The pro-European political forces in the European Parliament on Thursday 7 May reaffirmed the importance of convening "as soon as possible" the Conference on the Future of Europe as an appropriate "forum" to reflect on how the European Union should evolve in the light of the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We continue to believe that the pan-European project of a Conference on the Future of Europe must lead to a profound reform of the Union in order to make it "more efficient, cohesive, democratic, sovereign and resilient", said the EPP, S&D, Renew Europe and Greens/EFA groups at the end of the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament’s political groups (CoP), on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.
The GUE/NGL Group, which usually joins in this kind of statement, did not support it this time because it did not go far enough.
The Conference should have been officially launched on Saturday 9 May, potentially from Dubrovnik, the city dear to the competent European Commissioner, Dubravka Šuica. But the Covid-19 pandemic has turned the agenda upside down and the institutional trio - European Parliament, EU Council, Commission - has not been able to negotiate an inter-institutional agreement defining the modalities and objectives of this initiative. The health crisis also prohibits the holding of public debates.
In the Parliament, other initiatives aim to keep the Conference high on the political agenda. MEPs are likely to discuss this initiative when they celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration in a debate on Thursday 14 May. But they will not vote on a specific resolution. The subject will return to the Parliamentary agenda in June, promised the president of the Renew Europe group, Romanian Dacian Cioloș, hoping that by then the Council will have clarified its position on the organisation of the Conference.
The Chair of Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee (AFCO), Antonio Tajani (EPP, Italy), has also written to Parliament’s President David Sassoli, asking him to put pressure on the Croatian Presidency of the EU Council to get the Member States to resume their work.
See Mr Tajani's letter: https://bit.ly/2SNHNbk
Work in the Council has changed little since February (see EUROPE 12426/3). Nevertheless, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece and Ireland have recently written to their partners to stress the importance of the Conference on the Future of Europe and the need to "initiate an open and ambitious discussion on how to make the EU a strong, independent and credible actor on the international scene". Is this initiative a signal that the Austrian Government is relaxing its position and does not want to rule out the prospect of institutional reform from the outset?
In the Parliament, the AFCO committee, under the impetus of Domènec Ruiz Devesa (S&D, Spain), has drawn up a working document which recalls the topicality of the Schuman Declaration. This document, which did not receive the support of the RCE and ID groups, encourages the Parliament to work towards an institutional reform of the EU that strengthens "European democracy" by transferring executive powers to the Commission and reinforcing the parliamentary control of the Parliament. The European Electoral Law would also be reformed and the involvement of citizens strengthened, in particular through the establishment of a permanent consultation mechanism.
See the working paper: https://bit.ly/2WxKcry
Electronic platform in preparation
Pending a position from the Council, the European Commission is not standing idly by. Speaking on Tuesday 5 May at a debate organised by the think tank Friends of Europe, Ms Šuica said that the safest option in the current pandemic context was to move the Conference on the Future of Europe online until the virus was under control. We are working on "a multilingual digital platform", she added.
Reiterating the Commission's determination to lead the debate on the future of Europe, the Commissioner considered that "health systems and the 'Brussels' response to the health crisis" would become key issues. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)