European Citizens’ Panels

People-powered Politics: the journey through Citizens' Panels

Together, tackling hatred in society

Over three weekends, 150 randomly selected EU citizens engaged in discussions on how to tackle hatred in society. The outcome: Despite a sensitive theme and a risk of strong emotions and divisions, panellists had a constructive and respectful debate. Want to discover how their very personal insights led them to create 21 concrete recommendations to the European Commission?
Watch it here!

Making better use of energy, together

The EU calls you. Do you pick up? When Csenge, Conall, and 148 other randomly selected EU citizens were called upon by the European Commission to discuss Energy Efficiency in Brussels, they took on the challenge. Want to see how their voices contributed to the debate?
Join their journey in the European Citizens’ Panel on Energy Efficiency.

Concluded panels

A New European Budget Panel

On what priorities should the EU budget be spent in the future?
Which types of activities should the EU budget support to help deliver on those priorities?

Tackling Hatred in Society Panel

How can the EU tackling hatred in society?

Energy Efficiency Panel

How can the EU bring benefits of energy efficiency to citizens, public authorities and enterprises?

Learning mobility panel

How can we make opportunities for learning mobility a reality for everyone?

Virtual worlds panel

What vision, principles, and actions should guide the development of desirable and fair virtual worlds?

European Citizens' Food Waste Panel

What actions should be taken by EU Member States, actors in the food supply chain, citizens, and other private and public stakeholders in order to step up the effort to reduce food waste?

What are European Citizens’ Panels?

Citizens' Panels are a regular feature of democratic life in the European Union (EU).

They bring together randomly-selected citizens from all 27 member states to discuss – at European level – key, upcoming proposals that affect us all.

European Citizens’ Panels see participants working together in small groups (each of around 12 people) and all together (in plenaries). A facilitation team provides support. Based on the discussions, citizens make recommendations for the European Commission to consider when defining policies and initiatives.

How does a Citizens’ Panel work?

Session 1
Ideas generation
The goal of the first session is to generate ideas, and to build and group approaches that citizens find most promising for further discussion in subsequent sessions.
Session 2
Review and refinement
The goal of this session is to build on the approaches agreed in the first session and draft initial citizen recommendations. Following an iterative, 'peer review' process, citizens in working groups review and build on each other’s work, adding to the ideas. These constitute the basis for the panel to develop its final recommendations, during the concluding session.
Closing session
Conclusion
The closing session submits the conclusions of debates, together with the panel's recommendations, to the European Commission, as part of the package accompanying the relevant proposals.

How are citizens selected?

Around 150 citizens, randomly selected from the 27 member states
Representing the EU’s diversity - geography (urban/rural), gender, age, education, socioeconomic background, image of the EU
1/3 of participants are young people (16-29 years old)

Participants of Citizens’ Panels are recruited through random selection. To ensure that panels reflect as far as possible the EU’s socio-demographic composition, the process ensures that recruitment is representative.

Target recruitment figures combine data from:

Eurobarometer, the annual European Union public opinion survey, and
Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office.

A quota system ensures a gender-balanced panel, and specifies that young people aged 16-29 represent a third of the panel. Other socio-demographic characteristics we take into account relate to:

education level
geographic location
occupation.

Participants from each Member State are recruited in proportion to its population, while ensuring proportional representation across different groups. To guarantee that even the smallest countries are represented, each Member State has at least two participants. In such cases, it is not possible to reflect all socio-demographic categories within a single country’s delegation, but the diversity of categories is ensured across the panels as a whole.

The selection process is renewed for each new panel.

Recruiting panels that represent diversity is essential to facilitate vibrant discussions and ensure that those discussions reflect a wide variety of perspectives and opinions.