The Conference on the Future of Europe demonstrated that Citizens’ Panels can function as a working instrument of citizen participation in EU policy-making. The European Commission pushed the idea forward and organised the first European Citizens’ Panels on the topics of food waste, virtual worlds, and learning mobility between December 2022 and May 2023.
In this paper, the EU Democracy Reform Observatory team summarise their observations on how the European Citizens’ Panels worked in practice. We outline a set of recommendations to enhance Panels’ effectiveness and make them a better-functioning tool for involving citizens and ultimately supporting EU democracy.
