Evaluating the conference on the future of Europe : inclusiveness and deliberative quality of the European citizens’ panels

Abstract

This working paper offers a critical assessment of the first generation of European Citizens’ Panels (ECPs) organized as part of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) in Autumn 2021 and Winter 2022. Building on direct observation of the Panel 2 “European Democracy/Values and Rights, Rule of Law, Security”, it focuses on three key issues in deliberative democracy experiments: the inclusiveness and representativeness of citizens’ assemblies, the epistemic value of ECPs, and the quality of citizens’ deliberation. The paper first shows that the attitudinal representativeness of the ECP was limited by the absence of selection criteria linked to the adherence to, or the rejection of, the EU. As a result, the panels seemed uniform, and they gave a partial image of the citizens concerned and affected by the future of Europe. Second, it argues that inclusiveness depends largely on equal access to the knowledge and information required to feel legitimate to deliberate. In order to better include social categories that participate the least, the paper emphasizes the necessity of granting ordinary citizens basic information regarding the EU’s functioning to limit and counterbalance the effects of inequality at the start of the process. Ultimately, the paper concludes that as a consequence of this lack of inclusiveness, and limited briefing information, the cognitive and epistemic level of the ECP remained low.