Democracy: from CoFoE to EU elections 2024 and beyond
The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) proved that deliberative citizen participation can also succeed at the European level. Furthermore, it showed that cities and regions matter for the EU and vice versa. Regions, cities and municipalities are the laboratories of innovative participation mechanisms and the CoR is staying at the forefront of such experiments.
Since local and regional politicians are the closest link to the citizens, they have a crucial role to play in building a legitimate democratic foundation for the European project.
The kick-off event launching the new project was held on 9 March with the participation of over 300 people listening to the project milestones and exchanging on the main challenges and opportunities. Based on these discussions, we are now building a programme to support local and regional politicians in organising participatory mechanisms with their citizens. A call for application of interest is launched, application deadline is 22 May.