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If citizens have a voice, who’s listening? Lessons from recent citizen consultation experiments for the European Union
09/07/2009
Author : Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS - Belgium)
By Stephen Boucher
 
Are European Union institutions, as they claim, really listening to citizens thanks to more ‘deliberative’ consultation tools? The European Commission and the European Parliament in particular have committed themselves to engaging in a dialogue with citizens in recent years. But to what effect?

This paper notes how official policies have adopted language borrowed from the deliberative democracy school of thinking, but denounces the lack of clarity in the role assigned to deliberation with citizens in EU policy-making processes. It also invites EU policy-makers to think more critically about recent and future experiments that present themselves as ‘deliberative’. It does so by highlighting areas for improvement in recent initiatives. Finally, it makes a number of recommendations for the future of dialogue with citizens, suggesting in particular the creation of a European Observatory for Democracy and Opinion, as well as a list of criteria to assess the design and role of such activities, and the concentration of efforts on one high-quality, high-impact initiative per year.

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1 COMMENT(S)
  • Re:If citizens have a voice, who’s listening? Lessons from recent citizen consultation experiments for the European Union

This is my second to leave a comment. The last one was refused only moments ago. Not only do they ignore your votes, they ignore your written comment. Now where was I ?
I had mentioned the fact that France and the Netherlands as well as Ireland had said "NO" to what is now the Lisbon Treaty and yet that bunch of hasbeens are going to make Ireland vote again. As has already been said, which part of NO, do the Commission not understand? The N or the O.
As I also said, it would be perfectly legal for all of the working Taxpayers across the whole of the European Union to ignore all demands for the payment of Taxation as long as they change the way the are employed and are paid.
You will find a link at -: http://wwwanthony-flynn.blogspot.com Enough for now.
Regards, ATFlynn.

By Anthony Flynn on 7/10/2009 18:08
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