Vision Conference on Future of Europe – The EU’s man on the moon moment

26 – 28 may 2022, Certosa di Pontignano (Siena)

This Vision conference organized with the University of Siena, the participation of the European Liberal Forum, FEPS and the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, scaled-up the previous events and consolidated a project designed to create a permanent hub of ideas to reform the EU and to support the design and implementation of EU policies. The outputs of the conference are a general manifesto proposing a new method for integration and an action plan for each of the problems/priorities analyzed by each of the four-working groups.

The conference featured a range of speakers including: Romano Prodi, Angela Merkel, Enrico Giovannini, Jelena Dzankic, Luca Jahier, Sandro Gozi, Paul Nemitz, Marta Dassù, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Jos Delbeke and correspondents from The Economist, The Guardian and the Financial Times.

It is time to adapt institutions conceived for a more stable context to a century which increasingly seems defined by ever more frequent and intense crises. While during the first two Vision conferences on the future of Europe the continent was struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, the third conference is being organized while hundreds of thousands of families are besieged in Ukraine. For the first time since the early sixties, a nuclear strike cannot be classified as a negligible possibility.

We thus need to answer to the challenge posed by the war at the borders of the Union to give substance to the old aspiration of a European foreign and security policy; to find a great leap forward in energy and climate innovation; to transform into a very radical way the shape of our welfare system and define the terms of a new “health union”; to renew the European “lifestyle” finding a new balance between competitiveness and social protection. And yet, it is very difficult to do so with institutions that still depend on unanimity and without a proper European space for public debate.

• FEPS President Maria João Rodrigues contributed to the plenary session on the Future of Europe for a political exchange on “How can the EU integrate further so as to act more effectively together”. The session will be livestreamed – Thursday 26 May at 10.00 AM
• FEPS Director of Studies & Policy David Rinaldi introduced the session on the changing landscape for European economic governance and how to move further steps in order to ensure that the Next Generation of EU public finances is fit for purpose.
• FEPS Digital Policy Analyst Justin Nogarede contributed to the exchange on: “Finding a role for Europe Within the Battle for Global Digital Leadership” in order to identify policies for the new industrial policy era and discuss the merits of regulating global digital platforms.