Determined to play a leading role in the organisation and running of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which could start on 9 May and last two and a half years, the European Parliament on Wednesday 15 January adopted its position for the forthcoming negotiations with the European Commission and the Council of the EU.
The text of the resolution, as adopted by the plenary session by a large majority (494 votes in favour, 197 against, 49 abstentions), is almost the same as the one that the European Parliament Conference of Political Groups validated last week (see EUROPE 12400/3).
Among the amendments adopted was that of the EPP and S&D groups that representatives of the thematic citizens’ agoras and youth agoras will be invited to the plenary session of the conference to present their conclusions “so that they can be taken into account during the deliberations of the plenary session”. However, MEPs rejected the Greens/EFA group’s amendment, arguing that representatives of thematic citizens’ agoras and youth agoras should be involved in the deliberations of the plenary assembly.
On the other hand, the amendment by the environmentalists calling for the selection of citizens participating in the agoras to be carried out “at random” by independent institutions within the Member States was approved.
On the choice of the Parliament personality who is supposed to steer the day-to-day work of the Conference, the choice remains unclear. This issue will obviously be dealt with in the interinstitutional negotiations. Prospective candidate Belgian Liberal Guy Verhofstadt said he was “perhaps” a candidate for the presidency of the works in an election of a democratic process, as suggested by Damian Boeselager (Greens/EFA, Germany).
During the plenary debate, the representatives of the pro-European political groups stressed the importance of changing the approach compared to previous exercises, involving citizens in future deliberations, and of not setting in advance the objectives to be achieved in terms of political choices or recommended institutional reform. The outcome of the conference should “not be predetermined”, stressed Parliament President David Sassoli.
For EPP group leader Manfred Weber (Germany), the decade ahead must be one of “strengthening European democracy”. He reiterated his group’s interest in the principle of head-of-list candidates (‘Spitzenkandidaten’), which should be ‘compulsory’, without however referring to the creation of transnational lists in the European elections.
In February 2018, his group tilted the majority of Parliament against such an initiative in view of the 2019 European elections (see EUROPE 11956/1), a position criticised in 2019 by French President Emmanuel Macron.
On behalf of the Renew Europe group, Romanian MEP Dacian Cioloș advocated “getting out of the procedural logic” to “open the doors to the citizens” and put forward proposals to make the EU “a common home”. Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, Germany) admitted that there were “risks” involved in holding such a conference. But “the worst thing would be not to try”, he added. Advocating a federalist model, he warned against disunity, which would be the certainty of perishing small and alone. French MEP Manon Aubry, who co-chairs the GUE/NGL group, said the conference should respond to the “tremendous desire for change” expressed in particular by French people demonstrating against pension reform. “Our Union cannot be content with a cosmetic facelift, it is the whole architecture that needs to be rethought”, she said, advocating an “in-depth” reform of the Treaties.
The Identity and Democracy (ID) and ECR Groups, which have tabled their own alternative draft resolution, do not share the views of the pro-European political families.
The Conference would be useful if it allowed Europe to be “self-critical after the mistakes made” in dealing with the economic and migration crises, said Italian Marco Zanni, leader of the ID group, convinced that everything that has been done has only weakened Europe and “impoverished the citizens”. Contrary to what Mr Freund said, he argued, we should not create a federal state, but, on the contrary, start from states, from peoples, without whom Europe does not exist.
On behalf of the ECR Group, Ryszard Antoni Legutko of Poland denounced the “tyranny of the majority” represented by the groups supporting the resolution. For these pro-European groups, the unspoken objective of achieving an ever closer Union justifies ignoring the letter of the European treaties according to which it is for the EU Council to convene a Conference on the Future of Europe (Article 48, paragraph 4).
Work in progress in the other European institutions. On behalf of the Croatian Presidency of the EU Council, State Secretary for Relations with the European Parliament Nikolina Brnjac expressed the hope that the Conference would help to implement the strategic agenda adopted by the Twenty-Seven in June 2019.
On the same day, Member States informally discussed the objectives and modalities of the Conference, on the basis of the guidelines provided by the European Council in December. On Tuesday 28 January, the General Affairs Council will debate the issue.
The European Commission will present its contribution “on Wednesday 22 January”, confirmed Vice-President Dubravka Šuica, who thinks the Conference should “ideally” begin its work on Saturday 9 May, Europe Day.
See the text of the resolution: https://bit.ly/30svRym (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)