Is the light still on on the 31st floor? Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal for a “new Congress of Europe”

Deutsch

By Manuel Müller

Can you see how a new vision for Europe is being developed here?

The 1964 dystopian crime novel “Murder on the Thirty-First Floor” by Per Wahlöö is set in the skyscraper headquarters of a media conglomerate. On its top floor, the country’s best journalists are ostensibly working on developing a new quality magazine. In reality, however, the publisher only has them produce dummy issue after dummy issue, with no intention of ever putting the magazine into print: The work on the 31^st floor merely serves to keep the critical journalists busy and prevent them from posing a threat to the conglomerate’s political agenda.

In her State of the European Union address on 16 September, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (CDU/EPP) announced a “new Congress of Europe” to be held in 2027, marking the 70th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. This congress, she said, would bring together “our most brilliant minds from throughout our Union and from every corner of our great continent”, so that they could “produce a vision that can inspire the new generation of Europeans and recapture the European imagination”.

In the spirit of the Hague Congress

Von der Leyen explicitly placed her proposal in the tradition of the 1948 Congress of Europe in The Hague, where several hundred pro-European activists – including politicians, intellectuals, journalists, clergy, and business leaders – met to discuss the unification of Europe. The Hague Congress resulted in several follow-up initiatives, such as the establishment of the Council of Europe, the European Movement, and the College of Europe. It also highlighted the differences between the federalists around Altiero Spinelli and the more intergovernmentalist “Unionists” around Winston Churchill.

In her speech, von der Leyen explicitly stated what she hopes to achieve with a repeat of such a congress: “As a society, we need to rediscover this ability to think European. […] So that the next generation can write its own story.”

Sceptical reactions

But can the European spirit of 1948 really be revived so easily? The reactions to von der Leyen’s proposal certainly indicate some scepticism.

Perhaps the most positive response came from the European Movement, which supported von der Leyen’s proposal and used the opportunity to highlight its own proud history, which began at the 1948 Hague Congress. The Union of European Federalists (UEF) and the federalist Spinelli Group in the European Parliament, in a joint press release, “welcomed” the Commission initiative, but also pointed out that they had already planned a major public event to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome in March 2027, and another in May 2028 for the eightieth anniversary of the Hague Congress.

The German Europa-Union (one of the UEF’s major member associations) emphasised that the new congress must not become “a political show” and “should not get bogged down in symbolic debates”. Meanwhile, Brussels-based think tanker Janis Emmanouilidis stated that “what Europe really needs […] is not another grand vision, but a concrete plan for weathering this era of structural disruption”.

The Hague Congress followed a bottom-up approach

From my perspective, there are two main reasons to doubt von der Leyen’s proposal. The first concerns the format she proposes: a conference of Europe’s “most brilliant minds”, intended to reach the “next generation”. This raises two questions: First, how would these most brilliant minds be identified, and by whom? Second, how would the “vision” they develop have the desired societal impact in our notoriously fragmented public sphere?

As a reminder: The 1948 Congress was a private, activist-led initiative. It was not convened by any government agency, but by various European associations that had been founded in the immediate post-war period. Although their leaders included several high-ranking politicians, it followed, as we would say today, a bottom-up approach. An existing socio-intellectual movement with a shared vision of peace through integration organised itself in order to gain political influence.

A vision-finding process mandated from above

Meanwhile, von der Leyen seems to be expecting the opposite effect from her event: A congress, convened at the initiative of the Commission, is intended to stimulate a socio-intellectual debate and “produce” a new vision.

But why should anyone be “inspired” by such a top-down process? Europe will hardly overcome its reputation for bureaucracy and elitism by imposing a vision-finding process from above. Even if the “most brilliant minds” were to be joined by one or two familiar faces from the sports or entertainment industries, it seems safe to assume that, for the general public, von der Leyen’s congress would simply be lost in the background noise of daily news coverage.

EU-focused civil society organisations are struggling to survive

In comparison, the approach of the Union of European Federalists appears more promising. Admittedly, their planned “European citizens’ congresses” in 2027 and 2028 are also unlikely to attract widespread public attention. In any case, however, the UEF and its youth organisation JEF are striving for a genuine bottom-up movement that would bring a vision from society into politics – not the other way around.

It is all the more disheartening that the UEF and many other European associations are currently experiencing a severe funding crisis. After supporting the activities of EU-focused civil society for many years through the CERV funding programme, the Commission drastically cut the funds in 2026 following criticism from the far right. Even if one might agree that citizens’ associations should rely more on membership fees and donations than on Commission funds, this sudden loss of funding has come as a shock and is putting their future at risk.

As a consequence, many of the organisations best placed to stimulate a societal debate about the future of the EU are currently struggling for their financial survival. If von der Leyen and the Commission are serious about helping our society “rediscover the ability to think European”, here would be a far better place to start.

Didn’t we discuss the future just recently?

No less serious is the second major issue with Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal for a Congress of Europe: Haven’t we just gone through all of this?

Hasn’t the European Commission, under von der Leyen’s predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker (CSV/EPP), published a white paper with scenarios for the future of Europe already in 2017? Hasn’t von der Leyen herself then expressed the desire, in her 2019 political guidelines, that European citizens should “have their say at a Conference on the Future of Europe”? Hasn’t this conference begun its work in 2021, and hasn’t it presented a final report with 49 proposals and 326 specific recommendations one year later? Hasn’t the European Parliament responded to this by initiating a formal treaty reform procedure and adopting a report with concrete amendment proposals in December 2023?

And hasn’t the European Council consistently ignored this report ever since?

It is not a lack of vision, but a lack of political will

In fact, there is no shortage of visions for the future of the EU. The most coherent ones have been articulated by the European federalists, who have repeatedly published concrete proposals for the Union’s institutional development. A comparison of the ideas discussed in the European Parliament shows that the substance of the debate on the future of the EU has hardly changed since the times of the Euro crisis.

For just as long, the problem has been the political feasibility of these ideas. For almost two decades, European plans for reform and visions for the future have regularly failed due to disagreement and a lack of political will among national governments.

The CoFoE was inteded to overcome the reformability crisis

The 2021/22 Conference on the Future of Europe was already an attempt to overcome this reformability crisis by involving “the citizens”. By stimulating societal debate, the conference was meant to put pressure on reluctant national governments – and indeed, the governments were unable to entirely reject the idea of a citizens’ conference. However, they managed to delay the adoption of the conference mandate by a year and ultimately formulated it in the vaguest and most undefined terms possible.

The conference’s unclear mandate meant that it received little media attention. Consequently, a large part of the population was completely unaware of its existence, with only a few tens of thousands of people participating in the specially created online platform. Since the most active group among these participants were the federalists, the conference’s final report predictably supported many classic federalist demands – from abolishing national veto rights in the Council to introducing transnational lists in European elections.

The momentum generated by the conference was weaker than the European Parliament had hoped. Nevertheless, the Parliament attempted to build on this by initiating a formal treaty reform procedure. Its successful adoption of concrete amendment proposals in 2023 represented a breakthrough that should have shifted the focus of the debate: Instead of debating abstract integration goals, it would now be possible to negotiate specific reform proposals.

A new dummy issue on the future of Europe

However, the European Council avoided this debate altogether by never responding to the Parliament’s initiative. And even Ursula von der Leyen, who in 2019 had provided the impetus for the Conference on the Future of Europe, has been speaking about it less and less. In her 2025 State of the EU address, she devoted only a few sentences to institutional reform, but did at least advocate for a reduction of national veto rights and a right of initiative for the European Parliament.

By 2026, these demands are no longer mentioned at all. Instead, the Commission president suggests returning to square one: a new Congress, a new vision, a new attempt to “write our own story” – while in the European Council, disagreement and unwillingness to reform remain as entrenched as ever.

On the 31^st floor, the continent’s most brilliant minds are sitting together, creating a new dummy issue with ideas for the future of Europe. Will it ever see the light of day?

Manuel Müller is a Helsinki-based EU researcher and the editor of the blog “Der (europäische) Föderalist”. His research focuses on supranational democracy and EU institutional reform.

Pictures: Skyscraper: roma (@tuhtoroma) [Unsplash license], via Unsplash [cropped]; portrait Manuel Müller: Finnish Institute of International Affairs [all rights reserved].