Is Europe’s Future Getting under Way?

The Executive Board of the Conference on the Future of Europe has endorsed the multilingual digital platform that will allow citizens from across the EU to contribute to the Conference in an open and inclusive participatory democracy debate.
“It also agreed on its working methods and advanced preparations for the inaugural event on Europe Day, 9 May,” has said europarl.europa.eu.
This new multilingual digital platform, which is set to be launched on April 19, will enable citizens from across Europe to have the possibility to provide their views on any topic that they consider important for the future of the EU.
“This will enable citizens for the first time at EU level to put forward their ideas, comment on other people’s ideas, create and participate in events. The platform will be the Conference’s central hub, a place where all contributions to the Conference will be brought together and shared, including decentralised events, the European Citizens’ Panels and Conference Plenaries,” said the press release.
A specialised feedback mechanism will aggregate and analyse key points raised, so that they can also be taken into account during the European Citizens’ panels and Conference Plenaries. The platform will also provide information on the Conference’s structure and work, as well as resources for event organisers including a catalogue of key events through which they will be able to promote their initiatives at local, regional, national, and European levels. Citizens will easily be able to look up events in which they wish to participate thanks to an events map.
The European Parliament’s Guy Verhofstadt (RE, BE) said: “We need to make this discussion as lively as possible, and in times of Covid that means to experiment with digital platforms as much as we can. With this platform, we offer the tools to give everyone a chance to get actively engaged in this debate, and we will make sure these ideas feed into the analysis and conclusions of the Conference. It’s their future, so it’s their Conference.”
The Portuguese Secretary of State for EU Affairs on behalf of the Presidency of the Council of the EU, Ana Paula Zacarias, commented that “The Digital Platform will bring Europeans into the public space. It will allow them to express their concerns, share their dreams and expectations and to engage with their representatives. The Union needs the power of its citizens behind it to make it stronger. This is a decisive moment, and this will allow us to debate differing views frankly and without taboos.”
Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica, stated: “The launch of the Digital Platform in ten days’ time will provide a unique space for our citizens to engage in conversations and debates right across Europe. It will allow people to share their ideas, concerns, hopes and dreams – and in all official EU languages.”
The Conference’s official hashtag #TheFutureIsYours is an invitation to EU citizens to contribute and define the EU’s future: “The future is in your hands”. /argumentum.al