Citizens’ Climate Convention

Launch of the Citizens’ Climate Convention:

In the early afternoon, Klervi Kerneïs, the Académie’s educational manager, presented the convention’s agenda. Linking back to the morning’s presentations, the hierarchy of solutions was presented to guide the young people in their discussions and decision-making processes. They were then divided into four thematic groups: food, housing, transport and energy production.

Once the groups were formed, the discussions began.

Thematic groups and citizen discussions:

Each thematic group was supervised by a young member who had worked in advance on documentation containing key information and data to guide the discussions. Once the important information had been acquired, the discussions focused on the form and type of proposal to be made: should it be a directive? A regulation? A recommendation? Did the proposal fall within the competences of the EU or not? Who was the target audience?

The young people developed their skills in debate, discussion and negotiation on a climate-related topic, while also refining their thinking and knowledge on how to submit their proposals to European institutions and politicians.

Presentation of proposals and voting:

After an hour, each group presented its proposals for directives, regulations or recommendations. Alice Moscovici, a research fellow at the Jacques Delors Institute’s Energy Centre, then gave her expert opinion on each of the proposals. This enabled the young people to understand and discuss the plausibility of their proposals from Alice Moscovici’s perspective as a researcher.

Once all the proposals had been presented, they were put to a vote one by one by all the young people. In total, 9 out of 12 proposals were adopted by the young people of the Academy. The selected proposals will then be sent to political leaders with the aim of promoting and disseminating the views of young people in these areas.