The Democratic Odyssey: Design Innovations in Transnational Deliberation

As the first itinerant transnational citizens’ assembly, the Democratic Odyssey was conceived as an experiment and pilot of what Europe-wide deliberation could look like. In this article, we draw on our first-hand experiences as organisers and observers to reflect on three innovations introduced in the Odyssey’s process design: iterative composition, open consultation on the remit, and centring lived experience.

The Democratic Odyssey began as a collective initiative to promote a permanent Peoples’ Assembly for Europe. The project, led by a Consortium of over 30 academic institutions, practitioners, and civil society organisations, launched in 2023 and evolved into an itinerant, multi-stage pilot for a travelling European Citizens’ Assembly, the first of its kind. The first assembly cycle began in Athens in September 2024 and concluded in Vienna, in May 2025, with the launch of a Citizens’ Charter to Revitalise Democracy in Europe by Navigating Future Crisis Together.

The Odyssey set out to build on lessons from the Conference for the Future of Europe (COFE) and the European Citizens’ Panels (ECPs), expanding the horizons of what European citizen deliberation can look like. Where COFE and the ECPs demonstrated that a transnational, multilingual citizens’ assembly was possible, the Odyssey set out to rethink the baseline, anchoring deliberations in local realities and responding to people’s everyday concerns.

To achieve this, the Odyssey set out to experiment with established design features of citizens’ assemblies, following two core principles: radical inclusion and radical transparency. Here, we reflect on three innovations – and the challenges they brought – to operationalise those principles: iterative composition, agenda co-creation, and centring lived experience.

The Democratic Odyssey is an iterative process where some participants from each session also took part in the next, creating continuity in debates as new participants also joined.

Radical inclusion was operationalised in how participants were selected and in how the remit was set. The Democratic Odyssey is an iterative process where some participants from each session also took part in the next as ‘ambassadors,’ creating continuity in debates as new participants also joined in each new location. The recruitment and selection model comprised two participant groups: transnational and translocal. Transnationals were European residents from across Europe, recruited by Sortition Foundation, as well as former participants of other CAs, including the ECPs, and representatives from civil society organisations, recruited through the consortium’s networks. Translocals were selected at each site where the assembly met (Athens, Florence, and Vienna) and comprised citizens from the respective city; European citizens residing in the city; local civil society representatives; and ‘global’ citizens of any nationality residing in the city. This marked a departure from previous EU-level deliberative processes, where recruitment was based on nationality alone.

To ensure the local anchoring of deliberations in topics and realities close to participants’ lives, participants were empowered to redefine the remit at each assembly.

To ensure the local anchoring of deliberations in topics and realities close to participants’ lives, a multi-stage consultation process was led to set the remit. A European citizens’ assembly should “narrow the democratic gap” between “what is discussed in classic electoral settings and what people really would care to talk about.” To achieve this, participants themselves should be able to decide the remit.

Topics were first gathered in Brown Bag Lunches with the Constituent Network, an open collective of individuals engaged in co-designing and monitoring the process that served as a proxy for the broader public sphere. Proposals were then clustered by the Consortium and submitted to vote with the Constituent Network following five criteria established by both bodies.

Despite best intentions, an element of chance remained throughout the consultation. For example, ‘food systems,’ ‘migration,’ and ‘global shocks’ were submitted to vote under a single cluster, with ‘migration’ as the preferred topic in that cluster. If ‘migration’ had been clustered with other topics, like ‘security,’ or ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ the vote may well have yielded different results and priorities.

The Consortium and facilitation team came to accept that some process decisions must be made at certain moments to move the process forward, despite that element of chance. The Odyssey’s second structuring principle of radical transparency aimed to foster accountability at all stages: decision-making moments on agenda-setting were documented online, so that design decisions are laid out along with the reasoning behind them, making them available for participant and public scrutiny.

The consultation was summarised by the Consortium into a broad question – Reflecting on your experience of recent crises, what needs to change for the EU to overcome future storms? And how can we, the people, help better steer the ship? – followed by example topics from all clusters. At each assembly meeting, participants were empowered to redefine the remit. While this created many back-and-forths in deliberations, it also helped identify political ‘pain points’ grounded in everyday experiences of crises.

Centring lived experience in deliberations revealed the emotional realities of policy impact, offering granular context that technical expertise often overlooks.

The iterative and itinerant nature of the pilot meant that each assembly in the cycle took place at a different site, embedding its debates at each place with the goal of creating a ‘translocal’ sphere instead of a purely supranational one. The selected remit offered a natural opportunity to centre lived experience – no technical expertise could better account for the impact of crises on people’s lives than people themselves. Following the principle of radical inclusion, instead of expert witnesses presenting evidence, participants were invited to reflect on their experiences of Europe in plenaries and small groups: where did they come in contact with Europe? What politics are, and should, be taken up at the supranational level?

At the first assembly moment in Athens, participants explored the remit through dialogue, storytelling, and reflection on Europe’s current crises. They shared personal stories, compared and contrasted from their collective experience across places and social settings, and were asked: what needs to be preserved, changed, or reimagined.

Building on this foundation, Florence participants debated tensions that arose in Athens along ten tradeoffs in political crisis management, such as government autonomy versus active citizen engagement in emergencies. Reflecting on their own life stories, they tended towards ‘middle of the road’ ways of distributing authority.

In Vienna, the last in-person iteration, participants developed the recommendations resulting from Florence, drawing from programs and actions familiar to them, such as an ‘erasmus for citizen participation.’ Following the principle of radical transparency, they were presented with documentation of all prior steps, which helped them finalise a Citizens’ Charter—a shared declaration of democratic principles and citizen commitment for a just Europe in times of crisis.

Centring lived experience in deliberations revealed the emotional realities of policy impact, offering granular context that technical expertise often overlooks. It helped cultivate solidarity and mutual recognition, allowing participants to identify core values and practical trade-offs together. Yet removing a ‘traditional’ information phase also brought challenges. Individual and collective experiences were essential in identifying problems (Athens) and values (Florence), but difficult to translate into concrete policy proposals (Vienna). Expertise on already existing or planned policy measures would have been helpful to direct the deliberations towards complementing, challenging, or supplementing viable political action.

Some process innovations yielded positive results, some not. Operationalising core democratic principles, such as radical inclusion and radical transparency, inevitably involves limitations and trade-offs in practice. The attempt to establish a remit through a wide-ranging consultation demonstrated that, despite the openness of a ‘bottom-up’ process, executive decisions must be made at different stages, sometimes well before assembly members can take them up. The Odyssey sought to open that ‘black box’ of decision-making; participatory governance may also offer effective and accountable approaches. In turn, relying exclusively on lived experience proved useful to determine overarching consensus, but faced constraints in proposing policy actions. Here, we see potential for better embeddedness with existing policy communities and debates, though such potential remains dependent on institutional receptiveness.

As a campaign led by scholars, civil society, and practitioners, the Democratic Odyssey relied on broad room for experimentation and accepted imperfection as its departure point. Although the project received some institutional support, the ‘bottom-up’ nature of the initiative and resource limitations fostered the willingness to experiment and depart from established process design.

About the Authors

Melisa Ross is postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen, Co-lead of the Global Citizens’ Assembly Network (GloCAN), and Co-Chair of ECPR’s Standing Group on Democratic Innovations.

Kalypso Nicolaïdis is Chair in Global Affairs at EUI’s School of Transnational Governance, Director of Research of EUI’s Transnational Democracy Programme, co-founder and Scientific Lead of the Democratic Odyssey.

Camille Dobler is Head of Research at Missions Publiques, Coordinator of the Horizon Europe project ScaleDem dedicated to studying the scaling democratic innovations, and co-founder of the Democratic Odyssey.