(Te vertalen)

Why Citizen's Panels?

Citizens’ panels aims at:

  • enabling "ordinary citizens" to deliberate on the basis of balanced and comprehensive information and provide their point of view to decision-makers as a complementary decision-making tool;
  • stimulating learning in participation and mutual understanding through dialogue between citizens, politicians, experts and stakeholders from different backgrounds;
  • raising and sustaining public debate in a transparent way during the implementation phase of the project, and after this phase through a wider dissemination of the citizens’ recommendations to interested organised groups and the wider public.

General methodology

A citizens’ panel with citizens who:

  • are randomly selected from a cross-section of society
  • receive and assess balanced and authoritative information, provided by a range of profiles (experts, stakeholders and civil servants) and viewpoints
  • deliberate thoroughly with their peers
  • build and present a citizens’ report on the chosen issue
  • publicly present their report and recommendations to the relevant authorities and stakeholders.

The citizens’ report is widely diffused to stimulate wider public debate and the whole process is made transparent and receives media coverage.

Different names are used in different countries, sometimes with some variation in the methodology (number of participants, length of the work, etc.): conférences de consensus, nucleos de intervencion participativa, citizens' juries, Planungszelle, etc.).

Past projects

Deliberative democracy initiatives adopted by the Foundation

Citizens' panels initiated by the Foundation

Deliberative democracy initiatives involving the Foundation

The Foundation has supported the following processes in different ways (advisory role, member of the Steering committee, coordinating a specific work area, etc.):