DID THE CONFERENCE ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPE GO LOCAL? EVIDENCE FROM POLAND

: The aim of the paper is to analyse the involvement of the local and regional authorities within the Conference on the Future of Europe. The former, being closer to the citizens, could play important role in reaching integration. Therefore, the activity of the subnational level could contribute to the final success of the Conference (or failure in case of lack of any actions). The a among the Polish territorial self-government units after the closure of the Conference. The local and regional authorities were asked if they informed the citizens about the Conference, organised events regarding this enterprise or took part in the events organised by other entities. The results show very low level of the activity, even among the territorial self-government units that are present at the European level. The conclusions regard both to the Polish circumstances as well as to the general performance of the Conference. In the first case, they unveil the unwritten practice among the Polish territorial self-government units on their involvement in the European affairs. Regarding the seco


Introduction notably the European
Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP) have been coming up with several ideas on how to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the EU.The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE or Conference) was the latest attempt in that matter and it has differed from 1 The author would like to thank prof.Piotr Tosiek, the participants of the UACES Graduate Forum 2023 as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks.
Abstract: The aim of the paper is to analyse the involvement of the local and regional authorities within the Conference on the Future of Europe.The former, being closer to the citizens, could play important role in reaching integration.Therefore, the activity of the subnational level could contribute to the final success of the Conference (or failure in case of lack of any actions).The a among the Polish territorial self-government units after the closure of the Conference.The local and regional authorities were asked if they informed the citizens about the Conference, organised events regarding this enterprise or took part in the events organised by other entities.The results show very low level of the activity, even among the territorial self-government units that are present at the European level.The conclusions regard both to the Polish circumstances as well as to the general performance of the Conference.In the first case, they unveil the unwritten practice among the Polish territorial self-government units on their involvement in the European affairs.Regarding the seco

ONLINE JOURNAL MODELLING THE NEW EUROPE NO. 44 / 2024
the previous enterprises, both in regard to scale and the openness.The Conference has tried to reach the citizens through as many channels as possible.The latter had the chance to enter the Platform.However, this was not the only way since in its quest to get closer to the people, the EU has used the help of the ones that are indeed close the local and regional authorities.They (among other entities, such as NGOs or social partners) were invited to take part in the CoFoE and pass further the ideas of the citizens gathered during the meetings organised on the subnational level.The question is if they have accepted this invite.
The aim of the paper is to analyse the involvement of the local and regional authorities in the Conference.The subnational level is in a better position than the European one in terms of engaging the citizens because of the smaller size and number of the members of the community.Hence, the activity within the CoFoE of the local and regional authorities could be a significant factor contributing to the final success (or failure) of the former.Although it is only general performance of the Conference.
There are not so many studies on the Conference on the Future of Europe yet, mainly due find some first studies ( there, however, is a sole listing of the actions but not the answer to the question of the scale of the data for only one member state, it will be the first one to assess the extent to which the subnational level took part in the CoFoE, as well as to look for reasons for that level of activity. territorial self-government units (TSGUs) after the closure of the Conference.The analysis tries to confirm the hypothesis stating that the greatest determinant of the T understood in the formal terms as: (1) being represented in the CoR in a form of member or The article is structured as follows: section 2 introduces the theoretical framework, while section 3 methodology and the results of the empirical study are presented in section 4. The analysis of the results is included in section 5. Finally, section 6 contains conclusive remarks.

Theoretical framework
In order to achieve the aforementioned goal of the study, this research draws on two Institutionalism (hereinafter also SI).The former serves to acknowledge that the CoFoE was quite a unique possibility of involvement at the European level for the subnational authorities, compared to the previous opportunities.In turn, using the SI framework allows one to demonstrate that this current involvement was shaped by the preexisting rules of subnational (Schakel 2020, p. 772)   dreaming of the regions replacing the nation-states as the main actor of the European integration, it perceives the EU as a multiinvolvement at the European level, like the Committee of the Regions (hereinafter CoR) or the Regional Offices in Brussels .That leads us multi-level governance (Schakel 2020).Secondly, the literature has hitherto focused on the that is on the ways of influencing the European decision-making process.That was seen as significant especially since approximately 60-80% of the European legislation impacts the regional and local level (Moore 2008, p. 518-519).
However, what is generally missing is the participatory aspect, i.e. the ways the subnational authorities could involve the citizens in their activities at the European level (Tatham 2018, p.

676--61
).This should not be ignored In the formal terms, the Final Report was the main result of the CoFoE.Therefore, it was undermine the credibility of any future citizen-oriented initiatives.The EP was the most eager to strengthen the importance of the Conference by calling for the results to be basis for the Treaty The CoFoE was the enterprise of three EU institutions the Council, EC, and the EP.
However, it does not mean that others could not be involved The open structure of the Conference provided a place for several actors, not only those formally represented in the Plenary (such as national parliaments), but also political groups, for instance.As the CoFoE was an are considered to be the closest to the people namely the local and regional authorities.
Starting with the formal side, the subnational level was represented in the Conference Plenary.There were 12 representatives of the democratically elected local and regional authorities 6 per each level.Moreover, one should also count the 18 representatives of the CoR.The Multilingual Digital Platform was another involvement opportunity for the subnational level.As the Platform Final Report states, the local and regional authorities were among the actors that had organised some events and later uploaded the results of the consultations (Conference on the Future of Europe 2022b, p. 18).The results of the empirical research will shade some light on the scale of activity in that matter.
The subnational level has been also mentioned in the documents establishing the and in full respect of the principles set out in this Joint Declaration, we will organise events in partnership with civil society and stakeholders at European, national, regional, and local level, with national and regional Parliaments, the Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee, social partners, and academia.Secondly, the CoR has adopted 4 resolutions, expressing its stance on the CoFoE.In the for the decentralised approach with aim to reach every area of the EU, not only the capital cities (Official Journal of the European Union 2020).On its own behalf, the CoR has committed to helping the local and regional authorities with organising the events for the citizens within the Committee of Regions to encompass adequate channels of dialogue for regions as well as cities and municipalities, giving it an enhanced role in the institutional architecture, if matters with a To sum up the activity of the subnational level and its representatives within the Conference, two main remarks can be made.First of all, the local and regional authorities as well matter of the CoFoE.
The results of the empirical study will show how big was the scale of this activity and what were its determinants.Secondly, this activity has apparently not gone unnoticed since one can find some ideas about the future of the subnati proposals outlined in the Final Report that were put forward to be implemented.

Methodology and the results of the empirical study
The paper is based on empirical study that was conducted among the Polish TSGUs.It started at the end of July and ended at the beginning of September 2022.The research has had a quantitative form using the right to access to the public information, the author has sent to the selected TSGUs the following questions: 1. Have the authorities of the TSGU informed its citizens about the CoFoE (opening, durance, closing)?If so in what way?
2. Have the authorities of the TSGU organised any events within the CoFoE?If so what was the topic of the event?
3. Have the authorities of the TSGU taken part in the CoFoE-related events organised by other entities?If so were the citizens informed about that?
Concerning the TSGUs selected to take part in the study, they can be divided into three categories.The first one consists of the TSGUs that are institutionally engaged at the EU level.
egional Offices in Brussels or the Conference Plenary.In fact, this category could be reduced only to the CoR, as the TSGUs that have the Regional Offices or were represented in the Conference Plenary, are also represented in the CoR.The second category is connected to the structure of the Regional Offices in Poland.On the total number of 16 Offices, 15 is run by the voivodeships 2 .The remaining one (Pomorskie Regional Office) has different form as it is an enterprise of the Region, 25 of them are members of this association.Therefore, the aim of selecting this category is to see if being the member of association active at the EU level leads to the greater involvement in the CoFoE.After receiving the first part of the results, it was decided to extend the study also to the capital cities of the voivodeships to see if the size of the TSGU has determined in any way its activity within the CoFoE.Total number of the study population is 182 TSGUs.Out of those, 179 have given the requested information, which gives the response rate of 98%.The division into the categories was made as follows: 36 TSGUs in the first category (35 have responded) 3 , 135 TSGUs in the second one (133 have responded) and 18 TSGUs in the third one (18 have responded) 4 .Regarding the type of the TSGUs, the study was conducted among 16 voivodeships, 21 counties and 142 municipalities (out of those 80 were rural municipalities, 19 were urbanrural municipalities and 43 were urban ones).TSGUs have more than one representative. 4As some TSGUs belong to more than one category the sum of the three categories is bigger than the study population.Moreover, although in Poland there are 16 voivodeships, there are 18 capital cities as 2 voivodeships have 2 capital cities.

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involvement in the CoFoE.Before presenting the results in each category, it may be worth looking at the general overview.The results are presented in Figure 1.Total number of the TSGUs that have undertaken at least one of the measures is 26.That leaves us with 153 TSGUs with no activity within the CoFoE 85% of the study population.
be said that it did not happen.The presentation of the results divided into categories will attempt the EU level gives not only better access to the information about the CoFoE, but also more strategy on the Conference was to help its members organise some events, the TSGUs have had more encouragement to get involved.Figure 2 shows if these assumptions are justified.The results may lead to two different conclusions.On the one hand, the percentage of nes is bigger than the inactive ones only in one category informing the citizens (which is the simplest task to do out of these three measures).Out of 35 TSGUs, 16 did not do anything regarding the Conference.Hence, it cannot be stated that being involved at the EU level automatically leads to undertaking some CoFoE-related measures.To throw more light on these results, further and alternates, TSGUs having Regional Offices in Brussels and CoFoE Plenary members.The latter two are also members or alternates of the CoR so the general results match the results for 5 ) have informed the citizens about the Conference, 12 have organised some events and 6 have taken part in events organised by other entities.There is only one TSGU with no activity.As one 5 Regional Offices run by the voivodeships.On the 18 cities, there are 4 with at least one activity.These combined results do not allow to prove the assumption regarding the size of the TSGU.To get the full picture, this paragraph will also contain the presentation of the results from the other types of TSGU.Starting with the rural municipalities, 1 of 80 has informed the citizens about the CoFoE and there was no activity regarding organisation of events or taking part in events organised by other entities.
Hence, there was 1 TSGU with at least one activity.Urban-rural municipalities (n=19) have not taken any measures in any of the categories.Out of 43 urban municipalities, 3 have informed the   To complete the picture, it is worth taking a look at the types of the activity that has been undertaken by the TSGUs within the CoFoE.Regarding providing information about the Conference to the citizens, it was mostly done by publishing information on the websites of the TSGU.The events concerned mostl and medium entrepreneurships, but also youth policy.There were also some events devoted strictly to local matters.The authorities of the TSGUs have taken part in the events organised by the other TSGUs, Europe Direct Information Centres as well as NGOs.Some decision-makers have taken part in the international events for instance, one TSGU has taken part in the project of the CoR and the Bertelsmann Stiftung that was mentioned earlier.When it comes to the TSGUs with no activity, a number of them have tried to explain this fact by stating that they were not among the organisers of the CoFoE, or they did not get any information about it.Finally, in a few cases the author had to provide to the information about the CoFoE to the TSGU as its

Analysis of the results
There are two major conclusions that can be drawn up from these results.The first one is understood in the formal terms since in regard to the CoR, Regional Offices in Brussels and Conference Plenary.
Moreover, that is also the case in the results of the TSGUs from Pomorskie Region (Figure 2) although the difference is not that detectable.However, if one eliminates the Regional Offices there are (on the total number of 20) 4 TSGUs that have informed the citizens about the CoFoE, 3 that have organised the events and 3 that have taken part in events organised by other entities.
Overall, there are 5 TSGUs with activity in at least one category.Therefore, the activity of the This point of view could lead to the conclusion that the original hypothesis should be Regional Office in Brussels.However, before declaring success, one should consider two additional facts.First of all, the activity focused on involving the citizens in the EU decision-making process just does not comply with the role of the Regional Offices.Their goal is to represent the interests of the TSGU.Moreover, the nature of the interests that the Regional Offices should secure is primarily economic.The Offices undertake the measures to get the EU funds for their TSGU or lobby for adopting the hypothesis is better access to the information about the ongoing EU activity.However, the members of the CoR have the same (or even better) access to such information.But in their case, it does not lead to greater activity within the CoFoE.
The second factor that should be considered is the fact that in 15 out of 16 cases the Regional Offices are run by voivodeships.And in this remaining one, the voivodeship is involved as well.Hence, the attention should be turned to this type of TSGUs.As it was shown earlier, 15 out of 16 voivodeships have undertaken at least one activity within the CoFoE.No other result presented above shows the higher (or even similar) activity.So why is it the voivodeships that are the most involved in the Conference?It seems that in Polish circumstances the informal practice was established, according to which the voivodeships have adopted the role of the voivodeships have the sufficient size and finances to afford being present in Brussels.Regarding other types of TSGU, only a few of the biggest cities would be able to do that.Furthermore, in ate.
Therefore, the smaller TSGUs counties and municipalities can be also considered to be somewhat represented as their interests can be included in the general interests of the voivodeship they are located in.This is why the Polish law regarding the selection procedure for the candidates for members and alternates of the CoR states that all of the voivodeships shall be Offices in Brussels.So, these Offices are not determinants of anything.They themselves are a result of the voivodeships taking on a role of the TSGUs taking care of the EU affairs.Since this different character than economic.Hence, it also concerns the citizens-oriented enterprises like the CoFoE.Naturally, neither is the practice guarded by the legal principles nor the voivodeships try to prevent the other TSGUs from taking some measures focused at the EU level.As it was shown, there are some counties and municipalities that were active within the CoFoE.However, their activity was rather incidental as were the causes for taking some actions.Among them are for example the activity of the nearby Europe Direct Information Centre or the personality of the head of the TSGU.There is no visible trend in that regard.The tendency can be spotted only in case of the voivodeships.That could be a sign that the TSGUs of the other types have also accepted the practice and do not interfere with the current state of affairs.Does this conclusion mean that the original hypothesis has to be rejected?Not necessarily.However, the meaning membership in the CoR, running the Regional Office in Brussels or membership in the Conference Plenary.At this point, the formal understanding should be replaced with the substantive meaning the practice that was established among the TSGUs at the national level.The formal meaning is the consequence of the substantive meaning.In such circumstances, the original hypothesis can be upheld.
The scope of the second major conclusion goes beyond Poland as it relates to the general performance of the CoFoE.The Conference was an unprecedented enterprise aiming at reaching the wider public and involving as many citizens in the debate as possible.There were several ways of ensuring that goal and using help of the local and regional authorities was only one of Such study would bring a different perspective and allow to assess the performance of the CoFoE in a more scrutinised way.Nevertheless, the results presented in this paper alone can contribute to the debate as they show the state of affairs in one of the biggest member states of the EU.NO. 44 / 2024

Conclusions
The local and regional authorities are in a better position than their European counterparts when it comes to reaching the citizens.It stems from the fact that it is easier to engage the citizens in the smaller communities.However, in a situation where the TSGU is not an organiser, but the participant of the initiative, one additional factor comes into play.It is the institutional environment, consisting of inter alia access to the information and the relation between the TSGU and the actual organiser.The CoFoE was such an enterprise.It has attempted to involve as many citizens as possible.Engaging the local and regional authorities was one of the measures to achiev results indicate that the Conference at least in that area cannot be considered as successful.
had troubles engaging the TSGUs that are present at the EU level, as members or alternates of the CoR.Despite its As a result, only these TSGUs that are normally dealing with the EU affairs have undertaken some actions regarding the Conference.The institutional habits have occurred to be stronger than that the further attempts to work with the local and regional authorities to engage the citizens in the discussions about the EU should not be undertaken.It takes some time and actions to form a habit as well as to change it.The CoFoE should be a lesson for the EU institutions on how to will be developed.For now, we can say tha activity at the European level (participatory and representative, respectively).Furthermore, they can be attributed to the different institutional settings.For instance, the Regional Offices in with the participatory one (the CoR could combine bot ONLINE JOURNAL MODELLING THE NEW EUROPE NO. 44 / 2024 change (European Parliament 2022).The EC and the Council have chosen more of a technical Commission 2022a).The main findings of these documents are that the EU already has introduced (or plans to do it) most of the measures.Moreover, in the 2022 State of the Union Address, Ursula von der Leyen has stated that the EC will include the proposals from the CoFoE in work the programme for the forthcoming years as well as it will make use of the Citizens Panels formula (European Commission 2022b).The Conference was also addressed by the European Council that in its June 2022 summit conclusions devoted 4 sentences to the CoFoE, effective followagain proved the difference between the intergovernmental and supranational institutions in volvement.

was 30 .
However, they cannot be classified as the most influential members of the Plenary.As it was stated in the Final Report, and in accordance with the Rules of Procedure, the 49 proposals were formulated on the consensual basis, but only between the Council, EC, EP, and national parliaments.Other members subnational level, social partners etc. (Conference on the Future of Europe 2022a, p. 35).NO. 44 / 2024 scope of the CoFoE.The second resolution was adopted in May 2021 (Official Journal of the considers the Conference to be an opportunity to bring Europe closer to its citizens and to strengthen their aiming at involving the citizens in the decision-making process.At the beginning of 2022, the third resolution was adopted (Official Journal of the European Union 2022a).The CoR has development(Petzold 2022, p. 68).Based on that, the CoR (as the representative of these authorities) has called for strengthening of its own position by being given the institution status the Conference (Committee of the Regions 2022a).In this document, the CoR has inter alia:(1)   for the local and regional authorities at the future Convention deciding on the treaty change;(3)   supported the idea that the national and regional parliaments should be able to suggest the legislative initiatives at the EU level in the future.Regarding other activities in that category, in 2021 the CoR has set up the High-Level Group on European Democracy.The group was chaired by the former president of the European Council, Herman von Rompuy.In the final report, the High-Level Group has called for staying within the current framework of the Treaties and trying to make use of its untapped potential (Committee of the Regions 2022c: 4).The report also or the subsidiarity principle.activity within the CoFoE was the presence in the Conference Plenary.As it was mentioned, the CoR had 18 representatives there.In that matter, objective at the Co strengthen the role of local and regional authorities in the democratic functioning of the European egions 2022a, p. 2).It is worth noting as well that the CoR (along with the Economic and Social Committee) has been granted a role of an observer to the Executive Board (Conference on the Future of Europe 2022a, p. 7).

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Activity within the CoFoE of the Polish TSGUs.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Activity within the CoFoE of the capital cities of Polish voivodeships.

7
TSGUsundertaking at least one measure.When it comes to counties (n=21), 2 have informed the at least one action).Compared to every other type of the TSGUs, the activity of voivodeships looks different.On the 16 voivodeships, 15 have taken at least one action.Detailed results for voivodeships are presented in Figure5.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Activity within the CoFoE of the Polish voivodeships.
as a significant factor contributing to the final assessment of the Conference.The results presented in this paper dictate to consider the CoFoE rather in terms of the failure -especially in light of the original ambitions.The Conference has not exceed some actions concerning the CoFoE.There were no urban-rural municipalities and 7 urban municipalities active in that regard.The tendency according to which it is the most difficult to reach and engage the citizens from the smaller and/or rural communities has been proven many times and the Conference has been no exception to that.Moreover, the CoFoE has not even filled 35 TSGUs of this category, 15 have not done anything concerning the Conference.This result goes even lower when eliminating the activity of the voivodeships, leaving us with 4 active TSGUs.Having in mind all the effort that was put behind the Conference, this is rather not the outcome that was wanted limited to the entities substantially involved, like the Polish voivodeships.However, it does not make the asses the participants of the Conference) is significantly reduced.These remarks lead to one additional conclusion.It is somewhat difficult for the ad hoc enterprises (regardless of the scale of the attempts) to break the long-standing institutional practice (cf.Risse 2019, p. 134).Even though the CoFoE was substantially different from the other opportunities for the local and regional authorities to be involved at the EU level (because of its citizens-oriented and noneconomic character), it did not change much regarding the behaviour of the Polish TSGUs.The unofficial principle has prevailed.One should remember that these conclusions are based on the empirical results from Poland one of the 27 member states the CoFoE took place in.Hence, they can explain the behaviour of the Polish TSGUs, but they might not match the results from the other member states in the analysed matter.Especially since Poland was not among the most active state in regard to CoFoE.As the Multilingual Digital Platform Report states, Poland was the state with the least contributions per the number of inhabitants (26 per 1 million [Conference on the Future Therefore, the results from other member states may show the greater activity of the TSGUs.
Circa 2000 people have participated in these events and have formulated more than 400 proposals on the future of Europe.The ideas have been presented in the summary report of the Their involvement will ensure that the Conference of the European Union 2021).The Rules of Procedure formulates similar message and ads in relation to the Platform other stakeholders, as well as public authorities at European, national, regional and local level, nce on the Future of Europe 2021).Apart from taking part in the CoFoE Plenary and organising events for the citizens, one should mention two additional points regarding the activity of the subnational level.The first that were organised in other places than Strasbourg (Conference on the Future of Europe 2022a, p. 15).Secondly, the Socia local EU Councillors, as a way to reduce the distance between the EU institutions and European Separate attention has to be given to the CoR.As it has stated in its report summarising in addition to its regular debates during plenary sessions and commission meetings a variety of events in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe, with the double objective of informing citizens and local politicians and developing its position regarding the future of Europe.In so doing, the CoR has worked together with local and regional administrations, associations representing local and actions can be divided into three main categories.regularly organised by the CoR have been devoted to the topic of the Conference.Apart from that, the CoR has (Committee of the Regions, Bertelsmann Stiftung 2022).The project consisted of 23 cooperation projects by total number of 67 regions and cities that have conducted consultations with the citizens.