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: Being ready to tackle crises calls for a commitment to maximise democratic competence for all, at all ages, in ways that allow intelligent and empathetic conversations across countries and languages. Learning is the name of the game, so we can all be empowered in advance to be prepared to think and act during crises and involved in collective learning afterwards. Empathy can be learned and practiced collectively in various public spaces and moments. Scenario making ...
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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)
Foresight and future-scanning remains an elite exercise in Europe. Can we imagine the practice to be generalised, before, during and after crises, seeking to reconcile polarizing views and lived experiences of crisis in different contexts, social and geographic? Can we invest in connecting debates across borders?
[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)
Should people learn to anticipate in order to avoid crises or rather to deal with them? Should we emphasise the local or the transnational or both? Some members argued that learning must be embedded in regular community rhythms, through neighborhood dialogues and local assemblies. Others that it should be done through networks of cities. Many argued that we do not have to choose. Some suggest to establish a European School for Citizen Deliberation, ...
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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? (Vienna spirit)
In order to prepare the population for future crises we want to introduce education reform that includes international united guidelines. These include teaching democracy, policy and rights, debating and discussion training, active listening for understanding issues from different perspectives. This should be implemented by/ through national governments, the EU level, People’s Assemblies at the EU level, Neighborhood Assemblies, Civil Society Organization...
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