The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe published a report with Citizens’ Assembly guidelines for municipalities on 23 March 2022. Drafted with the contribution of Yves Dejaeghere, the document emphasises the benefits of such assemblies and recommends their use.

The report offers guidelines for municipalities and regions, illustrated by case studies at the local and regional levels: Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Oud-Heverlee (Belgium), Scottish Climate Assembly (UK) and Ostbelgien (Belgium).

The Congress, together with the rapporteur Karl-Heinz Lambertz (Belgium), has called for the further implementation of deliberative methods at all levels of governance, identifying specific issues where these mechanisms could contribute to the decision-making process. It stresses the need to plan the whole process, to allocate the necessary time for citizen deliberation, and specifically, to define fair criteria for the selection of participants. The deliberative process could be institutionalized by ensuring that local governments are provided with the necessary financial means.

Read the report here

A Commission chaired by former national ombudsman Alex Brenninkmeijer was tasked with producing a report for the Dutch government on the possible use of a Citizens’ Assembly on the topic of Climate policy in the Netherlands. FIDE was one of the expert organisations that was interviewed by the Commission for its report.

The report (in Dutch) can be found here.

In February 2019 the parliament of the German Speaking Community of Belgium voted unanimously to install a permanent so-called Citizen Dialogue process (Buergerdialog). This consisted of institutionalising deliberative processes as integral part of the policy-making of the Parliament and Government of the Region.

The system is composed of two types of citizen bodies. First of all a permanent Citizen Council, which is composed of 24 citizens drawn by lot that sit for 1,5 years (with 1/3th rotating every six months). This council has as its main tasks to set the agenda for separate Citizen Assemblies and to follow-up with parliament what happens to recommendations from Citizen Assemblies. The second citizen body is the Citizen Assembly. These are also composed of citizens drawn by lot and can count between 25 and 50 members. There can be up to three of these assemblies a year and the topic is set by the Citizen Council. The Citizen Assemblies take several days to study the topic that is given to them and then deliberate and propose recommendations to parliament and/or government.

The whole system has been named the “Ostbelgien Model” after the shorthand name of the region and was designed and proposed by a group of international experts in deliberative methods. The group of experts was itself convened by the Belgian G1000 organisation on the request of the parliament and government of the region.

The Regions’ website has a good explanatory page in English on the Citizen Dialogue process.

In this policy paper from the Jacques Delors Institute, Gaetane Ricard-Nihoul cites a number of reasons why democratic innovation is needed at the European level. She looks at forms of citizen engagement already organised by the EU and the evolution therein. Subsequently her focus turns to participation processes using deliberative methods and citizens drawn by lot. Gaetane Nihoul reflects on how they would be a valuable addition to the existing methods used by the EU.

Using her own experience in setting up the Grand Débat in France and using a number of findings from the evaluations of that process, she also looks at a number of conditions needed to make this a success. Furthermore, she focuses on the specific aspects of doing this type of exercise in an international, multilingual setting such as the EU.

The policy paper can be downloaded here