Empty for more than fourteen months, the hemicycle of the European Parliament in Strasbourg will come back to life this Sunday, May 9, on the occasion of Europe Day. The French president will officially launch the Conference on the Future of Europe, a pan-European consultation exercise postponed last year due to Covid-19.
→ EXPLANATION. Conference on the future of Europe: the online citizen platform is launched
He will also take the opportunity to defend the siege of Strasbourg, shunned for months for the benefit of the premises of Brussels due to the pandemic. « The date is obviously symbolic and the place is just as much: it was therefore particularly important for us that the conference could be launched in Strasbourg ”, we insist at the Elysee.
European Babel
More than seventy years after May 9, 1950, the day of the Schuman Declaration laying the first stone of European construction, Europeans are therefore invited to express themselves. Since April 19, a multilingual digital platform was launched, with already nearly 8,000 participants and more than 1,500 ideas on various themes (health, environment, social justice and employment, migration, democracy, etc.).
At European level, citizens’ panels will be organized until the end of the year, with recommendations that will feed into conclusions expected in March 2022. France will then assume the rotating presidency of the EU, at the same time as it will be in the last weeks of the presidential campaign.
Each of the 27 Member States will also host its own national debate. In France, a system of drawing lots for fifty citizens will take place in each region. These groups will be brought together locally in September over a three-day weekend, with workshops before being the subject of a national synthesis.
70,000 participants in 2018
This is not the first time that the French have engaged in exercise. In 2018, the consultations on the future of Europe – already wanted by Emmanuel Macron – had gathered 70,000 participants, but “Had not had the expected impact”, by the Élysée’s own admission. The approach was not in vain, however, we insist in the entourage of the president, since it made it possible to alert on several priorities such as the fight against hate speech, the reinforcement of controls on food. , the question of imported deforestation …
→ READ. Europe “Macron version”, a playing card for 2022
“Attention, Europe is not France on a larger scale”, alert Sandrine Roginsky, from the Catholic University of Louvain, specialist in European communication. In previous consultations, Eastern European countries tended to participate less than others.
Each has its own specificities. “The countries of the North, already used to these spaces of exchange, did not wait for France to consult”, specifies the researcher. “In Belgium, where compulsory voting has eliminated the fear of abstention, in Germany, where popular initiatives are numerous in the Länder, the issues and modes of expression will not be at all the same. “
Challenge of the tangible
According to a Eurobarometer survey carried out last October-November among 27,034 Europeans, the Conference on the Future of Europe has won support in principle. According to the results presented in March, 76% agree that this type of consultation represents a “Significant progress” for democracy in the EU.
However, its launch comes up against the difficulty of organizing events other than virtual ones. This May 9, in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, contributions from citizens and representatives of civil society will be broadcast on video.
Only twenty-seven Erasmus students from all EU countries will be present in the room, with another 300 citizens invited to participate remotely. A special European edition of the magazine Phosphorus was published on this occasion, in order to encourage young high school students to take part in the debates.
– .
