May 9th marked Europe Day – and the kick-off of the Startschuss für die Conference on the Future of Europe. Along with “Pulse of Europe”, we set an example for a Europe of active citizens with a “Europe pride” bike tour.

Upon our arrival at Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt, Jörg Wojahn (representative of the European Commission in Germany), my colleague Hildegard Bentele (EPP) and I spoke about the importance of the Conference on the Future of Europe. Deutschlandfunk also reported on the Conference in a short feature, to which i.a. Peter Funk, who is involved in “Pulse of Europe”, contributed.

I am confident that many great ideas will emerge from this citizens’ forum on how we can further develop and strengthen Europe – and how we can ensure that it is capable of dealing with the major issues of our time. We need to tackle the climate crisis and finally move forward with the energy transition. We must shape digitalization in a way that allows people decide what happens with their personal data. And we must finally make large corporations like Amazon or Google pay their tax contributions.

Who knows: maybe this citizens’ forum will eventually generate completely new, original ideas that we had not even thought of yet!