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In this Open Letter, members of the Conference Observatory’s High-Level Advisory Group put forward a proposal for such a Group, with recommendations on how the EU 27 should respond to today’s transformative times by paving the way for an ambitious joint future.

When the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) comes to an end on 9 May, EU institutions must not only decide on the follow-up to this exercise but, more fundamentally, give direction to the future of the European project. It will require more than just a few well-intended Sunday speeches. The multiple consequences of the new era we live in have increased the urgency of policy reforms as well as institutional innovations in different areas. But the exact direction of travel is clearer in some areas (e.g. energy independence from Russia) than in others (e.g. future of EU defence or democratic reform).

They are the culmination of an entire year of European Citizens’ Panels; plenary sessions; and local, regional and national events and engagement on the multilingual digital platform. By all the different means available in the Conference context, people from all over the EU have weighed in on crucial policy questions, including climate change, democracy, digitalisation, foreign affairs, migration and well-being. Citizens, alongside politicians and other stakeholders, were able to express their ideas about how the Union should deal with current and future challenges.