What do we propose to do?

1. Every year Europe’s Peoples’ Forum and its national technical partners would let the citizens online prioritise 3 themes for example among the European Commission’s Annual Working Programme. These European themes will first be the focus of deliberative discussions in online debates and activities in the 27 member states and will be based on the  questions for debate and on a presentation of the theme by civil society organisations working within the same theme but will be balanced with different views and opinions.
2. Through agreements with regional and national public service broadcasters and with involvement of civil society organisations the national technical partners will coordinate the efforts to create online and face-to-face debates about the EU-policy and seen from a perspective from all sides of Europe. Exchange of thematic videos will take place between South, East, North and West to ensure that all interests are taken into consideration in the thematic deliberative dialogues.
3. A thematic national citizens panel with fully representative participation of citizens (demographic, socio-economic and geographic) will during a weekend identify and describe key challenges within their respective theme and outline possible areas for solutions. In this process they will first watch videos from different corners of EU about their local challenges, and the citizens will then deliberate to find common ground.
4. In a systematic process the inputs from the 27 thematic national citizens panels on the definition of challenges and of areas to address to solve the challenges will be brought together and presented for each of 3 thematic European Citizens Panels.
5. Three thematic European Citizens Panels are established with full representativity of the participants. The European panels will receive the inputs from the 27 national citizens panels and during 3 weekends finalise well defined proposals and recommendations that are presented to and considered by the three EU-institutions for possible implementation..
6. During an annual large-scale Europe’s Peoples’ Forum the participants in the thematic European Citizens Panels will present their proposals. Together heir conclusions and the contributions from other European citizen-based initiatives will provide the basis for exciting discussions with politicians and civil servants from Europe’s regions, member states, and the European Institutions will be invited to hear and discuss the strategies and visions. The annual State of the Union speech will take place during the annual forum.

The Research Validation Panel is made up of recognised researchers and research institutions across Europe with specialists within a broad range of themes that can be dealt with by EPF. The Panel is tasked with several important functions for the Europe’s People’s Forum.

The overall goal of EPF is to engage the people in all 27 member states in a debate and development of policy proposals that their representatives can present and discuss with European and national politicians and civil servants. During the process of transforming opinions and visions into policy proposals the Research Validation Panel will  contribute data and analyses that serve to substantiate and synthesise the proposals from the people across Europe.

The Research Validation Panel will further ensure that the final policy proposals presented by the representatives at the Europe’s People’s Forum are well substantiated in a broader analytical and political perspective.