THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION REPORT. Europe in a period of transition

THE CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN, WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE AND WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM IT 27 The least we can expect from this Conference, given its definition in the Rules – namely, “a citizens-focused exercise… for Europeans to have their say -, is that, be- cause of its real impact on the political life of the Union, it becomes a true exercise in participatory democracy and not just a mere consultative operation. The most we can expect from it is that a reasonably significant number of proposals for action arising from the Citizens’ Panels and the Digital Platform will develop into Union decisions and that one of them consists of the calling of a Convention. Finally, we might expect that with regard to Europe- an governance the Conference proposes a limited series of improvements, most of which attainable without the need to change the treaties and in the following terms. 1. Improvement in the effectiveness of the Union through the following action: • Recovering the “community method”, which means that each institution focuses on its es- sential tasks: the Commission on initiating and executing decisions; the Council and the Parlia- ment on adopting legislation and the budget; the European Council on laying down the political guidelines, • Improving the devising and implementation of the Union’s general political strategy, avoiding con- tradictions between the drafting and implemen- tation of the Council’s strategic agenda and the political priorities of the Commission mandate, • fostering qualified majority voting in the Council as much as possible and • synchronising the mandates of the three pre- sidencies (European Council, Parliament, and Commission) better. 2. Improvement in the legitimacy of the Union through the following action: • establishing direct democracy instruments such as, for example, the European referendum, • Europeanising national election campaigns and de- bates through the introduction of a system of trans- national tickets for the European elections of 2024, • conferring on the European Parliament the direct election of the President of the Commission, • recovering, on the part of the Commission, the full use of its power of legislative initiative, • increasing the transparency of the Council of the European Union and the European Council and • increasing the real accountability of all the ins- titutions. Conclusions The pandemic has speeded up European construction, as demonstrated by the examples of the Recovery Fund and the Vaccination Strategy, two major instruments at European level without which it would not be possible to win the double battle (for health and the economy) over the virus. The logical thing is to seize this momentum to deepen European political union , raising the reform of the Trea- ty of Lisbon where necessary when in 2022 it will be 20 years since the launch of the Convention that drafted the European Constitution, whose main advances live on in it. To do this, in its final Report the Conference should provide for the calling of a Convention to debate, draft, and propose the necessary changes to secure more and a better Europe, indicating the fields in which those changes would be appropriate. Moreover, many of the steps forward that the Confer- ence could include in its final Report would not require changes in the Union’s primary law, rather political de- cisions that are fully applicable in the framework of the existing Treaty. Completing European political union will not be easy, because unanimity still applies to any change in the Treaty, which ultimately can only introduce an Inter- governmental Conference. Yet nor should it be seen as impossible if it has the support of citizens (made explicit in the Conference on the Future of Europe) and institu- tions and can count on politically sufficient arguments, will and patience.