2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"
16th Edition
State of North Rhine-Westphalia Konferenz zur Zukunft Europas – Onlinekonsultation “NRW gestaltet Europa” / Conference on the Future of Europe - Onlin
As the Conference on the Future of Europe stated in its final report, the active involvement of citizens is elementary for a citizen-centred Europe that adequately represents their concerns, interests, wishes and hopes. Citizens want a visible and easily accessible Europe in which they can actively participate.
But in order to adequately address citizens' concerns, the European institutions must first be aware of them. Thus, a method for representative and meaningful citizen participation is needed.
A particular challenge in citizen participation is that traditional methods often do not reach the entire population. Traditionally conducted consultations of citizens in public areas have been proven to reach older generations in particular. As a result, consultation results disproportionately show the concerns of older generations, while the concerns of younger generations are not visible and consequently do not receive the necessary attention in EU policy.
The new concept of an online consultation, developed in cooperation with Make.org, helps to obtain results that are representative for all generations and thus for the entire population. The innovative online consultation enables citizens to voice their concerns at any time from any location and thus standardises the participation opportunities for all citizens. For example, participation is not restricted to the limited time windows during which participation formats are conducted in pedestrian areas. Even the place of residence no longer plays a role in participation opportunities. Every citizen has the same opportunity to access the participation process, regardless of whether they live in the centre of a large city or in a more rural area, where participation formats are conducted less frequently.
The newly designed online consultation proved to be particularly successful in several aspects.
First, the communication campaigns for the online consultation reached an above-average number of people, namely a total of 815,000. With this wide reach, it set the first step for a representative result.
In addition, the participation rate was also much higher than expected, with a total of 28,000 participants. Participants took part in 202,224 votes and made 508 suggestions for the future of Europe. The disproportionately high participation of young citizens was particularly pleasing.
The consultation model involved participants sharing their ideas and concerns about the future of Europe on relevant topics such as climate change and the environment, the economy, social justice, migration, education and democracy in Europe. The results were then published in a report and visually accompanied by graphics and quotes from the citizens. In particular, the topics on which there was great agreement as well as the most controversial topics were highlighted.
This online consultation thus contributes on several levels to the realisation of the goals set by the Conference on the Future of Europe. First of all, it makes Europe more visible in the regions and encourages citizens to actively participate in politics. Secondly, it represents an innovative online participation method that reaches younger citizens and, in combination with traditional participation methods, ensures that the views of the entire population are properly reflected in EU policies.
More information:
Wie wollen wir Europa konkret neu gestalten?
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