Renew Europe is pleased to welcome today in the European Parliament the citizens who participated in the European Citizens’ Panels during the Conference on the Future of Europe, for a feedback event.
Our group and the European Parliament are fully committed to support the conclusions of the Conference. We repeat our call for a Convention in order to reform the EU treaties, to increase the competence of the EU in crucial fields, such as energy, defence and health and to strengthen the European Parliament. Our group wants to make the Conference and its method an integral part of the European political and democratic landscape.
EU Citizens see the limits of the EU’s functioning, which can be blocked by a single Member State on the basis of the unanimity rule. We stand with the citizens who participated in the Conference.
Guy Verhofstadt (Open VLD, Belgium), co-chair of the Executive Board of the Conference on the Future of Europe and Renew Europe negotiator of the resolution calling for a Convention, declared: “Following up on the Conference is not a numbers exercise. It’s not enough to say 60 or 70 percent of proposals can be found in the Commission Work Programme. We have to fully implement what the Conference decided, and that means we need a Convention. That is the place to take up our common responsibility as EU-institutions and say: this is the way to reform Europe along the lines of what citizens wanted.”