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.
