Summary of the DG REGIO Peer2Peer Community on Citizen Participation meeting

The international online meeting with a workshop format was held on October 2. The meeting was attended by 30 people from almost 15 EU countries.

Previous results from a survey of this community members indicated that the main topics of interest were digital tools to support citizen participation in the management of public programs and issues related to youth engagement.

The current state of technology development (CivTech) was presented by Tomáš Rakos from Participation Factory (Czech Republic). He focused on digital tools that can be used by public authorities to increase citizen participation in decision-making processes. The presentation included examples of innovative applications and platforms that help engage citizens at the local and regional level. Tomáš Rakos also indicated how these technologies can support youth in actively participate in public governance programs.

Paweł Engel from the Centre for EU Transport Projects and other speakers, including Simone Cafieri from the Italian National Institute of Statistics, discussed different approaches to involving citizens, with a particular focus on young people and children, in the data collection process. The representative of CEUTP talked about the experience of organizing a panel with the participation of children and youth during the conference Children and seniors in public transport – a task for European Funds for Infrastructure, Climate, Environment 2021-2027. By organizing this panel, we wanted to show that the opinion of children is extremely important when designing transport. Transport designers and organizers should  take into account the opinions of young travelers.

Sara Pane from the Universities of Rome and Turin (Italy) presented the topic of citizen monitoring as a tool for strengthening European identity. In her presentation, she discussed how citizens’ initiatives, such as the monitoring of EU-funded projects, can contribute to building a sense of community and unity in Europe. This demonstrated how such activities support communication about the benefits of European projects and strengthen citizens’ trust in the European institutions.

Participants discussed how different age groups can work together to improve public services by actively participating in the provision of data.

After the end of each presentation, the participants had the opportunity to ask questions to the speakers. The Q&A session clarified the details of digital tools and methods of engaging citizens, in particular children and young people. Participants asked, among other things, about specific examples of how technology is being used in different regions and about the challenges of involving young people in civic projects.

The next meeting of the DG REGIO Peer2Peer community on public participation is planned to be held later this year.

The meeting was chaired by Ondrej Seban, Director of Strategy, PwC (Slovakia).