This project is about citizen participation in EU politics on a broad scale and across borders. We are happy to announce that 36 EU politicians from six countries and five parties are participating this year. Among them are Martin Schirdewan, chair of the Left Group in the European Parliament, Nicola Beer, member of the Renew Group, Othmar Karas, Austrian MEP of the EPP Group, and Vice-Chair of the Committee on Fiscal Affairs and Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, French MEP from the Greens.
This is how it works:
We provide supportive information to citizens who then invite friends and family to discuss a certain topic among themselves, in a private and familiar setting. These private conversations take place in different countries across the EU. After these conversations took place, we collect the results, analyze them and prepare a short report. This report will be handed over to politicians, who respond to the report and the questions to be discussed.
This way, we make citizen participation fun and we create a dialogue between citizens and politicians. This happens across European borders. Creating the link to decision-makers in Brussels lets citizens feel involved in EU politics and politicians get informed about citizens’ interests. On top of that, European HomeParliaments are a tool for a transnational dialogue. A European HomeParliament can take place across countries, via video conference. Beyond that, Participants will be confronted with the reactions of politicians in different countries and thus learn about different perspectives.
Find more information here: https://homeparliaments.eu/en/
We are looking for organizations who want to collaborate with us on this project. We can offer space on our external communication and are open to collaboration beyond that. To make this happen, we are only looking for support in external communications.
On the most basic level, we would be happy to share our Social Media posts with you, which you can then publish on your channels. We will also provide content for mailings.
EU politics needs citizen participation. Voter turnout in EU elections is usually low, many people know little about EU politics, and what is even worse, they believe, it doesn’t concern them. Additionally, national perspectives dominate the regional narratives leaving little room for collaboration on the European level. To generate large-scale citizen participation, it has to be fun and simple: the threshold to participate has to be low. In the European HomeParliaments people can participate at home and with their friends, contributing with a lively and constructive debate to decision-making in Brussels. The European element in the project contributes to international understanding among citizens. Most importantly, we make sure, the citizens’ debates influence European politics.
