Rome was not built in one day, neither will a European Citizens’ Assembly
Camille Dobler (Missions Publiques) and Antoine Vergne (Missions Publiques)
It has been fascinating to read the different contributions of academics, politicians and practitioners, and to get a glimpse of the potential of marrying the two fields of European Studies and Democratic Innovations. It has been four years already since the Conference on the Future of Europe and we remain puzzled to see how few scientific contributions from either field of research have yet been published. It was, therefore, about time to launch this discussion.
We have the luxury and difficult position to be among the last ones commenting on Kalypso Nicolaidis’ essay opening this forum. As others, we find ourselves in a tricky position as we are both judge and party in this debate, working on the deployment of the European Citizens’ Panels (ECPs) from the Conference on the Future of Europe onwards and participating in the Democratic Odyssey. And while we seek to remain reflexive in our work, we agree with many comments already put forward in this discussion, while remaining fully convinced that the proposal is timely, solid and exciting.
Nicolaidis’ epistemic democracy argument, to mention only one point, is not misplaced. For anyone who has ever witness such processes, there is no denying that European deliberative mini-publics enable Europe’s diversity as a democratic resource beyond both national closure and the “Brussels bubble”. By involving individuals with layered identities – local, regional, national, and transnational – they deliver far better on the demoicratic promise than European elections.
Yet, we also know all too well the design hassles and normative challenges that Nicolaidis’ proposal has to face. Like Jelena Dzankic, we wonder about the risk of exclusion of remote rural areas from an itinerant European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA); like Anthony Zacharzewski, we often have doubts ourselves, wondering if there is a strong-enough public demand for such a radical proposal.
In our contribution, we do not want to repeat the arguments that have already been made but would like to focus on “dezooming” the discussion along three distinctive features of the ECA as proposed by Nicolaidis – translocalism, radical inclusion, and porosity – before concluding with a provocation of our own.
Complementing transnationalism with translocalism
The idea of a translocal assembly as suggested by Nicolaidis operationalises demoicratic theory by grounding European-level deliberation directly in local contexts, effectively decentralising participation. A translocal assembly would not be a permanent institution with a fixed location; instead, it would travel across the Union, meeting in various European cities and communities. This rotating model would deepen its ties to the localities it engages with and has potential to enable a Europe-wide exchange of perspectives while deeply engaging with the specific contexts and values of each locality. This approach respects and integrates local identities within the larger framework of European decision-making. We think such an ECA is a powerful model for a more inclusive, grounded, and agile form of deliberation at the supranational level.
We understand the ECA as only one element within what Azucena Moran and Melisa Ross call wider “ecosystems of engagement”. A forest is composed of thousands of trees, hosting billions of living organisms each. The same should be the case for deliberation. Some critics in this debate stress that deliberative mini-publics can’t reach the larger European maxi publics. This is only true if we consider those exercises as isolated. If we imagine instead a web of deliberation of which the ECA is a part, then we can think in fractal terms. Impact and relevance add up as the Assembly is travelling in Europe. It kickstarts processes in every locality it visits. Partnerships are made, capacity building occurs, local communities build resilience. The ECA even becomes like a circus: people and institutions prepare it, apply for it, celebrate it: “The Assembly is coming!” Like Melisa Ross & Andrea Felicetti, we believe that each visited locality could spin up its own process encouraging more decentralisation and exponential scaling.
Intersubjective representation and radical inclusion
Much has been written in previous comments on the representativity of the sampling for the assembly. We would like to take a more radical approach to this: No sampling ever, no election ever, no market ever is representative of whatever. All selection mechanisms are intersubjective processes. Whether it is 720 (Members of European Parliament) or 800 (randomly selected participants of the ECPs of the Conference on the Future of Europe), it is presumptuous for them to claim being representative of 448 million European inhabitants. In both cases, those numbers are the result of political, normative and logistical decisions.
This being said, we applaud the radical inclusion ethos of an ECA, and we would also argue that inclusion, if radical, should not stop with citizens. Precisely because we share Nicolaidis’ objective of a radically inclusive and holistic European democracy, we would challenge her to break away from “toolbox mentality”, a trap we ourselves too often fall into. In recent years, the trend of citizens’ assemblies and their plethora of design do’s and don’ts have overshadowed other equally stimulating deliberative mechanisms. As Graham Smith and David Owen point out, the composition of an ECA, just like all its design features, should neither mimic existing legislative bodies, nor, in our views, any other local or national citizens’ assembly.
As we observe a (modest) rise in mixed elected officials-citizens institutions, such as mixed deliberative committees, it would be beneficial to see these mixed expert/civil society-citizen-decision-maker initiatives expand and become more sustainable. Why not at the European level too? Can we imagine an ECA in which different categories of actors sit at the same table, rather than adding yet another table to the EU institutional setting? In that respect, we welcome the legacy of the Plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe for the radical inclusion ethos of the ECA, as Nicolaidis does stress the importance of including civil society in this discussion. Yet, we would encourage her to exploit this legacy more fully and be even more radical in her proposal. This is the next frontier: inclusion is also about overcoming Eurocentricity and Anthropocentricity, as Alvaro Oleart and Rainer Bauböck argue.
Complementing institutionalization with “porous” experimentation
A third aspect of Nicolaidis’ proposal that we find particularly intriguing is that an ECA should be both top-down and bottom-up. Contrary to ECPs, which are initiated based on the needs of Commission Policy Directorates and as part of their legislative proposal prerogative and public consultation toolbox, the ECA mandates would not be decided by EU institutions only but also “evolve organically from bottom-up initiatives”, in strong porosity with both the policy and civil society worlds.
We understand the ECA as an agenda-setting body. This is an interesting and stimulating prospect, as the ECA would find its natural role in complementing other instruments for citizen participation available at EU level. However, such an ECA is likely to bring into sharp focus the challenges of gaining influence at the institutional level, especially in shaping European negotiations and policies, as demonstrated by the rather sobering experiences with the European Citizens Initiative, and the long legitimacy struggles of the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Hence the higher the porosity, the stronger the need of “docking” the ECA, which, as conceptualised by GLOCAN, describes “the process of interfacing in a compatible way with existing institutional structures”.
While it is easier to imagine how a translocal ECA would dock to ongoing civil society initiatives and local institutions – Nicolaidis lists for example the European Capital of Democracy Initiative, and local citizens’ assemblies – it is harder to see how such an ECA would fit within already complex inter-institutional relations at EU level. Harder perhaps, but solutions are not out of sight. Nicolaidis’ proposal might be bold in normative terms but does not seem to us to be practically unrealistic.
Many contributors to this discussion are supportive of the idea of an ECA yet remain cautious regarding its docking within existing institutional structures, arguing that we first need a stronger European public sphere and level of public support for, and understanding of the deliberative ethos and citizens’ assembly process. This is the chicken and egg problem: what should come first? The ECA and then support and understanding among the maxi-public, or support and understanding first, and only then the ECA? We find ourselves leaning towards the former option. Our own learnings from advocating for more citizen deliberation at transnational level, first with the World Wide Views on Climate and Energy and later We the Internet, is that proving by showing is most effective, an approach that was also favoured by the 2021 Global Assembly. We do not consider docking an ECA to have either an end or a beginning; it is a process that needs first piloting, improving and institutionalising, aiming precisely at rooting new habits in our political cultures.
Falling forward, from citizens’ juries to an ECA?
We would like to conclude with a provocation of our own: there is no better moment nor better place, at least for now, to experiment with a permanent translocal assembly than in the EU.
Let’s zoom out: the institutionalisation of the European Citizens’ Panels is a case in point. Would we be at such a stage if there had not been the Conference on the Future of Europe and before it the French Climate Convention, the Irish Citizens’ Assemblies, Deliberative Polls, and long before, back in the 1970s, the Citizens’ Juries and Planning Cells? We do not believe so. The pace is already de facto accelerating in a “falling forward” fashion; only five years ago, nobody could have imagined how European Citizens’ Panels would work in practice.
Now, let’s discuss numbers. The budget of the European Parliament is roughly €4 billion per year without the costs of elections to bring it together. A typical general election in France amounts to €300 million. A single Eurofighter jet without maintenance costs is evaluated at €124 million. It is estimated that €900 billion go into road building and maintenance each year globally. €135 billion are spent yearly by governments of the EU to maintain their police forces. There are around 9 billion trips made by train every year in Europe. European citizens spend an average of 1.5 hour a day on social media. That amounts to roughly 70 thousand years of attention every day.
The list could go on forever, but our point is clear: an ECA is not expensive, it is not technically impossible, and it doesnot take too much time. The challenges lie elsewhere: in conformism, our choices and the limits we set. This hinders not only our collective imagination but also our capacity to act and build the infrastructure European democracy needs. Instead of imagining a future where an ECA would have failed to have an impact, we should imagine a future in which participating in an ECA is as natural as jumping in a train. The Eiffel Tower was not built to last and was notoriously hated at first. Now it is being visited by over 2.5 million tourists per year.
Zooming back in: European integration has always suffered, in the absence of a European demos and a European public sphere, from a democratic deficit, and will inevitably continue to do so. It is therefore all too easy to call an ECA a luxury unlikely to have any impact. It does not seem fair to expect ECPs alone to reconnect European citizens with EU politics. This was never their primary objective. Similarly, it would not be fair to expect an ECA alone to foster the emergence of a European public sphere. Together, however, within an ecosystem of engagement, the odds already look more promising. As European political integration deepens, we are eventually faced with a normative necessity to try. But more than that, it is a privilege for the EU to be able to seriously envision the prospect of an ECA, at a time where many global thinkers and promoters of change across the globe lack the financial and political support to do this work. Hence we find ourselves in alignment with Nicolaidis’ call for a more holistic and braver European democracy. We are all the more optimistic as the power of performative politics and academic activism has long shaped the political integration of this continent. There is little to lose and lots to win from piloting, failing, starting again, improving, and institutionalising a European Citizens’ Assembly.