Treaty change can secure post-Covid reform for the EU

Daniel Kaddik | 14th April 2021 | Uncategorised

The upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe must avoid becoming a mere publicity stunt, when the bloc needs drastic change.

In 2007, when the last amendments to the constitutional basis of the EU were signed, we lived in a different world. Among the government representatives and legal scholars from each member state in the intergovernmental conference that drafted and negotiated the Treaty of Lisbon, very few had a smartphone in their pockets. Except in TV shows like Star Trek or Knight Rider, none of them had ever seen a tablet or a smartwatch. None of them could have commuted to the conference venue in an affordable electric car or a shared ride that appears after a tap on a touchscreen. Reusable rockets, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence were theoretical concepts. Facebook had no more than 100 million users and there were less than 60,000 tweets per day on Twitter. Netflix had just started streaming and there was no Spotify, Instagram, Bitcoin or WhatsApp – and no Covid-19. Fourteen years later, and against a backdrop of so many technological blessings, governments use automated bots to s...

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