stygian
Before any substantive progress can be made, citizens must have confidence that the EU is the right organisation in which to place trust for the future. Currently, this trust can not placed, not least because of the massive EU-wide multi-million pound fraud and corruption and the failure to achieve an unqualified independent audit that is able to sign off the EU's books.
The UK is one of the worst offenders in this regard. Unless and until the UK Eurofrauds and corruption are fully exposed, and dealt with appropriately, can there ever be any hope of trusting the EU to shape our economic and social future in a globalised world.
At the centre of a debate such as this, if citizens are to participate, there must be evidence that it is the citizens who are involved with a meaningful consultation that facilitates citizens to make the decisions that affect their lives. What has been seen so far, especially in the UK, is the creation and maintenance of an illusion of consultation, followed by false claims of concensus from government-sponsored groups that falsely claim to represent a section of society.
If our EU leaders can't place their trust in us, why should we place our trust in them? If our EU leaders can't place their trust in us, why should we place our trust in them? To date, whenever we place our trust in the EU leaders, they betray our trust.
A clean sweep of the UK-sponsored EU corruption would be start, and this is this citizen's proposal.

The best move for the 27 nations being subsumed by the corruption riddled democratically deficient eu would be to leave the eu, and set their own laws and regulations. Why should we trust the unelected commission who ignored the rejection of the constitution by the french and dutch, and then seem to want to ignore the Irish as well, whilst no one else has had any democratic input these self serving liars claim that 25 countries are in favour.

The complexity and lack of transparency in both the make up and running of European Union and all its instituons prevent his excercise from being successfully meaningful, especially when some contributors clearly fundamentally question its existence as a result of obscurity and resultnt lack of understanding.

For all the obvious complaints others have made about corruption, pooled EU funding has undoubtably help the poorer regions of Europe develop. As a mechsnism for redistributing wealth it has been relatively successful see former Objective 1 areas in South West, South Yorkshire, Highlands and Islands and Wales. Unfortunately for real transformational change the programmes have not been long enough and local politicianns have made many unsustainable funding decisions (white elephnts) and processes have been far to bureaucratic such that the people and communities most in need have not had much say as they should have over the resources pumped into their communities.

EU election turn-outs in the UK demonstrate the extent to which successive UK Governments and MEPS, irrespective of the political party, have failed to inform and engage the British public in any serious discussion about what the EU should be for.

Being a very reluctant partner has allowed successive UK Government's to use the EU at various times to score party political rather than tru national interets points. Until the directly elected European Parliamnet becomes, through universal sufferage, both the instigator, decision-maker and regulator of any necessary EU wide policy, and is librated from the Council of Ministers who use it to play out national politics and Commission who have no directly legitimate authority, then the UK will always see the EU in very negative terms.

This said the clear failure of unregualted fiancial markets in the US and UK irnically demonstrate the benefits of a regulated EU market, the eurzone coming into its own following the unfettered greed within the under regulated USA and UK financial systems.

The socio-economic models in most EU countries, which are more balanced than pure free market monetarist policies followed in the UK by the Thatcher, Major , Blair and now Brown Government's again refect how out of step the UK is with the rest of Europe.

Corruption and the clear differences in the vigour in applying and abiding by EU regualtion between north and south Europe aside, the EU nees to develop more sustaibale approaches to any policy developments, placing both social and environmental concerns on an equal footing with the hitherto dominant economic agenda.

The rise of China, India and the Middle East requires in real politik, that the EU contiue but ina much more directly democrtically accountable way so that EU countries can play their full role in a global economy an society.

Unfortunately this process has been so controlled and made as elitist and exclusive as the EU institutions, tht it is therefore doomed to fail i.e. make no difference whatsoever, which greatly disheartens a committed UK based European.

I have professional activities in different eastern EU countries and Turkey. The EU is assembling nations with totally different cultural values. These eastern-oriental states are deeply corrupt, with clanic structures, have NO traditions of a civil society. E.g. in the Ucraine a student has to bribe a professor if he wants to be admitted for an exam. Plus: we are getting infected by their viruses of corruption and oligarchic behaviour.
(E.g. the FORTIS case where the belgian gouvernment tried to influence judges for the profits of BNP Parisbas.)

A merging of these tutti frutti nations has been forced by the informal oligarchy of the EU, big business and their political friends. These people benefit whereas the majority is massively impoverished (somebody has to finance our crazy moguls of enlargement).
Now we can ask: where is the success of this inconsiderate enlargment?
For the majority there is none! But we are facing a situation comparable to medieval Byzance: paying other nations off till no resources are left and our civil world destroyed.
The solution:
Refoundation of a smaller but tighter Union state based on comparable values WITHOUT the eastern states and maybe even Mafia-Italy, as long as they have not reached a minimum level of civic society. (I think that is never)

Stop the impoverishment of our communities to their benefit !

The new EU comprises France, Benelux, scandinavian countries, Germany, maybe Britain. The refoundation must be based on a referendum, democracy implemented.

Economical turnover must shrink to the social and environmental benefits.
Profits and bonuses must be reduced to a reasonable level. Economical treachery (the financial crisis, waste of EU money in the new EU states...) must be severly punshed.

On this we can still be friends with Romanians, Ucrainans, Turks and visit them as tourists....

I don't think anyone could be accused of taking this exercise seriously as a European-wide consultation exercise. Who are the 'national policy makers' anyway?

It reduces the whole of the democratic process to asking a few people (those how happen to hear of the website) what their views are, then passing them on to mysterious anonymous bureaucrats, who, judging by their past record, will ignore the whole thing anyway.

I think a lot more would have voted for the proposal on Democracy had they believed it would make the slightest difference. I know from my own proposal on 9/11 that there was a feeling that the whole process was a sham, otherwise I am sure a lot more would have voted for it. The Esperanto proposal was about Democracy too. The talk about equality of languages in the EU is another smokescreen. The hidden agenda is English and the New World Order.

I think the democratically selected (by whom?) panels need to see all these proposals as different aspects of the same problem: the EU is not living up to the democratic ideals which it professes to stand for.