Third time lucky?
The Conference on the Future of Europe has triggered the debate on some crucial institutional reform ideas. One concerns the procedure to appoint the Commission president. The rise and fall of the lead candidate procedure has shown the need for fresh ideas. Neither the European Parliament’s (EP) power grab in 2014 nor the European Council […]
The good, the bad and the ugly of the Conference on the Future of Europe
The Conference on the Future of Europe is over. It actually went well, at least when only considering the participatory element and citizens’ enthusiasm to take part. However, as anyone with at least a passing knowledge of EU institutional power games would have anticipated, cooperation between the main EU institutions has been less than stellar. […]
Marking the first Europe Day of the Brave New World
This is the first Europe Day in a fundamentally changed world, with a new and completely different understanding of what Europe is and what Europe means. The EU has lived through numerous existential crises over the past 15 years, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has alerted Europeans to the fragility of Europe as an […]