Democratic Society aisbl
Demsoc
Democratic Society is a network of people working to create a democracy that works for the 21st century.
ID: 420209952503-54
Lobbying Activity
Response to Policy agenda for cities
26 May 2025
Although the city agenda is broad, this response focuses on our principal area of work, democratic innovation and governance reform. In this context, and through our work with cities across Europe, we have seen that the EU acts both a guarantor for democratic and citizen rights, and a supporter of innovative action at city level, for instance through the Cities Mission. The future cities agenda should build further on these strengths. The idea of streamlining support is welcome, but must be delivered in ways that respect local democracy and support civic society, rather than concentrating power over local funding choices at national or European levels. Specifically, we would encourage the Commission to consider: * Ensuring a proper role for local democracy in the proposed Democracy Shield, recognising that democracy is most closely felt at local level, and needs to be strengthened and developed there. This should involve support for local civic and democratic action. In particular, a resilience and democracy element to cohesion funding (in allocation and in operation) would give practical and symbolic support to democracy where people experience it most closely. * Initiatives that support open and persistent social infrastructure at city level. Often, democratic initiatives run by city councils and others have a limited life span, are tied to the organisation that commissions them, and spend much energy and money building up audiences and recruiting participants, which is then wasted when initiatives close. Supporting the creation of an open social infrastructure for democracy, through which all local public services could engage citizens, and which can be a stable actor in multi-level democracy initiatives (see later) will both reduce the cost of democratic action and bring more consistency to people's democratic experiences in their cities. Such initiatives could be a focus of Horizon or other research funds in the initial phase of the strategy, with funding to roll out tested approaches later, in partnership with supportive regional or national government. * The "end of the web" combined with increasing distrust of media are likely to make local and human connection ever more important for the sharing and validation of information essential to citizens' democratic lives. The proposed city initiative should recognise and strengthen the capacity of local networks of media and citizens to support citizens with trusted and true information. * The huge range and variety of citizen participation and democracy activism at city level is a strength for the EU, but is often hard to see from the Union level. Decision making in the city agenda and much more broadly can benefit from "multi-level democracy" approaches, where trusted city-based participation in multiple places is connected upstream and down into national and European policy making, and where resources are made available for European participation initiatives to be increasingly visible at city level.
Read full response