Hosted by the JRC and organized by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and FIDE Europe, the event convened representatives from key European institutions - such as the European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, Committee of the Regions - as well as practitioners and policymakers from the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, East Belgium, Baden-Württemberg, and the OECD. Their shared goal? To exchange ideas, test new tools, and foster citizen participation in Europe.

From September 2025 to March 2026, 100 young people from across the EU will come together to deliberate over key issues connected to the decline of wild pollinating insects. With preparations for the Assembly in full swing, we have reached important milestones we wanted to share with you.

The Competence Centre has recently published practical Guidelines to evaluating processes of citizen engagement in policymaking. At the moment, it is aimed at Commission policy officers, while work at the Competence Centre continues towards expanding its usability also for other kindred institutions, as well as to the wider Community of Practice of participation and evaluation experts.

A new report from the Joint Research Centre explores the challenges and lessons learnt from the online citizen engagement process of the Conference on the Future of Europe. The report looks at the potential of digital technologies in increasing the opportunities for citizens to participate in policymaking, highlighting several of the challenges faced during the implementation of the Conference’s digital platform.

The European Commission is calling for feedback on the four Codes of Practice for Knowledge Valorisation, adopted in 2023-2024. Share your insights!

What threatens the integrity of innovative forms of citizen engagement? A new report uncovers five key risks facing deliberative mini-publics—randomly selected groups of everyday citizens tasked to deliberate and generate recommendations on complex policy issues. It highlights challenges like economic pressures, restrictive remits, poor governance, and ambiguous impact while offering strategies to strengthen these democratic innovations and ensure they fulfil their promise.

The European Commission invites EU Public Administrations to fill out an impact survey which will inform a report to policymakers in Member States and EU Institutions

The Assembly aims to engage young citizens in the crucial dialogue on how to reverse the dramatic decline of pollinating insects unfolding against the backdrop of general biodiversity loss. An Advisory Committee will support the Assembly in terms of knowledge curation as well as transparency and integrity of the process. The call for expressions of interest to join the Committee is now open!

For the past two years CC-DEMOS has invested in developing a training offer on citizen engagement specifically tailored to public officials, civil servants and other government professionals working in local, regional and national public administrations, and future trainers. The first edition of the training includes three different levels of competence and will be offered online between 26 March and 8 July 2025 in the EU Academy platform.

Launched on 5 December, the EU-funded project ScaleDem will promote the adoption and scaling of democratic innovations as a way towards greater inclusive and participatory governance. Together, leading experts, researchers and practitioners will develop tools such as policy roadmaps and a Compass for Scaling Democratic Innovations, to support the uptake of battle-tested solutions by policy makers and practitioners. Two open calls will be published in 2026 to support third parties in real-life experimentations of these solutions.