 Good afternoon to everybody and thank you for inviting me here, thank you for receiving us here, me and my team from European Commission. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I was trying to pronounce one word but Akkariye, Akkariye, as you know my priority is to engage with European citizens and as you know my portfolio is demography and demography, people started asking me what is the link between democracy and demography and how come this is the title of your portfolio and then I was trying to answer this question at the beginning so as you know there are there is demographic change all over Europe but not only Europe also in the world and people start feeling left behind because there are no services, there are no buses, there are no there is no ambulance, there is no connectivity, there are no shops in rural areas and then they start blaming democracy for being neglected, for being left behind and but it's not democracy to be blamed, they start not believing in democratic institutions, they start not participating in elections and different democratic processes but we think that there is not democracy to blame because there is nothing better than democracy but demographic change, demographic change which makes them feel like that and this is the reason why we connected these two terms and as I said my priority is to engage with all European citizens and also with institutions. I believe that not only Ireland but also Ireland has an interest in both issues in democracy and demography and I'm sure that I can listen this afternoon to you here in order to hear your best practices and to try to implement the best practices for Ireland in our documents which we are just about to issue on behalf of European Commission. As you know on 22nd of January the Commission adopted a communication tabling our contribution to the shaping of the conference on the future of Europe. First of all let me try to explain what is the conference on the future of Europe because sometimes this title might be misleading, some people thought that it's the conference on the one conference so it will be series of different events, different conference, it was called before convention but it's not convention, I'll tell you the difference soon. So it's series of conferences, round tables, different events, different fora where citizens will be able to debate and to discuss the topics of their interest. So this was one of the first priorities of our president Ursula for the line. She assigned this conference on the future of Europe to me in Commission so I'm in lead on behalf of Commission but not only me, there are other two colleagues, Vice President Shevchovich and Vice President Euroma, who will be in charge but they will be in charge of institutional matters, rule of law and different institutional matters and I'll be in charge of organizing this and in charge of these political guidelines or if I may say daily issues. The conference will have two strengths, one strength is institutional one and another one is political daily issues of our citizens. One institutional one because we have to talk about transnational lists, we have to talk about lead candidate system or special candidates system which failed last time as you know. So how are we going to approach 2024 European elections if we don't have rules? So this is a reason why one part of this conference must deal with institutional matters but at the same time we don't want our citizens feel that we start debating about ourselves again. So it is a little risk, there is a flight risk there but we will try to finish this part on institutional matters as soon as possible in order to know what are the rules for next elections. You have big experience here in Ireland on deliberative democracy and I'm sure that during our conversation later on you can help us, you can help me a lot in order to see what is, what are the benefits of deliberative democracy. As I said commission presented our communication, parliament already adopted its resolution on the conference of the future of Europe and now there is a council, we are waiting for the council's positions which means 27 member states and it will be soon we hope and after that there will be a joint declaration among three institutions council, parliament and commission. This joint declaration will be a basic document on which we can build on our conference in which we can which we can develop the conference. We will invite all other institutions to come on board which means Committee of the Regions, Economic and Social Committee, NGOs, civil society, national parliaments which are very important and also regional parliaments but also local and regional authorities which committee of the region but also they can sign on this joint declaration. It will be the basis for inviting all of them. Our aim and our idea is to officially launch the conference on the 9th of May, on the 9th of May during the Croatian Presidency if possible somewhere in Croatia and the idea is to start from Dubrovnik which is my hometown but there's nothing to do with me. The reason is that Ursula from the line asked me and asked us to go to not to go only to capitals. This is a reason one of the reasons I'm not I'm in Dublin today but this afternoon we are heading towards Galway which is European capital of culture together with Croatian capital of culture which is Port of Rijeka. So it's outside of the capital and we want to reach everyone to talk to everyone regarding not only to to not only to capitals and not only to urban areas. This is how we see this conference. As I said this is the reason why we would like to start the conference from the south of Croatia and the conference should last two years and it will end during French Presidency. The inspiration for the conference was your Irish experience but also the experience from Grand Debate in France which was led under Macron's governance. There are also many different examples all over Europe. They already have small conferences and we will use best practices in order to see how we can make this big conference important and successful. I think that we can already agree on the the process must be guided by transparency, openness, openness. This is what we want to do and inclusiveness which means everyone can come on board as I already said and what is very important already has some questions from you. We won't predetermine any outcome so there is no predetermination on the outcome. We won't preempt what will be the result of this conference. It is true that President von der Leyen said in her political guidelines and in her opening statement in European Parliament that she will be open to any outcome which means if citizens say that treaty change is necessary we will do it but I must reassure you it's not our first option and it's not our option at all but I mean from commission side but if citizens say that they want to change them I think it will be a very very hard exercise and I'm not personally I'm not in favor of this exercise because once you start changing the treaty it's you know notification 27 countries referendum so it's not easy and I don't believe that this will happen in the end but you never know what the citizens say. What we want is that citizens in the end see the tangible results of our debates. What is the difference between the citizens dialogues held until now? There were more than 1800 citizens dialogue in last period. Citizens were not aware of the result of the outcome. The feedback wasn't there. The benchmark of this conference will be feedback to citizens which means they have to see the concrete results from our debates. We will try to do it via multilingual digital platform which means it will be open all the time and everyone could participate online but also offline in different fora like this one although the conference hasn't been started yet this is only pre-tour if I may say so. So what I wanted to tell you about demography which is also very important part of my portfolio. Active aging is part of my portfolio. Children guarantee and comprehensive strategy for children, work and life balance and long term strategy for rural areas which will be the toughest part of my portfolio. How to reverse the trends, how to make life in rural areas in the country, in the villages again interesting, attractive, how to make people stay there or how to make people return. It won't be easy but at the same time taking into consideration our first priority EU Green Deal which is better life, better environment, better quality, taking into consideration digital agenda. I think digital is very, very connected with rural areas. If we have digital connectivity we can create new jobs which means people can stay there and they can work there but at the same time they have to have different services and services as kindergarten, schools, host offices, whatever they need. So this long term strategy will be done on the basis of our demographic impact report which will be on the 8th of April on the college agenda. This will be mapping of European Union. We'll do it and then this will be the basic document according to which we will develop our so-called toolbox or different set of measures which we can offer to member states. We know, I have to say this again because it is important, we don't want to interfere into member states competence. We know that this is member state competence but at the same time if we work together local, regional, national and European we can save the continent if I may. So we can leave our population with there and we can help them. So the demography is very important and now we are struggling all together to include demography and different measures into the international framework which is now being debated. Today there is an extraordinary council meeting in Brussels and we are trying to of course to make demography visible in this new envelope for next seven years because it's not problem only in Ireland people are moving from rural to urban areas but people from my from the country I know best not to mention are moving towards Ireland. There are many people who are now here. This is the moment where I can greet Ambassador to Ireland who I met here and I didn't know that you are now here. So Mr. Riddish, I'm really glad to see you here. Sorry for not mentioning others because I don't know all the names. So yeah people from Croatia are moving towards Ireland because there is better living standard here and they want to live here because of that. Some of them want to acquire new skills. Some of them want to marry here. Some there are different reasons why people move and they move according to as you know there are there is nothing better than for freedoms freedom of movement that's it they don't need the working permits anymore which is which is which is a wealth of having European Union. At the same time we lack our citizens in our home countries people are moving from east to west from south to south to north and we have to find the solutions for making all this sustainable in each and every country and cohesion policy is also very important as you know. So as you know as I want to conclude because maybe it would be better not to have my monologue but to listen to you as I said this is listening tour but just to somehow warm us warm up. So we believe in the liberative democracy. It doesn't mean that representative democracy doesn't exist anymore but we see this as a complement to representative democracy which means MPs and MEPs don't have to feel neglected. They are here but citizens can help them in different ways. They are closed. They know what are the problems and I think only together we can solve the problem of euro skepticism problem of so-called populism. We have to find the way what we did wrong. We must have done something wrong because there is a gap between us politicians and citizens how to abolish this gap how to bridge the gap between us and the citizens and this is the reason for inaugurating this conference on the future of Europe. You know what happened in your neighborhood. This is my personal opinion. I'm sure that this was this was not that there was a lack of good communication and that I'm sure that they made the historic fault. It happened in half of commission. It's my it's my opinion. I'm sure we will have good relations in future because we are in Europe all of us and we are Europeans regardless of being members of union or not but I think that we have to stay together because we cannot solve security problems, terrorism problems, defense problems if we are alone. We have to stay together and I hope this conference on the future of Europe will help us to debate problems, to debate the concerns, to have new ideas, to listen to our citizens and see what do they what they expect from us politicians from the beginning. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to open the floor now. If you just identify yourself and any organization that you represent, I'd appreciate that and we'll take questions for a little while and maybe do them one by one initially and if we have to group them in the end we could do that too. So please, behind me. Don LaBralacan, I'm a member of the Institute. Welcome to Ireland and I hope you will learn some things from our experience of deliberative democracy. I'm assuming you're referring to the Constitutional Convention which sat for two years in 2012 and the Citizens' Assembly which sat for two years in 2016. I want to point out to you that there were 18 recommendations, maybe even 19 recommendations for constitutional change in the Constitutional Convention. Only three have been considered. There is one topic that both the Constitutional Convention and the Citizens' Assembly voted on and in both cases they voted on by a bigger majority than voted for same-sex marriage in the first case or repealing the Eighth Amendment on abortion in the second. That is Citizens' Initiative directly not deliberative democracy. The powers that be have ignored it. So why should me or anyone else like me believe that when you say you will don't like treaty change, why should we even bother trying to make submissions on the future of Europe when you're writing that off? You know, what mechanism is there to cope with the centre having shifted? It may be holding according to some people but it's certainly shifted as has been seen in our recent elections here and I would just also point out to you that we haven't re-elected an outgoing government since 1969. Sorry, we did it once in 202. So that our centre has been shifting for the best part of 50 years and I'm suggesting that the governing elite, which is basically all those who get invited to state receptions, don't recognise that and have ignored measures that citizens came up with like direct democracy in the Constitutional Convention and the Assembly. So why should I believe that the Commission is any different? Why should you believe? As I said, the reason for starting this is big turnout. More than 50% in May last year there was a turnout in European elections and it's the highest turnout in the last 20 years. We understood that citizens sent us a message. They wanted to tell us something. They were not voting for us. They were voting for different diverse parties. They want to have a greater say. They don't want to be heard only once in four years, only once in five years in the election process but they want to be heard all the time. And this is the reason why Ursula von der Leyen realised that this is a problem and she said let's go but not only her, also European Parliament and also Member States. So we believe in success of this exercise because as I said, the benchmark will be the feedback and feedback will be collected on this multilingual digital platform and the most represented patterns would be taken into consideration and would be translated or transposed into concrete policies. That's what I can say to you. This is, as I haven't said this, but this is, I'm still within the first 100 days. We are developing this portfolio. We are developing this policy. I must say we haven't started from scratch because there are good examples, best practices as here in Ireland as I mentioned in some other places and we will, we have, how can I reassure or how can I assure you that it will be a success? We will reply to citizens' demands. I know that there is a citizens initiative. There are level four which were, which we had until now. There were citizens' dialogues as I said but there wasn't feedback and it will be the key difference between actual conference and former, former different fora. Okay, Luna. Oh, do I remember of the Institute and former Commission official. Thank you very much, Vice President, for presenting to us today this truly interesting initiative which I think certainly aims at filling an enormous need in Europe today of the lack of connectivity with the citizens. But I'm curious to know about what is the division of responsibility between the three institutions involved in this regard, how each one of you plan to move forward and in particular who would be your counterparts in the European Parliament, obviously in the Council. It's the presidency. Thank you. There is no division or responsibilities. As I said it will be joint agreement among three institutions and it won't be 27 commissioners who will go all around Europe. Okay, we will go but it's not enough. At this moment there is one million of democratically, locally, local elected representatives. So there is one million representatives all over Europe. So they will be our counterparts. They are the ones who have to start this conference. So without local and regional authorities we cannot do anything. So they are the ones who will do this. Of course, it will be on national level in national parliament and it will be on European level. Then European Parliament, of course, is the House of Democracy and the European Parliament is the most important institution. So regarding Council, national parliaments, regarding the European Parliament, as I said we will be facilitator or honest broker. I'm in commission. And the local representatives and there are a million of them all over Europe. They will start these debates in different fora, in different events, in different roundtables, in different town halls, wherever. I said a few minutes ago, even living room debate can be branded as the conference of the future of Europe. So it should be branded as the conference of the future of Europe. So there will be a common set of guidelines according to which all of them should adhere. And I am sure that this can be positive if we are open, if we are transparent, if we are frank to each other. And because we see that Europe is that there is transformation. We see that there is something must have been done. Must be done. I take another question from the floor. Maybe I could ask a question myself. Of course. One of your responsibilities is active aging, but just go back to the beginning of the life cycle. How are we going to make sure that, or how are you going to make sure that we get younger people involved in this initiative? I mean, again, huge emphasis on getting younger people to participate in our democracy, generally. But in this particular initiative, how are you going to excite them and get them to participate and get them to contribute to their views? I mean, once we mention future, we immediately think about young people. So who is going to live in this future but them? So they are invited, I think. Who but young people? I mean, the future is in their hands. Okay, we can help them, but they are the ones. So I'm sure that they will have interest for their own future. But there will be, if you have seen a resolution on behalf of parliament, they visit even youth agoras, different agoras, and one only for youth. But I don't think that they should be, they should be segregated. They have to talk about each and every politics because it's, everything is about them. So I don't fear that young people won't come and be part of this big exercise. Okay, please. Thank you. My name is Anastasia Del Geori and I'm a Marie Curie fellow at Double City University working with Jane Shutter on issues of deliberative democracy and European democracy. So we were very happy to see that all this work and research in deliberative democracy can actually help in this initiative of the EU, which I think is very important. So I understand that the design is still under development. And there are several designs that have been actually proposed about several think tanks and research institutes. So I don't know whether you have actually decided or you think that one of these designs must be followed or the other. So whether you're going to have, you know, who is going to participate in this conference is going to be with MEPs, civil society, young people. So all these different settings in terms of who participates. Another big decision and discussion is the design. So the different settings that were proposed, national, transnational, at which time they take place. And I think according to at least the research, there were several initiatives from the EU that were great steps towards engaging citizens. But one of the most important shortcomings is that they cannot secure an impact on EU policymaking. So as you said, the outcome of this conference needs to speak to EU policymaking and citizens need to see concrete impact and result. Otherwise, we may have backfire effect, which is not very good. I don't know if the website you are referring to is a single communication point or some further actions to be undertaken in order to ensure that citizens are convinced that their participation really matters. Thank you. Thank you for this question. It's not a single communication point, but it will be, of course, multi-lateral tools. And definitely on scope, timing we know, scope is also, as I said, different topics. But we won't limit any topic. It will be political guidance of this commission, strategic agenda of the council and whatever may crop up. Why don't we let citizens talk about this? So it's not limited like that. So as I said, openness, transparency, inclusiveness, which means everyone can come on board. But there will be, as I said, guidelines which can brand each and every event as the part of the conference. Otherwise, it will be a chaos. So I don't doubt on this. It will be open. But once again, without help of local, regional, and national representatives, we cannot do this exercise. That's it. We know that there was different ideas, there were different ideas of selection of citizens, random selected citizens. So we will see how it works. But I don't think that, I don't think, I was the other day, if I may recall, I was the other day in Open in German speaking community in Belgium. They already have small conference on the future of Europe. They had 1,000 citizens. Then they had, no, no, they had 1,000. Then they selected 165 of them wanted to take part. Others didn't want to take part. And they started the conference and they chose the topics alone. It was old pensioners houses and they started talking about this. How will they organize this service in their area? And then the city council had to adopt the ideas. And then city prime minister, governor of this region, he had to implement this. And this was the way how it went. So this was one of the examples. The reasons, as I said, why I'm touring all around Europe is to hear what are the best examples and try to implement them in our documents. And I rest assured that it will be good because we are not preempting anything. Very good. Any more questions? Never just the microphone. Never curious. My name, a member of the Institute. And also I worked for a number of years with the European Commission. And I'm also a former parliamentarian. I am very interested in your thinking and hope it works in the way you're planning. But again, like in previous questioner, I would have a degree of skepticism about the possibilities. Because I have had to over the years, I've attended meetings on all kinds of issues throughout this country. And if it's a phrase I hope is known at these meetings, I've usually found the usual suspects present. And it's very hard to escape the usual suspects who turn up in order to try to control the meeting and the discussion of whatever kind it is. That's one fundamental problem. Another interesting issue is the issue of elections in the member states. And I don't know enough about the electoral systems in all the member states. But we have very interesting examples. We like to think that here in Ireland we have one of the fairest electoral systems around because of its proportionality. But we have been horrified spectators of what has happened in Britain in recent years, where they have a patently unfair pattern of elections. We don't have to deal with them anymore. But I would like some assurance that there are good electoral systems which people can feel are fair at work. Then also one of the things which I'm interested in is the Citizens Initiative, which at the moment I think I'm right in saying that people need to collect a million signatories to get action in that area. I've been in the business of collecting signatures and it seems to me that it's terribly difficult to get a million signatories even in all the member states. And I would certainly think that's something that needs to be looked at. I could go on Chairman, but I won't. But one of the things, fortunately Vice President, we had your Director General here recently and the Director General acknowledged that there will be very big problems of getting the personnel and budgetary resources to run an exercise of this kind. And I can certainly vouch for that that if one, for example, in our own small country, if you have to fight any kind of referendum here, we now have to assume that 30% of the population are likely to vote against from the starting point. So you have to begin by overcoming the 30%. And it needs a huge effort and a lot of committed people and resources to win a referendum even here. So the best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. Out of 440 million now Europeans to collect one million, I don't think it's a problem. So out of 440 million European citizens. And we already had, as you know, one citizen's initiative against glyphosate, another for water for all. And they were pretty successful if I may. The minority safe pack also. Also, yes, you are right. You are talking about different electoral systems. We are still not federal states of Europe, but we are sovereign national states and we will remain so far as I know. And each of us, so our diversity is our wealth. And we have different electoral systems. I know that you have very, very fair and complex electoral system here in Ireland. But you know, it depends on national states. And I don't want to comment anymore on this. As you know, regarding Euro skepticism, it's definitely the problem. The reason for starting this exercise is, in fact, this. So we want to reassure each and every citizen that Europe is a good place to stay, good place to live. And maybe Brexit was one of the reasons why we started this, if I may say. So one of the deep reasons for starting this to talk to citizens, because if the citizens are not well informed and if we don't communicate well, it can lead to such a disaster as it was there. So I'm sure that if we are open, if you are frank, if we talk openly to our citizens that they will support this way of communicating. We have to find something innovative, which politics is not anymore doing business as usual. It is different. We have to change. And that's how I see this. So politics is not anymore. You see what's going on in European Parliament. There is no majority. You cannot have majority. Not three mainstream political families, they don't have majority. The reasons, we have to go to Greens, to Renewal, to European People's Party, to Socialist and still it's not still sure that you will have majority there. So it's also going on in different parliaments in all over the world, even in this country. So no one can have majority. The absolute majority is a dream nowadays. But even once having a relative majority, it's hard to convince some political partners to have a coalition. So we understand what is at stake and what's going on. And we have to start to be more open and more direct and talk to our stakeholders and our citizens, our neighbors, our friends, our relatives. So it's not anymore as I said, politics as usual, business as usual. Please, question over here. Hi, my name is Els. I'm a Belgian paralegal student and I'm an intern at the Belgian Embassy here in Dublin. We keep talking about the future and about change and that's all a really nice idea. I'm very, very happy to see some change in the near future. But it has been brought up that young people aren't participating. It has been brought up that you always see the same faces everywhere. And I think it is quite obvious that not many young people are here today either. Do you think that a significant change can be made in the course of five years or something before something which has been a concern for a lot of people, the union collapses because it has been a little unstable, especially since Brexit. And it has been a concern among citizens everywhere, I think. Thank you for this question. There are different instruments on behalf of European Union, European Commission like youth guarantee. You had Erasmus, I don't know if you were on Erasmus or not, but Erasmus program, Erasmus plus, what better, I cannot imagine anything better but Erasmus for exchanging of students, for exchanging the practices, learning, acquiring new skills. So there are many different European social fund now European social fund plus. Now we are developing children guarantee. So I don't, I think if we communicate properly that we can attract also young people because, as I said, future is yours. Yeah, that's the biggest problem I think that a lot of young people have a voice that they feel like they're not being heard. This time they have multilingual digital platform and you can sign on there. You don't even have to come here. But we'd rather you did come. Not you, I'm saying to your friends. Yeah, of course, yeah. Very good. May I say a few words about ageing because you said ageing is a very important issue which I haven't mentioned. According to Eurostat, we live in last 20 years, we live six years more. So Europeans they have the highest life expectancy. Now more than 80 years, Europeans are the, it is the highest life expectancy in the world. In Spain, they live 84 years. Women have, women as you know, have higher expectancy than men. But six years more, living six years more, can you imagine talking about our pension systems, talking about who is going to fill in this gap? And as you know, there is a 65 or 63 years pension age. So there is a huge, I won't say problem anymore. This is the reason why I'm talking about silver economy, economy of silver hair people, you know, because we think that we can, older people can contribute on the labor market nowadays because we have a big, big problems with labor market in Europe as you know. So for those who wish to work, why don't let them work? For those who wish to stay at home, why don't they stay at home? But it's really a big, big challenge for European economy. And so you see that demography is now penetrating in each and every economic policy, strategy. And we have to, this is the reason why this portfolio is first time mentioned in title of one of commissioners because everyone is aware nowadays that we have to solve this problem. How are we going to fill in our labor market? I don't want to start communication on migrations, but once we have to start talking about this because we won't be able to make our labor market sustainable. So we will lack, we will lack 12% workers on our labor market in 2017 if we start like having birth rate like this in 2017 we'll lack 20% of workers on our labor market. Who is going to fill this gap? So we have to see what are the measures for increase our demographic trends if I may say so not to be to be politically correct in my English wording. So this is a thing which we have to start thinking about this. Work and life balance is also very important. We have to encourage our families, our parents to have their kids if they have a work and life balance. If they have a kindergarten, if they have infrastructure, they will be encouraged to have more kids of course. So we have to create all environment in order to be, we have to start our strategies early enough. Otherwise we will be faced with big, big problem in each and every European country not only in Eastern part of Europe but also in this part of Western Europe. So this is very, very important and I don't think we have enough time for this sociological and philosophical and political debate but let's imagine that this is only the start of our conference on the future year. I'll ask some more questions. I just have one final question. I mean so in five years time you've had your conference, you have the results. What would be your single greatest expectation of what the ordinary citizen would, we don't preempt the outcome of course, but what would be your single greatest expectation of what the ordinary citizen would see as being a dividend or a result or a visible result from this conference. What is going to look different if anything? I think that it's hard to say from my angle because as I said Europe is diverse and the citizens have different people in Baltic countries have different views. They have some different problems than you in Ireland. So we are diverse, we are together but being in Ireland, being in Estonia, you have different challenges if I may say so. So for them security may be the key problem. I think for you in Ireland maybe demography, maybe single market, maybe customs union, maybe border to, I cannot, I cannot preempt, I really cannot preempt but I think security is something which borders many of European citizens. Security and being safe and of course EU Green Deal, why we started this. We want to live in fair and fair enough environment but if America, if China, India, if they don't adhere to Paris Agreement, CO2 emissions, we will not, we will fulfill our goals by 2050 and if they don't do it, there are no borders in the air. So it's a really big problem. So I cannot tell you what is, what will be in five years time, I cannot envisage this because at the start of commission 2014 they never thought that they will be, they will have migration as the key problem. Junkers commission in the beginning they had 10 priorities if you might, if you remember. They had among these 10 priorities they were not migrations and then out of sudden 2015 and 2016 there were, as you know, a big migration flow from different parts of Syria and Africa and so on. So it's hard to say. As I said earlier we will have a college to college meeting next week in Addis Ababa because we want to college, African Union College to College of Commission. We would like to start developing better relations with Africa in order to let them to make their life better there if possible. So we will have also strategy for Africa on our agenda very soon. So it is I think one of the most important issues nowadays for nowadays Europe. Of course enlargement is also important. Maybe you are not very interested here in Ireland but enlargement of these six countries is also important if you want to have Europe as a whole otherwise we have a black hole within Europe and it is also a topic of utmost interest in many other countries. So I know that some of Europeans can see this as a burden to European internal, to their internal politics but at the same time out of security reasons I think it's very important to have these countries together in European Union. If we have to be as we said in our fifth pillar strong Europe in the world. Thank you very much Vice President. Thank you very much Commissioner please.