We are thrilled to inform that the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy has kicked-off a research project on the topic of “Public spaces as spaces for citizen engagement. Partnership to democratise science and policy”, in collaboration with eleven renowned scholars and practitioners in the field.

Available a short video on the BiodiverCities project and extract from a conversation with the BiodiverCities’ expert Medea Ferrigno on the meaning of engaging citizens (and much more).

The Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy is organizing in partnership with the Association “I Musei del Cibo della provincia di Parma” two events that will take place in September-October 2023 in Parma and surroundings. These are the results of a collaborative effort that started few months ago, with the purpose of meaningfully disseminating the results of a research project and, more importantly, to build partnerships with civic spaces, such as food museums, and local actors.

It’s time to meet again! Save the date for the fifth edition of the Citizen Participation and Deliberative Democracy Festival, which will take place in Brussels, 12-14 June 2024. For this next edition, we decided to focus on the engagement of citizens in addressing environmental issues.

On 19 July 2023 the European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication (COMM), published in the Official Journal a new Call to Participate in a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) targeting expertise and capacity to support its growing needs to engage citizens in policy-making. All economic operators capable of delivering services underpinning participatory processes are invited to submit request to participate.

We are very happy to announce that the BiodiverCities Atlas, the main public output of the BiodiverCities project, is now published, and its digital version is available at: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC133253.

Citizen engagement is defined as “an invited form of citizen participation where public institutions invite citizens to openly discuss matters of concern and care” (p. 79) and a process which involves the mobilisation of local actors. For this to be effective, citizens need to be given the space to discuss and share ideas – and feel as though their opinions on issues and decisions are heard. What better place to do this than a public library?

On December 2022, the European Commission organised, as a direct follow-up to the proposals originated from the Conference on the Future of Europe, a new set of citizens’ panels. From mid-December 2022 to the end of April 2023, three panels, each composed by three sessions and with around 150 participants, were organised in Brussels to develop concrete recommendations on some of the key initiatives of the 2023 Commission Work Programme - food waste, virtual worlds and learning mobility.

By the time you read this last week’s 2nd Summit for Democracy will have just been completed. Did you feel it was a decisive, action-led Summit which will make a significant practical difference to strengthening global democracy or did you log out on Friday with a hollow sensation of unfulfilment? The second equally important test is did the Autocrats observe the proceedings with a sense of fear and trepidation or a smirk of relief?

The dust has not settled yet but already the caravan has started up with the announcement that the 3rd Summit event has been announced for next…

Climate and biodiversity crises are among the greatest global threats that we have to confront now and for many decades to come. Even if the consequences will not touch everyone in the same way, many in the research and policy worlds recognise that moving towards more hopeful futures cannot happen without active participation of the wider society. In this post we bring you a summary of several recent projects that the Competence Centre has run focusing on the engagement of citizens in one pressing biodiversity issue: the protection of wild pollinating insects.