In an unprecedented joint collaboration between the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council, the Conference on the Future of Europe was developed as a commitment to listen to Europeans debate on the challenges and priorities for Europe in order to provide guidance for future policymaking. The Conference’s goal is to offer an open, inclusive, and democratic forum for a pan-European, citizen-led series of debates about crucial issues that shape Europe’s future. While the Conference covers many key areas, this article highlights a project that focuses on culture and its role in the shaping of Europe’s future. We sat down with Willy Brandt School Alum Maya Weisinger to learn about this important Conference.

Thanks so much for being with us! Could you go into some detail about what the role of culture is in the Conference on the Future of Europe?

In the Spring of 2022, the conclusions of a multi-year, pan-European democratic exercise will be published. Almost a year before, in March 2021, the joint declaration confirming the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) was signed, putting into effect the first initiative coordinated jointly by the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council. In an unprecedented joint collaboration, the Conference leadership has developed this Conference as a commitment to listen to Europeans debate on the challenges and priorities for Europe in order to provide guidance for future policymaking. The Conference’s goal is to offer an open, inclusive, and democratic forum for a pan-European, citizen-led series of debates about crucial issues that shape Europe’s future. 

The Conference is currently in its final phases of citizens’ panels and plenary sessions, both of which take up ideas, concerns and visions from citizens across Europe, which have been submitted into a multilingual, digital platform over the course of the past year. According to the latest interim report, over 29.000 contributions have been submitted since the start of the Conference. In addition to these submissions, organisations and groups have held decentralised events in order to discuss and raise issues to be brought to the Conference.  Across key topics, from the economy to migration to education, ideas across Europe have been collected, analysed and published throughout the Conference and serve as input to decision-making by the Conference Plenary, which is made up of members of the EU Parliament, national parliaments and governments, the EU Commission, social partners, and civil society representatives. The idea is for the Plenary to take up citizens’ recommendations and create a course of action for the future.

Are their any specific challenges?

While the Conference is being hailed as a unique step forward for European democracy, it has still experienced its share of pitfalls. Beginning with the initial planning of the event, EU governments, the Commission and the Parliament delayed the start of the Conference due to disagreements regarding the aim and scope of the Conference.

As no process has been left unaffected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the start of the Conference was also pushed back in order to plan within the scope of everchanging Covid regulations across member states. This was another reason for the CoFoE starting a year later than initially planned. However, the results of the Conference are still expected in the Spring of 2022, with no current plan to make up for the lost time. 

Additionally, many who have been monitoring the Conference proceedings have spoken out about the apparent lack of diversity and accessibility in the panels and plenaries themselves. After the CoFoE kicked off and held its first Citizens’ Panels, which are composed of 800 randomly chosen European citizens, over 60 civil society organisations came together to submit multiple open letters to the organisers of the Conference calling for more inclusivity. The campaign, #InclusiveCoFoENow, headed up by Citizens Takeover Europe, calls for concrete changes such as the implementation of a diversity assessment of the panels and a Conference Inclusiveness Council in order to ensure marginalised voices are included within the scope of the Conference.

Alongside the steps that are currently being taken to listen to and understand the demands of organisers who are pointing out shortcomings of the Conference itself, most see these efforts as an opportunity to build a pathway for a more inclusive strategy at an EU-level for ongoing and future plans. 

In line with the idea of building more sustainable relationships with marginalised communities, the Communications Directorate of the EU Parliament established a grant programme with the principal objective of raising citizens’ awareness of the role and democratic values of the European Union by promoting strategic engagement via three different channels: civil society engagement, community engagement and youth engagement. Through civil society engagement funding granted to Culture Action Europe (CAE), the Brussels-based cultural policy organisation¹, the project, “Amplify: Make the Future of Europe Yours” was born.

Could you put a spotlight on 'Amplify: Make the Future of Europe Yours'

The Amplify project seeks to widen the diversity of voices that are included in EU-driven projects. Amplify’s main goal is to gather ideas, proposals, recommendations, and concerns about the vision of culture in the future of Europe. This project is carried out in collaboration with members of CAE’s network in Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. The members working in each of these countries are a diverse coalition of cultural organisations and agents already working at the intersection of social, educational, and artistic segments of the cultural sphere. Alumna Maya Weisinger (‘20) is the Project Coordinator of Amplify.

One of the main outcomes of this project is to bring underrepresented voices in the cultural sector to the Conference on the Future of Europe. Over the course of the past year, more than 360 people from diverse parts of the cultural sector met in participatory work groups across 12 countries and collaborated on a set of recommendations that outlines their ideas, concerns and vision for the Future of Europe and how this impacts their communities. These recommendations were submitted onto the conference platform in October 2021.

Following this action, Culture Action Europe has also produced a Collective Recommendation, which consolidates all 12 countries’ contributions and synthesizes the ideas within them into an overarching set of recommendations that will set the basis for interaction between participants and policymakers beyond the scope of the Conference.

A communications project at its core, the Amplify campaign uses its platform across Europe to spotlight key conversations and issues that came up during the participatory sessions. One of the main goals is to create a space for critical voices in the cultural sector to be heard and amplified and create a dialogue between Amplify participants and EU decision-makers. 

9 May 2022 marks the date of the final activity of the Amplify project, which will contribute to the celebration of Europe Day through the execution of a Hackathon. This 8-hour hybrid event will react to the conclusions of the CoFoE and gather participants from the cultural sector across Europe to co-create their vision of the Future of Europe. The day will focus on shining a light on the diversity of cultural agents and discourse within the cultural sector across Europe. In satellite, live meetings across European cities, diverse groups will work together to combine their knowledge and experiences to formulate one concrete outcome/set of recommendations. Throughout the day, EU policymakers will be invited to react to the recommendations and outcomes. 

While Amplify specifically focuses on the creative and cultural sector, people and organisations across Europe are using the Conference framework to push for their voices to be heard across all aspects of European life. The Conference on the Future of Europe is an interesting opportunity to gain an up-close view of participatory democracy, alongside understanding the challenges of policy making, especially through the lens of bottom-up approaches. For policy students, the Conference is an engaging way to observe an unprecedented moment in EU-level initiatives unfolding in real-time. 

The final two sessions of the Citizens’ Panels will take place on 11-13 February 2022 (Panel 4: EU in the world, migration) and on 25-27 February 2022 (Panel 1: Stronger economy, social justice, jobs, education, culture, sport, digital transformation).

To read more about the Conference on the Future of Europe, find a #CoFoE Reader here.

¹ Cultural policy includes the regulation, support, and focus on laws and programs pertaining to cultural heritage and the arts and creative sectors.

Cover Photo Credit: Culture Action Europe/ Lulu Soto

About the Interviewee

 Maya Weisinger earned her master’s degree at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy in 2020. She is a community engagement specialist with a particular focus on projects at the intersection of social justice and the arts. She currently is a Project Coordinator with Culture Action Europe, a European network organization, focusing on informed opinion and debate about arts and cultural policy in the EU. Before her work and research in Europe, she worked for ten years in the non-profit sector in the United States, focusing on ways of using art and creativity as pathways to diversity, equity and inclusion. As the Community Partnerships Coordinator at the Walker Art Center she created strategic policy focused on breaking down structural barriers that have traditionally marginalized people of colour, indigenous and immigrant communities, and disabled individuals from large cultural institutions. Her current research focuses on the implementation of arts-based projects in the peacebuilding field.

About the interviewer

Carolina Reis holds an Master's of Public Policy from the Willy Brandt School. She served as Alumni Affairs and Project Manager at the Willy Brandt School. 

~ The views represented in this blog post do not necessarily represent those of the Brandt School. ~