EU-CIEMBLY: CREATING AN INCLUSIVE EUROPEAN CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY – Project Launch

 We are proud to announce the launch of a new project in the EU and international political sphere, called EU-CIEMBLY: Creating an inclusive European citizens assembly.

The project addresses the need for the introduction of new forms of citizens’ participation and deliberation in EU political life and particularly an EU Citizens’ Assembly whose design and implementation fully addresses issues of intersectionality, inclusiveness, and equality.                    
                   
Deliberative and participatory democracy practices are on the rise across the world. The European Parliament recently recognised in its Report on Citizens’ dialogues and citizens’ participation in the EU decision-making, that existing EU participatory instruments should be improved “and new ones should be developed to make citizens’ participation more accessible, inclusive, meaningful and effective”.                    
                   
 Based on this premise, the EU-CIEMBLY project aims to develop an ambitious foundation for a novel type of pan-EU mini-public, namely a Citizens’ Assembly, that encompasses the qualities of intersectional equality, inclusiveness, and deliberation, in every aspect of its design and operation. The prototype will constitute a new method of democratic deliberation that enhances the participation of disengaged groups, vulnerable persons and deconstructs biases and unwelcoming practices.                    
                   
Although this new prototype will be tailored to the needs and ambitions of the European Union, it will also be applicable to different levels of governance such as national and local democratic spaces, with the necessary adjustments.                    
                   
The project will initially set the framework for the creation of intersectional citizens’ assemblies that present the qualities of inclusiveness, equality, and deliberation; evaluate the effectiveness of existing selected citizens’ assemblies against that framework; pilot model citizens’ assemblies as new methods of democratic participation; and, finally, recommend an EU-level citizens’ assembly prototype that addresses issues of intersectional equality.                    
                   
EU-CIEMBLY is led by the University of Coimbra (Portugal). The consortium comprises of 10 partners from the UK, Spain, Belgium, South Africa, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, France, and Cyprus:                    

  
                                       
The project is funded by the European programme Horizon Europe 2021-2027, under the topic Intersectionality and equality in deliberative and participatory democratic spaces (HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01-07) with a funding of approximately three million euros. It started on the 1st of January 2024 and will be completed at the end of 2028.

For inquiries, please contact the project Co-ordinator Dulce Lopes at geral@ij.uc.pt

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.