The EU for Global National Citizen’s Panel in Riga, Latvia took place on 27 November 2025, hosted by Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation LAPAS. The objective of the panel was to bring together citizens in Latvia to discuss the role of the EU in the world, with a specific focus on community resilience, active citizenship and solidarity. The Citizens’ Panel was organized in conjunction with the Global Education Week in Riga, to ensure broader visibility and reach a larger audience.
The Citizens’ Panel began with six five-minute TED Talk Style speeches, presented by regional NGOs working in the areas related to the community resilience, active citizenship and solidarity. D.Zeltiņš as president of youth NGO ‘Club House’ spoke about democratic sustainability and youth voices; I.Strazdiņa project lead of Green Liberty spoke about climate change and its social context; I.Pērkone head of the NGO ‘Women 50+’ spoke about demographic challenges and the role and responsibility of all citizens; D.Mita senior researcher at ‘Baltic Human Rights Society’ spoke about human rights; A.Birule deputy director of ‘TI Latvia Delna’ spoke about global partnerships ; and I.Kelle a chair of the board of the NGO ‘Papardes zieds’ spoke about how to tackle disinformation and the importance of civil society resilience. All in all, these speeches by various experts contextualized the discussion of the Panel by focusing on practical applications in the NGO space.
Following the presentations from the experts, the participations were divided into six groups, all led by the NGO experts to participate in a world-cafe discussions on resilience, active citizenship and solidarity. To reach the objective of creating recommendations, as part of the EU for Global project, the methodology used by the experts was developed to cover discussion steps focusing on defining first, the challenges and then an open discussion on solutions and recommendations at EU, national and local level.
The recommendations of the national Citizens’ Panel in Riga are congregated around three levels of policy making, the EU level, the national level and the local Level, they are as follows:
European Union Level
- Enhanced Communication: Increase the sharing of local civic initiatives, ensuring they are accessible in national languages and simplified formats.
- Expert-Led Dialogue: Prioritize expert-driven insights over purely political debate to ensure evidence-based policymaking, especially engaging experts from local level.
- Climate Equity: Reduce the financial gap between the Global North and Global South to ensure equitable support for climate adaptation and mitigation.
- Civic Empowerment: Increase funding and structural support for civic education and advocacy activities, accessible also to the local level organisations.
National Level
Education & Capacity Building
- Curriculum Reform: Integrate civic engagement, climate science, critical thinking, and media literacy into school curricula and teacher training programs.
- Skills Development: Expand vocational training programs to meet evolving labor market needs.
- Public Awareness: Elevate climate change on the political agenda and fund awareness campaigns that use clear, jargon-free language.
Governance & Transparency
- Electoral Accountability: Improve the national electoral accountability to increase the direct responsibility of elected officials.
- Administrative Transparency: Mandate that civil servants publicly communicate long-term strategies and implementation plans to citizens, engage them in consultative processes.
- Financial Integrity: Strengthen the monitoring and control of financial flows within global partnerships to prevent corruption and improve equal cooperation.
Media & Civil Society
- Journalistic Integrity: Support independent media watchdogs and safeguard investigative journalism, especially at local level.
- Digital Governance: Review and improve media accessibility/ accountability and improve the moderation of online public discourse.
- NGO Integration: Reposition NGOs as strategic partners in governance rather than perpetual opposition.
- Regional Equity: Ensure regional diversity is respected, guaranteeing that rural areas meet national standards for health and education.
Local Level
- Civic Engagement: Foster a culture of active citizenship through regular public dialogue and accessible information on how to get involved.
- Municipal Values: Strengthen democratic standards and values within local government administrations.
- Sectoral Adaptation: Support local entrepreneurs and farmers in adapting their operations to climate change.
- Global-Local Links: Utilize international city partnerships to share "best practices" and broaden local perspectives.
- Strategic Outreach: Focus on "active listening" and target-group-specific messaging to address global challenges at a community level.
To read all the recommendations collected throughout Europe during Local and Transnational Citizens’ Panels, click here.
