About Us – Conference Observatory

Who we are

The EU Democracy Reform Observatory is a joint initiative by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the European Policy Centre, the King Baudouin Foundation, and the Stiftung Mercator. Our aim is to foster the debate on modernising European democracy and provide recommendations on how to make democracy and decision-making more legitimate, participatory, and effective in the EU.

What we do

In a context set and shaped by the Conference on the Future of Europe and the watershed moment of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Observatory seeks to:

Support via analysis: with our analytical input we support EU institutions and decision-makers with fresh and outside-of-the-box ideas on how to improve existing citizen participation instruments and overcome political and institutional hurdles to citizen participation in the EU.

Advance discussion: through our ‘EU Democracy Conversations’, series of interactive on-line discussions with EU and national policy-makers, politicians and experts we stimulate a meaningful discussion on the role of participatory democracy in the EU, its connection to representative democracy, and better instruments of citizen participation.

Inform via research: in our comparative in-depth expert study on the positions of the EU Member States on the EU reform we will reflect on how proposals for EU reform, prompted by the Zeitenwende, address the broader state of European democracy.
Monitor: with our interactive on-line EU Democracy Monitor we track and analyse the legislative, policy and institutional developments for European democracy since the end of the Conference on the Future of Europe and make it transparent to the public and experts.

Looking back – and starting a new chapter

Following two successful phases of our EU Democracy Reform Observatory, the project opens a new chapter in 2025. In an era of permacrisis, the EU27 need to embrace the necessity of permachange – and thus constantly adapt the Union in response to fundamental transformative challenges. In the next phase, the EU Democracy Reform Observatory will continue its successful role as a critical friend of the Union’s reform process, particularly in view of a potential Union with 30+ member states.

How it started

Phase 1 – The Conference Observatory

Ahead of the Conference for the Future of Europe (CoFoE) the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the European Policy Centre (EPC), the King Baudouin Foundation and Stiftung Mercator launched the “Conference Observatory” in June 2021. The Observatory closely monitored and contributed to the Conference’s discussions, evaluating the participatory process and its interplay with the European Institutions and provided input for the policy debates.

In May 2022, the unique transnational democratic experiment came to an end: Eight hundred randomly selected Europeans wrapped up months of in-depth deliberations on the future of Europe and presented their conclusions to the three EU institutions. Citizens and policymakers jointly formulated 49 concrete proposals in a Conference Plenary to advance reforms of EU policies and institutions and to make the Union a truly citizen-driven project. Never had Europe witnessed such a large-scale, bottom-up discussion on the foundations, goals, and direction of the common European project.

In this effort, the Conference Observatory launched a High-level Advisory Group, which brought together a group of experts, former policymakers, and civil society actors under the co-leadership of Herman Van Rompuy and Brigid Laffan to generate new ideas for Europe’s future in light of discussions held in the context of the CoFoE. The group made recommendations, including a comprehensive report on enhancing participatory processes in EU decision-making. Many of these recommendations were published as part of a publication series. Furthermore, twelve Conference Conversations, a series of public talkshow events featuring key CoFoE figures, such as Guy Verhofstadt, Dubravka Šuica, or Daniel Freund discussed the proceedings of the Conference.

Phase 2 – The EU Democracy Reform Observatory

When the Conference ended in May 2022, its key message to advance EU democratic institutions and to make the Union more participatory and a truly citizen-driven project could not have been timelier. Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine has been a profound external shock for Europe and the future of liberal democracy. If European democracy is to endure and become more resilient to both internal and external crises, how should it be reformed? More importantly, how can the EU preserve and build upon the Conference’s most significant achievement – broad, direct citizen participation – in crucial discussions on EU democratic reform?

For the consortium supporting the Conference Observatory it was evident that these were key questions that needed to be raised to ignite a European debate in times of geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges, rising populism, and growing democratic uncertainty – if not outright skepticism – among European citizens. Following the end of the Conference, they therefore launched the EU Democracy Reform Observatory to continue efforts with an even broader objective: sustaining and advancing discussions on the state of European democracy and internal EU reforms in challenging times and ensuring that citizens remain at the center of such debates through direct participation mechanisms.

As a result, the “Conference Observatory” organically evolved into the “EU Democracy Reform Observatory”, which was officially launched in early 2023.

The masterminds and responsible persons were: Dr. Dominik Hierlemann, Dr. Angela Jain and Dr. Andrey Demidov from Bertelsmann Stiftung, and Janis Emmanouilidis, Johannes Greubel and Corina Stratulat from EPC.

Our ambition

Against the backdrop of giant political shifts, the second phase of the Observatory aimed to initiate and sustain a broad public discussion on EU Democracy Reform, focusing on various topics most relevant to the debate on EU democracy and reform in general, and on the role of citizen participation in particular. To achieve this goal, the Observatory relied on its well-established and proven series of online interactive discussions, Democracy Reform Conversations, as well as a series of expert workshops in Brussels.

Second, the Observatory’s experts monitored the main achievements of the Conference on the Future of Europe – specifically, the implementation of citizens’ recommendations. Here, experts focused on the proceedings and outcomes of the ‘first generation’ of European Citizens’ Panels convened by the European Commission, summarizing their observations in Observatory papers. They also closely tracked a wide range of democracy initiatives, legislative acts, and action plans from EU institutions, continuously updating the online EU Democracy Monitor.

Third, the Observatory’s experts set the goal of informing the debate on European democracy through in-depth research and analysis. A key focus was how EU member states perceive EU reform – one of the central recommendations made by citizens during the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Outputs

The Observatory published several timely impulses to the on-going EU democracy debate in form of policy papers, including an analysis of the new generation of European Citizens’ Panels, a roadmap for EU participatory enlargement, a detailed analytical assessment of the political and institutional obstacles to EU’s participatory democracy, as well as a trenchant commentary on the democracy priorities of the second U. von der Leyen’s Commission.

In addition, the Observatory ran seven online Democracy Reform Conversations that brought together numerous well-known speakers and experts and more than 700 participants altogether. Speakers shared their views on a range of topics: EU institutional reform, the role of citizen participation in the EU, EU enlargement, European elections etc.

The Observatory also organised two workshops on the role and state of citizen participation in the EU to take stock of momentum created by the Conference on the Future of Europe. One Observatory workshop dealt with the future of EU enlargement discussing how the EU needs to widen and deepen at the same time.

Finally, the Observatory experts conducted a wide expert survey into the positions of the key EU member states on the potential EU reform and summarised their findings in an opinion paper.

Main accomplishments

European democracy is living through challenging times and is expected to face even more challenges in the future. On the one hand, the Conference on the Future of Europe has indeed created important momentum for European democracy. Citizen participation has become an integral part of the EU policymaking process and is no longer an unfamiliar democratic innovation that raises more questions than it inspires policymakers. The European Commission has turned the European Citizens’ Panels into a regularly functioning instrument for its legislative initiatives and invested significantly in refining the methodology and enhancing citizens’ deliberations. Other EU institutions, such as the EESC, are exploring ways to incorporate citizen participation into their working processes.

However, citizen participation has also hit its own ‘glass ceiling,’ as Observatory experts conclude. While it has evolved into a policymaking instrument effectively utilized by EU institutions, citizen participation still requires stronger political backing from both the EU institutions and member states. This missing political will is further reinforced by several structural obstacles: diverging views, fears, negative risk assessments, and an overall deficit of imagination. Whether these obstacles can be overcome remains to be seen.

The Conference has also triggered a pan-European debate on EU reform. The geopolitical shocks of the war in Ukraine have pushed the EU to revisit the discussion on future enlargement and renew its commitment to expansion. The Observatory has closely followed both debates and how they intersect by inviting experts to its workshops to discuss the course and state of EU reform debates. The discussions have demonstrated: while civil society has provided significant impulse to the reform debate, member states remain reluctant to engage in discussions on institutional change – let alone Treaty revision – and instead favor a pragmatic approach, focusing on reforming specific policies (such as cohesion, defense, budget, and fiscal matters) before addressing broader institutional questions.

A new chapter

Following the two previous successful phases, the EU Democracy Reform Observatory will continue its role as a critical friend of the Union’s reform process aiming to foster the discussion on the overall future of the European integration process. In an era of permacrisis, the EU needs to embrace the logic of ‘permachange’: constantly adapting in response to fundamental transformative changes. Consequently, the Union needs to substantially adapt its policies, enhance its governance structures and strengthen EUrope’s (participatory) democratic foundations.

In the novel phase of the EU Democracy Reform Observatory, we will continue to contribute to the enlarging Union’s reform process in this new era. Following the notion of “thinking enlarged”, the Observatory will particularly look into the interlinkages between EU widening and deepening. With our analytical output, off-the-record workshops and public event, including in the context of the our Democracy Reform Conversations, we will seek to leave our mark in Brussels and beyond. Stay tuned for more!