European Democracy Conference
Perspectives on Europe’s Future after the Elections | July 2nd | Berlin
European Democracy Conference 2024
The EU at a Crossroads: Perspectives on Europe’s Future after the Elections
Europe has voted. The results show that the conservative EPP and the far-right groups ECR and ID have emerged stronger from the election. The liberal Renew group and the Greens/EFA, on the other hand, have suffered heavy losses. While there is still a pro-democratic and pro-European majority in the European Parliament, it has shrunk in favour of far-right parties. In times, which are characterised by wars and conflicts, the rise of authoritarian regimes, climate change and a crisis-ridden economy, the result poses immense challenges for the EU.
Four weeks after the elections to the European Parliament, we therefore want to analyze the election results with European experts, media professionals, academics and actors from an active and courageous civil society. We want to scrutinize the causes and consequences of this trend and discuss how the new electoral majority structure will affect the European Parliament's ability to operate, the interaction between the European institutions and the future political direction of EU policy.
Content on the European Union
The European Democracy Conference from 2016 - 2022
The European Democracy Conference has taken place annually since 2009. The conference is documented each year with the help of articles, podcasts and video recordings in an online dossier.
About the European Democracy Conference
A conference on Europe's future
The European Democracy Conference is an annual international conference on Europe held in Berlin. It offers a platform that brings together representatives from politics, academia and civil society from all over Europe to advance current debates on European policy and to discuss the future of the European Union in a constructive way.
For European exchange
The European Democracy Conference aims to facilitate a European exchange, to make European voices heard in the Berlin conference landscape and to formulate European expectations of German European policy. The international conference creates a space for ideas, innovation and controversy and brings together more than 300 guests every year. This European exchange is organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in cooperation with various partners.
Topics of the European Democracy Conference
The European Democracy Conference has been bringing together green perspectives from Europe every year since 2009. Each year, the conference focuses on a pressing European policy issue.
These were the conference topics of the last years:
2022: The European Democracy Conference 2022 focused on the question of how we can specifically and decisively counteract the advancing deterioration of free reporting.
2021: The European Democracy Conference 2021 asked how to make economic reconstruction in Europe socially just and ecologically sustainable and put a focus on the local dimension of the European Green Deal.
2020: In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, Germany took over the EU Presidency for six months. The European Democracy Conference 2020 looked at the expectations of the EU and the German EU Presidency.
2019: The European Democracy Conference 2019 was held under the theme "After the European elections: Where is the European Union heading?" and analysed the election results, causes for voting patterns in the individual EU countries and how the new majority structures will affect the future political direction of EU policy.
2018: In 2018, the Conferent posed the question of what a positive vision for the future of Europe could look like. The focus was on finding ideas for a progressive policy that wants to prevent the right-wing populists from gaining further ground.
2017: The European Democracy Conference "Sixty Years of the Treaties of Rome On with Europe! The Crisis of Liberal Democracy and the Future of the EU" explored the question of how Europe can defend its liberal values, achieve a new basic consensus, revive the spirit of cooperation and solidarity and strengthen its capacity to act.
2016: In 2016, the "refugee crisis" was the focus of the European Democracy Conference. Under the conference title "Border Experience: Asylum and Refugee Policy in Europe", national perspectives were presented and discussed on what a common European asylum and border protection policy could look like.
