About the ECC 2009

The European Citizens’ Consultations 2009 (ECC 2009) brought together citizens from all 27 EU Member States in the run-up to the 2009 European elections to debate the question:

“What can the EU do to shape our economic and social future in a globalised world?”

An online debate

A pan-European online debate marked the first stage in the ECC 2009 process. Between December 3 2008 and the national consultations in March 2009, more than 250,000 people from all over Europe visited the ECC websites set up in every EU Member State to discuss and put forward their ideas on what the EU can do shape our economic and social future. This debate took place in the national languages of each country, enabling all members of the public to make their voices heard and propose ideas for action. The top ten proposals from the online debate in each country were fed into that country’s national consultation for discussion by the citizens who attended the event.

27 national conferences

The 27 national conferences were attended by a total of 1,605 citizens selected at random to reflect their country’s demographic composition by professional opinion research institutes These conferences, held simultaneously in nine countries at a time over three weekends in March 2009, were the heart of the ECC process. They enabled citizens to develop recommendations on Europe’s economic and social future, and to discuss them with key national and European policy-makers. The European Citizens’ Consultations do not take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. While all the consultations followed the same basic format, the size of these events varied from a minimum of 30 participants to a maximum of 150. On the second day, the citizens were given the opportunity to debate their recommendations with national MEPs and candidate MEPs in the run-up to the June European elections.

A European Citizens’ Summit

The outcomes of all these national deliberations were then drawn together to prepare a European overview of national recommendations, shortly after the last round of the consultations was held. This overview of the top ten recommendations from all 27 Member States was then debated online by the general public and the final 15 European recommendations were selected by those citizens who attended the consultations at national level. These 15 European recommendations formed the basis of the European Citizens’ Summit, attended by 150 participants from the 27 national consultations, which was held in Brussels on the May 10-11 2009. Here, citizens finalised a set of European recommendations and discussed these with European policymakers, including the heads of the EU’s institutions and European political party leaders.

Regional follow-up debates

The citizens’ recommendations will be discussed with newly-elected Members of the European Parliament and other opinion-leaders at regional conferences in five EU Member States in autumn 2009. A final event will also be held in Brussels to draw all the strands together and discuss the results in front of an audience of Brussels-based policy-makers, stakeholders and media. The results will also be disseminated to the newly-appointed European Commission as it begins its term of office

Partners

The European Citizens’ Consultations are organised by a group of independent not-for-profit organisations including foundations, NGOs, universities and think-tanks from all EU Member States led by the King Baudouin Foundation (Belgium). The ECC 2009 is co-financed by the European Commission under its “Debate Europe” programme, the King Baudouin Foundation (Belgium), Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy), Robert Bosch Stiftung (Germany), Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden), Suomen Kulttuurirahasto (Finland), Svenska kulturfonden (Finland), OSI Sofia (Bulgaria), Fondation de France, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal), Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation UK, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Pears Foundation (all UK) and ING (Netherlands).

For further information:

Ecas