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The Conference on the Future of Europe must lead to a change in the European Union's treaties, although this is unlikely to happen during the current term of the European Parliament, and the process that begins through this consultation of the citizens of the EU bloc will be all the more successful the better they manage to co-opt the civil society and the people in this approach of democratic change, the Romanian MEPs from the entire political spectre believe.
The Romanian MEPs who took part in the online debate "Conference on the future of Europe: Civil society priorities", organized on Thursday by the European Parliament Office in Romania in collaboration with the Europuls European Center of Expertise, were generally optimistic about the Conference on the future of Europe, although, as they admit, the experiences of recent years are not the most promising.
"Personally, I was involved, in my previous capacity as Minister Delegate for European Affairs, in the consultations on the future of Europe. At that time we held consultations all over the country, invited everyone, had a report sent to the European institutions and the end result of the consultations made by almost all member states was a phrase in the Council's conclusions. The Sibiu Summit, which was supposed to take over the ideas, unfortunately did not do so," said MEP Victor Negrescu.
"We must have the ambition for this conference to change the treaties, to have a real impact," said Negrescu, one of the 108 MEPs who will attend the inaugural plenary session of the June 19 Conference on the Future of Europe in Strasbourg.
His colleague from the Renew Europe group, Alin Mituta, even believes that this conference should be made permanent and that there should be a system of annual consultations of citizens and civil society.
However, UDMR MEP Iuliu Winkler, from the European People's Party (EPP) group, has a different opinion, stating that sometimes "the better can be the enemy of the good".
In fact, he said he was convinced that this conference would eventually lead to a change in the treaties, even if "in 4, 5 or 6 years."
Ionut Sibian, who represented the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society, said during the debate that the mistakes made during the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002-2003), a ke- step in drafting the Lisbon Treaty, signed in 2007, should not be repeated.
"I think we need to look at the lessons we have learned since then and not politicize this process too much because we are going to end up burying it," he said, reports agerpres.
