The European Conservatives and Reformists Group has announced that it will continue not to participate in planned follow-up activities of the Conference on the Future of the Europe (CoFoE).

Tomorrow, the Parliament, Council and Commission will hold a feedback event to explain to participants of the so-called European and national panels how the citizens’ 49 recommendations are being followed up on. The ECR Group walked out of the Conference on 30 April in protest of deficits in participation opportunities, legitimacy and transparency, for example in the formulation of conclusions, but also in the Conference’s financing. Voices critical of further centralisation of the European Union had been systematically disadvantaged from the beginning.

MEP Prof Zdzisław Krasnodębski, ECR representative who withdrew from the board of the Conference, said:

“In fact, the Conference was a stage on which some political families were able to create a false impression of consensus on the future of Europe,whereby any valid alternative to more centralisation and further limitation of the role of the Member States vanished.

“An unrepresentative group of citizens was mobilised as a tool to legitimise these old calls. If the Parliament and Commission take up these initiatives, they serve an unrepresentative minority.”

The European Conservatives had further noted a distortion of citizens’ recommendations due to the two-stage nature of the Conference, as well as an imbalance between the different components. In addition, they said the Conference was characterised by a lack of time and extremely low visibility among the European public.

“It is now clear to everyone involved and also to the media that this Conference had many shortcomings and was doomed from the start. The public should no longer be led to believe that this endeavour is somehow representative”, concluded MEP Krasnodębski.