The ECR Group in the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) was very pleased to welcome the Co-Chairman of the ECR Group in the European Parliament MEP Raffaele Fitto to our Group Meeting which took place ahead of the CoR July plenary to talk about the Conference on the Future of Europe from the perspective of the ECR Group in the European Parliament.

​Mr Fitto began by stating the need for a "substantial reforms of treaties". The idea of the ECR Group is to talk about proportionality and subsidiarity – "two very important issues that are not fully respected", stated the Co-Chairman. He highlighted the very important role of national parliaments and emphasized that the EU as an "overarching state with a centralised view" is simply not acceptable. The risk is that Brussels will turn into a "bureaucratic entity" that would be far too "removed from citizens", warned the ECR MEP.

For the conference on the future of Europe to be successful there must be a bottom-up approach but for Mr Fitto there is already disappointment at the methodology and structure of the conference – "representation in its various forms is not respected", he said. Firstly, we "must define a perspective and the role of the various institutions", he urged. This is a point that has already seen diverging visions and ideas.

The MEP referred to the ECR Group in the European Parliament's European tour on the Future of the EU, which launched in December 2020. The tour takes the form of a series of live broadcasts from 15 European capitals, in which citizens of European Member States are consulted. An array of speakers from different backgrounds have already featured enabling to feed into the idea of Europe and the conference in a bottom-up approach.