European Citizens Consultations: a successful agenda setting event in Brussels

The first phase of the project European Citizens Consultations (see the Politeia website and www.european-citizens-consultations.eu) started on the weekend of 7/8 October with a grand scale conference of 200 citizens from all 25 member states of the EU in Expo hall 10 in Brussels. The participants, assisted by about 60 interpreters, 25 facilitators and more than 80 staff in organizational, technical and logistic functions, discussed the agenda for the 25 national citizens consultations in each member state early next year. They prioritized three topics: 1. the EU and environment and energy, 2. the global role of the EU and external borders and immigration and 3. social policies, including health care and family affairs.

Opportunity

These topics may be very broad and not always necessarily related but this gives participating citizens at the national consultations maximum opportunity to set their own accents. (thus, the topic ‘the global role of the EU’ is about a common European foreign and international security policy, about the position of the EU versus the USA and the upcoming Asian states, about a common Middle East policy, etc. That is quite something else than the problem of the influx of immigrants at the outer borders.)

Inspiring

The vice president of the European Commission, Margot Wallström, held an inspiring speech about the importance of an European environmental policy considering the dangers of global warming – she had just returned from a meeting with Al Gore presenting his documentary An inconvenient truth in Amsterdam – and about the importance of bringing citizens in Europe closer to the Union. More than 60 observers from the Commission, the European Parliament, representatives of several embassies and journalists visited the event on Saturday afternoon.

Success

The event, perfectly organized by the King Baudouin Foundation (Belgium) and the Institute for Organisational Communication (IFOK), has been a big success, in view of the enthusiasm of the participants.

Ivo Hartman, Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek, Amsterdam