Involvement of stakeholders and general public

Together with our broad network of civil society organizations, we organized the largest transnational online event to date, offering live translation in 10 different languages. We had over 1,200 registrations from people across 50 countries, and all of them have access to the event recording and can rewatch it at any later time. In the end, all included 583 people from 42 countries attended the two-hour live event on 12^th of September 2024. Attendees from countries participating in the CERV program were 430 from 27 countries.

We included a broad spectrum of panelists who were important stakeholders in the process of creating and supporting the structure of our innovative participation project, “The Democratic Odyssey.” The event was designed to convey the vision and purpose of the Democratic Odyssey to a wider audience. Therefore, we embedded the Odyssey within the traditions of the growing deliberative wave around the world, which aims to make everyday citizens a constructive part of political discussions and solution-finding processes.

We began with an introduction that provided a broader context for why it is an incredibly important task to change democratic structures so that our democratic system can rebuild the lost trust of the people. We explained that citizen assemblies are able to rebuild trust in multiple ways by influencing reinforcing valuable values like respect, empathy and ambiguity tolerance. 

Since the Odyssey wants to learn from past experiences, we than looked back at citizen assemblies in Ireland and the Netherlands. After that, we presented the ambitions and concrete designs for the Odyssey. Stakeholders and citizens provided feedback and constructive criticism, which we can still integrate, as the Odyssey structure develops organically with each session and is therefore able to continuously adapt to rising challenges along the way.

Event-Agenda:

• Warm welcome to everyone and the special guests (the first selected assembly citizens)
• Introduction “The (slow) Transformation of Democracy” (Sarah Händel, Mehr Demokratie e.V.)
•  “How does the past lead us to the future? 3 Spotlights”: 

• Belgium’s G1000, presented by Yves Dejaeghere from G1000
• Ireland’s Assembly on Abortion Rights, presented by Art O’Leary, secretary general of the Irish electoral commission 
• Lessons from the Conference on the Future of Europe, presented by Stephanie Hartung, citizen ambassador

• Talk between Prof. Dr. Kalypso Nicolaidis and Niccolò Milanese, Co-Founders of the Democratic Odyssey on the “Vision of the first Transnational Peoples’ Assembly”
• Friendly Provocations by: 

• Brett Hennig from the Sortition Foundation
• Alexiane Terrochaire-Barbancon from JEF (Young European Federalists)
• Helmut Scholz, former MEP, The Left Party
• Daniel Freund, MEP, The Greens
• Replies from the Odyssey Team and feedback from citizens

LINK TO PODCAST: https://europecalling.podigee.io/b200-power-to-the-people-buergerraete

DOWNLOAD THE DELIVERABLE HERE.