Die reisende Versammlung

[Please note this latest version was made public on 25 May 2025, after the final meeting of the 2024/25 pilot Assembly]

A Citizens' Charter to Revitalise Democracy in Europe by Navigating Future Crises Together

Our world is changing dramatically! We see profound transformations in our planetary climate, our geopolitics, financial systems, as well as our societies, technologies, cultures.  

It is not hard to imagine more future crises, from natural disasters to pandemics, to the crises that will define our collective destiny, climate meltdown, the dismantling of the welfare state, rampant corruption, the disruption of social ties, booming precarity, discrimination and inequality. Europeans are confronting the spectre of war.

The Assembly members of the Democratic Odyssey believe that Europeans have learned a lot through crises, but that we can do better. We call European publics, politicians, civil servants and institutions to take a leap of faith with us. 

We must, we can, better navigate through these turbulent times. We must do so democratically. Together, authorities and citizens must envision the crises of the future, avoid them where possible and address them where necessary. The key: prepare, prepare, prepare. Together we must learn from them, learn from our mistakes and success. Use our collective intelligence to consider what is to be done now to tackle future crises. 

Let’s always ask not only who already has the power but who should have it. Meaningful action is also in the hands of societies. Whether they act in times of emergency or in normal times, it is in the interest of elected officials to tap into peoples’ real-life experiences, often the best expertise around. But smart action and decisions depend on widely accessible democratic competence.  

The Democratic Odyssey, a randomly selected people’s assembly of 300 people from across Europe and from every walk of life and background, have come together for a year to design changes to our democratic landscape that stem from the conviction that citizens need to be involved in the making of the decisions that impact their lives. In our understanding, everyone living in Europe is a citizen and has political agency and responsibility for our collective future. Travelling from Athens to Florence and Vienna, we engaged in deliberation, story-telling, immersive theater or future envisioning, to generate ideas on what needs to change in Europe to democratise our futures.  

Can the democratic ideal be reborn? We invite all citizens to reimagine democratic participation beyond elections as translocal, multi-generational, grounded in care for common goods and in symbiosis with non-human life, embedded in every aspect of our lives, from the family to the school, workplace and public services, as well as every level of government. If this were to happen, people would engineer their own democratic resilience before, during and after a crisis, and learn in the process to rely together on democratic foresight.

Our Charter lays out ten pathways to navigate towards this horizon. It acknowledges that crises can affect everyone, anywhere but in different ways. Nevertheless, broad principles can be shared to create a more participatory democratic world across our continent and beyond.

The "Ten Democratic Pathways towards Crisis Resilience"

1. 'Being involved is also our responsibility as citizens!'

2. “Our Money, our Choice!” 

3. 'Nothing About Us Without Us'

4. 'Educate to Anticipate'

5. 'Collectivity and self-organization are our power'

6. ‘If People relocate, democracy must follow’

7. ‘Transparency is non-negotiable’

8. 'Care is at the heart of democracy’

9. 'Harness Technology, unleash collective intelligence'

10. 'Not everything has been invented yet'

All Pathways are structured as follows:

• Principle - the guiding vision for this pathway
• Change? The question of what needs to be kept, eliminated, or imagined anew (Athens output)
• Tensions? The difficult conversations or tradeoffs and dissenting opinions raised by this principle (Florence output)
• Steps? How do we get there? What are plausible scenarios? dream scenarios? Opportunities to grab on the way? what we must guard again? (Vienna output)