Shaping the EU’s Climate Transition: Citizens take the floor

Today, we have published a new report, “Shaping the EU’s Climate Transition: Citizens take the floor.” The report shares the views and ideas of European citizens on how to make the Climate Transition a just one, during deliberative processes that took place between November 2021 and March 2022.

The priorities and recommendations put forward by citizens included the need for more economic incentives for retrofitting and energy-saving measures that do not leave behind rural dwellers, older people, renters, or low-income households, as well as specific suggestions such as, for example, a “sustainability” label for food.

The results are clear: citizens are ready to commit to the Climate Transition but demand support from EU institutions – through legislation and financial assistance – to make the transition fair for everyone.

Citizen participation is at the core of the European Green Deal, and the Climate Transition will only be successful with the involvement and backing of citizens.  

Putting citizens at the centre of the debate around the EU’s future is also the main goal of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) that run between May 2021 and May 2022. The findings of this short report feed into the work of the CoFoE.

On 29 April 2022, European citizens were invited to share their ideas, concerns, recommendations, and expectations on the Climate Transition with European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans during a live event.

Background

The European Commission (DG Research & Innovation and DG CLIMA) ran two participatory, deliberative processes on sensitive climate issues across Europe. The two projects ran in parallel from November 2021 to March 2022 in different but complementary formats:

• DG R&I organised 27 representative national-level citizen debates – one per Member State – to collect ideas and recommendations. This was part of a project funded through the Horizon 2020  European Green Deal Call for the “elaboration of a roadmap for the climate transition with the active participation of citizens”. 
• DG CLIMA invited citizens across Europe to have semi-structured, self-organised climate debates in familiar environments, so-called Peer Parliaments. As part of the  European Climate Pact, hundreds of private small group deliberations have taken place and their hosts reported the outcomes back to DG CLIMA via a web platform.

The European Commission initiated both processes to identify citizens’ preferences, gather their input and formulate political demands on three crucial climate areas: sustainable mobility, energy transition, and food and consumption. In each area, the goal is to learn about citizens’ concerns, views and recommendations, and the trade-offs they are willing to accept for the climate transition.

More information

Shaping the climate transition: Citizens take the floor

Research and innovation for the European Green Deal