 Thank you so much for these very warm, welcoming words. Ladies and gentlemen, dear members of the Institute of International and European Affairs, and Madam Chair, dear Mrs. Cross, thank you very much for your invitation to speak and for the welcome that you have given me here today. It really is a pleasure for me to be here in Dublin to join you and talk about citizens' engagement from the perspective of the new commission under our new, still very new president, Ursula von der Leyen, also the first female president of our institution. And even if it was not like that when we planned this event, I am well aware that tomorrow the people of this country will exercise their rights as citizens in their most eminent, visible and direct way, of course, by going to the polls to elect a new government. And I know that you've had the opportunity also to hear from the leaders of your political parties in a series of pre-election events on Ireland and the EU after Brexit as part of your future of the EU 27 program. And of course, you will not expect me, and I will refrain from commenting on any specifics on the election here in Ireland. But I would, of course, emphasize the crucial importance of engagement, of discussion and dialogue between citizens themselves, between citizens and politicians who seek their votes, and between citizens and the institutions that serve them, around elections and beyond. And this is very, very crucial for the health and vitality of our democratic values and principles, not just at national level, but also, and increasingly so, at European level. So a stronger connection between people, policy, and decision making is needed. And that's a general point that I want to make. Some speak about the need for a European demos. If a truly European democracy is to emerge, supplementing, not replacing, and I think it's a point that we need to stress time and again, national democracy and the identification and solidarity that that subsumes. Citizens' engagement is decisive in this respect, and also it does remain very essential, even in the digital age, with many challenges posed by online commentators, by influencers, and manipulators sometimes, new tools and methods of political mobilization, risks of fragmentation, but also many, many opportunities to engage with citizens in ways that address their needs and concerns with accessibility increased, indeed, by the digital tools we have today, also the transparency and the visible follow-up that we can give and use these tools for. But let me, with this message, my first message may be that engaging citizens is more necessary than ever and that it strengthens our democracy. Just zoom out a little bit for a second and take a look at a very big picture beyond the European Union, just to identify some trends that are affecting, and I hope you can still get an idea of what they say. You don't need to dwell too much on the detail, but there are some quite challenging trends affecting democracy all across the world and not just here in Europe, not just here in our member states. And they are phenomena. Again, we will not have time to go into all of them, but that we need to recognize and be aware of as we speak about strengthening our European democracy. And this is work which is summarized in this very, very simplified graphic presentation, by the way, from our European Political Strategy Center, as it worked in the previous mandate of the previous commission here issued in 2019, and which was the subject of a number of discussions. But as my point is simply as political discourse becomes more characterized by populism, by polarization of positions, and active use of disinformation sometimes. It is all the more urgent and necessary, and these are some of the trends that you can see there on the graph. It's all the more urgent and necessary to discuss ways of ensuring active citizen's engagement as indeed a way of both keeping our democracies vibrant, strengthening their resilience, and renewing them at local, national, and also in our case, at the European levels. Because as these different trends indicate, democracy is across the world very much under pressure. For example, only 4.5% of the world population lives in what, again, academic research can qualify using different parameters as full democracies. And almost one third of the world's population lives in countries undergoing even democratic erosion. Or what, again, this research is calling autocratization. Again, I will not go deeper into this research, but while electoral institutions and practices remain robust or even improving media freedom, freedom of expression, and alternative sources of information as well as, and you know that very well, of course, the rule of law are under pressure in many places around the world. So just summing up some of the common traits of the populism, organized confrontation and polarization around this line of division that the perpetrators are trying to establish between the people on one hand and the others, anti-pluralism, a belief that nothing should constrain the will of the true people in quotation marks, and a tendency also to blur the lines between facts, half facts, and fiction, increasingly exploiting the potential which is offered by social media. And of course, Ireland is illustrating this tomorrow while voting remains by far the largest expression of political participation. There are today very visible changes in the ways that citizens are engaging with politics. So we need to reflect. We need to adapt. Young people, as we have seen, are less inclined sometimes to vote regularly compared to their elders. But they are more likely to post comments online, of course, about social and political issues. And digital technologies are indeed creating a whole new type of social fabric and a fertile ground for the spread of a wide variety of non-establishment stakeholders and networks. So all these developments and more, they pose actually quite some significant challenges to what we're discussing today and to all of us who work in the public domain as policymakers and decision takers. But also when it comes to being individual citizens, of course, and Democrats. And at European level, an additional challenge is to create a real European public space, if not a demos where participatory democracy can flourish and a true, let's say, real public space can take shape. And each of our member states, of course, of the 27 composing the European Union today, they come with their own experience and tradition of democratic processes. And it's not obvious that all Europeans absolutely want to debate the same thing at the same time, although sometimes they do think of climate change, think recently of Brexit, think of even the coronavirus. It is clear, however, that for the good health of our common European democracy and our common institutions and common solutions to the challenges that we face together, we need to strengthen the foundations and re-engage with citizens on issues that matter to them. So let's look at a little bit what the basis is for our unique system of democracy to survive and flourish in the European Union. We have some basics in our treaty. I'm definitely not going to read everything out for you because that could become a little bit dry. But you see very clearly in our article 2 the foundations in terms of the values that we share and indeed, which are very explicitly the basis for our being together, our existence as a European Union and therefore also for our democratic foundations. Responsibility of the Union and its institutions towards citizens and interaction with them is part of this. And we have it in article 9 also with the principle of equality of all the citizens who shall receive equal attention from our institutions, bodies, and agencies. Also there is a very strong basis. And I go on to quote the article 10, which also is very, very explicitly a basis for our European democracy because it states that indeed the functioning of this union should be based on representative democracy and that citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament and that each citizen should have the right to participate in the democratic life of the European Union. And finally, let me quote article 11 because also there we have very directly an article that says citizens should be given by appropriate means the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of Union action just to take that one. And the openness, the transparency is of course eminently anchored in this provision of the treaties. And finally, the broad consultations that need to be carried out concerning to ensure that the Union's actions are coherent and transparent is also enshrined in this article. So again, we have indeed a very, very strong basis in the treaty taken together. All these articles, they underline the links between the values and the democratic basis of the Union, the need for the EU institutions to engage with the Union citizens on a continuous basis and the importance of taking into account the views of our citizens in defining and implementing the policies and activities that the Union undertakes. So with past initiatives with these articles, as well as with past initiatives of citizens engagement and participatory initiatives to come, we are not trying to replace the representative democracy that already exists and is expressed through the European Parliament, but we're trying to actually support and reinforce and complement this by making the EU democratic engagement with citizens more vibrant, more continuous, more interactive, and finally, more relevant. So let me mention a few of the other things that we do when it comes to ensuring that citizens actually have a very, very central place, of course, in European democracy. European citizens initiatives is something that we have established first in 2011 and we recently updated it in a new regulation that entered into force a few weeks ago. I just take these examples because I think it's important to situate our, let's say, our more immediate focus on the conference on the future of Europe that I will come to in a minute as the latest initiative on citizens engagement in the wider context, but we're getting there. But this tool, just to mention it very briefly, actually allows citizens and civil society to take the initiative themselves and ask the Commission to propose legislation in areas where the Union has competence to act. So again, apart from the treaty, we're not starting from scratch, but we are building on what has gone before. We are taking it further. This procedure, of course, has a lot of requirements. You should be resident in at least seven member states to organize such initiatives. You should gather at least one million signatures from at least one quarter of the member states within one year of initial registration if you want to ask the Commission to act. And of course, there's no guarantee that your initiative will be successful. There's a whole range of issues and conditions that need to be met, but some have actually been successful. One which is ongoing, which is an initiative to improve the protection of persons belonging to national and linguistic minorities and strengthen the cultural and linguistic diversity in the Union. It's called Minority Safe Pack. It was registered in April 2017. There's another completed initiative, which is called Right to Water, which was intended to ensure that all EU citizens enjoy the right to water and sanitation and to exclude water supply and management of water resources from internal market rules and liberalization, just to mention that one. And then we have a fresh initiative, which was registered in January 2020. Stop finning, stop the trade. It's an initiative that calls on the EU to amend existing legislation so as to introduce a ban on the trade of shark fins in the European Union. So we'll see in the future the fate, which will be reserved for this initiative. Very brief mention of a very important, previous debate on the future of Europe that was launched with the white paper on the future of Europe in 2017, in addition to these initiatives. This was a necessary engagement initiative that was launched by former Commission President Junker in the wake, of course, of the outcome of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom in June 2016. And there was quite a wake-up call, of course, connected with the Brexit referendum, which was also followed with the Bratislava Declaration, which was adopted by the EU 27 leaders in September 2016, where one of the things that was stressed there was the need for improved communication, and I quote, most importantly, with our citizens, with emphasis on clarity, sorry, honesty and a focus on their expectations. And our response with the white paper was to prepare a launch of an extensive exercise in connection with this white paper, an open-ended means of consulting and debating about how the EU should develop in the future on the basis of fives and heros. I'm sure you also debated them a lot, many of you sitting here. You will remember them. Should we carry on as usual? Should we have nothing but the single market? Should we have a scenario where those who want more EU do more EU together? Should we do less but more efficiently? Or should we do more together? And a mixture of tools at the time was used to engage citizens broadly, the other EU institutions and, of course, the member states and, crucially, civil societies and citizens themselves. And we accompanied it with some reflection papers. There were five of them that, within the space of a few months in the spring early summer 2017, set out, as we saw it at the time, the main challenges that were facing the European Union and which were nurturing this debate around the five scenarios that had been presented in a very open-ended manner by former President Juncker. The reflection concerned the social dimension of the Union. It concerned the challenges of globalization. It concerned the deepening of our Economic and Monetary Union, strengthening European defense and options for the future budget of the European Union. Issues which, I can safely say, are still very much at the heart of the European policymaking today. And we also consulted with an online exercise where citizens and stakeholders were invited to submit their comments on the white paper and the reflection papers and a specific citizens panel then. And that was a novelty for us. It was the first time we did this. We brought together 100 citizens from all EU 27 member states to discuss the future of Europe, of course, in the context of this whole ongoing debate at the time. They were selected randomly in order to represent the diversity of the European Union and its citizens, but of course very much inspired also by initiatives that are also continuing to see the light of day across Europe. And the outcome was the drawing up not of solutions answers, but actually the 12 questions, the 12 key questions that these selected citizens thought were the most important ones to ask the citizens of Europe in an online survey that would support the white paper process. So it was a quite original initiative for us in that this was not done before in such a sequence at the European Union level. And the European Parliament also conducted a series of high profile debates in plenary with many member states leaders, of course, including the Irish T-Shock that was in January 2018. And each leader was then able to in the plenary of the European Parliament set out their own sorts, their own priorities and objectives for the future development of the Union in the European Parliament as a platform for those visions that leaders were putting forward there. And admittedly, we could probably have done more at the time to set out the conclusions, all the different conclusions of this multifaceted process in a more high profile, more systematic and less dispersed manner than we actually did. And of course, we could also have made more clear that it was a continuous process and not, let's say, different elements of the future of Europe exercise. But the process definitely had the advantage of raising the debate and also inspiring future priorities which have now very much informed the political cycle in which we find ourselves today. And we learned a lot of lessons from that exercise as we now seek to deepen the engagement, both deepen and widen the engagement with our European citizens in the Fundal Lion Commission that took office in December last year. For example, one of the key elements of the younger approach that I still dwell on a little bit longer and one which the Fundal Lion Commission indeed intends to build on under the current mandate is the organization of citizens' dialogues. We organized around 1,850 dialogues with the participation of commissioners in the last commission. And many times it brought national political representatives together with the European politicians. I think that was a key merit of some of those dialogues, of course, in engaging with citizens face-to-face with people whom they are, of course, there to serve because President Junger, like Mrs. Fundal Lion has done it now, had asked all his commissioners to be very active and engaging in dialogues with citizens by presenting and communicating the commission's common agenda, listening to ideas and engaging with stakeholders. And that, as I said, led to the organization of all these 1,850 dialogues between 2015 and 2019, where we gathered some 280, 18,000 participants in 650 locations across the European Union. And for the informal meeting that took place in Sibiu in Romania last May, in, yes, the informal meeting, the commission reported on the experience to date there in Sibiu. And overall, the participants in those dialogues tended to perceive, and again, it has to do with the audiences that we managed to engage with in these exercises, but mostly perceived the European Union positively as the most legitimate and indeed effective place to deal with global challenges. And when asked what European decisions would make them proud of belonging to the European Union, the respondents to the online consultation spontaneously mentioned issues relating to, and here we have it again, the environment and the climate, migration and refugees, something that was the subject of great controversy in the past commission and still is, as you know, and also foreign affairs and defense. So these were issues which were made really at the very, very high end of citizens' concerns. A more complete picture there in terms of the issues that came up in the discussion and in the online consultations which were conducted and the relative weight that citizens attached to each one of them, just an idea. And these are, of course, the issues which are at the very top of citizens' concerns even if their importance vary. And of course there is a big diversity across Europe in terms of how citizens consider these different areas of policy. So in summary, citizens definitely expect a lot from the European Union. They want a Europe that is competitive, fair and protective and that plays fully its role in the world. Those were, again, things that came out of those consultations, very general things, of course. We will agree on that immediately. But also, importantly, they indicated that they see Europe as a continent of values where rule of law, the fight against corruption and non-discrimination must be upheld. Again, it came from all these consultations as results. And while trust in the European institutions have fortunately been increasing again since 2014, many participants indicated that they still consider our European Union as too remote and expected to be more efficient and more transparent. And some contributions called for action that would bring the European Union closer to citizens. So there we have it again. It included not only the desire for more cultural exchanges, which is something that citizens stress regularly as something that they would like to see, learning other languages and teaching about the European Union at school. This need of knowledge about the European institutions and how they work, but also using European symbols such as the flag and Europe Day. And some participants expressed worry also about disinformation as a big risk for undermining the democratic process. It's a trend that we see very much confirmed, by the way, in our Eurobrometer surveys. And citizens would appreciate also more information about the Union to help them better understand and influence decisions. So all these issues were reflected very much in our contribution to the strategic objectives as we designed them in the spring when we contributed to the Union's next strategic agenda back in May last year. And they have, of course, also influenced very much the priorities of the new president, the six priorities, which Ursula von der Leyen put forward. And she was elected on that basis by the European Parliament, namely the political guidelines where you've seen the Green Deal, the European Green Deal, an economy that works for people, a Europe fit for the digital age, promotion of our European way of life, a stronger Europe in the world, and a new push for our European democracy as the central priorities for this mandate of the new commission. Public opinion is something that, as you know, we track very regularly and it's our long-established tool, the Eurobrometer, for measuring public opinion across the EU and really an essential support to the policymaking at the EU level. So again, a dimension of the engagement and indeed of the close monitoring of public opinion as a basis for our policymaking. I will not go into the detail because I think we have too many things to discuss on how we do it, but we always have in the standard Eurobrometer questions on trust in political institutions, democracy in the European Union and European citizenships and of course what are the main concerns of people that are being monitored in this opinion survey. And the last Eurobrometer that we published shows that overall trust in the EU remains stable. Trust in the EU is the majority view in 18 member states and trust has increased in 12 member states since spring 2019. But we also see this increasing concern very strongly going up about climate change and the environment with support for EU measures to improve gender equality in the workplace and continued support for the Economic and Monetary Union and the Euro. And some interesting results from Ireland indicate that 58% of citizens trust in the EU, 63% have a positive image of the EU and 54% think that their voice counts and 73% are satisfied with how the European democracy works. And that is not found anywhere else in the European Union. So also we should not be complacent about it still, but it is encouraging. Allow me to say that. And for the forthcoming conference on the future of Europe, of course the Eurobrometer will continue to be a very important tool that will accompany us in the exercise that I will come to just leaving with you there the European election results as we saw them the final turnout which was indeed encouraging even if in Ireland we saw a little bit of the opposite phenomenon to the general trend as we saw the turnout going down from 52.4% in 2014 to 49.7% in 2019 and there was a very low youth turnout as well according to the figures that we have from the European Parliament, so that I'd be interested to hear your explanation from that, but no complacency even if the general result is encouraging we definitely cannot be complacent about them and need to continue to nurture the participatory democracy as we are on our way into this new political cycle and that's where the conference on the future of Europe centrally comes in where of course President von der Leyen has very clearly expressed this as a central commitment a commitment to give Europeans a greater say on the policies of the future of the European Union and this comes back to right back to when she was actually nominated as candidate for president of the commission last summer she wanted to go beyond the existing tools to a new level of citizens engagement and she elaborated these intentions in the political guidelines in July last year and stressed the need to strengthen this link and link the connection that's really central for what we're discussing between people, nations and institutions between expectations and delivery between words and deeds and among the six priorities that I already mentioned very briefly she included one on a new push for European democracy and in this context and also in light of this increased turnout that we saw on the screen she proposed indeed to go further than ever before in giving Europeans a stronger say in decision making so it's very much about listening but it's also influencing the decision making it's about making a mark on the policies of the future of Europe so President von der Leyen outlined her wish to establish this conference on the future of Europe that should last two years starting from this summer and two years ahead so not a one-off event but a continuous process and the conference should in the president's view bring together citizens including a significant role for young people civil society and European institutions as equal partners and that's what we're busy doing now prepare the conference well with a clear scope, clear objectives agreed between the European Parliament the council and the commission and President von der Leyen was clear at the time she was president-delect she indicated her readiness to follow up on what is agreed including by legislative action if appropriate and she would also be open if justified to treaty change this is what she indicated but for more than anything it was for her bringing Europe closer to home making it less remote we saw it was a concern for many citizens in the consultation she responded to that in this way and she followed it up this commitment from the guidelines in the individual mission letters of the commissioners that she sent to each of the prospective members of her team and in each mission letter there is actually a section that is called bringing Europe closer to home and there she reiterated that she wanted to strengthen this link between people and the institutions that serve them and narrow the gap between what people expect and the reality and to communicate also more about what Europe is doing and she instructed her whole team the vice president but also every college member to engage with all Europeans not just those who live in the capitals and are knowledgeable about the European Union but definitely she expects them to visit every member state within the first half of the mandate at the latest so that means by mid-2022 coinciding with more or less the end of the conference on the future of Europe and she asked also crucially commission members to continue to meet very, very regularly with national parliaments and take part in citizen's dialogues across the Union notably as part of the conference on the future of Europe and she appointed vice president Schuitzer as having special responsibility for this and as vice president responsible for democracy and democracy so again this is also an indication of the perceived link between the citizen's concern and the demographic challenges experienced by a number of regions across the Union for example, in the population and the provision of public services something that of course is very much at the heart of people's concerns and going beyond the earlier guidelines she asked vice president Schuitzer to work to improve participation in our democracy to ensure that people can indeed have the effective possibility to make their voice heard and are listened to and she underlined once again this need for a wide debate clear objectives and a tangible follow up to what is agreed and she also noted the need for very close cooperation of course with the other institutions the council and the European parliament and make it easy to participate both in person and also online and make it really an accessible exercise for our citizens and the vice president is busy as we speak following up on these instructions and of course already in her own hearing before the European parliament in September and in other statements that she has made since she has underlined her commitment to producing results in the conference that leads to real action and one of her priorities is to involve local and regional authorities, non-governmental organizations and getting really deep into the regions and talking to people on a continuous basis just once every four and five years when an election comes around but actually as a part of this very intense process that we have ahead of us in the two years that the conference is going to run and dialogues of course we already have a number of them happening with individual commissioners undoubtedly this will continue beyond the conference as well so apart from vice president the president also gave specific conference tasks to two other vice presidents closely linked to their own portfolio responsibilities as well as chairing a new commissioners group on a new push for European democracy vice president Vera Jurova who was already a member as you will remember of the previous commission was asked to play a prominent role in the conference of the future of Europe and she was asked notably to broker the discussions between the European parliament and the council when it comes to improving the lead candidate system and on the issue of transnational lists in European elections and she will indeed be representing the commission in the conference on the future of Europe on this topics modalities governance all of that still to be defined I will come to some of the ideas around in a moment but first I have to mention another vice president who was also a member of the previous college this time he was given the responsibilities for inter institutional relations and foresight and in this capacity he was asked to strengthen the evidence based policymaking and identify long term trends on which the commission needs to act and about which of course the commission needs to know more to design the right policy responses and the president wants this vice president to play an active role in the conference on the future of Europe also bringing the benefits of this work on foresight and forward thinking and planning the major themes so this is how the commission based its work on the conference on the future of Europe but the other institutions have been very busy as well and the European parliament more so I would say than any other institution and it was very important for President von der Leyen that this were to be a joint exercise with a leading role for the European parliament but also one that shows joint responsibility for all the European institutions so the European parliament is indeed taking this conference very seriously indeed and I have myself met a number of MEPs recently in recent months including Maurit McGinnis and there has been a lot of internal debate in the European parliament also in and between political groups and other committees and in the plenary itself and essentially the European parliament has prepared I'm just summing it up I'm probably not doing full justice to what has been some very very deep and comprehensive work but to sum it up there's a twin track here one through the constitutional affairs committee of the European parliament and one through a specific by the president a solely of the European parliament that brings together each of the political groups and the outcome is the resolution that the European parliament adopted on the 15th of January and it is a resolution that is very ambitious in its scope in terms of also its governance in terms of how it envisages the position of the conference and again this is my reading of it but the European parliament position places the emphasis on citizens at the at the core of broad discussions on how to tackle both the internal and the external challenges that are facing the union today calling again like the commission for a very inclusive process with people of all backgrounds civil society stakeholders of European national regional and local level to be involved in actually setting the EU's priorities in line with citizens concerns in a bottom up transparent inclusive and indeed very participatory approach there are details there I'm sure you have studied them and I would not propose to go into to all the details of it but simply mention the key things that the parliament is proposing is to establish what they call citizens agoras with citizens representatives chosen randomly in line with proportionality and representativeness criteria it's a quite sophisticated approach with youth agoras also being set up each comprising two to 300 citizens with a minimum of three per member state just to give you an example of the level of detail and granularity that the parliament's proposals involve and all the representation of the different institutions and bodies and social partners are also addressed in the parliament's position where at the heart of the setup there is also a plenary with 135 members from the European parliament 27 members from the council two to four members for each national parliament three commissioners four members each for the economic and social committee and the committee of the regions and two members from the EU level social partners just to give you an idea of the comprehensiveness of the approach I will not go further into the detail of the governance envisaged but it's very complete and ambitious in that respect now I come back to how we at the commission put down the concept as we saw it on the 22nd of January 2020 so very closely following the parliament's resolution a paper that was designed as a contribution to shape the conference putting more flesh on the bones that were already set out on our part in the guidelines and in the mission letters and we having this very valuable and substantive experience with citizens dialogue we of course would want to build on the past experience while introducing a range of new elements to increase notably the outreach you know get deeper and wider engage with new audiences and strengthen ways for people to actually take part in shaping the future EU action so we proposed two distinct work strands one that was focused on political priorities so what matters to citizens in our view and which was also set out in the president's guidelines and the council's strategic agenda and of course without limiting in any way the issues that could be discussed but nevertheless seeing the political priorities the strategic agenda as a useful frame for the exercise because it is already inspired by indeed citizens concerns and what the citizens have told us in the previous exercises the other strand in addition to this very policy focused strand addresses topics which are specifically related to the democratic processes and institutional matters notably the lead candidate system and transnational lists for elections to the European parliament and for us this is a bottom up exercise so we are insisting more on the engagement with citizens and on the policy focus on the fact that we need to make this exercise really accessible to people well beyond the capitals again I insist from all corners of the European Union other EU institutions national partner and social partners regional and local authorities civil society should of course be invited to join there I think we have very common ground between all institutions in this and then we also mentioned that we should have a multilingual online platform that should ensure that this is a transparent exercise that is one that supports wider participation including crucially this outreach to younger people which is so essential for making our democracy vibrant and sustainable and here we are also committing to most effective actions with other institutions to integrate the citizens ideas back into policy making the whole feedback process will be central in this respect citizens have to know what happens to what they are telling us something that was not so obvious in previous exercises even if we made quite a lot of efforts also online and in our different reports but the communication approach needs surely to be more ambitious this time very crucial that we take joint responsibility for this in terms of when defining the concept the structure the scope and the timing of all of this this is where we are we are in this process where soon we will see and I'll come to that in a moment the institutions all having made their positions clear then of course we will have to find common ground so that the exercise can indeed take its final design something of course which in the end it will only do when citizens engage in it in diverse and I'm sure multifaceted ways but this is where we are at the moment and let me just mention as DG communication we in my department will of course put our resources at the disposal of the whole exercise notably when it comes to the representatives in the member states who are of course a vital link that we have in every member state of the European Union to organizations and citizens on the ground and through them also these 500 Europe direct information centers which work very closely together with the representations when it comes to reaching out way beyond the capitals of our member states on EU policies and instruments so we have reiterated and there again I think all institutions see things the same way we should launch the process on the 9th of May this year which is incidentally also the 17th anniversary of the Schumann Declaration and Vice President Schweitzer has suggested a launch event in Dubrovnik since Croatia is indeed holding the presidency of the council for the first time during the launch time so that would be a natural thing to do now I haven't mentioned in detail the European council and the council but of course work has been going on there as well it started with a Franco-German paper and then it took shape particularly under the Croatian presidency which is ongoing but even before there were European council conclusions already in December about this that outlined let's say the basis for the work which is now ongoing between the member states to agree on a mandate for this conference that will then be the basis for negotiating with the two other institutions on the final design indeed the European council asked in December the Croatian presidency to work to define such a mandate and on that basis engage with the European commission and the parliament and in last week's meeting in the general affairs council the discussion on the basis of a presidency non paper underlined very much the importance of putting citizens at the heart of the conference and ensuring that it actually contributes to the development of EU policies and involves a wide range of stakeholders and groups there are differences of views between the institutions when it comes to governance and representation in the conferences bodies these are some of the things that we have to agree on and of course balance representation of the three EU institutions are something that something that will surely play a role in this discussion and the same goes for the involvement of the national parliament in addition to of course the place which is important of other European institutions of stakeholders of civil society and more than anything of citizens themselves so we will see how exactly the discussion will continue and how quickly we can agree on a joint declaration because that's the idea that we have at least to have a broad frame for the scope and the principles and the concept to be agreed between the institutions what it could look like in a very basic fashion and again I stress this is just what it could look like would be something that took the European Parliament's resolution our contribution and the state of play of the discussions in the council as a basis here are some of the elements that could perhaps find themselves in the final outcome bearing in mind that this outcome doesn't exist yet and there are a number of possibilities before we actually can see the full shape of this architecture but we don't have much time to take it forward if we wish to have it ready and launched and indeed inviting citizens to join as from the 9th of May this year so we are already working on this draft joint declaration that we would hope to put on the table as a suggestion capturing let's say what could be a common position in due course but this will be a negotiation no doubt about this and bear in mind that we would also need very shortly to make progress also on some sort of charter that will go down in more detail into what conditions what terms the events and event organizers would need to respect if they were to be considered as events, debates falling under the umbrella of the conference because the idea is of course that this needs to be something where citizens can in this bottom up exercise that we have in mind at least and that I think we all have in mind among institutions enable citizens to bring messages back to the policy makers so a conceptualization where you have basically a national level and a very multifaceted field of opportunities for organizing debates and then a European level the European parliament I mentioned called them agoras should they be transnational should they be randomly selected all these things have to be defined crucially there need to be space for both physical and online debates there needs to be feedback and there needs to be reporting and recommendations and there needs to be translation into results when it is warranted by the European institutions I think that these things are elements that will find themselves one way or the other into the final architecture of this conference and also into the ensuing term sheet or charter or protocol or what we will call it that will enable the organization of debates to take shape and of course resources financing will inevitably also enter into the equation in due course what's new here in this compared to what we have done already in the past I think the joint responsibility that I have stressed a lot in this presentation is something that is very clearly a new element that would then have its expression in a joint declaration also a charter level for events and organizers for all those who will be busy organizing debates in the member states will be a new thing the feedback mechanism where we manage to channel that wealth hopefully of inputs and results from the different debates on the ground will also be something that is quite a challenge to design how do we translate it you can imagine there is also linguistic dimension to this going beyond the usual suspects and away from any sort of preaching to the usual suspects and reaching much more the young people who sometimes have not engaged so much about European affairs and then of course getting into the all corners of Europe into the regions also the help and support of this online multilingual platform those are some of the novelty elements that we see but it is incremental because we are building on a basis and we are of course also drawing on crucially the many very interesting experiences across Europe at a smaller scale and often debating and deciding on precise issues and how we can design this I think that is what we need to say about this and I am approaching the end of my long presentation but there is a lot to say on this I hope we will still have time to engage next steps as I was saying immediately defining the position of the council and then to have discussions between the institutions and agree on a common position hopefully and then it actually follows quite logically that of course then the terms will need to be clear the participation will have to be clear and of course in that modalities for involving the national parliament is something that is extremely important for the national parliaments but also for us to define clearly before we then can move into the practicalities that include the points that I have summed up very quickly in the column in the right that can then hopefully lead to launching events across Europe also to give it high visibility as a starting point because as we all know getting attention, media attention in particular for this kind of event is not always obvious but it is a real and a link to the 9th of May 2020 that would be a very emblematic and symbolic good moment to launch this big new initiative and we need and I would stress that at the end and it links a little bit to the model I presented before even if we didn't write it it's very important for us that there's also an exercise when it comes to the European level where we need to also enable citizens to engage with citizens but also enable them to mobilize and draw on expertise to feed the discussions draw in people who can also help organize and animate events and who can provide stimulating and purposeful material research and give new angles that we're discussing or that citizens will be discussing at the different events so if I just sum up very quickly the main messages that I've tried to pass here engaging more with citizens is necessary to strengthen and renew our European democracy and it's definitely all the more essential in these days in the context of populism fragmentation and also in some member states more than others perhaps but we're all concerned about it the disinformation and secondly at the European level we do have tools in place for engagement and consultations of citizens that we should develop we need to go further and we must start a more inclusive conversation with Europe's citizens about the future of Europe and also provide much better feedback than we have done in the past on how results of dialogues and debates are used and finally by proposing the conference on the future of Europe Ursula von der Leyen is committed to give Europeans a greater say but it's not just for the commission to do that of course it has to be a genuinely effort and to be meaningful it definitely requires the support and participation not only by the EU institutions but also by member states and by civil society and so in doing this of course reaching out to our young people young people are the future and our democratic future so nothing could be more important than that let me finish with a few words on Ireland because I think we can really benefit from your considerable and very valuable experience in this domain we've already been in touch with yourselves of course and a number of people in Ireland who have helped us moving our thinking but we can always do with more so therefore I'm looking forward to hear what you think and your advice will certainly help a lot not only from the previous citizens consultations but also from all the specific citizens assembly exercises that you have had in recent years and there's one that is currently ongoing if I'm not mistaken on the subject of gender equality also so making this a meaningful exercise and not a repetition of what we've already done we need experiences such as the Irish ones to move it further because making citizens feel that they can really make a difference and have an impact is in the end what we really want to do so thank you very much for listening to me for so long and I hope to have at least given a little bit of fruit for thought and give and use some information where we stand in developing the conference on the future of Europe which depends on all of us to become a success thank you thank you very much indeed Director General for that very comprehensive overview of where things are where we're coming from and I think a very good direction as to where we're going to I think we can have some minutes for questions and if I could just reiterate when you put in the question if you could identify your organization name an organization sorry we have here Kevin I'm fine my name is Nebuchadre I'm speaking initially as a member of the institute sorry I'm very much welcome which I read as an invitation and that you've already contact with the institute about making some contribution and I hope the institute will take a decision to involve all its members in thinking about this very important project but secondly from my experience I worked in the European Commission on communication and in what would now be your DG and I'm quite shocked by the scope of everything that you've told us and I feel that it will need massive resources and a very large staff even just to monitor any of us who are trying to read what is happening in research institutes in other member states and so on it's an enormous job to keep up to date with what people are contributing and then the schema you've set out so is there a real prospect that you will get the staff to make a backup to make a go of this if that's all right Michael and we have two more Hello Michael Doyle member of the institute and former EU official I mean if we think back to the report or the process adopted by Philippa Gonzalez and the reflection group on the future of Europe ten years ago I think it's to be commended how the new process is being designed inclusive and participatory and I think we could be fairly confident that at the end of that we'll come up with policy priorities and other recommendations that will have a broad consensus but I think there's another aspect to involving Europeans and that's to have a larger scale awareness and mobilization of people and perhaps there's inspiration that can be somehow taken from how Greta Thunberg and others have engaged youth and not so young as well on a very large scale because if we look at even at Eurobarometer indications they're quite positive but I often wonder how informed the people who were giving these assessments really are and that's a big challenge we all know those who've worked in the institutions as well so I just wonder are there ideas or are there people working on how to have a really large scale engagement and commitment of people but at the end of it we will have ownership and so on of the priorities and recommendations thank you if you would like to take to always have seven more questions as well I need those two with you thank you very much for these very important aspects that both former colleagues are underlining I think it's spot on it's a huge and unprecedented exercise that we are lining up here one that can only be done and I insisted very much on that if we pool our resources between institutions but the institutions will not do this alone now we need partners we need strong partners on the ground both driven and indeed owned by the member states themselves this is also why it's so important what the discussions which are ongoing in the council at the moment you know how will member states actually take ownership of this exercise in the same way that we have seen the European Parliament and the Commission have done what agreement will they reach on their level of engagement in this exercise and again this will still not be enough we will need the other European institutions the Committee of the Regions the Economic and Social Committee but also partners on the ground we will need to use our networks we have our own networks in the European Commission we have our representation Jerry Kiley is heading it here in Ireland we have our Europe direct information centers which are also already very good at organizing and engaging debates with citizens on the ground we have 500 of those across Europe in the member states and of course we have help from also the digital age as it were even if of course it will take a lot of good organization of good design intelligent platforms and also resources indeed to make sure that the transparency of this exercise is something that is a strong component and that means for example operating in all the European Union languages so it is a tall order and we will also have to make choices because we will not be able to do everything in this exercise so we will have to define a scope which is realistic and then we will have to also hand it out as a concept to civil society to buy in and take part and then we will see also how we can support this this is a discussion at political level that will need to be also part of the equation what is the funding that we could make available for this not only for my staff I would like to have more staff I don't think I am going to get much more staff this is not let's say where the focus is at the moment this is not where the prioritization is we are having a lot of budget negotiations between member states at the moment I think we will very much have to leverage partnerships all across Europe to make this exercise a success but no doubt about it new things will have to be done for example when it comes to setting up a digital platform but even there we are trying to use also very good tools that we have but that we have not used for this purpose before let me just remind myself greater Thunberg how can we use inspiration from what she has done so emblematically and fantastically when she has mobilized our use around what they certainly consider as the most defining and urgent issue for their generation yes we can take inspiration from that but we can also tap into that I think we should tap into we should go with this conference on the future of Europe not to the conference in Brussels but we should go where people are you know and where young people do things together and where people discuss and debate political issues so we will have to to tap into existing discussions we will have to find fora that are already active and help you know them maybe engage on issues that they think are important for their future and for Europe's future so I think it's very much about tapping into indeed dynamics and organizations like this it's not easy because much of this for example climate for future is not very organized necessarily so we have a challenge there but again we are well plugged in around Europe on the ground to identify partners so this is one of the first things that I think we should do thank you now we have two questions over there yes my name is Jerry Wardell I'm the director of Code Images Dublin's energy agency local energy agency and I'd like to thank you very much for your wonderful presentation but even more for taking the trouble to come here today and actually doing what you're talking about come face to face coming out of your office and coming here the Code Images my agency was set up in the 1990s which is a little bit reminiscent to what you've been talking about now where there was it was set up as a European program to establish local and regional energy agencies and you've talked quite a bit today about that type of thing and the idea was to you know the word agency is to do with the influence the flow of events and empowerment of the local and regional or actors and you know there were about 400 of these agencies set up across Europe and they thrive for a while but in a way the the balance between structure and agency the pendulum swings back and forth quite a bit and during the 2000s I think swung away from this concept and a lot of these agencies didn't survive that period we did establish a network to help each other and there was a reflection group a managed energy reflection group which was really valuable represented by these networks but it survived only for a few years and as the pendulum swung away from this concept during the 90s a lot of these agencies fell by the way in these structures the managed energy program for regional local energy agencies was discontinued when Horizon 2020 came in which isn't so well suited to local and regional actors so the question is then what is the possibility of using your influence to try and establish programs which will support directly local and regional actors in this time the pendulum seems to be swimming back again in favour of the bottom-up approach as you talk about what's the possibility of some new programs being introduced in the new commission to target directly local and regional actors Thank you, we have one other question I'm afraid due to time constraints we'll have to make this the last one John can remember the institute also just in regards to the citizens initiative is it considered 71 registrations, that is satisfactory level I just wonder is the 1 million signatures threshold that too high maybe, certainly for a member state such as are in a small member state that's a very significant amount of the population and although it's transnational obviously with certain initiatives there's a critical mass that has to be achieved much easier to achieve in France or Germany for example and this was a key setting point as I recall for the Lisbon Treaty referendum in this country it was emphasised by parties as a championing point so I'm just wondering perhaps that should be under significant review of the stage thank you Thank you very much I would see all this including the last one on the number of signatures as things which can be debated it's debatable and the support to different kinds of networks of course there are many networks being supported in different programmes in the European Union today much support is also foreseen in the future multi-annual financial framework again I mean we are for example at the moment but it's only from a communications point of view I have to add in mentoring a little bit our different networks across the European Union precisely to assess what is the engagement potential because that's of course my interest right now in this exercise to look at of all the different networks that we have and support you know who all have purposes you know be it different kinds of regional social funding business small medium sized enterprises you name it energy why not I mean again I'm not very knowledgeable about the networks in the energy area but all these things I think is something that we need to discuss you know I cannot sit here and evaluate the chances of new programmes in the future reviving the networks that you're talking about but these are debates that deserve to be to exist as indeed are the thresholds for what is the right level of citizen signatures for a new citizen initiative I mentioned to you the updating that we have just done of the rules after very carefully assessing and consulting on precisely this so I'm not sure that tomorrow you know there will be a proposal to change this but again I'm not sitting here to prejudge that what is is worth discussing in precisely this upcoming conference on the future of Europe I mean if this is a valid issue and something that a lot of citizens feel the same way about then there are no taboos in this discussion so this would be my answer no taboos and let's have a really vibrant debate and thank you for everything you're doing to contribute to it and I hope you will do so throughout this exercise and beyond thank you very much for inviting me thank you very much indeed for coming and giving us such an overall comprehensive view there's clearly a lot of work for all of us to do and just to say we have our work with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the future of the Year 27 group which is ongoing and the outreach aspects of that we are going to work hard on in the coming years so thank you so much again for coming and we wish you well in drawing off and the working towards the conference thank you