“Deliberative democracy, involving citizens’ assemblies, is an innovative approach that goes beyond mere citizen consultations, and provides space where citizens’ voices – including those of young people – can be heard,” underlined Congress Director Claudia Luciani at the workshop ““Empower communities: an eco-system for youth democratic participation”, organised in Strasbourg on 25 June 2026 as part of the “Youth Innovating Democracy” conference.
Ms Luciani highlighted the importance of the event for the elaboration a New Democratic Pact for Europe, which is being developed around four key challenges faced by modern democracies: disinformation, social injustice, threats to free and fair elections and the need to innovate democratic participation. In this regard, she pointed to the need to protect free and fair electoral processes, for example through election observations and the prevention of foreign interference, as well as the need to clarify the definition of hate speech to ensure the right balance between the protection against hate speech and the protection of free speech. One approach was the creation of “safe public information spaces” allowing for free speech while putting up safeguards against hate speech. The Congress Director concluded by stressing the importance of ensuring young people’s full participation, giving them a space and a voice.
Former Congress youth delegate from Denmark Markus Melau reminded participants about the new European Charter for the participation of young people in local and regional life adopted by the Congress in October 2025, which specifies the obligations for local, regional and national authorities in strengthening youth participation, the inclusion of youth perspectives and youth policies overall.
The round of presentations was closed by Gordana Berjan, Head of Division in charge of the European Youth Foundation, who underlined the utmost importance of youth spaces and youth centres in giving young people a voice. She saw one of the biggest challenges of full participation in the inclusion of youth across the board, including rural youth, youth from disadvantaged neighbourhoods or youth with a migrant background, or simply youth who feel disconnected and do not believe in democracy anymore.
