Political co-production: a new Commission, a new method?

Back-to-work presentation of the 5-year programme. On 5th September, the Director General for Energy presented the European Commission’s priorities: reducing energy prices and securing supplies. What are the new European policies designed to achieve these goals? But, above all, who will propose them?

This may be giving a weak signal, and may soon be misused, but the “Structured Dialogues”, if generalised, could make it possible to take a step back and not to view the next mandate as an eternal cycle of negotiations which keeps coming back to the same starting point, with the same stakeholders, failing to liberate itself from a fixed framework.

Looking back to last spring (or rather the end of last winter), we recall the anger of farmers, the backtracking of the Commission and Parliament on the ambitions of the Green Deal, and the political instrumentalisation of this anger for the elections … The President of the European Commission then set up a “Strategic Dialogue on the future of EU agriculture” which has just published its findings.

What method was used? Getting all parties to face up to their joint responsibility. The organisations that usually spend years trying to amend the proposal tabled by the European Commission to include clauses protecting their individual interests have adopted joint proposals.

This is rather like a Convention of Parties where all the participants are accountable for the conclusions reached. And like Citizens’ Conventions (for which participants are drawn by lot), the deliberating method, the framework of the mandate and the resources allocated to the process are necessary conditions for success.

The dialogue on the future of agricultural policy has benefited from these aspects, (except perhaps the effective inclusion of all stakeholders, no local authorities, etc.) and the conclusions of the dialogue really do propose a new basis for the future, especially by separating socio-economic aid from eco-conditionality. This completely redefines the terms of the debate.

This is all the more interesting given that the Commission launched this exercise before making its proposals, and that it complements other European democratic innovations such as citizens’ panels.  And that is why, in a joint letter to the President, local authority networks, united in the “Local Alliance “, propose that:

1. the same dialogue be launched for the concrete implementation of the green deal at the local level

2. local governments be systematically involved in structured thematic debates that the Commission will organise.

In the spring, European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic chaired an initial debate between business leaders and mayors to promote concrete partnerships for urban transition. But, to date, there has been no dialogue on the European instruments needed for urban transition.

Yet, is it possible to decide on policies to meet the strategic energy agenda – “Reducing energy prices and ensuring security of supply” – without including municipalities?  Furthermore, how can public funding and budgetary and fiscal rules be reviewed to support local transition?

We look forward to hearing from you, local authorities, about your expertise and ideas on these issues, and to promoting them in future European structured discussions!