2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The antecedent of this program was the so-called Zure Auzoa Hobetuz, which was limited, as regards the final decision, to the sector of neighborhood associations. The selected projects were only for investments in public roads.

In 2015, after a thorough review of the citizen participation model, the 2015-2019 Citizen Participation Plan is launched, which is subsequently continued with the one drawn up for the 2019-2023 period.

This Plan introduces important changes in the model, being one of its objectives to give greater prominence to citizens. Thus, the citizen participation bodies lose their presidential character, change their name, elkargunes in the case of the sectorial scope, and auzogunes in the territorial scope, giving the greatest protagonism to the citizenship since it assumes the management of the work agenda of each body. 

The program VITORIA-GASTEIZ HOBETUZ is created, open to all citizens, considering children as part of it and recognizing the diversity and cultural richness brought by people who have come from other countries and live in the city.

The first two editions held for the budgets of the years 2017 and 2018-2019, are the best letter of introduction for the third edition, the one presented to this contest, held in 2021 for the budgets of 2022 and 2023. There are 7,786 people participating in the voting phase, more than twice as many as in the previous edition.

The evaluation conducted after each process continues to provide us with important information to introduce improvements and increase citizen participation in the different phases of the process. The proposals generated by the citizens and the technical staff facilitate the political agreements at the table set up for this purpose.

This program has brought about changes in most municipal departments, which have had to adapt their schedules to include citizen proposals approved by citizen vote, and has also provided excellent information on the citizen's vision of the city and how they would like to improve it.

We believe that this city is achieving an ever increasing involvement of citizens in municipal issues, not only through this program but also in the debates that are generated on the municipal budget and the annual Ordinance of Fees and Public Prices. And a very valuable collaboration through the 23 citizen participation bodies that are currently operating. We count on the Escuela Abierta de la Ciudadanía (Open School of Citizenship) that works to improve the training of citizens in this collaboration.

After three editions, the project has been very well received and in a very special way by the citizen collectives that participate from different areas in the neighborhoods and towns of the municipality. In this sense, we are grateful for the role played by the local media in echoing the projects already implemented.

Vitoria-Gasteiz Hobetuz: an instrument of citizen participation (External link)