The Travelling Assembly

We believe in the creative power of democracy to address the challenges facing Europe and the world, and that citizens themselves should be at the heart of this story! The 2024/25 pilot Assembly tackles a timely question: 

Reflecting on your experience of recent crises, what needs to change for Europeans to overcome future storms? And, how can we, the people, help better steer the European ship?

The Assembly will first need to chart a course, a direction of travel, and imagine a desirable future for the places where we all live, and where new measures could help...

… to overcome conflict with our European neighbours, 

… to mitigate environmental breakdown while taking care of the refugees it may bring,

… to find agreement on asylum despite disunited views, 

…. to make a common good of food, housing, education and healthcare, taking care of those left behind, 

… to come up with the money needed for these endeavours! 

And last but certainly not least… 

…to bring about a future with you in it, through a European Peoples’ Assembly. Yes, this is an ambitious agenda! 

But politics is, or should be, about negotiating big picture transformations. The future People’s Assembly will not only recommend specific policies and monitor EU institutions. It will also meet on a regular basis to reflect on what crisis may come next, which hard choices and difficult trade-offs will be needed to to overcome them, and what the EU can do to stay on course. This democratic experiment will serve to kick off this process as you set an agenda for the next EU. 

Note: the Democratic Odyssey’s topic selection process was crowdsourced in spring 2024, from the Democratic Odyssey's Constituent Network (see the process here). The above themes are just a starting point. As this journey continues, our vision is that the randomly selected Assembly Members will refine the broad topics down to more specific focus areas. These will then be taken up, in multiple sessions, as the Assembly evolves into a permanent institution. For more information about the Democratic Odyssey, and to join the project’s Constituent Network check out our website.