Polity shaping from below: institutional activism and the Committee of the Regions in the Conference on the Future of Europe

The European Union is often described as an ‘unfinished polity’ with its institutional design contested in periods of reform. The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) constituted the most recent reform arena. Research has largely focused on the European Parliament and national parliaments, while the role of weaker bodies is underexplored. This article ad-dresses this gap by analysing the European Committee of the Regions (CoR). Building on the concepts of institutional activism and opportunity structures, the article examines how and under which conditions the CoR acted as a polity-shaping actor. The findings show that the CoR secured access to key conference bodies and embedded its claims in the reform debate through agenda-setting, strategic framing, and the use of procedural ambiguities. This demonstrates that, particularly in reform contexts, institutional influence depends less on formal authority than on actors’ ability to leverage opportunity structures.