European Citizens’ Panels

The Conference on the Future of Europe is a citizen-led series of debates and discussions that will enable people from across Europe to share their ideas and help shape common European future. The European Citizens´panels are integral part of the CoFoE.

The panels are bringing together people from different walks of life. Citizens have been chosen randomly by specialist contractors on behalf of the EU institutions, using methodologies that ensure that they are representative of the EU's diversity in terms of geographic origin, gender, age, socioeconomic background and level of education.

Young people between 16 and 25 make up one-third of each panel. These citizens will come up with ideas and recommendations that will feed into the overall Conference deliberations, in particular into the Conference Plenaries, and ultimately into the report on its final outcome.

The European Citizens’ Panels kicked off their deliberations with the first 200-citizen meeting between 17 and 19 September in Strasbourg. The first sessions of all four Panels took place in Parliament’s premises in Strasbourg and began working on draft recommendations within each Panel’s remit. This first European Citizens’ Panel was focusing on a stronger economy, social justice, jobs/education, youth, culture, and sport/digital transformation, based on citizens’ contributions collected from across Europe on the Multilingual Digital Platform, as well as support and presentations from prominent academics.

The second European Citizens’ Panel during the weekend 24-26 September focused on European democracy/values, rights, the rule of law, and security. The third panel´s agenda (1-3 October) is climate change, environment and health.