Critical perspectives on the Conference on the Future of Europe: the representative, executive and participatory dimensions revisited

Abstract

The recently concluded Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), although overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine, has managed to stir the substantial debate about potential EU reforms, also in the context of the EU enlargement. Various institutional actors and Member States have responded to the Conference’s final recommendations in their own, strategically motivated way. These responses provide a complex picture of ideas, concerns and expectations with regard to the future evolution of the constitutional framework of the EU. In an attempt to reconcile some of them, it is of crucial importance to understand them first. Against this background, the underlying goal of this panel is to take a closer look at some of these responses and critically analyse them. The panel gathers four contributions addressing the impact of CoFoE on the EU constitutional dynamics as viewed from four different perspectives: two parliamentary (national and European), executive and participatory ones. The papers address the increasingly important issues of the interplay between participatory and representative democracy in the EU multi-level system, the position of national parliaments towards EU treaty changes, the evolution of the strategic position of the European Parliament towards EU reform and the Commission’s "ideological" approach to the citizen’s turn in the context of the ‘new generation’ citizens panels. The proposed papers offer both conceptual and empirical insights, including methodological approaches to study the various actors’ perspectives, as well as normative and ideational frameworks, which guide their perceptions of the potential institutional changes.

Title	Details
When citizens’ participation meets parliamentary representation in the EU: towards a framework for analysis	View Paper Details
How do the parliamentarians (de)legitimize EU the treaty reform?	View Paper Details
Driving democratic change? The EP’s reform agenda in the context of the CoFoE	View Paper Details
The institutional ‘success’ of the CoFoE via the ‘new generation’ citizen panels: The European Commission leads the public-private ‘citizen turn’	View Paper Details