Various citizen platforms and self-convened populations met this Tuesday at multiple points in the capital of Santa Cruz to remember the date. In El Cristo they staged a rally.

Sta. Cruz, Feb.21.– The commemoration of the seven years of the constitutional referendum of February 21, 2016, which prevented Evo Morales from running for a new re-election for president, various citizen platforms and self-convened population, met this Tuesday in various points of the capital of Santa Cruz and the country to remember the date.

by Daniela Vancic *

Cologne, Feb.16.– Since 2019, we have reported extensively on the developments around the Conference on the Future of Europe, from our advocacy work with Citizens Take Over Europe to the monitoring of the actual European Citizens’ Panels on the ground. And on January 14th, the next phase of the Conference began: the Parliament for the Future of Europe.

Parliament for the Future of Europe is an EU-funded project coordinated by us at Democracy International that will continue for the next 1.5 years until the 2024 European Parliament elections. The project involves 6 other partner organizations from the 6 EU Member States with the lowest voter turnouts in the last European elections. The goal: to scrutinize the proposals of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) and reshape them to be more inclusive and to better meet the needs of marginalized and underrepresented groups. 

Rewind back to the fall of 2021: the European Citizens’ Panels just launched, and one of the top civil society criticisms of the process was the lack of inclusiveness. While the European Citizens’ Panels, in theory, should be a mirror of European society due to the nature of the sortition process of citizens’ assemblies, those underrepresented groups in traditional political participation practices remained underrepresented in the European Citizens’ Panels. This is especially concerning when discussing topics like migration, where those who would be most affected by EU migration policy could not be seen in the room.