Join us in Brussels for ECI Day 2024 on 5 March

Please join us for this year’s ECI Day on 5 March 2024 in Brussels at the EESC, which for the first time is part of the European Civil Society Week, under the theme “Rise up for Democracy”.  Register here before 27 February.

As you can see from the programme and the description of Panel 1, the ECI is in a fundamental crisis due to the EU Commission’s lack of follow-up to successful ECIs. In the last 12 years, no ECI has ever been fully implemented by the EU Commission, and even when the EU Commission promised to fully implement the End the Cage Age ECI in 2023, it turned out that this was not true, which is undermining participatory democracy and presents an unexpected form of democratic backsliding in the EU. We now have to defend democracy on a transnational level with all available means and partners, including the past successful and failed ECIs who will be with us on ECI Day.

This year’s ECI Day promises to be particularly enriching as we will also explore in Panel 2 how ECIs and randomly selected citizens’ assemblies should synergize to strengthen democracy. This session will take place on 5 March from 11-12h30. Invited panelists including Prof. Paul Blokker of Citizens Take Over Europe, Angela Jain of the Bertelsmann Foundation, Prof. Graham Smith and David van Reybrouck, one of Europe’s leading intellectuals and writers, will present their ideas on this important question.