EU Tuomas Suihkonen was driving to the cottage when he got a strange call: as a result, he has been thinking about the future of the EU from one weekend to another.

Maastricht / Brussels

Phone soi kun Tuomas Suihkonen was driving to a summer cottage with his family in July 2021.

The call came from Kantar TNS, a company that conducts, among other things, opinion polls. The caller said that Suihkonen had been randomly selected from among Finns to participate in an EU-themed event, the EU Future Conference.

Participation would require Suihkonen to travel to Europe for two weekends in the fall and spend one weekend on a remote event. All expenses would be reimbursed.

Suihkonen suspected he was the target of a joke, but he still listened and began to ask more. The wife sitting next to her still thought the caller was a cheater and tried to stop the sigh from the shower.

At the end of the call, it was agreed to return to the matter in August. Arriving at the cottage, Suihkonen googled: yes, such a conference does exist.

Thence a chain of events began, as a result of which Suihkonen, 45, the CEO of a media sales company in Espoo, has spent a lot of time thinking about the future of Europe. He was elected as one of Finland’s representatives on the conference’s citizens’ panel.

Each of the four panels has 200 randomly selected EU citizens from all 27 EU countries. Emphasis has been placed on one third of them being between 16 and 25 years old.

There are a total of 16 Finns involved.

In addition, Suihkonen volunteered as an “ambassador” who will take the messages of the citizen panels to the plenary sessions of the conference. It topped the original three weekends with five more weekends of what to do in the EU. In practice, time is always spent on Thursdays and Fridays, where Suihkonen spends his holidays.

EU The Conference on the Future is a joint project of the EU Commission, Parliament and Council, the member states, in which they want to gather the views of citizens on what the people of the Union want.

The transition to the people in the EU style is a bit crazy and, in the opinion of critics, a confused process. There will be enough speech, a panel and a plenary session before the results of the conference are presented on Europe Day on 9 May.

People’s opinions are collected through several channels.

Any EU citizen can visit on the digital platform shedding their most secret hopes or outrage from the future direction of the EU.

In addition, member states have organized events, in which citizens have been able to participate. Among other things, arrangements have been made in Finland Europe is us tour, the attraction of which was the recruitment of government ministers.

The third means are citizen panels made up of Suihkonen and 799 other elected citizens who have come up with ideas, debated and voted on their own recommendations during their joint weekends.

The fourth form is the plenary sessions of the Conference on the Future, one of which will take place this weekend in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France. Representatives of the EU institutions, the governments and parliaments of the Member States and a number of citizens will be present at the plenary sessions. Plenary sessions are due in March and April.

In Finland, there is concern that strong EU institutions will steal the show from citizens.

“Finland is not looking for any bureaucratic exercise from the Conference on the Future to change the Treaty, contrary to the ambition of some representatives of the European Parliament, for example,” says the European Minister. Tytti Tuppurainen (sd).

The most important thing for him is that the message from the citizens is heard and the recommendations of the panels are taken into account. The change of the Treaty, ie the “constitution” of the EU, would be a big process that Finland does not want.

Last over the weekend, Suihkonen participated in the fourth citizens’ panel in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on migration and Europe in the world.

There were also people from Finland at the Maastricht Exhibition Center Teo Matala About Mikkeli and Marja Rajala From the sea buckthorn.

The panel adopted 40 recommendations, which will proceed to the plenary session of the conference.

Suihkonen and other panelists started working on the theme in the autumn.

“There were about twenty of us in small groups. We first listed what topics could be related to migration, and then we concretized. On behalf of the organizer, the Moderator was present to take the discussion forward. ”

According to Suihkonen, the panel conveyed a humane will to treat people well. No one had any kind of wish to catch on.

“The message from the panelists was that we must act in accordance with EU values ​​towards migrants and that responsibilities must be shared between member states.”

Are selected a little too like-minded? Adult camp school on a campfire?

“It has been criticized that there are no EU-critical people here. Well, if you call and ask if you are going to discuss the EU and you are not coming, then who can be blamed, ”says Suihkonen.

According to Marja Rajala, the group had more unrealistic demands on the EU.

“Many countries would like the EU to provide a patch and ask why we are not all as good as the founding members of the EU. It is not understood that the EU has not done that work, but the countries themselves. ”

For the shower As work progresses, at least the multidimensional and complexity of EU issues has opened up.

“It is also stinging how subordinate EU policy is to domestic policy, beyond Finland alone. Migration is also a tool of domestic policy. I come from a corporate world with a common goal and an effort to get things done quickly and well. That is certainly not the case in the EU. ”

Suihkonen has also worked part-time in the EU decision-making group. It concluded that the EU should abandon the unanimity requirement for member states in almost all decision-making in order to be more effective.

According to Suihkonen, encounters with other EU citizens have been “by far the sweetest” in the entire panel. The team spirit is good, Whatsapp messages are squeaking.

“At best, it feels like you can make a difference if, even if the wording I suggest starts moving forward.”