Taking stock of the “Democracy and Participation in Europe” project

Our project “Democracy and Participation in Europe” started five years ago. Back then, the participation landscape was very different. The EU had few successful forms of deliberative participation. Today, new participatory processes get established in European regions and countries. The European Commission has launched its very own citizens’ panels after the Conference on the Future of Europe. Citizen assemblies have become the talk of the town in the democracy community.

 

For us, strengthening citizen participation on the European level has been the priority. We have worked with European institutions to promote a more citizen-centred Europe.

 

We organized, facilitated and were involved in 54 citizens dialogues with 3,417 citizens from all 27 EU member states. We applied and promoted random selection, simultaneous interpretation and other innovative methods for inclusive, deliberative and effective citizen participation. We analysed the participatory infrastructure of the EU. We observed and contributed to the Conference on the Future of Europe. And we delved into case studies, methods and tools from Ostbelgien to Taiwan.

 

Our work resulted in 73 published formats from books to policy papers to short films in several languages. After 5 years, we are taking stock and invite you to have a closer look at some cornerstones of our work. And please stay tuned: Our new project "New Democracy. Protecting and Rethinking Democracy" is in the starting blocks.

 

Enjoy the read!

 

Dominik Hierlemann and Anna Renkamp
 
Round Tables with dicussing citizens

Basics, methods, and cases of deliberative democracy

How does deliberative democracy work in theory and praxis? How does random selection benefit a participation? What is participatory budgeting? We present and discuss interesting approaches, methods, projects and guidelines for solving democratic challenges and setting up participatory processes.

Laptops with a Zoom Call

Digital participation

How does Taiwan's Join platform work? How can citizens digitally be involved in a simple and practical way? How digital was the Conference on the Future of Europe? In studies & pilot projects we have dealt with chances & challenges and developed & tested innovative forms of digital participation.

survey questions on the screen

Transnational citizen dialogues

How can citizens from different countries and languages ​​come together and discuss meaningfully, face-to-face and in a digital way? We designed, tested and evaluated several international, multilingual citizen dialogues. Learn more about the approach, methods and outcomes in our reports and videos.

Woman with the publication Under construction in his hands

Instruments and infrastructure for EU citizen participation

Elections, citizens’ initiatives, consultations, dialogues: citizens can participate in EU politics in various ways. But how well do these instruments work? Learn more about the instruments, existing gaps and the institutionalisation of European Citizens’ Assemblies in our publications and podcast.

Flags of the European Countries on a table

Conference on the Future of Europe

The Conference on the Future of Europe was a first-of-a-kind democratic exercise. How did it work, what can be learned and what happens with the results? We discuss the Conference in depth and show new ways how to institutionalise citizen participation on the EU level.