For a Permanent EU Citizens’ Assembly: Why, When, How?

We have been witnessing an impressive increase in the use of stratified randomly selected Citizens’ Assemblies across the world in the last decade. Many believe that they can play a crucial role in creating the social conditions to tackle complex policy problems such as the climate emergency in addition to their intrinsic value for democratic renewal. Others however, criticise them as a gimmick or even a threat to traditional representative democracy.

This “deliberative wave” has now arrived in the EU, which for the first time in history is systematically applying such methods within the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe taking place in 2021-22. In fact, the four European Citizens’ Assemblies (here called Citizens’ Panels) with 800 randomly selected citizens from across the EU are a key pillar in the Conference architecture. On 10 December 2021, one of them will be hosted at the EUI in Florence for its final deliberation and recommendations on European democracy/Values and rights, rule of law and security .

But what comes next? Do we need to make such EU Citizens’ Assembly permanent? And if so, how should it be designed to become a truly efficient and meaningful instrument of transnational deliberative democracy? What can we learn from the many prior experiences in this vein, such as the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate, the permanent Citizens Assembly in Eastern-Belgium or the Irish Citizens’ Assembly model where citizens can vote on the assembly’s proposals in a referendum?

The EUI-STG Democracy Forum has been investigating these questions along side the Conference on the Future of Europe and is eager to exchange on this prospect with a broader public.

Join us online next Monday 6th December at 17h CET Online to consider this topic with some of the most knowledgeable experts in the field.

Chair: Kalypso Nicolaidis (EUI)

Speakers:

Initial Presenters:

• Claudia Chwalisz (OECD)
• Yves Sintomer (University of Paris and Oxford University)

Roundtable:

• Gabriela Cretu (Social Democratic Party (PSD), Romania)
• David Farrell (University College Dublin)
• Christoph Niessen (EUI)
• Niccolo Milanese (European Alternatives and Citizens Take Over Europe)
• Alberto Alemanno (HEC Paris and The Good Lobby)
• Carsten Berg (Berggruen EUI Fellow and ECI)

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