Events

The Robert Schuman Foundation was associated to the "States-General of Europe" organized by the European Movement France, le Monde and Europa Nova. During this day have taken place workshop discussions concerning various topics, such as the place of citizens in the European Union, the energy transition, populisms in Europe or the place of Europe in the world.

The people attending this event were together for two plenary conferences. The topic of the first one was "What Europe do we need?".

During the second one, which concerned the ways of "getting Europe out of the doldrums" the former president of the European central bank Jean-Claude Trichet, the European commissioner for internal Market and services Michel Barnier, the members of European Parliament Franziska Brantner (Greens/European Free Alliance group), the chairman of the "Confrontations Europe" think tank Philippe Herzog and the ambassador of Poland in France Tomasz Orłowski exchanged their views on the responses to the crisis that the European Union is currently facing.
All the speakers highlighted the necessity of going towards more federalism, and specified that this recommendation also applied to areas other than economic policies. They recalled that the economic fundamentals of the European Union remained sound and that the European Union retained, in this difficult period, a relatively high level of confidence on the part of its citizens. They evoked the many reforms conducted to respond to the debt crisis, ensure fiscal discipline and better regulate the European financial sector. They suggested some measures to improve the institutional functioning of the Union and of the euro area, of which the creation of a "president of the European Union" position and the deepening of the internal market, and insisted on the need to convince citizens of the necessity of these reforms and to involve citizens in this move towards federalism.