Does the Conference on the Future of Europe present EU citizens with a mere suggestion box?

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Copyright: "Lamu, Kenya: Police Suggestion Box" by lindsay_bremner is licensed under CC BY 2.0

By Pelle Christy Geertsen (EU expert, analyst, commentator, and lobbyist)

Yesterday, there was yet another press conference and a whole lot of communication on the “Conference on the Future of Europe”, which will be officially launched on 9 May, which is Europe day.

Following a long hiatus, partially a result of the pandemic, the conference, which was announced in 2019, is finally moving forward somehow.

The main point of yesterday’s press conference was to present the new digital platform, which will be at the centre of the conference’s activities and which allows anyone to submit suggestions for reforming the European Union.  From how it was heralded, one can fear that some of those behind it believe that if only the right digital platform is used, it will automatically be a success, and everyone will feel included and being listened to.

Like with other aspects of the conference however, there might be good reasons to question whether the platform and the approach used align with the stated desired outcome the conference is supposed to deliver.

Receiving comments is not the same as listening

As anyone who has ever worked in a company with a “suggestion box” can testify, the fact that you are allowed to submit comments is not the same as ensuring that what you suggest is also given actual consideration.

I remember the frustration that can arise from submitting constructive suggestions that could easily optimize workflow and increase output, but that were not met with any real response. That’s not to say all submissions warrant approval, let alone serious debate. I know that when we – out of frustration – switched from submitting actual proposals to instead suggesting that our direct manager should dress up as a pirate every Friday, we did not exactly expect the corporate hierarchy to adopt this. In fact, we would have been rather surprised if they did, yet the fact that our repeated pirate-themed suggestions received about the same amount of feedback as the serious suggestions we submitted, clearly demonstrated the problem.

Making sure that people can submit comments or ideas is not the same as making them feel heard. It might work for a bit, but once it is discovered that comments are only welcome when they say what the receiver wants to hear, the feedback exercise can quickly become counter-productive.   

People supporting a more inclusive EU policy approach have long figured out that certain public consultations published for EU initiatives and proposals are really interchangeable. While some are relatively open to a broad range of critical opinions,, others seem more like variations on the theme “Please tell the EU Commission just how much you support their new proposal”.

With this in mind, it is easy to see the danger of this Conference ending up to make European citizens feel – even – further removed from decisions in Brussels.

This is not an attack on CoFoE

Do not get me wrong, even if pertinent questions can be raised about the lack of a clear purpose of the conference, how the executive board members for the conference might be anything but representative, whether the system of moderation may filter out “unwanted opinions” or whether the methods used may turn out to be counterproductive, the idea of holding a conference to discuss the future of the EU policy level is not bad in itself. In fact, it might very well be just what a doctor would prescribe, but then it needs to be done properly.

We definitely need to have a good and profound debate about the future of the European Union, and what the different ambitions of citizens and politicians might be. Perhaps this is even something that should be done more regularly than only every twenty years.

If not like this, then how?

First of all, we must make sure that we do not end up with a Conference on the Future of Europe that more or less takes the form of yet another EU public consultation. In these kind of consultations, one is typically invited to provide input, but expected to mainly comply with what the European Commission already had in mind.

Supposedly, the “CoFoE” secretariat will incorporate all the input received into the discussions, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Ms. von der Leyen already received a wildly divergent series of suggestions on her twitter feed, which may be indicative of the challenge to translate the received suggestions into a coherent set of proposals, providing more power for those coordinating the whole exercise:

An  EUObserver op-ed argued it was best to “just cancel the Future of Europe Conference” altogether, fundamentally questioning its legitimacy:

The op-ed predicts:

“After spending an estimated €200m and countless months in meetings, the conference will likely release a grand statement along the lines of ‘making the EU more inclusive, more competitive, sustainable, green’, ‘a united global player’ to ‘fight nationalism and partisanship’ and share ideas of ‘social solidarity and human rights’ around the world.”

This all brings us back to the discussion of what the purpose of the conference actually is. Do we want the citizens to debate the EU in general or something specific? And if we only want them to debate things and come to conclusions that cannot lead to any significant changes, why should they end up feeling listened to, once it is all over?

If the Conference on the Future of Europe will effectively turn into yet another EU public consultation, we do not only run the risk that its outcome may only receive as little attention as the average post-consultation summary for the average EU directive. We actually will then be in danger of something much worse: The next time EU citizens are asked their opinion about the EU, they might not bother to answer at all.

 

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