The Presidents of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and, on behalf of the Council of the European Union, the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, signed, on Wednesday 10 March, the interinstitutional declaration laying the foundations for the Conference on the Future of Europe (see EUROPE 12671/27).
With the signing of this declaration, the three EU institutions commit themselves to starting the Conference on the Future of Europe this coming “9 May”, said Mr Sassoli, without specifying whether this launching event will take place at the European Parliament’s headquarters in Strasbourg. He hoped that this exercise, which will place citizens at the centre of the reflection, will be able to “lay the basis for a new European social contract”. There will be “no taboos”: it is essential that this exercise leads to “legislative changes, treaty changes — if this is desired and wished for”.
According to António Costa, it is necessary to “debate now to be ready when we have defeated the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“We want to know what kind of Europe our citizens dream of”, said Ursula von der Leyen, who wants the conference to “go beyond Brussels” to “reach what some call the silent majority”. And to add: why in the midst of a pandemic? It is precisely in times of crisis that we must ask ourselves how Europe can improve. “Europe can achieve results when it is given the means”, said Mrs von der Leyen, referring to the Next Generation EU Recovery Plan, with a budget of 750 billion euros over the next three years.
See the interinstitutional statement: http://bit.ly/2NXZO7k
Executive Board. The signing of the declaration marks the start of the operational preparations for the Conference on the Future of Europe.
The three presidents of the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of the EU will co-chair the Conference, but will not steer the day-to-day work, which will be carried out by an Executive Board. This body will soon be constituted, perhaps within two weeks.
The Parliament will have seven members (three full members, four observers), i.e. one representative per political group.
On Tuesday, the president of the EPP group, Manfred Weber from Germany, had announced his intention to sit on this Executive Board. He set three priorities: an enhanced role for the EU on the international stage, a European Health Union and a truly democratic Europe. The following will also sit on this Executive Board: the President of the S&D Group, Iratxe García Perez (Spain) and Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe, Belgium).
The four observer MEPs are expected to be Gerolf Annemans(Identity and Democracy, Belgium), Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, Germany), Zdzisław Krasnodębski (ECR, Poland) and Helmut Scholz (The Left, Germany).
The Executive Board will have to decide how many people will participate in the plenary sessions of the Conference and in the Citizens’ Agoras and how to select citizens in a representative manner. The MEPs had already mentioned some ideas in this respect (see EUROPE 12645/23). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)