Why people disengage: Is Fair Europe the solution? Brussels, Belgium, 26 June 2026
On 26 June 2026, RegioDev organised a local event focusing on citizens participation and engagement in the framework of the CERV project Fair Cities for the EU.
The event set out to ask the uncomfortable questions: who is disengaging, why, and how a more Fair Europe can bring people back to the political processes, making them more active and engaged citizens.
The event was centered around 2 panel speakers, Ventseslav Kozarev, Research Officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, and David Talukder, Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science at ULB/Cevipol.
Tessy Melidi from RegioDev presented at the beginning the project and its main aims and achievements.
Ventseslav Kozarev,opened by flagging citizens' frustration with slow follow-up on engagement exercises as a recurring risk to trust - one Fair Cities has flagged as acute where climate policy is decided over residents' heads rather than with them. A recent JRC survey of EU public administrations showed the risk can be managed: 97% of those that had run an engagement exercise said they would do so again, citing improved policy quality and legitimacy when follow-up is handled well - evidence that feeds directly into Fair Cities' push for genuine consultation on the green transition. He pointed to the European Centre for Democratic Resilience, announced by the Commission in February 2026 as part of the European Democracy Shield, as a further avenue for closing that gap, extending support to public administrations, NGOs and local authorities alike - the actors Fair Cities relies on to keep the transition socially fair.
David Talukder, examined citizen participation in electoral processes through the resources model - linking abstention to socio-economic status - and the cost-benefit model - weighing the effort of voting against its impact. He cited Belgium's 2024 elections as a natural experiment: turnout in Flanders fell by nearly 27 points once local voting became optional, far more than in Wallonia and Brussels where voting stayed compulsory, with the drop concentrated among younger and less-educated voters - precisely the groups Fair Cities warns risk being priced out of a green transition that raises costs without offering them a say. European Social Survey data across 16 countries confirmed younger generations are growing less satisfied with democracy, driven increasingly by economic insecurity, a pattern Talukder linked to climate policy being imposed rather than shared. Reversing the trend, he argued, means tackling that precarity and recognising non-institutional participation alongside the ballot box.
The presentations were followed by an interactive debate, in which participants engaged both speakers directly, drawing on their own experiences to test the findings against realities on the ground and to explore what practical steps could follow at local and European level.
The session was moderated by Nikos Lampropoulos, Brand Manager at ESPON EGTC.
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