Austria's Commitment to the 2030 Agenda

ACTIVE ON NATIONAL LEVEL
DIALOGUE WITH CIVIL SOCIETY
CONFERENCE
ON THE FUTURE
OF EUROPE
With the “Conference on the Future of Europe” initiative, the EU facilitated
a wide participation process for future issues. In Austria, the conference
process was implemented in a particularly proactive manner.
On Europe Day, 9th May 2021, one of the
greatest and most innovative citizens’
involvement processes in European history
started across the whole of Europe. For
the entire year, all citizens of Europe were
called up to participate in many formats of
the “Conference on the Future of Europe”
and to develop proposals. Topics of the
conference were, among other things,
climate change, environment, health,
economy, social equality, work, education,
culture and youth.
Austria implemented the future process
very ambitiously. Already one year before
the official start of the “Conference on the
Future of Europe”, Karoline Edtstadler,
Austrian Federal Minister for the EU and
Constitution, launched the dialogue
process across Austria for the further
development of the European Union under
the motto “Our future: rethinking the EU”
on 9th June 2020. A tour across Austrian
federal states - the “Austria Dialogues”
- picked up sentiments, experiences and
expectations of citizens on the regional and
local level. The participants could prioritise
the most important future issues of the
EU from their point of view by means of a
questionnaire: the first place was occupied
by the issue of environment and climate
change, followed by the economy, work
and foreign policy.
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