Ramnicu Valcea involves citizens in EU cohesion policy

On 27 and 28 June 2024, the Municipality of Ramnicu Valcea organised the closing event of the Citizen Jury on Urban Mobility.  The Citizen Jury brought together a group of 20 citizens, representative of the population of the city, to discuss and formulate recommendations for the City Council to make public transport more appealing to the public, thus reducing traffic congestion. The event gathered public authorities from the local and the national level in Romania, as well as representatives from the European Commission and OECD experts on deliberative processes, to present the results of this pilot experience and share the lessons learned.

The city of Ramnicu Valcea is conducting huge efforts in transitioning towards the substantial reduction of CO2 emissions, in line with the EU-wide objective of Net Zero by 2050. These efforts are supported by EU Cohesion Policy: Ramnicu Valcea plans to invest 32 million euro in the local sustainable urban mobility plan in the upcoming coming years. Involving citizens in the decision-making process of the measures that enable the green transition is key to enhance their effectiveness and acceptability.

A Citizen Jury is an example of representative deliberative processes. A deliberative process consists in a randomly selected group of people who are broadly representative of a community that comes together to spend significant time to learn, debate, and deliberate on a given policy issue. The results of the deliberation, usually facilitated by trained staff, are a set of collective recommendations for policy makers. The Citizen Jury on Urban Mobility is the result of a joint effort of the Municipality of Ramnicu Valcea and the Civil Society Organisation Valcea Community Foundation, together with the technical support of the OECD experts of innovative citizen participation under the aegis of the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) of the European Commission. The City sent 2000 letters to random households across the city. Citizens who manifested their interest in participating were then sorted according to gender, age bracket, and habits of transport. The Jury convened for six days of work between interactive learning sessions with experts, facilitated debate, and drafting of recommendations. The Jurors presented the final recommendations to the Mayor and the City Council. Each recommendation will now be analysed by the technical departments of the Municipality and receive a detailed response from the City Council on its feasibility. All the feasible recommendations will be implemented. To date, the Citizen Jury of Ramnicu Valcea is the first deliberative process ever recorded in Romania.

Background

The Citizen Jury of Ramnicu Valcea is part of the pilot initiative “Innovative Implementation of the Partnership Principle in EU cohesion Policy”, a cooperation between DG REGIO, the OECD, and programme authorities, beneficiaries and civil society organisations. The project aims at experimenting and institutionalising  innovative methodologies to involve citizens in policy making, such as deliberative processes, open innovation, participatory budgeting, civic monitoring, applied to an improved management and monitoring of EU funds under cohesion policy. In 2024, 11 pilot projects are taking place across 7 EU member states .