The Travelling Assembly
Towards a permanent Peoples' Assembly for Europe
[Please note this latest version was made public on 25 May 2025, after the final meeting (External link) 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)
[Please note this latest version was made public on 25 May 2025, after the final meeting (External link) of the 2024/25 pilot Assembly]
Principle: Spending of public money should be decided with the participation of the people, to ensure that everyone is taken into account, to limit the influence of special interests, to mobilise collective intelligence, cultivate learning, and build trust. Participatory budgeting has been tested in many places, now it should become mainstream across Europe at all levels including whether to spend or to tax. It is important to receive and implement public feedback on how to ra...
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[Please note this latest version was made public on 25 May 2025, after the final meeting (External link) of the 2024/25 pilot Assembly]
Change? (Athens spirit)
The assembly discussed some useful examples of deliberative efforts regarding budgets around the world, especially at the local level. Now even the EU is consulting on how to spend its 2 trillion euro budget. But this exercise is limited, many aspects are not debated, and, after the fact, people are unaware of where the money goes and which purpose different budget allocations serve.
[Please note this latest version was made public on 25 May 2025, after the final meeting (External link) of the 2024/25 pilot Assembly]
Tensions? (Florence spirit)
Some dissenting voices fear this will create social conflict. Budgets give rise to conflict, as people perceive that if one group is powerful, it can take away resources from other groups. But others feel that budgets are not necessarily zero-sum.There are ways to generate more ressources. Many say that it is their own money and they should decide on how to allocate spending as long as they consider tradeoffs. Should consultations take the form of ad...
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[Please note this latest version was made public on 25 May 2025, after the final meeting (External link) of the 2024/25 pilot Assembly]
Steps?
We recommend concrete actions in four areas:
- Education: People need the tools for a better understanding of public finances. Therefore, educational systems need to integrate classes on public budgets in school curriculums and offer voluntary courses for adults (both online and offline). These should include gamified approaches and also be integrated in people’s workplaces.
- Information: People need to be better informed about budget spending. This includes online platforms ...
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