Moving EuropE Together, one citizens’ agora at a time

Summary:

EU citizens crave opportunities to exchange views on important national and European policy questions. Inviting them to become a more integral part of EU decision-making can effectively respond to popular demand for more participation and transparency in EU governance and raise people’s awareness and knowledge about complex EU issues.

Those are some of the preliminary findings of the Moving EuropE Together (MEET) project. The initiative, which the European Policy Centre set up last year with the support of the European Parliament and King Baudouin Foundation, intends to supplement and reinforce the national dimension of the Conference on the Future of Europe and contribute to the Union’s ongoing efforts to include more participatory elements into its policymaking.

Halfway through the project, this Interim Report assesses what has and hasn't worked so far.

Between September 2021 and January 2022, five different organisations put together eight so-called Local Citizens’ Agoras (LCAs) in Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Ireland and Romania. People were able to discuss core policy themes from the Conference agenda with each other and with Members of the European Parliament. They came up with concrete recommendations on democracy, the green transition, health policy and foreign policy. The events were carried out on the basis of a standardised model of national deliberations elaborated by the EPC, allowing for comparative analysis.

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