The European Parliament and the Conference on the Future of Europe: Between ownership and diverging political visions

The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), hosted by the European Parliament (EP), aimed to bolster EU democracy through citizen engagement. Although the initial idea of the conference came from Emanuel Macron, the EP, through its largest pro-European political groups (S&D, Renew, EPP) tried to claim “ownership” of the CoFoE by shaping its agenda and debates (Johansson and Raunio 2022). This paper broadens the scope of analysis by providing a full picture of positions towards the CoFoE formulated in the EP. Although all political groups welcomed the ambition of achieving broad participation by citizens throughout the Conference, Eurosceptic groups (ID and ECR) voted against resolutions over CoFoE prepared by the rest of the EP groups. Later on, the ECR even withdrew from the Conference. The Left, a Eurosceptic group, although signed the resolution together with pro-European groups, exhibited very low voting cohesion, indicating a certain level of contestation over the issue. Based on text analysis of the motions for resolutions and plenary debates, I argue that political groups diverged over the CoFoE based on the ideological stances constructed around the EU. Meanwhile, the pro-European groups (S&D, Renew, EPP, EFA/Greens) employed the CoFoE to enhance integration and launch the Treaty Change procedure. The ECR and ID, on the other hand, intended the conference as an evaluative tool, open to the full range of visions, such as the Eurorealist concept of a confederal Europe. Contrary to these Eurosceptic groups, the Left supported triggering the Treaty Change as a chance to depart from the EU's neoliberal monetarist policies. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these divergent political visions approach the role of national parliaments within the CoFoE and in the wider EU institutional setting.