Final, final flashback of our time-travel machine with the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE), launched by the European Union in May 2021. A joint initiative of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council of the EU, it marked a significant milestone in the evolution of European governance and in MP’s history! It was the first time that a citizens’ assembly format was adopted on such a scale. Completed in May 2022, the CoFE combined an unprecedented level of complexity with significant linguistic and logistical requirements.
- A multilingual digital platform where citizens could share their ideas and submit contributions online. These were collected, analysed, tracked, and published throughout the conference. 54,000 citizens contributed with 19,000 proposals.
- Decentralized events, held online, in hybrid form, or in person, organized by citizens, organizations, as well as national, regional, and local authorities across Europe.
- European citizens’ panels, which debated various themes and presented their proposals. Four panels, each made up of 200 citizens, met three times (in Strasbourg at the European Parliament, online, and in Florence, Warsaw, Maastricht, and Dublin).
- Plenary sessions ensured that recommendations formulated by both national and European citizens’ panels, grouped by themes, were debated with no predetermined outcome. On equal footing sat 108 representatives from the European Parliament, 54 from the Council, 3 from the European Commission, 108 from national parliaments, and 108 citizens, including 80 from the European panels, 27 from the national panels (one per Member State), and the President of the European Youth Forum.
In this context, Missions Publiques – in addition to contributing to the process design – acted as a coordinator within the deliberative team, supporting the implementation and operationalization of the approach, in collaboration with Danish Technology, Ifok, Deliberativa, and Kantar for recruitment. On May 9, 2022, the results (49 proposals) were presented to the EU presidency (France), the European Parliament, and the European Commission. Today, the three institutions are working on these recommendations and have decided to institutionalize European citizens’ panels as a tool for public policy preparation. Impactful, isn’t it?
