Online presentation “Deliberative Forms of Civil Participation at Local Level”
The engagement of citizens in the political decision-making is a core element of active democracy in municipalities. Among the different forms of participation and engagement of citizens, throughout Europe there is an increasing development of deliberative formats of participation, such as the Citizens’ Assembly.
To introduce the concept of the Citizens’ Assemblies in general and to give an overview of how the process is conducted, the Council of Europe organized, jointly with the Center for Blue Democracy from Poland, the online event “Deliberative Forms of Civil Participation at Local Level“.
During the event, a methodology for organising a Citizens’ Assembly was presented and challenges and opportunities of such a model, in particular in the Georgian context, discussed.
“It is crucial to establish and develop forms of participatory democracy in order to have a correlation between what citizens expect and what their political representatives decide”– said Daniel Popescu, the Head of Democracy and Governance Department of the Council of Europe in his opening speech.
The event gathered around 90 representatives from local authorities and civil society organisations from 34 municipalities of Georgia, as well as experts, representatives of the Public Defender's Office and the National Association of Local Authorities of Georgia. The participants showed high interest towards the topic of deliberative democracy and the Citizens’ Assembly as a civil participation form, some expressing even readiness to pilot the model in a near future.
„I believe that this methodology will have an added value to the existing active or passive instruments recognised in Georgia” mentioned in her feedback the representative of the Ozurgeti Municipality City Assembly, Nana Tavdumadze.Also the director of the NGO Tkibuli District Development Fund, Zaza Gochelashvili, stressed in a comment “This methodology provides a ground for large-scale and quality citizen participation in the decision-making process at the local level”.
The event was organised in the framework of the Project “Strengthening Participatory Democracy and Human Rights at Local Level in Georgia” run by the Council of Europe with the financial contribution of the Austrian Development Cooperation within the Council of Europe’s Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023. The project aims to strengthen institutional frameworks for citizen participation, support local authorities and their national association in their efforts to protect and promote human rights and enhance civil society organisations to have real impact on local decision making.
