It no longer looks likely that the Belgian liberal former prime minister Guy Verhofstadt will be given the lead over the prestigious 'Conference on the Future of Europe.' This two-year broad conference is supposed to see EU countries discuss and agree on the modernization of the EU organization and procedures.
The agenda for such a large European summit still needs to be established, but it is already clear that it will be a piling up of many, sometimes years-long ongoing discussions. Many of these stem from the growth of the EU over the past twenty years, from 12 and 16 to the current 28 member states. Answers must also be found to the criticism of the British (and other countries) regarding procedures.
Recently, Germany and France (read: Merkel and Macron) circulated an unofficial, non-binding non-paper among EU government leaders with their ideas about renewal and improvement of the EU. Their idea is to start the two-year conference in autumn 2021, when France is the rotating EU president.
The conclusion of the conference would then fall in autumn 2022, under a German presidency. That would also simultaneously be Merkel’s last major EU summit.
In July, French President Emmanuel Macron (LREM/Renew Europe) indicated that such a conference should consider how European posts and jobs could be distributed more democratically and transparently, and how European elections should be transnational.
At that time, Macron put forward liberal group leader Verhofstadt to lead this consultative body, after Verhofstadt missed out on the EP presidency and was also sidelined as group leader within Renew Europe. According to some, the presidency of the Conference on the Future of Europe was a kind of consolation prize for Verhofstadt.
At the end of November, the first resistance came from the European People's Party, where it was heard that Verhofstadt is too federalist and not neutral on many sensitive EU issues. Yesterday, the group leader of the European Social Democrats, Iratxe Garcia, said that no one better than David Sassoli, the current president of the European Parliament, should lead the conference. Among the liberal group, it is heard that nothing has been decided yet.