A prosperous economy must be at the centre of CoFE recommendations

To create a new impetus to the democratic process in the EU, the European Commission launched the Conference of the Future of Europe (CoFE) in September. The aim of the Conference is to collect views from European citizens on four broad and important areas.

Those are: A stronger economy, social justice, jobs, education, youth, culture, sport and digital transformation; European democracy/values, rights, rule of law and security; Climate change, environment and health; and EU in the world and migration.

For all the topics, the Conference will make concrete recommendations that will help to set the course of the EU in the coming years. Business organizations, as key stakeholders in the majority of the topics, welcome the overall objective of the Conference, which is to discuss key areas that will form the future of the EU.

However, as the nature of the discussions is informative, the recommendations formed during the process shouldn’t be considered as a political recommendation that the Commission must implement in the future years. Furthermore, it is important that the recommendations suggest realistic and feasible goals, otherwise citizens involved in the process could be disappointed if the proposed goals aren’t met.

As social partners both on national and European level have always paid a crucial role in the consultation processes, their views need to be taken into account in this initiative as well. According to business organizations, the overall focus of the recommendations should be on healthy economy that creates conditions for achieving further objectives.

Businesses will play a vital role in this process as it is they who create wealth and jobs. Last but not least, the recommendations should also strongly focus on the role of Europe on a global scale. Europe needs to be strong internally in order to play a strong role internationally, and in this context a more effective and transparent involvement of the representatives of the European society in the process is needed.