ERA's first conference as part of the Conference on the Future of Europe
In her candidate’s speech to the European Parliament in July 2019,
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to set up a conference
to examine the mid- and long-term perspectives of the EU aiming to
develop a strategy involving citizens and not excluding institutional
reforms. This Conference on the Future of Europe has now been formally
launched by the three presidents of Parliament, Council and Commission
through a joint declaration signed on 10 March 2021.
As in former
reform processes of the EU, ERA will closely monitor and enrich the
unfolding debate through a series of own conferences and discussion fora
with a particular focus on the legal aspects of the ongoing analysis
and emerging proposals. The series will take off with this event: A
panel of two key politicians with a legal background – Vice Presidents
Vĕra Jourová of the Commission and Katarina Barley of the Parliament –
will discuss aims and procedure of the Conference with an academic,
Professor Peter-Christian Müller-Graff (Heidelberg), and with ERA’s
former director Wolfgang Heusel.
Professor Müller-Graff will
give a tour d’horizon of the most pertinent areas of EU policy as
reflected in the list of topics for the Conference (such as climate
change and the Green Deal, digital transformation, migration, the EU in
the world) which might require legislative programmes similar to the
Single Market legislative packages of the ’80s and ’90s. Vice President
Jourová, the Commission’s official representative on the Conference
Executive Board with a special mandate to look at ways to improving the
lead candidate system and at the issue of transnational lists, and Vice
President Barley will then present ambitions and expectations of their
respective institutions, before the floor will be opened to the
audience.