European citizens on migration and EU foreign policy: how to assess the citizen recommendations of the Conference on the Future of Europe?

Roundtable event  

European citizens on migration and EU foreign policy:
how to assess the citizen recommendations of the Conference on the Future of Europe?

On 9 May 2021, Europe Day, EU leaders launched the long-awaited Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), an attempt by EU institutions to receive input from beyond the usual suspects by putting ‘citizens at the centre’. In Maastricht, Studio Europa Maastricht and the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) were privileged to host the third session of the fourth panel on 11-13 February 2022, which addressed the topics of the EU in the world and migration.

The rich discussions that took place throughout all the sessions concluded in Maastricht with a set of concrete recommendations voted upon by the citizens’ panel members. The sessions on the EU in the world and migration were of particular relevance considering the recent invasion of Ukraine by the Russian government. Issues related to defence and foreign policy, enlargement, migration and asylum have dramatically increased their salience in public debates across Europe.

Experts from the Maastricht research community analysed a selection of the recommendations put forward by the citizens’ panel in order to assess their feasibility, potential barriers to their implementation and the different European perspectives on these issues.

The findings will be presented during a special event on Friday 22 April (13:00 – 16:00) at Lecture Hall UCM; Zwingelput 4, Maastricht.

This event is organised by Studio Europa Maastricht in collaboration with EIPA. It aims  to bring together Maastricht University researchers interested in the Conference on the Future of Europe, a unique democratic experiment, and who would like to know more about the process and the outcomes, particularly in the field of European migration, defence and foreign policy.