Political science student Alisa Wegner (22) from Kassel, Germany, looks intently at a list of migration proposals, neatly arranged on a man-sized panel. Will she soon put a sticker next to proposal 5.1.8.1 to liberalize European migration policy? Or would it rather agree to a plan, comprising eight subsections, to reform the processing of asylum applications?
Last weekend, Wegner gathered with 160 other European citizens in the MECC conference center in Maastricht, together with 23 participants via the screen, to discuss migration and the role of the EU in the world. The conference is part of a European experiment with citizen participation. Wegner puts her sticker next to the proposal on the revision of the asylum procedure. “The Dublin Convention really needs to be renewed,” says the student firmly.
Democratic deficit
Brussels politicians realize that many Europeans think that the EU is far removed from its citizens, and that they have little input. In order to remove this democratic deficit, citizens should be able to participate. There are even calls for citizens’ panels to be permanently added to European decision-making. One of those voices is Guy Verhofstadt present in Maastricht. “The recommendations of the citizens are impossible to ignore,” says the Belgian MEP. Verhofstadt sits on the organizing committee on behalf of Parliament; the presidency is shared with the European Commission and the Member States, united in the European Council.
The lottery determined which citizens were allowed to participate, says Danish Mia Lunding Christensen (28), co-organizer of the conference. “You really have to think about dialing random phone numbers in different area code areas.”
Efforts have been made to achieve a good distribution of citizens by nationality and gender. Only young people are deliberately overrepresented; one third of the citizens drawn is under the age of 25.
Besides Maastricht, there are also regional conferences on the future of Europe in Florence, Warsaw and Dublin. These meetings focus on other themes, such as climate. European citizens were also allowed to express themselves digitally.
Pleasantly surprised with phone call
The citizens present in Maastricht were pleasantly surprised that they had received a phone call asking if they wanted to participate in the conference. “I am a simple man,” says Estonian carpenter Meelis Pikhof (44). Until recently, he did not know much about migration policy, but now he is also fully involved in discussions about the role of the European border security service Frontex, or about member states that push refugees back across the border without the chance of applying for asylum.
Together with eight citizens from Sweden, Poland and Germany, Pikhof sits in the aptly named Brussels room – the conference center spaces are named after European cities – to formulate policy recommendations. Everyone speaks in their own language; everything is translated simultaneously via headphones.
What do we really mean, asks the Polish participant, by ‘The EU should communicate better’? Can’t we make that: ‘The EU should try to actually reach citizens?’ The meeting chairman assures her in Swedish that her amendment will be taken on board. The proposals are projected on a screen. Adaptations are translated into all languages of the attendees.
Like this Northeast European get-together, there are many other rooms where citizens make policy proposals. In the end, all these proposals are glued centrally on panels. If a proposal is to the liking, citizens can put a sticker next to it. The plans with the most stickers are discussed further.
How do citizens decide which proposal to vote for? German student Alisa Wegner: “We first discussed the proposals in a smaller group. Our first criterion was: do we understand what it says? If not, we asked the submitter for more explanation. But some recommendations remained very vague.”
To give the participants some guidance, they were briefed beforehand by experts. Those experts selected by the organization are also available as fact-checkers during the weekend.
Million-euro question
Whether citizens’ proposals ever actually become policy, says a European Parliament employee behind the scenes, is the million dollar question† “Or, rather, the million-euro question.” After the regional sessions such as this one in Maastricht, there will be a plenary session in Strasbourg, where in addition to 108 citizens, hundreds of MEPs and national politicians can also participate in the discussion about the plans that emerged from the conferences.
This procedure also leads to frowning among proponents of more participatory democracy, such as the Belgian writer David Van Reybrouck. He recently spoke in the podcast Café Europe expresses the expectation that the input of the citizens drawn at that big session in Strasbourg will be ‘dismembered by all kinds of interest groups’. He also complained that citizens “have to cover far too many topics, are given far too little time and formulate far too many recommendations”.
Nevertheless, despite the shortcomings he observes, the Belgian is happy that Europe is working on citizen participation. In Brussels, too, they know that democracy is having a hard time. Recently noticed The Economist a “new low for global democracy”: In a ranking of democratic freedoms kept by the British weekly, the autocrats gained ground.
“We have to get the debate outside the Brussels bubble,” said an official of the European Commission present in Maastricht. Citizen participation is seen as a way to renew existing institutions. Belgium’s small German-speaking community is at the forefront of this, and there is plenty of experimentation going on in France too.
On Sunday afternoon, citizens vote on 46 proposals, forty of which achieve the required 70 percent majority. In Strasbourg, there will be a vote on, among other things, promoting the economic development of refugees’ countries of origin. And asylum seekers should be distributed more fairly among the member states, according to the citizens. The German Wegner can be satisfied.
Alisa Wegner (22) and Linnea Fenske (21)
‘Human rights must count in migration policy’
Political science student Alisa Wegner (22, right) from Kassel in Germany hangs out in Maastricht with 21-year-old Linnea Fenske from Berlin, student of social sciences. “You could say that the theme interested us from the start,” says Wegner with a laugh in the coffee corner, where they take a breather after a “bit boring” morning studying proposals.
Fenske: “We agreed that human rights should count more in migration policy.”
Wegner: “I work for Amnesty International, so I knew in advance that pushbacks are not a good idea.”
Fenske: „I did not see any supporters of parties that do think that is a good idea, such as AfD. Perhaps AfD supporters were not comfortable with this conference. I find it very instructive to talk to a Hungarian participant about the information he receives about migration in his own country. There the media is on the side of the government, which is very critical of foreigners. Very different than in Germany.”
Wegner: “I also spoke to someone from Greece. There, of course, they have more experience in dealing with migrants. I hope I can learn something from that.”
Meelis Pikhof (44)
‘Migrants are welcome if they work’
Meelis Pikhof (44) from Estonia is a carpenter. The discussions with his European fellow citizens, he says, can be followed reasonably well through the simultaneous translation into Estonian. “I think I get 80 percent of what is being said. Sometimes the proposals are also very technical. Then I find it difficult to understand.”
The subject that is central in Maastricht, migration, appeals to Pikhof: he himself regularly works in Norway. “I think migrants are welcome in Estonia if they work and pay taxes. Otherwise they can stay away from me.”
For his own interest in Europe, the conference has already done a lot of good, he says. “There is an Estonian MEP who puts a video on YouTube every week showing what he did in Brussels this week. I have been following that faithfully in recent months.”
Indigo Hall (22)
‘Not everyone can come to Europe’
Indigo Hall (22), a ground stewardess and IT student from Gothenburg, Sweden, is happy that she can participate in the discussion about migration. She says it is a theme that interests her very much: as the daughter of an American father and a Swedish mother, she is often mistaken as a migrant herself. “It’s not a problem for me, because I’m a Swedish citizen. But I see around me that migrants have a lot of trouble living in Sweden. The Swedish government is making it very difficult for them.”
Together with the other participants in her working group, she is working on a proposal to receive refugees as much as possible in their own country. “Everyone wants to come to Europe, but that just isn’t possible.”
Portrait photos: Chris Cologne
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