Preparations for the Conference on the Future of Europe are ongoing. What are our expectations and wishes for it? Three new guest contributions have been published on the blog “The (European) Federalist”: Member of the Bundestag Axel Schäfer (SPD) calls for effective participation of the national parliaments. For our Senior Researcher Julian Plottka, a good preparation of the conference is more important than a quick start. Gustav Spät (#EngagEU) emphasizes that the conference should not only reach those who are already interested in politics and enthusiastic about Europe.
This is Julian Plottka’s contribution.
Since the German Government began to outline key points of its forthcoming Presidency, an interesting debate has been initiated on why the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) does not rank higher on the German agenda. German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised high expectations when she called the CoFoE a long-term response to the current COVID-19 crisis, and the usual federalist suspects began to question how much the German government is really committed to the conference. The Foreign Office reaffirmed its clear commitment to the CoFoE. Michael Roth, Minister of State for Europe at the Foreign Office, said that he was working very hard, but that the Council was still a long way from a political consensus. A launch in 2020 is still considered possible or even probable.
Read more in German here.
