This is a common space. EU podcast.

From the city of the Hague, welcome to Global Europe Unpact, a podcast about Europe's engagement

with its neighbourhood and wider world.

You know, the last major initiative of this kind was the Convention on a European Constitution

that was organised in the 90s.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Global Europe Unpact, the podcast that looks at the global trends affecting the European continent and the growing ambition for the EU to become a global or geopolitical power.

I'm your host, Will Murray, and in most episodes we look at a challenge that's facing the EU from a foreign policy perspective. But in this episode, we're doing something slightly different. Today we're looking at

the Conference on the Future of Europe, an idea that hopes to bring together citizens, organisations,

politicians and everybody else that's living within the European Union to speak about the future

of the bloc. Decisions that are made at the conference could have major implications

for how the EU acts on the world stage. Shortly I'll be speaking to Robert Mikalev, who's

a co-chair for the working group on the future of Europe for the European Network of Political

Foundations. We're going to be speaking about what the big idea is behind this, what's currently

happening with the conference and various disagreements between the European institutions about how it should be run, and how we can make sure that whatever does

happen here has real value. But before we speak to him, I'd like to give you a little bit of basic

background about where this idea came from. Here's my colleague Nina. At the end of 2019,

a non-paper co-authored by France and Germany put forward a proposal for a conference

on the future of Europe. In doing this, they sought to start a conversation on the future

of the bloc. It would take place under the shared mandate of the three institutions of the European

Union, the Parliament, the Commission and the Council, and would include not only the member

states, but also experts and civil the Council, and would include not only the Member States,

but also experts and civil society institutions, and most importantly, Europe's citizens.

...