Brussels, 26 February 2010

The European Citizens and Action Service (ECAS) will organize a European Conference in scope of the project "European Citizens’ Panel: new democratic toolbox for new institutions" on Friday the 26th of February in Brussels.
For background information on the project, please click here
For the conference agenda, please click here
The overreaching objective of this innovative project is to try to answer two fundamental questions:
How should the citizens engage in European participatory processes and how do the citizens expect their recommendations to be followed up?
Instead of asking the citizens to debate on the different issues which are inherent to European politics or their immediate concerns, this project’s objective is to use one of the participatory methods – The Citizens’ Panel – on the European scale, in order to bring about operational recommendations from citizens on their engagement with EU policy-making via participatory democracy methods.  This is the first time that citizens have been asked to debate these questions in a structured way.
The European Conference will bring together 5 citizens from each of the four national citizens’ panels and the experts in participative democracy and European decision makers.  This will be a trialogue of citizens, experts, and the EU representatives. 
The event aims to engage these three groups of participants in a facilitated dialogue with one another about the role and potential of citizen participation in European decision-making, helping to finalize the citizens’ recommendations by enriching them with the considerations of both experts and policy makers.  Citizens will present the key recommendations that have been drawn up, before additional input is provided by the other groups and deliberated amongst all participants.

In this way, the Brussels Conference will not only serve as a work meeting, providing additional insights relevant for the final recommendations and report, it will also act as a prominent outreach opportunity, bringing together those working on participation and consultation in the European Institutions, academia and as practitioners. The conference will ultimately help advance the issue of participation throughout Europe.
Contact
ECAS – European Citizen Action Service
83, Rue du Prince Royal
1050 Brussels
Tel: +32 2 548 04 93
Fax: +32 2 548 04 99