Initiated and coordinated by European House Budapest Europa Platform Hungary is a grass-root civil initiative open to civil society organisations and citizens interested in the future of Europe. It aims to contribute to the successful proceedings of the Conference on the Future of Europe.
Last year December we organised an online debate on how we evaluate the situation in Europe from a citizens’ perspective and as a follow-up we quickly approached with an online survey 107 interested citizens/CSOs. 69 responded to our call and on the basis of their reactions it can be concluded that
- our event speaker dr. Tamás Halm, a university lecturer and editor-in-chief of „Economics” magazine was right when he pointed out in his introductory remarks that it is not possible to talk about EU reforms without bypassing the Member States;
- at the same time, we citizens and CSOs would give the European Parliament a much bigger say than at present and we would be prepared to relinquish even more of our national sovereignty in order to see an increased EU involvement regulating such areas as education or health;
- it is not surprising to see that we citizens and CSOs would like to have our chair at the EU decision-makers’ table; a large majority of respondents (70%) said that this requires coordinated CSO actions, while only three persons (4%) said that it was not necessary;
- although we differed on what the EU will look like in 2050, the majority were optimistic about its survival and only 3% of respondents believe that by the time the organisation will be dissolved or disappear;
- it is remarkable that we want to increase the role of the EU in our daily lives, we would support the introduction of the Euro in Hungary and we think that the British made a bad decision to leave the EU;
- finally, the organisers of the EU Conference on the Future of Europe should take it as an encouraging signal that we, as citizens, would like to be involved in its work. Just get started!
If you are interested in the details of our questionnaire, which of course should not be considered as representative, please check the full data.
