This case study provides insights from the experiences of 11 pilot territories across 7 European countries that experimented with and institutionalised citizen participation in the management of investment policies for territorial development. The pilot projects, implemented with the technical support of the OECD, demonstrate how citizen participation can be relevant and meaningful at all stages of the policy cycle. The case study also highlights lessons learned in implementing the pilot projects and suggests priorities moving forward.
Implementing citizen participation at all stages of the EU Cohesion Policy cycle
Abstract
The OECD defines citizen and stakeholder participation as “all the ways in which stakeholders, including individual citizens, can be involved in the policy cycle and in service design and delivery” (OECD, 2017[1]). Citizen participation allows governments to deliver more effective policies while reinforcing citizens’ trust (OECD, 2022[2]). The results of the 2023 OECD Trust Survey demonstrate that providing meaningful opportunities for citizens to voice their opinions is the government action with the highest potential to strengthen citizens’ trust, especially at the local level (OECD, 2024[3]). These opportunities can be implemented at all stages of the policy cycle, in all branches of government, and at all levels of governance (OECD, 2025[4]).
Citizen participation is also a strategic priority for the European Union. In 2023, the European Commission published a Recommendation (European Commission, 2023[5]) to promote the engagement and effective participation of citizens and civil society organisations in public policymaking processes. The European Commission, Parliament and Council launched a series of Citizens’ Panels (e.g. European Citizens’ Panel on Energy Efficiency) (European Commission, 2025[6]), as well as the Conference on the Future of Europe, between 2021 and 2022, to deliberate on EU priorities (European Commission, 2024[7]). These panels highlighted fostering participation as a critical aspect to shape future policies.
The European Cohesion Policy, the main investment policy of the European Union, seeks to improve economic, social and territorial cohesion within and across EU Member States. The Cohesion Policy cycle aligns with the EU Multiannual Financial Framework, covering seven years. The ongoing Cohesion Policy 2021-2027 has a budget of 392 billion euros, accounting for almost one-third of the total EU budget (European Commission, 2025[8]). The policy instruments adopted to achieve the Cohesion Policy’s objectives are the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund+ (ESF+), the Cohesion Fund and the Just Transition Fund (JTF). At the EU level, Cohesion Policy is co-ordinated by the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO).
Among the principles underpinning the Cohesion Policy, the Partnership Principle implies close co-operation among the Commission; the authorities at national, regional and local level in the Member States; and other governmental and non-governmental organisations and bodies in the use of Cohesion Policy Instruments (European Commission, 2021[9]). Since 2020, the OECD has partnered with DG REGIO to deepen and expand the implementation of the Partnership Principle by equipping regional and local authorities with capacities and methods to engage with individual citizens and stakeholders at all stages of the Cohesion Policy cycle.
The project “Innovative Implementation of the Partnership Principle in Cohesion Policy” consists of 11 pilot initiatives with local governments from 7 European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Spain) implemented between 2021 and 2025. The OECD provided technical assistance to regional and local authorities to experiment with and institutionalise citizen participation processes to inform the management of Cohesion Policy instruments. The project sought to:
Equip local public administrations with structures, practices and skills to better understand citizens’ needs when implementing EU Cohesion Policy and other policies.
Increase awareness among citizens of the role played by the European Union in the development of their territory: only about 4 in 10 people report having heard about EU co-financed projects to improve the area where they live (DG REGIO, 2023[10]).
Improve the outcomes of Cohesion Policy investments at the local level by better understanding citizens’ needs and priorities.
The 11 pilot projects covered a variety of policy areas within the scope of the Cohesion Policy, such as transport and infrastructure, sustainable development, employment, education, cultural heritage and tourism. The OECD supported all territories involved in the design of a citizen participation process adapted to the policy area and the stage of the policy cycle. Table 1 provides a summary of the 11 pilots by stage of the policy cycle, participation output, and engagement method.
Summary of citizen participation processes implemented in the pilot experiences of the “Innovative Implementation of the Partnership Principle in Cohesion Policy” project.
Note: This table is exclusively based on the experience collected through the project and does not constitute a comprehensive analysis of relevant citizen participatory processes at all stages of the policy cycle.
Source: Author’s own elaboration.
Engaging with citizens in the early stages of the policy cycle helps align policy priorities to citizens’ real needs (OECD, 2022[2]) and increase public acceptability (OECD, 2025[11]). Citizen participation processes, such as public consultations, offer a channel for citizens to submit input, proposals, and comments on draft policy documents. More advanced engagement methods, such as open innovation and representative deliberative processes, allow citizens to learn about the policy issues at stake, share their experience, form their own opinion and propose more refined and collectively agreed upon project ideas and policy recommendations. Representative deliberative processes1 are particularly suitable for addressing complex policy issues requiring trade-offs, long-term issues, and ethical or value-based decisions (OECD, 2020[12]). Participants are selected through sortition to represent the broader society and given the time to learn, discuss, and reach consensus.
Among the 11 pilot initiatives, several relate to the agenda setting stage of the policy cycle:
In 2021, the government of Cantabria in Spain organised the Citizens’ Jury of the Besaya Basin (“Besaya Delibera”), a representative deliberative process to ensure that local development investments for the green transition preserve employment and promote upskilling and reskilling. The 35 jury members deliberated on the question “How to take advantage of European green funds in the Besaya basin to create and/or maintain jobs that respect the criteria of a just and inclusive ecological transition?” The jury produced 26 final recommendations that all received at least 80% approval among the members (European Commission, 2022[13]).
In 2023, the city of Banská Bystrica in Slovak Republic, together with the civil society organisation (CSO) Dialogue Centre, organised a multi-stage, hybrid participatory process (“Ideathon”) to collect citizens’ ideas for the Integrated Territorial Strategy (ITS), the policy document that collates the projects funded through the ERDF. The Ideathon included a full day of in-person activities with 24 participants, a public consultation, and an online voting process open to the entire city to select the ideas to include in the ITS (Gabadou, 2023[14]).
Between 2023 and 2024, the Upper Silesian and Zagłębie Metropolis (GZM) in Poland partnered with the Centre for European Transport in Poland (CUTP) and with the CSO FADO to design a multi-stage participatory process to rethink the metropolitan transport system with citizens to promote sustainable mobility. The project had a strong focus on including people with disability. An initial online survey with 421 responses allowed GZM to collect data on the commuting behaviours and priorities of residents. GZM also organised 12 research walks in small groups around future stations of the Metropolitan railway network and conducted workshops with students and professors of architecture and urban design. The findings of both activities created the knowledge base for the Citizens’ Forum on Transport, a representative deliberative process with 42 citizens that formulated recommendations to respond to the question “How to design a railway for good transfers in the Upper Silesian Metropolis?” (Gabadou, 2024[15]).
In 2024, the government of Catalunya in Spain organised Parlem de pr€ssuposto, a hybrid participatory process to involve citizens and targeted groups (students and experts) in informing the government’s budget law along four axes of discussion -- debt reduction paths, creating fiscal space, political priorities for expenditure, priorities for the use of EU Cohesion Funds). The process included an online consultation and multiple in-person sessions in different locations, either open to interested citizens or targeting selected groups (students aged 11 to 15, university students and experts from think tanks) (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2024[16]).
In 2025, the Normandy Region in France, together with the CSO Relais Culture Europe, implemented a representative deliberative assembly (“Citizen Forum”) focusing on citizens’ criteria to finance of cultural spaces and cultural projects (Région Normandie, 2025[17]). Participants presented 13 recommendations grouped in 5 pillars to the Regional Councillor in charge of culture. The region will enforce the “citizen’s right to follow-up” at the end of 2026, providing information on the implementation of the recommendations.
While the agenda-setting and decision-making phases define the strategic orientations and priorities, the policy implementation phase constitutes the fine-tuning and executive planning step of policymaking. This phase represents a meaningful opportunity for policymakers to harness local knowledge and meet citizens’ needs in the shaping of, for example, individual projects within broader strategies. Engaging citizens in the implementation phase also supports the continuous improvement of policies and greater connection and integration across existing policies. Several of the 11 pilot initiatives focused on the implementation stage of the policy cycle:
The regional government of Emilia-Romagna in Italy organised Students’ Assemblies targeting high school students to shape local Innovation Hubs, one of the projects included in the Strategy for Inner and Mountain Areas funded through the ERDF. The project involved four classes of the two local high schools and consisted of four days of workshops held between November 2022 and March 2023 and animated by the CSO Bangherang, specialized in non-formal education methods (Cibrario, 2025[18]).
In 2024, The Government of Cantabria in Spain partnered with the Chamber of Commerce of Torrelavega and the Santander International Entrepreneurship Center (CISE) to organise Besaya Europa Plus. Building on the results of Besaya Delibera (OECD, 2022[19]), this initiative consisted of a participatory process involving 40 job seekers and employed citizens to deepen and transform the Citizens’ Jury recommendations upskilling and reskilling opportunities for a fair and inclusive green transition into actionable insights for the regional government.
In 2024, the city of Ramnicu Valcea in Romania and the CSO Valcea Community Foundation organised the Citizen Jury on Urban Mobility, a representative deliberative process with 20 participants to rethink urban mobility in the city to favor the uptake of the new EU-funded bus fleet, thus reducing traffic congestion. The Jurors’ recommendations highlighted the need for an integrated approach that involves different departments of the government of the city, such as mobility and transport, infrastructure, green spaces, and communication (Mejia Galvan, 2024[20]).
In 2025, the South Muntenia Regional Development Agency (SMRDA) in Romania and the National Union of Romanian County Councils (NURCC) will hold the Local Dialogues, a hybrid participatory process involving citizens and experts in in-person workshops and online consultations to enrich and adjust the projects in the Integrated Territorial Strategies. The County of Dambovita will serve as a testing ground before expanding the methodology to the other 13 Counties of the Region.
Involving citizens in the active monitoring of project implementation allows governments to expand their monitoring capacity and to benefit from the citizens’ perspective. This participatory method can also serve as a vertical or social accountability tool, allowing citizens and stakeholders to hold public authorities accountable for their decisions or actions. The following initiatives focused on the monitoring stage of the policy cycle:
The ERDF Managing Authority of Italy’s Lazio region partnered with the regional branch of the Italian Association of Municipalities (ANCI Lazio) and the CSO Monithon Europe to design and implement a civic monitoring process of the Territorial Strategies of four municipalities (Latina, Rieti, Frosinone and Viterbo) funded through the ERDF. The civic monitoring process adopted the Monithon method to train local civil society entities to draft accurate and actionable civic monitoring reports. In total, Monithon collected 17 highly qualitative civic monitoring reports on 14 projects included in the Territorial Strategies. The reports contributed to an evidence-based discussion with municipalities to adjust, complement, or better connect the implementation of projects with other strategies, policies, or interventions (Cibrario, 2025[21]; Reggi, 2025[22]; Lazio Europa, 2025[23]).
Citizen participation requires adequate frameworks, structures, skills, and resources. Building these capacities within governments helps ensure the sustainability and consistency of citizen participation practices over time. As part of the project, the OECD has supported initiatives to strengthen capacities in citizen participation:
The Brussels Region in Belgium and the organisation Métrolab sought to embed citizen participation in the evaluation criteria and monitoring indicators of ERDF-funded urban development projects. The pilot aimed to generate evidence-based insights by analysing accepted and rejected projects from the ongoing and previous Cohesion Policy cycles, as by applying two tailored methodologies designed by Métrolab for citizen participation in urban development projects.
To improve its participation practices, particularly in infrastructure projects and by involving underrepresented groups, the Marshal’s Office of the Silesian Voivodeship in Poland developed a Roadmap analysing existing practices and proposing an action plan based on international best practices and interventions tailored to the local context.
The 11 pilots of the “Innovative Implementation of the Partnership Principle in Cohesion Policy” project demonstrate that citizen participation creates significant opportunities for local governments to improve their capacity in delivering policies in line with citizens’ needs and priorities, while raising awareness of the role of the European Union in promoting local development. To unlock these benefits, participation processes must be tailored to the specific phase of the policy cycle in which they intervene, setting relevant and realistic expectations for citizens. By creating a safe space for experimentation, the project also allowed the OECD and DG REGIO to observe which factors and conditions lead to the successful implementation of citizen participation processes as well as the persistent challenges that remain when seeking to scale and mainstream these practices.
A qualitative comparison of all concluded pilot projects highlights several positive results, such as:
Pioneer initiatives: the project created the space to implement deliberative processes for the first time in new countries (Romania) or at new levels of government (GZM - Poland, Cantabria - Spain, Normandy - France).
Participation of underheard groups: pilots successfully involved young people (Emilia-Romagna) and people with disabilities (GZM – Poland and Silesia, Poland), allowing governments to better shape their policies to meet specific needs.
A culture of participation and new skills in local public administrations: territories developed new capabilities and started embedding participation in their approach to future policies (Cantabria - Spain, SMRDA – Romania, Brussels Region - Belgium, Silesia and GZM - Poland), while others built digital infrastructures for participation that can be re-used in future processes (Banská Bystrica – Slovak Republic, SMRDA - Romania).
A culture of participation and new skills in CSOs and partner organisations: although most of the CSOs involved had expertise in community engagement, the project allowed them to build new skills on citizen participation and deliberation (Valcea Community Foundation, Relais Culture Europe, Bangherang, ANCI Lazio, NURCC). Partner organisations such as CUTP and the Chamber of Commerce of Torrelavega are now institutionalizing their capacities to implement participatory practices in future projects.
Inputs and insights for more effective policymaking in line with citizens’ needs: thanks to citizens’ inputs, recommendations and contributions, all local governments involved benefitted from the citizens’ perspective and insights to better align policies with real needs. For example, in Latina (Lazio, Italy), the insights from the civic monitoring report informed the executive planning of projects.2 The City Council of Ramnicu Valcea (Romania) committed to report on the implementation of the recommendations a year after the end of the Citizen Jury.
Network of champions of citizen participation in the Cohesion Policy: the OECD and DG REGIO organised in person activities to bring together all project teams involved, allowing for the identification of synergies, highlighting common challenges, and building a network of citizen participation “champions” that is now disseminating experiences and lessons learned among the broader community of Managing Authorities and Beneficiaries of Cohesion Policy instruments.
With respect to the gaps and barriers to the implementation of successful citizen participation processes, the following challenges were widely shared across the territories involved:
Legal barriers: the design and implementation of representative deliberative processes, namely the civic lottery process required to perform selection by sortition, often encountered legal issues related to data protection. In addition, the absence of a legal basis for remunerating participants for their time and effort constitutes a barrier to the inclusion of vulnerable and marginalised groups. Mapping and reviewing existing legal frameworks with respect to these issues can help project teams anticipate potential legal barriers. Territories such as the Emilia-Romagna Region in Italy have adopted a regional law dedicated to participation to remove obstacles and institutionalise participatory and deliberative practices (Regione Emilia-Romagna, 2018[24]).
Administrative and organisational barriers: Citizen participation often lacks adequate financial and human resources. Including participation processes in the strategic planning of activities can help scope and anticipate their cost and staffing. The Cohesion Policy is implemented at different stages by different levels of government and by different offices within the same institution. The design of citizen participation process needs to reflect this complexity to produce relevant and impactful results. Citizen participation can also act as a catalyst to improve vertical and horizontal co-ordination within governments.
Skills gaps: A successful participatory process requires specific skills, such as participatory design, project management, public communication, facilitation, reporting, relations with diverse publics. Acquiring new resources with adequate skill, providing training opportunities, and building strong communities of practice and networks are effective strategies for building participation capacities in government and improving the impact of processes.
The upcoming final report of the experimentation phase of the project will provide a more in-depth analysis of the findings covered in this Case Study.
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← 1. A representative deliberative process is a specific format of citizen participation. It consists in a group of citizens selected through civic lottery, a two-step stratified sortition process, to represent the broader society (at the local, national, or international level). After learning about the policy issue at stake, listening to experts and stakeholders bringing different perspectives and opinions, and engaging in facilitated discussions, participants are asked to provide recommendations that address a given question. The OECD has collected more than 800 cases of representative deliberative processes from OECD members and partner countries since 1970s, covering a wide range of policy issues, from environment, to health, to public services. Source: (OECD, 2020[12]), (OECD, 2023[27])
← 2. The latest stage of infrastructure project development before implementation.