The 200+ recommendations were developed from the ground up by the various thematic clusters of the Civil Society Convention to the Conference on the Future of Europe, which included ECNL and over 100 experts and practitioners from 40 different organisations, as well as surveys and crowdsourcing processes involving over 2,000 national CSOs.
As a member of the Convention to the Conference on the Future of Europe, ECNL actively contributed to the reports and recommendations that were brought directly to the Conference deliberations by the Steering Committee of the Convention. This report is the result of our collective engagement led by Civil Society Europe.
More specifically, ECNL’s contribution resulted in concrete recommendations by the Convention regarding:
1. Strengthening digital safeguards by including in relevant legislation efforts (such as EU AI Act) to
- provide sufficient safeguards to protect citizens from any negative impact of AI technologies on their fundamental rights, particularly ensuring privacy, accessibility, and non-discrimination;
- uphold an effective right to redress for those affected by an AI application and raise awareness and accessibility to redress mechanisms;
- make human rights impact assessment mandatory for the design, development and deployment of AI.
2. Improving participation rights within the EU through for example enabling participatory mechanisms, including easy-to-understand and accessible consultations for residents;
3. Bringing attention to the shrinking civic space of climate defenders. The recommendations promote the protection of environmental rights and civic space, including freedom of association, right to protest, freedom of expression and information and the right to privacy.
We believe that our collective work does not end here, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate with EU institutions and member states on the implementation of these recommendations.
You can read the report and recommendations here: The Future of Europe is Ours: A View from Civil Society