Now more than ever, Europe is faced with various challenges: a growing distance between citizens and elected representatives, a loss of trust in European institutions, the rise of extremism and increasing political polarisation. The EU is responding to these challenges through a number of policies and actions to strengthen ties between citizens.
During the years, the EC has raised the number of meetings, assemblies, juries, and panels with citizens showing the value that it has. Therefore, the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy will foster partnerships and provide guidance, tools, and resources to strengthen citizen engagement in policy in order to give the population the opportunity to be supported in projects and policies on participatory or deliberative democracy. It is already working on several pilot projects, from green cities to future mobility solutions.
The aim of the commission is to give visibility and a voice to the city to have fairer policies and a fairer Europe. This has been demonstrated in other initiatives such as the Conference on the Future of Europe and the European Democracy Action Plan.
As it is seen in the proper website, the objectives of the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy are:
Enrich the EU knowledge base on participatory and deliberative practices;
Provide guidance for researchers and policymakers;
Build capacity in citizen engagement and participatory governance;
Implement diverse perspectives in policymaking from practitioners in the field, civil society organisations and citizens;
Develop and experiment with new public spaces for citizen engagement ; and
Foster our Community of Practice (CoP) on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy in continuing to share knowledge on best practices in the field and build on these insights for more participatory governance models in the EU and beyond.
The competence centre will also develop a framework to evaluate citizen engagement and deliberative democracy and extend practices across Europe.
In 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen already mentioned that “a new push for European democracy” is to “strengthen the links between people, nations and institutions in Europe”.
Now regarding the new initiative, some of the Vice-Presidents and Commissioners mentioned that “This new competence centre(…)shows the European Commission's determination to engage with citizens on the issues that matter to them (…) is offering Europeans a central role in shaping the future of the EU, encouraging them to discuss our common challenges and help define our priorities(…)” ; “(…) The new competence centre on participatory and deliberative democracy is an important new resource to help the Commission, and all other interested stakeholders, in achieving this objective.”; “Citizens' input is more important than ever as the increasingly complex challenges we face as a society force us to rethink and reinvent many areas of our societies and our economies.”
All of this shows how important citizen’s participation is and the importance of democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights are the foundations on which the European Union is built.
