The purpose of this contribution is to critically scrutinize prominent reactions to two key innovative components introduced by the European Union (EU) institutions at the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) in 2021–2022: the CoFoE Plenary and the European Citizens’ Panels. These components were at the heart of what has been considered a unique deliberative (quasi)constitutional experiment aimed at ‘ending sleepwalking’ characterized by low trust and engagement between EU citizens and institutions and deficits in democratic decision-making in the EU. How do the two components fare from the perspective of contributing to this outcome? To conduct a systematic evaluation, the chapter identifies two main approaches to evaluating deliberative processes with a constitutive element; the popular mobilizational and the ideational institutional accounts. Both oppose sceptical views of deliberation as competing with the principle of representation. After elucidating the key features of both accounts and highlighting the complementarities and contrasts between them, the chapter proceeds to address selected criticisms of the CoFoE Plenary and the ECPs. It finds that while some of these criticisms are largely supported by the popular mobilizational account, their purchase decreases with the ideational institutional account. Instead, the ideational institutional account sheds light on some shortcomings of these formats, that tend to be neglected by alternative perspectives. The findings contribute to understanding some lessons from the CoFoE for a potential EU Convention triggering Treaty changes as well as more permanent deliberative mechanisms.