Fifth Siena Conference on the Europe of the Future

: 29 May 2024; Events

It is for us to put some flesh on the Community’s bones and, dare I suggest, give it a little more soul

How can there be further expansion of the EU, yet at the same time how can the EU become nimbler to adapt and react to crises? What is the right level of regulations (of digital markets and banks) so that we can both maximize innovation and protect citizens’ rights? What kind of reform of the EU research programs can help Europe to escape its middle technology trap? Is there a way to make green policies both more popular amongst people (including farmers and householders) and yet capable to transform societies? How and how much should the EU spend on defense so it can foster its open strategic autonomy? What kind of democratic tools do we need to support more integrations?

These are some of the questions to which the Siena conference will try to provide useful answers to. Answers that will support whoever will try to craft possible shapes of what the EUROPE of the FUTURE may look like. This will be, after all, the response from the innovative community of think tankers, academics and passionate policy makers.

(The link to the AGENDA)

The aim of the project will be very different from many other discussions on Europe: it will be not just to analyze how “complex the situation is”; or how difficult are the trade-offs that impose on us difficult choices (and endless negotiations) but it will aim to develop fresh, visionary, pragmatic, not ideological proposals. So that they can be followed up by the conference convenors in the months after the conference; discussed with the European institutions and the major European political parties to find possible convergences; conveyed through media to engage European public opinions in a multi partisan way. Such a unique and ambitious objective requires partners coming from different worlds to work together in a multipartisan way.

Overview of the 4th Siena Conference on the Future of Europe.

In June 2020, the conference was called for the first time by the think tank VISION during a break amongst the waves of COVID-19 related lockdowns. The pandemic signposted the worst crisis Europe has experienced since WW2 and, yet those tragic months showed literally to everybody that we have entered “unchartered territories”: a brave, new world that requires new instruments to govern and understand complexity. New leaderships and a different approach to outreach public opinions. In those very same days, the European Council showed an unprecedented determination when it reacted with a radically new fiscal instrument to the shock. Since then, the endeavor has grown until this year’s fifth edition.

The 2024 conference is convened by Vision in partnership with the European University Institute and the University of Siena and with the scientific support of the Institute of European Policy Making at Bocconi University. However, one of the most distinctive feature of the project is that it became the place where the five political foundations that act as think tank of the five largest European Political Parties get together: the Martens Institute for the European People Party; the Foundation for European Progressive Studies for the Party of European Socialists; Green European Foundation for the European Green Parties; the E uropean Liberal Forum for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe; New Direction for the European Conservatives and Reformists.

Our corporate partners – Intesa San Paolo and Monte dei Paschi di Siena – are companies that know how important an open, innovative and solutions-oriented dialogue is in drafting the proposals. Our media partner (RAI) and the international journalists (from, amongst others, outlets like The Economist, the Times, The Telegraph) share with VISION the idea that we need to go from analyses to proposals: they will be pivotal not just to reach out public opinions but also as sounding board of the ideas. Students and academics who framed the discussion are all convinced that interdisciplinarity is indispensable: they come from different domains and are working so that different pieces of knowledge can be put together for problem solving. We, however, believe that the best has yet to come, and the format of the conference has got the potential to grow further (together with Vision’s similar global platforms on climate change – the DOLOMITE conference – and on global governance of Artificial Intelligence – with the University of Southern California and The Conversation).

Logo Siena 2024 edition

Our 2024 Edition Logo

This is the VISION that make the convenors of the SIENA CONFERENE ON THE EUROPE OF THE FUTURE to believe that this project will continue to grow and finding new corporate partners, media, scientific, policy making - partners willing to transform an exciting conference into a permanent, informal, open platform for problem solving.

Below you find the link to the initial concept paper; the work (and the webinars) through which the four “problem-setting/ problem solving groups” have been prepared, the key participants; the structure of the agenda; the description of the scientific, corporate and media partners of the project; the method through which the “PONTIGNANO PAPER” will be drafted.

For further information, please contact Valerio Rosa This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For media or press enquries, please contact Chiara Mezzogori This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Press Conference

The Agenda

Find more details in the Programme of the Siena Conference:

AGENDA 2024

Front agenda1

Registration for the Conference

Streaming

Participants

The SIENA CONFERENCE participants are gradually developing a proper “problem solving community”. The 2024 edition starting list includes: Romano Prodi (Former Prime Minister of Italy and Former President of the European Commission); Patizia Nanz (President of the European University Institute), Erik Jones (Director of Schumann Center at the European University Institute), Simon Hix (Stein Rokkan Chair at the European University Institute) and Marco Buti (Tommaso Padoa Schioppa Chair at the European University Institute and former Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs at the European Commission); Daniel Gros (Director of the Institute of European Policy Making at Bocconi University) and Eleanor Spaventa (Director of the Bocconi Lab in European Studies at Bocconi University); Roberto Di Pietra (Rector University of Siena) and Simone Borghesi (President European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and Vice Rector of University of Siena); Fabrizia Lapecorella (Deputy Secretary General OECD) and Mikel Landabaso (Director of Fair and Sustainable Economy at the Joint Research Center of the European Commission); Sandra Whipham (Co-Director Doc Society Trustee), André Wilkens (Director, European Cultural Foundation) and Joe Elborn (Evens Foundation); Giovanna Melandri (President of Human Foundation and Board Member of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment; Former Italy’s Minister for Cultural Heritage and Youth Policies), Raja Chakir (Steering Committee of the French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists) and Gerlinde Niehus (Deputy Director, Defence and Security Cooperation, NATO Headquarters); Bill Emmott (Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former editor of The Economist), Jan Piotrowski (Business Editor, The Economist), Lisa Jucca (Reuters) and Anne-Élisabeth Moutet (The Telegraph) and Iain Martin (The Times); Nicola Maione (President MPS) and Gregorio De Felice (Chief Economist Intesa Sanpaolo); Raffaele Fitto (Italy’s Minister for European Policies and Vice President of New Direction); Giorgio Gori (MEP for S&D Group), Sandro Gozi (MEP Renew), Dace Melbarde (MEP, Vilnius/Latvia).

We are waiting for confirmation from Mario Draghi* (Former Governor of the European Central Bank and Former Italy’s Prime Minister) and Antonio Costa* (Designated president of the European Council).

The 2024 edition will be chaired by an extraordinary pool of thinkers, professors and policy makers coming from very different political angles. They will – together with Vision and University of Siena – steer the conference towards the agenda setting. We expect to then scale up last year chair group to: Maria João Rodrigues (President of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies and former Portuguese Minister of Employment), Peter Hefele (Policy Director of Martens Institute, the Political Foundation of the European People Party), Sandro Gozi (MEP Renew Europe, Italy’s former State Secretary for European Affairs), Kalypso Nicolaïdis (Professor at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and Professor at the School of Transnational Governance, EUI), Robert Tyler (Senior Policy Advisor at New Direction), Taube Van Melkebeke (Policy Manager of Green European Foundation), John Hooper (Correspondent for Italy and the Vatican, The Economist).

Scientific partners of Vision will be the University of Siena and the European University Institute (EUI), to which the EU gave the task of promoting the academic debate on relevant topics for the European institutions. Institute of European Policy Making at Bocconi will chair two sessions of the conference.

As mentioned, one of the distinctive features of the conference will be that each of the five political foundations/think tanks of the main European political groups will present their own works and will deliver one of the plenary sessions: the Martens Institute for the European People Party; Foundation of European Progressive Studies for the Party of European Socialists (PES); European Liberal Forum for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats Europe Party (ALDE); New Direction for the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR); Green European Foundation for the European Green Party (EGP). Each of the foundations will take care of a plenary session, where the discussion will focus on the topic of one of their recent studies. We also envisage the presence of a MEP for each political group during the closing plenary session, where the Pontignano Paper will be discussed.

We expect to have 90 participants in person and 10/15 joining remotely. Criteria for the selection of participants will be gender (at least 50% of women), age (master students from the University of Siena and EUI will prepare the so-called problem solving/ setting groups), geography (less than 1/3 Italians, some British, some non-European), profession (policy makers, managers, entrepreneurs, journalists, economists, political scientists, activists, academics). Each of the participants will take part in the public plenary sessions and will act as introducer/chair/rapporteur of one of the problem-solving groups or the plenary sessions.

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PSSG: Webinars

Partners and Sponsors

Concept Paper

Jacques Delors was aware of the risks of a European project that that ends up becoming a matter of just technique, of bureaucratic, complacent management of what we accomplished. The European Union is a political project, arguably the most successful one of the twentieth century, yet it needs to renew its bones and muscles. It is now facing “mortal dangers” but also opportunities that the founding fathers could not have envisioned. Over the coming years it will be crucial to find new, pragmatic, visionary ideas and for its community of leaders to dare to venture a new method to find solutions to a complexity that we still do not fully understand.

The European Union is, indeed, at the most important crossroad of its own history.

The outcome is not a matter for forecasts from economists or political analysts, because it will entirely depend on our determination. Either we as Europeans - accept the continuation of an economic (and technological and political) decline that may eventually endanger even the possibility to defend values that defined our community. Or we find the enthusiasm, the energy to radically renew what is still the most advanced attempt to overcome the limits of “modern states”.

We need to be proud of a great past. But we must also act with the imagination and the determination that inspired a generation that transformed despair into hope. Europe will need ultimately to turn its peculiarities (being “half fish and half meat”; neither a Hegelian State nor a loose international organization) and fragilities into the flexibility that may teach other Regions of the world (from South America to Africa; from the Middle East to the Asian Pacific coast) how to navigate modernity. Europe does not just have to adapt to the progressive eclipse of an old-world order; it must regain the leadership to shape – together with the USA, but also India, Brazil and the other emerging powers - a new global governance that we all badly need. This will require a U-turn into the method and the ideological mind sets we have followed in the last couple of decades in the EU bubbles.

Our CONCEPT PAPER!

(For participants) Select your problem solving/setting group

Background Papers