The Conference on the Future of Europe and the EU Commission Citizens’ Panels: Technocratic Wine in Deliberative Bottles?

During the last decade, the EU has innovated in its political practices by organising a series of ‘citizen-centred’ processes that may be indicative of a new pattern in terms of democracy and participation, such as the citizen dialogues, the European Citizen Consultations or, more recently, the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). They aim to address the increasing decoupling between EU institutions and citizen participation in European decision-making via adopting a ‘citizen turn’. Gender parity in citizen’s panels and high number of representation of the younger generation are key elements of these activities. Situated by the von der Leyen Commission within the pillar of "A new push for European democracy," the Conference on the Future of Europe took place in 2021-2022, after month of intense inter-institutional fight over the governance structure and leadership of CoFoE. The paper describes how the Conference on the Future of Europe and the new generation of deliberative European citizens’ panels unfolded. It argues that despite the high activity and amount of innovations in citizen participation, they have not meaningfully contributed to democratizing the EU. Instead, the ‘new’ methods implemented through the von der Leyen Commission are coherent with the pre-existent technocratic and depoliticized EU political dynamics.