At the end of September, we were present at the last R&I Days, along with other EU projects and citizen engagement experts, to discuss how co-designing & involving citizens in EU missions can lead to a European collective intelligence.

The fruitful discussion covered the need for co-designing European policies and especially involving citizens in all areas of work. Citizens engagement is particularly important to reinforce democracy in times of populism and fake news.

Several areas have been identified, where changes or reinforcements would be needed in citizen engagement:

• Rural areas: citizens should have more opportunities to get involved;
• Promote a bigger solidarity between generations;
• More engagement possibilities should be given to individual citizens, not just to organisations
• Ensure a long-term conversation with participants, as opposed to single events
• Young people’s inputs and engagement should get a special focus

The Citizen engagement process has been identified:

Information –> Knowledge –> Mobilisation –> Action –> Commitment –> Accountability

Representants from the European commission shared their future plans and challenges:

• A communication will be made in December 2020 on the uptake of the missions and how citizens will be a part of the solution
• Citizen engagement should be promoted throughout all stages of policymaking – from design to implementation and monitoring
• Government structures should be holding a long-term conversation with citizens
• Citizens should be made confident tat they are being heard, by using deliberative and participatory democracy
• A particular attention should be made to science communication.