Concrete Achievements

Tag: conference on the future of europe

  • At @epc_eu in event on #cofoe #TheFutureIsYours and future of EU democracy.

    At @epc_eu in event on #cofoe #TheFutureIsYours and future of EU democracy. We’re discussing this excellent report, which was presented by @jaemmanouilidis epc.eu/en/Publication…. My four points:

    1. We need to think more deeply about the power relations on the politics side. COFOE has shown how hard it is to run hybrid decision making processes without a clear agreement on power and process up front.

    2. There is risk that the language or practice of citizen participation, which is developing quickly, runs ahead of political culture and structures. We need to move the latter faster and be careful not to overclaim and create disappointment.

    3. Institutionalisation (👋 @ClaudiaChwalisz) doesn’t mean a democracy bolt-on to each government body or structure, it means creating the structures in the middle that each government body can work through so we don’t duplicate design, expertise or networks.

    4. We can’t just work with panel-sized audiences. How can we create the digital tools for larger scale participation – with the design quality, legibility and flexibility that the best in class current apps have?

    Thanks to @epc_eu and other participants for a great event.

  • I wasn’t in Florence for #cofoe #TheFutureIsYours, though @demsoc colleagues were.

    I wasn’t in Florence for #cofoe #TheFutureIsYours, though @demsoc colleagues were. I see a lot of people here talking about one recommendation (on more European citizen assemblies) but it’s worth saying there were almost 40 others, on a much wider range of issues.

    For me the most interesting recommendations were those on rule of law and media freedom, confirming that these aren’t just elite/Brussels bubble concerns but the concerns of citizens from around Europe.

    Also worth noting is how much citizens overall saw Europe as a level of government that needed direct accountability to them – not surprising in some ways but a big change from the state-based proto-confederalism that is the structural logic of today’s EU.

    This came out most clearly in the recommendation on (what are known in Brussels as) transnational lists for the European Parliament – a voting system that would force candidates to appeal across national boundaries.

    So read the whole list to see a lot of interesting ideas, beyond more CAs, delivered in a very short time. Over to the citizen ambassadors and the others at the conference plenary to see what they can do with this raw material.

  • Links from the week of 17 May 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 19 April 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • 10 ways to make the best of the Conference on the Future of Europe #cofoe #futureofeurope…

    10 ways to make the best of the Conference on the Future of Europe #cofoe #futureofeurope – a thread.

    Too many presidents. Too little time. People have been pretty hard on the leaked plans for the Conference on the Future of Europe #CoFoE – but it can still make a positive difference to the emerging European Democracy.

    1. Make #CoFoE experimental. This isn’t going to be writing a new European treaty, so use the opportunity to test different participative approaches on big questions, including how to join up different processes at different levels.

    2. Listening means acting. The response to the European Citizen Consultation of 2018-9 was a sentence in a summit document. The Institutions should flesh out how they will respond to #cofoe concretely – not just promise to read the answers carefully.

    3. Start building civil society links now. Seeming irrelevance leads to civil society inaction leading to minimal response. Turn it into a virtuous circle by making clear how civil society can help – and how #cofoe matters to their goals, not just the EU institutions’.

    4. Get officials involved in person. Myths around citizen participation are more easily dispelled by taking part in an event than by reading a report – and #cofoe can help officials learn how they can use participation in their own work too.

    5. Set a clear pathway for citizen agenda setting. “Citizens are free to raise other issues” is fine, but it mustn’t be “raise it to be ignored”. Online idea generation should have a clear pathway from idea to #CoFoE agenda.

    6. Run past the deadline. Spring 2022 is soon – but it’s less of a problem if the Institutions plan now to continue the approach beyond the deadline, and show how issues not addressed in #cofoe can be picked up later, in the run up to the 2024 European Parliament elections.

    7. Leave a legacy. By the time #cofoe draws to a close, the programmes selected as part of the Green Deal to create infrastructure for citizen participation in Europe will be starting up. Pass on citizen networks, tech platforms and relevant conversations from one to the next.

    8. Let citizens mark the homework. As in France, let a group of citizens who have been involved in #CoFoE review what the Institutions do with it. It may lead to a few uncomfortable comments, but it shows that this is a meaningful process.

    9. Ensure that technology is open. The tools created for #CoFoE need to be shared widely. Multilingual dialogue processes on a common European digital framework – that could really speed up the developmed of a connected European democracy.

    10. Build the foundations for trust. The institutions need to trust the answers they receive from #CoFoE. Citizens need to trust that processes are run fairly and without outside influence.

    The creation of trust is a long-term effort, longer-term than a single year or #CoFoE. But as the Hippocratic oath says, first do no harm. Make sure that processes are open, trusted and used, and that facilitation and design is independent or at least independently verified.

    Then, as citizen participation at European level expands, as it will in coming years, the #cofoe will have a legacy to be proud of.

  • Good for it to start, but it will need adaptive structures, particularly around citizen…

    Good for it to start, but it will need adaptive structures, particularly around citizen engagement, that can develop and connect to new initiatives over the 18-24 month run of the #COFOE twitter.com/schwarzmar/sta…

    It won’t be good enough if it’s either a single citizen assembly type process with no horizontal or vertical connectivity – or if there is too tight a prescription of process at the start. This area is developing fast – and as long as the connections are clear

    the detail can be left more flexible.