Opening of the second plenary session of the Conference on the future of Europe (CoFoE). Opening statements and presentation of the agenda proposed by the Executive board by the Co-chairs: Guy VEHOFSTADT (Renew, BE), Dubravka SUICA, European Commissioner for demography and democracy and by Gašper DOVŽAN, Slovenian State Secretary for EU Affairs.

VERHOFSTADT, Guy (Renew, BE)

statement

Strasbourg

debate

future of the European Union (T)

ŠUICA, Dubravka (EPP, HR, EC)

conference on the future of Europe (T)

DOVŽAN, Gašper (SI)

Conference on the Future of Europe - Plenary session: opening by the co-Chairs and agenda proposed by the Executive board

SOUNDBITE (English), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, So thank you very much. The meeting of the plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe is open. And the agenda as proposed by the Executive Board is endorsed. And I welcome you all in this plenary chamber of the European Parliament for wha the co-chairs will hope to be an intense and fruitful debate on the future of Europe.

SOUNDBITE (English), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, Especially dear colleagues, I want to say welcome to 80 citizens that are representing the citizens panels in this plenary. It's the first time that they are here and that makes that the plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe is now completed.

SOUNDBITE (English), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, In total, we are 449 representatives of the civil society, social partners, the citizens and the institutions, including the national parliaments. May I ask you, during our proceedings, everyone respect the current health restrictions and measures in our premises. That includes keeping social distancing at one and a half metre and also wearing of face masks at all times, except when you speak.

SOUNDBITE (English), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, So in this plenary, we will have a morning and an afternoon session. In the morning session, we will hear a large number of reports from the European citizens panels and from the 27 national panels and events. In the afternoon, we will look into the results. First results of the European youth event, that was organised two weeks ago in Strasbourg where remotely and physically ten thousand young people attended this event.

SOUNDBITE (English), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, And we will hear also the results of the first and second report of the digital platform. That means that we have tried to allocate the speaking time in a way that we can have a good debate in the morning and a good debate in the afternoon. There will be also the novelty to make our debates more lively of a blue card intervention.

SOUNDBITE (English), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, And when we start to debate and it will be our co-chair who will explain you also how this will work. Blue card for those who are not familiar with this possibility to intervene.

SOUNDBITE (French), Guy VERHOFSTADT, (RE, BE), CoFoE Co-chair, Once again, I'd like to express my thanks to you all for attending today. And once again, I'd like to say that I'd like to particularly welcome the 80 citizens from the European citizens panels who have been appointed and who are amongst us here for the first time.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, Thank you. Dear members of the plenary, I look around me right now. I have been in this chamber so many times, but I have never seen such an amazing, diverse plenary. For the first time and that its citizens are here in the hemicycle willing to contribute to the future of the European Union, which they want to live in and work in.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, Dear citizens. You are joined today by your elected representatives at European, national, regional and local level, by members of the Commission, that I represent, representatives of civil society and social partners. To steer a course for our common future we all need to work together. We need to show our strong commitment.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, From the moment I entered my political life, I have invested all my energy in citizens empowerment and engagement because I believe this is what politicians should always do, take people along with us in our policymaking at all levels.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, I am firmly convinced that this strengthens our representative democracy, the more so after having experienced myself a European citizen panel last week. Thanks to all of us, the train of deliberative democracy has now left the station and there is no going back. Citizens were asking to have a greater say to be able to engage beyond European elections every five years.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, The Conference is our response to this call. This transnational multilingual exercise in deliberative democracy is innovative and unequal in terms of scale. It is not just a listening exercise, on the contrary, it started with a clear commitment of the presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission to follow up to this debate.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, I, in my own reflections on the future, I would hope that historians may look at European democracy from a pre and post conference perspective. But thanks to the Conference on the Future of Europe already today, each and every citizen has the possibility to engage in a truly European discussion on the issues that are important for them.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, We open up a truly European public space there, from the mountains to islands, from Arctic to the Adriatic, citizens and their elected representatives can share ideas, appreciate different perspectives and points of view, and most important, contribute to stimulate change for the current and next generations.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, I would also like to welcome our friends from the Western Balkans countries. We are sending today a strong message. Your future is European future. You are most welcome in the Conference on the Future of Europe, and I understand that the discussions in the working groups yesterday were vivid, well-prepared and substantial.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, This continues the trend that we have observed in the four sessions of European citizens panels that we have had so far. Our plenary today will hear about what has been going on both at European level as well as in each member state.

SOUNDBITE (English), Dubravka SUICA, CoFoE co-chair, I look forward to the opportunity to debate on a variety of issues, and I have one message in particular to you all. As a co-chair of this conference, as you know, we have set ourselves the objective of gender balance in this conference, and I am proud that we have managed to perform well on this so far. Nevertheless, I understand that in some of the working groups, we may need to address this in a more constructive way. I look forward to our discussions. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, Seven months ago, a common declaration was signed about the Conference on the Future of Europe. Since then, we've done a lot. A lot of work has been done. The multilingual digital platform collected more than 8000 ideas and more than 14000 comments.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, We had four citizens panels, and they did their first discussions. 800 citizens from all over Europe participated in these panels. Furthermore, all across the EU, we had events altogether. 3800 and 140000 people participated in those events. What do these numbers tell us? This tells us that we have initiated a movement.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, In today's plenary, we will talk about the citizens panels and about areas that they focussed on in their debates. We will also be talking about the multilingual digital platform. And we will also get an overview of all the events and all the panels that have taken place at the national level.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, These put together thousands and thousands of citizens working together. But these events at the national level are the most important ones because they have the greatest outreach. This is the second plenary of the Conference and the first one that I am co-chairing as a member of the presidency.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, During the first plenary a clear message emerged. This is also in the common declaration. The Conference is a citizens focussed project. That's why I am very happy to see 80 citizens as representatives of citizens panels here today, together with 27 representatives who represent national panels. They were here in June as well.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, Today's agenda is focussed on them. So you citizens will get more time to speak more than Commission representatives, more than European Parliament representatives and more than Council representatives. You will have more chance to speak than all the representatives of European institutions put together.

SOUNDBITE (Slovenian), Gasper DOVZAN, CoFoE co-chair, I hope that we will have a fruitful debate, and I hope that we will be able to chart the course in such a way that in December we will be able to focus on the recommendations of national and European panels. Today we also have as stakeholders, colleagues from the Western Balkans, and I hope they join the debate as well when we talk about the future of Europe, thank you.