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Digital Democracy Day 2018 – Crowdsourcing EU Legislation: Taking Decisions With EU Citizens and Not For Them!

28 February 2018

On February 27th, ECAS held its fourth Digital Democracy Day. Despite the cold weather and the national strike the event was a great success: a big thank you to all those who attended or followed us on the livestream!

Digital Democracy Day 2018: Crowdsourcing EU Legislation: Taking Decisions With EU Citizens and Not For Them! was organised in the framework of the EUCROWD project, under the Europe for Citizens programme of the European Commission. EU CROWD aims at fostering citizens’ understanding of the EU’s policy-making process and encourage democratic engagement by establishing a framework for an EU level pilot of crowdsourcing on the future of Europe.

The first panel of the event gave an overview of insightful international crowdsourcing practices from the project partners, conclusions from conferences in Europe. The second panel provided recommendations on the most suitable policies to be crowdsourced at EU level, which led to a discussion on ways in which policymakers can help.

“Political will has to be there to back up the crowdsourcing experience” said Elisa Lironi, Digital Democracy Manager at ECAS.

Crowdsourcing allows people to participate in debates in a constructive way and to learn from each other throughout the deliberation process (“Wisdom of the crowd” principle). Examples at national level, have been verified and analysed, however much more is in order if one is to establish a draft pilot at EU level.

Read the full report from the event here
Watch the livestream of the event: First Panel and Second Panel, and the final interviews
View the agenda of the event here.
Read the news article here.
View more photos here.
Find out more about our Digital Democracy focus area.