Transnational participatory Citizens’ Dialogue in The Hague with Ann Mettler, Head of the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), European Commission

The one day event with 120 citizens from Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland took place in the Louwman Museum of The Hague. It was preceded at the eve of the day by a get together in the hotel where people stayed with interactive methods that allowed people to know each other better.

The discussions in the morning focused on three themes – social Europe, digital Europe and global Europe – and people discussed in moderated mixed groups of 10 people what they saw as the biggest challenges. In the last hour of the morning session they were joined by one expert each.

Every table “elected” a speaker who was tasked to put the discussion of the morning into a question/comment that would be asked during the Dialogue. 

The Citizens’ Dialogue with Ann Mettler closed the event in the early afternoon. Ann was going from thematic group to thematic group and got questions from all three themes.

They were in the case of “social Europe” mainly focusing on the fight against poverty and homelessness (and less on employment issues etc.); the discussion of “digital Europe” focused on fake news and disinformation (and not on copyright, the digital single market or the infrastructure); “global Europe” was mainly concentrating on development aid, foreign investment and cooperation with Africa.