Training the trainers: inside Podgorica's facilitator session for the Citizens' Fora and the Western Balkan conference

Training

Gathered in Podgorica on June 19 and 20 for what was originally intended to be two full days of training, the facilitators devoted the first day to preliminary discussions. June 20 then saw an intensive day of practical training led by our facilitator’s expert Hannah Vanbelle and hosted by CEDEM. The goal: to equip participants for the European Parliament’s upcoming Citizens' Forums in Albania and North Macedonia.

A look at the highlights of these two days.

Setting the scene, before setting the agenda

Before any content was introduced, the room itself became part of the exercise. Participants were told, half-jokingly: we will talk about Albania and North Macedonia, but we are still in Montenegro. To bridge that gap, everyone was invited to draw or collage something that symbolized either country to them, and to think about what they wanted to see reflected in the room. 

Ground rules and a recap of what came before

Some of them had just completed a four-day Council of Europe training on facilitating deliberative democracy, so the Podgorica session opened by collectively revisiting the ground rules shaped during that training, asking what should be added, removed, or kept. Participants were then invited, in mixed groups, to reflect on what had stayed with them from the CoE training, how it had already shaped their mindset or career, and what questions remained open.

Understanding the architecture of the Citizens' Fora

A significant part of the day was dedicated to explaining how the Citizens' Fora process actually works. Initiated by the European Parliament, it consists of six national forums across the Balkans plus one transnational forum. Montenegro hosted the first, in November 2025, with 50 randomly selected citizens. From there, the process is deliberately interconnected: each subsequent forum carries forward citizens from the previous ones, building a continuous thread of memory and experience across the region.Each forum also guarantees a minimum of five to six young citizens aged 18 to 20, ensuring a transgenerational dimension throughout.

Facilitators were walked through the full life cycle of a forum, from mandate and remit design, governance, and two-stage sortition before the event, through the three days of learning, deliberation and drafting during the event, to the follow-up phase after: a formal institutional response within six months, public tracking dashboards, and a structured citizen feedback loop over six to ten months. Particular attention was given to designing a good remit: a real, contested, neutral question, co-framed with stakeholders, as opposed to a vague or leading one that would undermine the whole exercise.

A ghost presentation on EU enlargement

After lunch, the group tackled a dense but necessary topic: how EU enlargement actually works, from the Copenhagen criteria to the specific, and quite different, trajectories of Albania and North Macedonia. Albania's path has moved steadily since 2003, reaching the concluding phase of accession negotiations in 2026, only the second candidate country ever to get that far, after Montenegro. North Macedonia's story is more complicated: candidate status since 2005, but repeatedly blocked by bilateral disputes, first with Greece over the country's name, more recently by an unresolved deadlock with Bulgaria over minority rights, with the European Commission now describing the country's progress as stagnating.

Understanding this asymmetry mattered for what came later in the day: facilitators would need to hold space for citizens in two countries experiencing enlargement very differently.

Sharing expertise, then imagining what comes next

The afternoon shifted from theory to the room itself. Facilitators shared their own areas of specialism, how they got there, what's next for them, framed through a quick SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threats) exercise, and tried, where possible, to link their expertise back to EU enlargement.

The day closed with a more playful, forward-looking exercise: participants split into two groups, Albanians on one side, North Macedonians on the other, and were asked to imagine, as a kind of collective utopia, what a Citizens' Forum in their own country could look like, which topics should matter most, and what ideas they'd bring to the Western Balkan conference. They were also asked to name, honestly, the challenges they anticipate facing as facilitators.

What comes next 

What about Dem will coordinate the Western Balkan conference “exploring new democratic frontiers” , planned for September 22nd in Tirana and financially supported by the Open Society Foundation, is still taking shape. Its goal is to bring together practitioners and stakeholders already active in participatory democracy, or keen to build skills in the field, facilitators, civil society organisations, researchers, public sector representatives, media professionals and young participants. You will hear more on that in our upcoming posts.

What about Dem is following the Citizens' Fora and the Western Balkan conference from preparation to delivery.