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

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 36 list should be broad and they must at least consider these highlighted topics, although others should be added that both sides, including citizens and civil society, propose by mutual agreement in the Conference. Finally, in our declaration on 4 March 2021, we added: − Improving European democratic quality. − The solidity of the domestic market and the expan- sion of the industrial dimension of the European Union. − Reinforcing the European social model and, therefore, broadening competences in the field of social policy. − The creation of the European Health Union with transverse effects across all EU policies, to give Eu- ropean citizens better protection. − Looking at our Economic and Monetary Union in greater depth, for an economy that works for the people, with the development of the Banking Union and the Fiscal Union. − The improvement of the migration and asylum policy that, until now has not been supported by a suffi- ciently consistent competence from the Union. We will also look at the following points later in this paper: − The European Green Deal to develop a sustainable model, that helps provide an effective and ambitious response to the current issue of climate change. − The development of our own digital and technologi- cal model that is consistent with the European Union values and principles. − Making progress in expanding the notion of stra- tegic autonomy and developing a foreign, security and defence policy to achieve a stronger Europe in the world. − Education, culture and European sport. − The inclusion of equality between men and women across all fields and policies of the European Union. − Improvement of regional participation, particularly from European nationalities and regions with legis- lative competences and from ultra-periphery regions, within the framework of the constitution and the European Treaties. − The content that we have proposed is very similar to what appears in the Interinstitutional Declaration of 10 March although, as we will see below, there are some differences from what subsequently appeared on the Multilingual Digital Platform on 19 April. The topics suggested by the platform lack the accuracy of the proposals by the CFEME or from the actual original call. Implementation limits We picked out five difficulties when analysing the book El debate ciudadano en la Conferencia sobre el Futuro de Europa (Marcial Pons, Madrid, 2020) and various news- letters: a. Over-representation of institution representa- tives as they make up around 70% of the total; b.The suis generis participation from citizens by means of random selection that we are not convinced is going to work; c. The low relevance of civil society as we have mentioned throughout this paper which is just 2% although it could gain an extra 6% thanks to the 27 representatives; d.The lack of youth participation that does not even attain half its demographic weight despite highlighting that they should have a more prominent role; e. The Multilingual Digital Platform has been given excessive importance, en- couraging individual participation. Nevertheless, it should be an auxiliary tool that facilitates participation from civil society and the associations. The results from the first Plenary session of the Conference on the Future of Europe, also called the In- augural Plenary on 19 June, confirm these limitations, particularly for three reasons: the first is that there was no participation at all from the citizens.The envisaged 80 citizen representatives could not attend either in person or remotely. Consequently, there was an overwhelming imbalance between them, civil society and representa- tives from the institutions. The second reason is that only 250 representatives attended in person out of the 450 who make up the Plenary and 80 representatives interactively, 26 of whom