Prepare your Ideas for the online Platform of the Conference on the Future of Europe for Monday 19 April
Starting 9 May we want to update our European Democracy. The Conference on the Future of Europe will develop ideas for a more democratic and more integrated European Union together with our citizens. To make sure that every voice can be heard an online tool will collect and rank citizens’ proposals and channel them directly into the Conference.
How does it work?
Next week Monday 19 April the EU Commission will launch the multilingual online platform for the Conference on the Future of Europe (COFE). Everyone can upload events and ideas for the Future of Europe. Those proposals with most support will shape the agenda of the Conference and be debated. A wave of progressive, ecological, social and inclusive-democratic ideas in the online platform can carry our demands through the panels and the plenary into the final conclusions. For such a wave we depend on you.
To prepare your input for when the platform opens on Monday, we gathered what you need to submit an idea:
- an EU Login: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/cas/eim/external/register.cgi
- register as individual person or as organisation
- accept the Conference charter, a short list of conditions including to uphold EU values and avoid hate speech
- a title of 150 characters
- a text description of 1500 characters
- a catchy photo
- can have an attachment for background info
First mover advantage: If you want to register an idea similar to one already existing, the system suggests you endorse or comment (positive, negative or neutral) the existing one. The platform translates all content into the language you decide to use. Use simple sentences to be understood in other languages too.
For each idea, you can choose 1 out of 10 categories in the platform:
- Climate change and the environment
- Health
- A stronger economy, social justice and jobs
- Digital transformation
- Values and rights, rule of law, security
- Migration
- Education, culture, youth and sport
- EU in the world
- European Democracy
- Other ideas
We will gladly share and feature your best ideas. Please send the link to your ideas and events to us: ue.ap1714123873orue.1714123873lrapo1714123873rue@d1714123873nuerf1714123873.lein1714123873ad1714123873
1. The Commission will summarise the ideas collected in the platform and hands hands them to randomly selected citizens from across the EU meeting in autumn.
2. These EU Citizens Panels deliberate on this input in several meetings and condense into their own recommendations to politicians.
3. Politicians meeting as Conference Plenary, consisting of European and national parliamentarians, national ministers and EU Commissioners, will draw from this input first conclusions in (spring) 2022.
When the Commission will compile reports about the content of the platform to the EU citizens panels and to the Conference Plenary, not only endorsements (similar to Facebook-likes) and comments will be counted. The Commission also plans to favour ideas gathered from well organised events. Any event needs to be registered in advance so citizens can find it and join. The online platform provides a toolkit for organisers. The offices of the European Parliament and the Commission in all Member States can provide organisational help, even software for online-meetings. The outcome of each meeting should be registered as individual ideas. The ideas and the events remain connected.
The platform seems to be weak in activating users. Users can subscribe to a single idea, to a whole topic, but what they receive is not filtered according to endorsements/comments or interests but fully random and possibly overwhelming. To re-engage users, the platform depends on you to share your idea on social media or by email(-newsletter) for your followers to endorse, comment and add.