THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION Towards a new legislative term

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 20 Lastly, regarding new initiatives inspired by Confer- ence proposals that fall within the scope of the Euro- pean Commission’s competences (for example, a future initiative on mental health). As we shall see below, implementing some of the CoFE’s ideas requires a reform of the Union’s treaties. In keeping with this chapter’s title, here we shall ad- dress just six of the Conference’s proposals: numbers 22 (transparency of the EU and its relations with citi- zens), 36 and 37 (citizens information, participation and youth), 38 (democracy and elections), 39 (EU decision- making process) and 40 (subsidiarity). Suitably framed in the EU’s Principles of Good Gov- ernance ( European Commission, 2001: 7 and 8 and Can- dela Castillo, José, 2005: 180-183 ), these six proposals concern the EU principles of openness and transparency (proposals 22, 36 and 37), participation (36 and 37), legitimacy (38 and 39) and effectiveness (39 and 40). Improving transparency In Proposal 22, measure 1, the CoFE simply suggested “strengthening links with citizens and local institutions to improve transparency, reach the citizens and commu- nicate and consult better with them about concrete EU initiatives and at the international level.” This proposal provides no functional idea, nothing that adds value to what the EU institutions and bod- ies already do in terms of transparency. However, the recommendation to increase the institutional transpar- ency of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), according to some one of the community policies most in need of improvement as far as the transparency prin- ciple is concerned, does hit the mark. Improving participation Under the heading “European democracy”, CoFE Pro- posals 36 and 37 are geared towards improving partici- patory democracy in the EU. The ideas with most added value are: – holding citizens’ assemblies periodically, on the basis of a legally binding EU law, in which partici- pants are selected randomly, based on representa- tiveness criteria and on condition that if the institu- tions do not take the outcomes of the assemblies on board this should be duly justified; – increasing the frequency of online and offline interactions between EU institutions and its citi- zens through different means of interaction; – creating a mechanism to monitor policy and legislative initiatives that have emerged from participatory democracy processes and – creating an integrated official website that sum- marises all the information about the participatory spaces existing in the EU. The Council of the European Union, for its part, pub- lished a detailed assessment of the possible implemen- tation of these CoFE proposals ( Council of the European Union, 2022: 208 ff. ). Improving legitimacy: transnational lists in Euro The CoFE addressed the purely institutional issues af- fecting both the Union’s governance and structure in Proposals 38 and 39, under the headings “Democracy and elections” and “EU decision-making process”, re- spectively. Proposal 38 takes a forward-looking stance stem- ming from an institutional debate that, thanks to resolute support from the European Parliament, has been running for several years now, namely improv- ing the Union’s legitimacy through the creation of two new instruments: transnational candidate lists for the European Parliament elections and an EU-wide refer- endum. Given its importance and significance, find below the CoFE’s proposal on transnational lists in its entirety: “Amending EU law to harmonise electoral conditions (voting age, election date, requirements for electoral dis- tricts, candidates, political parties and their financing) for the European Parliament elections, as well as moving towards voting for Union-wide lists or ‘transnational lists’ with candidates from multiple Member States, having taken into account the views expressed among citizens across the EU Member States on this issue.