Commission-Eesc
(Brussels) For the first time in the history of the EU, the Commission has convened 80 EU citizens from 27 Member States to prepare a public consultation on the Future of Europe. They will meet on 5-6 May in Brussels, at the headquarters of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), to draft a 12-question online consultation. The EESC, which in 2017 had already organised consultations on the future of Europe in the Member States in the framework of the White Paper by Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, followed the idea of the French Minister for European Affairs, Nathalie Loiseau, who presented the European consultation process put forward by Emmanuel Macron while attending the EESC plenary session in March. This will be a “unique exercise in participative democracy” which “will see citizens shaping the conversation on the Future of Europe ahead of the European Parliament elections in May 2019”, a statement from the EESC reads. The meeting in Brussels will open with a plenary session and will be followed by a series of working groups taking place in parallel to define 12 overarching topics that “get to the heart of what matters to European citizens” today. The topics will become a questionnaire aimed at all European citizens and will serve as a basis for those Member States wishing to organise further initiatives. This “pan-European tool” will be launched by the Commission on 9 May, Europe Day.
