European Commission's corporate guidance on citizen engagement. The objective of this “Guidebook” is to establish a reference toolbox that identifies and categorises different formats of citizen engagement, from the fully-fledged citizens’ panels on pan-European level to other co-creation and exploratory formats. This corporate guidance aims at helping services to choose the most relevant methods of citizen engagement for their policy file and to understand better how to implement them and which added value they get from each of the citizen engagement formats described in the guidebook.

A New Phase of Citizen Participation

Building on the Conference on the Future of Europe and its follow-up Communication, the Commission has worked on further developing “ways to ensure citizens are given a closer role in EU policymaking”. More regular Citizen participation is important to build a democracy fit for the future. But it is also about the quality of EU policymaking: citizens are experts of their own lives and bringing in their perspectives can add value to EU policymaking.

This new phase aims at bringing more consistency in the Commission’s citizen engagement practices, making them more relevant to the Union’s policymaking and ensuring their visibility and effective communication, showing their results to the wider public and encouraging citizens from all walks of life to engage with the EU.

Guidance on citizen Engagement

The Corporate Guidance on Citizen engagement proposes two types of participatory formats: one based on deliberation between the citizens, in the form of the European Citizen Panels, and four others, such as focus groups or co-creation workshops, which are less resource-intensive and can add value to the policymaking process. The Citizen Engagement Platform also offers the possibility to run online participatory processes. Citizen participation can take place at pan-European level and/or have a decentralised dimension, possibly mobilising key partners in the Member States.

It also proposes key principles that should be considered when planning engagement activities.

• Anticipation
• Clear expectations
• Clear mandate and scope
• Multilingualism
• Inclusiveness
• Representation of Diversity
• Transparency
• Integrity
• Facilitation for respectful dialogue and knowledge management
• Accountability
• Follow-up, feedback and evaluation

Citizen Engagement Step by Step

This guidance does not come alone. Both at DG COMM and DG JRC, there are services that can advise on implementing citizen engagement exercises.