The Travelling Assembly

Our Timeline

The Democratic Odyssey's pilot for a permanent, travelling Assembly, will follow the below schedule for its 2024/25 process:

•  First Assembly moment: 27-29 September, in Athens [recording and full report]
•  Second Assembly moment: 26 November, online [recording]
•  Third Assembly moment: 21-23 February, in Florence [more info and livestream]
•  Fourth Assembly moment: end of March (to be confirmed), online
•  Fifth Assembly moment: 23-25 May (to be confirmed), in Vienna

Our Topic

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! 

Note: after all the work done in Athens (27-29 September 2024) and the subsequent online assembly moment (26 November 2024), the 2024/2025 Pilot Assembly adopted a more refined and yet generalisable formulation:

A citizens’ agenda in times of crisis: How can we help steer the ship and become effective change makers?

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.