22/06/2021 Political Affairs and Democracy
In order to respond to the urgency of the climate crisis, governments need to combine “a clear political engagement and top-down leadership” that allows for meaningful contributions from citizens, according to the Political Affairs Committee, meeting in Strasbourg and by videoconference.
The report by George Papandreou (Greece, SOC), adopted by the committee, stresses that citizens' assemblies, in particular, represent a way to “tap into collective wisdom, restore trust in politics and allow citizens to reclaim the public space which has been taken over by social media”, while informing the public authorities about their preferences, which remains essential in a participatory democracy.
To be credible, these citizens' assemblies should base their work on evidence, perspectives and different forms of knowledge, without being dominated by power, money or partisan logics, the parliamentarians stressed. To reduce the influence of lobbies, citizens should be selected randomly, considering all age groups, qualification levels, socio-economic differences and geographical distribution, the committee said.
It also called for co-operation with the scientific community to reach science-based decisions. It is important to open the citizens' assemblies to a wide range of stakeholders, including NGOs (especially youth NGOs), industry and environmental activists, it added. Ultimately, decision-makers need to incorporate these proposals into the policy process, including through parliamentary committees.
The committee said these future citizens' assemblies should go further and “address the underlying drivers of the climate emergency”. This means sharing with citizens the most pre-eminent forecasts on climate impacts, and designing procedures on key decisions, agenda-setting, expert selection and voting, the adopted text says.
Finally, the committee proposed that the Committee of Ministers, in co-operation with the EU, set up a European-wide “Citizens' Assembly for Climate and the future of Europe”, and to discuss this proposal at the next World Forum for Democracy (8-10 November 2021).