European Citizen Engagement and Deliberative Democracy Festival

Deliberative democracy and citizen engagement can be effective responses to the erosion of trust in democratic institutions, as well as helping to develop better policies by including all those concerned in more direct ways. A number of recent studies namely the OECD’s report “Catching the Deliberative Wave” and a European Parliament study on ‘practices of democracy’ describes the flourishing of inspiring deliberative democracy initiatives, including many in the EU, where thousands of randomly selected citizens are enrolled into more participatory governance styles in our democratic regimes. This context shows the flourishing interest in these tools and therefore raises expectations of the Commission.

Learning objectives:

• Capacity building on Citizen Engagement and Deliberative Democracy Practices.
• Showcase and learn about ongoing important files of citizen engagement run by the Commission by relevant services, notably the Conference on the Future of Europe.
• Illustrate why greater engagement of the public in policy-making is even more needed now than it was before the outbreak of Covid-19. Further strengthen and widen across the Commission the understanding of the role of citizen engagement in all phases of the policy cycle, especially focusing on co-creation and deliberative practices.
• Showcase citizen engagement that services are conducting or supporting, e.g. the Horizon Europe Missions and in the Member States.
• Address some cross-cutting challenges with practitioners in the field, e.g. evaluation.

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