The 'Citizen Z' project aims to respond to the European Commission priorities outlined in the European Democracy Action Plan and the EU Citizenship Report 2020 by enhancing civic engagement and democratic participation of EU citizens, particularly youth aged 15 to 25.

The project is also in line with the position supported by the European Committee of the Regions, which in 2019 encouraged a 'cultural change’ towards experimenting with deliberative democracy tools as developed at the local level (European Committee of the Regions, Putting citizens at the Centre of the EU agenda), as the most authentic democratic participation originates in the context closest to the citizen.

General objectives of the project

1) Strengthening the democratic participation of European citizens, especially young people, by complementing a top-down form of democracy, in which people's will is delegated to its representatives, with a bottom-up form of democracy, in which decisions have to be validated and legitimated by the people themselves.

2) Expanding innovative forms of participation other than those provided by traditional representative democracy.

3) Regenerating the democratic fabric of European societies by educating citizens to practice dialogue and to distrust preconceived ideas that are not based on facts, supported by trusted data and balanced arguments.

4) Finding new ways of engaging young people and making the EU relevant to them.

5) Fostering, in the context of promoting EU citizenship rights, the inclusion of politically non-active EU citizens in civic and political participatory processes.

Project structure

The deliberative model, considered as a tool to promote informed debate and contribute to the co-design of policies, has been used mainly at the local level. More particularly, it has been deployed at the municipal level to engage citizens in the search for solutions to micro-problems. The Citizen Z project seeks to stimulate a dynamic of change, which intends to go beyond this status quo to also encompass EU-related and other macro issues.

This intention is reflected in the project through 2 rounds of deliberations:

In the first round of deliberations, the focus will be on local life and the local perception of issues that are immediately problematic for citizens. The first round will represent the process of localizing European experience or issues (e.g. related to pollution, environmental problems, job insecurity, well-being, etc.).

Using different methods, such as deliberative workshops, open forums, citizens' assemblies, deliberative polling, etc., a series of local deliberations will be organized to allow participants to discuss their positions (stances) on a certain topic (often with input from experts) in order to reach a final consensus, which will result in the development of recommendations.

In the second round of deliberations, the contextualization of local issues within a European perspective will allow extending the focus of the debate to the European level and to higher policy issues. It will aim at deepening and contextualizing the same macro-issues on the regional/European level. Participants will explore whether the macro issues they have identified in their communities are also relevant on a larger scale at the regional or European level and how they are currently handled by policymakers.

The results of each round will be presented and discussed at the annual Deliberative Democracy Days events, the first of which will be held in Brussels on 13-15 March 2023. All countries participating in the project (Belgium, Croatia, Italy, and the Netherlands) will elaborate conclusions and provide recommendations to the relevant actors, decision-makers, and other stakeholders at the local, regional and European level.

Additional information

The Citizen Z project is funded by the CERV Program of the European Commission and will last until October 31, 2024. The project consortium is composed of five partner organizations from four EU countries: Intercultural Dialogue Platform (Coordinator, Belgium), Fedactio (Belgium),  Udruga Prizma (Croatia), Istituto Tevere (Italy) and Platform INS (the Netherlands).

If you would like to learn more about the project and stay informed about upcoming events, please visit us at: https://www.citizenz.eu/