In Esch-sur-Alzette, a Citizens' Assembly closes its mandate and opens a new chapter

Democratic innovation

On 25 June 2026, in a hall in Esch-sur-Alzette, forty residents formally handed over their recommendations to the City. After three months of work, from March to June, the Citizens' Assembly of Esch had fulfilled its mandate. What members experienced between those two dates says a great deal about what deliberative democracy can produce, provided it is built properly, investing expertise, time, and resources into it.

A letter that changes meaning

Ania still remembers her first reaction on receiving her invitation letter: "Oh no, more paperwork." Like thousands of other Esch residents, she had been randomly selected from 10,000 people invited to register. Nothing, at that moment, suggested she would spend several months on this, or that she would leave the final session in June full of hope for what had been achieved.

That shift, from initial scepticism to genuine engagement, is not a minor detail. It speaks to something central in how the process was designed: the Assembly was never meant to gather people who were already convinced, or already active in local civic and political life. It was built to bring together residents with very different experiences of the city: to see whether, together, they could build something shared.

Diversity as working material

That diversity was one of the ingredients that allowed the Assembly to develop its thinking about Esch. Each participant arrived with their own reading of the city, their own priorities, sometimes their own disagreements. None of this is surprising, but it also made the work more demanding. Sessions brought together opinions that didn't always converge naturally.

This is where facilitators played a decisive role. We are delighted to have been able to support them in their training with What about Dem. The quality of the facilitators kept the working atmosphere one where enthusiasm remained possible, even in moments of friction. One point came up repeatedly: there was never a hidden political agenda behind the process, and partisan politics was never the subject of discussion. 

Putting shared ideas into words

According to several participants, the hardest part of the work wasn't generating ideas  (there were plenty) but assembling them, making them hold together, and then putting them into writing in a form the Assembly could collectively endorse. This is less visible than the discussions themselves, but just as decisive: turning individual positions into a text a group can stand behind.

One participant summed up the spirit that ran through the sessions: "There was transparency, there were no bad moments and no judgment. We listened to each other, even when silly things were said." This tolerance for imperfection, the right to be wrong, to rephrase, to be heard anyway, was likely just as important as any facilitation method in keeping the process on track over time.

Four areas of work for Esch

The outcome of this collective work took shape as four thematic groups of recommendations: public space and urban planning as rebalancing mobility in favour of pedestrians, cyclists, and people with reduced mobility; nature and climate as greening, water management, more sustainable materials; people and social life as accessibility, social connection, an approach to safety grounded in presence and dialogue rather than purely security-based responses; and governance and civic life as with a strong call for transparent follow-up and ongoing participation.

Each recommendation was put to a consent-based vote rather than a simple majority: members could express agreement, a minor reservation, or a serious objection. This methodological choice made it possible to distinguish disagreement worth recording from opposition strong enough to challenge a text's adoption, and to arrive at a set of recommendations the Assembly, in all its diversity, could collectively stand behind.

What now?

The public handover on 25 June marked the end of the Assembly's deliberative mandate, but not the end of the process. The recommendations now rest with the City of Esch-sur-Alzette, which is expected to review them and respond.

Members said it throughout the process: participation has to be meaningful, not symbolic. Ania, like the others, left that final session full of hope, but for now, that hope remains a promise still to be kept. What comes next belongs to the City.

For its part, the City is currently working on how to make this venture permanent through institutionalization.