Deliberate! : taking stock of the conference of the future of Europe

This contribution was delivered on 5 May 2022 on the occasion of the hybrid 2022 edition of EUI State of the Union on ‘A Europe fit for the next generation?'With 800 randomly selected citizens deliberating the future of the European Union, the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) is a unique supranational exercise in participatory democracy. This panel proposes to take stock of the CoFoE, discussing in particular its procedural design. It aims to showcase academic research on the topic, the work of the EUI’s School of Transnational Governance Democracy Forum and the lessons to be drawn from the Conference itself, including the Citizens’ Panel 2 which met at EUI in December 2021. The panel discussion will ask: was this experiment truly democratic, to what extent, and towards what end? Did the CoFoE live up to its promise of giving EU citizens a genuine say? What broader lessons does it teach us about participatory democracy in a transnational, multilingual setting? Opening by Francesco Gazzetti, President, Commission for European Politics and International Relations, Tuscan Regional Counci