The Open European Dialogue Declaration: Creating Better Political Conversations
The Open European Dialogue works to improve the way European policymakers communicate and collaborate. We help policymakers understand diverse local and political contexts in an increasingly complex environment.
Our Declaration outlines how we work, what we believe in, and how we engage policymakers in more explorative and inclusive policymaking as well as active listening conversations.
We need to talk! Six years ago, we established a space for elected policymakers from across Europe to talk and share their ideas or concerns. What makes the Open European Dialogue platform unique is the diversity of political viewpoints represented in our activities and the willingness of our members to engage with European colleagues who are not their usual political allies. Our main product is dialogue, and our formats reflect it; we do not focus on a specific outcome nor push the need for one, instead, we focus on conducting good dialogue between policymakers. Participants own the aims, the content, and the outcomes they produce in our dialogue sessions. One outstanding example of the type of participant-led engagements we host across borders and party lines is the recent Policy Design Sprint. Parliamentarians from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Slovenia, concerned with the issue of parliamentary oversight during crisis, got together and collaborated with experts and citizens to develop a policy solution on the topic. Now, after just six weeks of work, they are in the process of sharing the results attained from this cross-country and cross-party collaboration with their colleagues in parliament. What a fantastic success!
We work in democratic innovation and experiment with new ways of meaningfully connecting Europe’s policymakers. Our Declaration is based on the experiences we had working together with them over the past years. This allowed us to identify three areas filled with potential to improve political conversations:
- Explorative policymaking
- A broadened scope of voices in policymaking
- Active listening in democratic decision-making
Our Declaration explains why we believe these three areas hold potential, how we tackle them, and how you can improve them too. Are you interested in creating better political conversations? Explore the Open European Dialogue Declaration below.
