The Travelling Assembly
Towards a permanent Peoples' Assembly for Europe
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 (External link) and full report (External link)]
- Second Assembly moment: 26 November, online [recording (External link)]
- Third Assembly moment: 21-23 February, in Florence [more info (External link) and recording (External link)]
- Fourth Assembly moment: 3 April, online [Recording available to members only, as the session was not public. If you’re an Assembly member and you don’t have it - feel free to reach out to democraticodyssey@gmail.com]
- Fifth Assembly moment: 23-25 May, 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! At a pivotal moment in the history of Europe, 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 plans 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!
Methodology: The Democratic Odyssey’s topic selection process was crowdsourced in spring 2024, from the Democratic Odyssey's Constituent Network (External link) (see the process (External link) here). The above themes are just a starting point. As this journey continues, the randomly selected Assembly Members are to the broad themes and narrow them down to more specific focus areas. These are then taken up in multiple sessions of the Assembly. For more information about the Democratic Odyssey, and to join the project’s Constituent Network check out our website (External link).
The refined Assembly topic
After all the work done in Athens (External link) and the subsequent online assembly moment (External link) (26 November 2024), the 2024/2025 Pilot Assembly adopted a more refined and yet generalisable formulation:
