On 9 May, also known as 'Europe Day', the Conference on the Future of Europe officially kicked-off a year-long consultation process. The process launched with an inaugural event in ICLEI Member Strasbourg (France), which invited European citizens to propose their ideas and priorities for Europe across nine key areas, including climate change and the environment.

National and local actors will play an important role in the consultation process – which is organised by the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission – facilitating the broad participation of Europeans. The Conference is foreseen to take place in different formats, each open for contributions. This primarily includes:

• A multilingual Digital Platform inviting citizens to submit, discuss and endorse their EU reform proposals and those of other individuals (Platform available in all 24 EU languages);
• Decentralised events organised by citizens and civil society that will be listed on the Digital Platform, and whose results will be fed into the overall process;
• European Citizens’ Panels (a form of citizen dialogues) planned for Autumn 2021, which will be informed by ideas proposed on the Digital Platform, and which will gather randomly-selected Europeans to create recommendations to be forwarded to the Conference Plenary.

The ideas and recommendations discussed across these three formats will all be fed into a Conference Plenary. The Plenary, composed of representatives from the main EU institutions, as well as national parliamentarians, regional deputies, the European Committee of the Regions, social partners, NGOs and 108 randomly-selected representatives, will discuss the proposals made and will adopt recommendations that EU institutions have committed to follow-up on.

Due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, the format and timeline of the panels and plenaries is still to be determined, and expected to begin this summer. The process is to conclude by spring next year, with a report laying out a set of recommendations for each of the EU institutions.

The European Committee of the Regions – the EU’s assembly of local and regional elected representatives and an ICLEI Europe partner – co-organised a citizen dialogue in Strasbourg with French regional and local associations on the kick-off day to discuss bringing the Conference to regions, cities and villages across Europe. More informaiton can be found here.

ICLEI Members from local and regional governments interested in encouraging engagement of their citizens, or in organising their own dialogues and events, can find information materials here. More details on the inaugural event can be found here.