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Ministère d'État - Le gouvernement luxembourgeois
Ministère de l'Environnement, du Climat et de la Biodiversité
Ministère de l'Aménagement du territoire et de l'Énergie
Université Libre de Bruxelles
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In October 2021, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel announced in his State of the Nation address that he intended to convene a Citizens’ Council on Climate (Klima-Biergerrot – KBR). This Citizens’ Council was composed of 100 citizens representing the demographic reality of Luxembourg, taking into account both residents and cross-border workers. With the support of experts, these 100 citizens discussed specific climate-related issues and developed and proposed 64 recommendations for the revision of the National Energy and Climate Plan, the cornerstone of Luxembourg’s climate policy.
The project was initially planned to last six months (January–July 2022, with the first session held on 29 January 2022), but to ensure that KBR members had sufficient time to complete their work, the project was extended until September 2022.
The members of the KBR met on the following occasions:
At the end of June and beginning of July, the second phase of the KBR began, with the aim of finalising the recommendations.
Given the very demanding schedule, the 100 members were divided into 60 full members and 40 substitute members. Full members were required to take part in all the activities described above. Substitute members could participate in the online debates and study visits, but not in the five working weekends, except when replacing a full member.
In keeping with Luxembourg’s multilingual context, discussions were conducted in Luxembourgish, French, and English. Participants were free to use the language in which they felt most comfortable, and simultaneous interpretation was provided during plenary meetings.
On 15 September 2022, the final recommendations were presented to the Prime Minister and the other relevant ministers, as well as to the media. A debate in the Chamber of Deputies took place in October 2022. In April and then in May 2023, in parallel with the presentation of the revised version of the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), the Government presented two response documents addressing the proposals put forward by the KBR.
The recruitment of KBR members was entrusted to the polling institute Ilres through a public call for tenders. The body responsible for implementation selected 100 participants (60 full members and 40 substitutes), intended to be representative of Luxembourg’s demographic composition.
Random selection (or civic lottery) was not the sole recruitment method within the KBR but was combined with self-selective techniques. This did not guarantee equal participation across the population and did not succeed in reducing the common biases associated with voluntary political activities.
The sociodemographic sampling applied to all volunteers who had expressed a positive interest in participating made it possible to ensure that the KBR was broadly representative of the Luxembourg population in social terms. The KBR proved to be inclusive of groups that are generally underrepresented in electoral politics, such as women and young people. The KBR also gave a voice to non-nationals (residents or cross-border workers), a segment of the Luxembourg population that is usually excluded from national politics.
Nevertheless, asymmetries in recruitment persisted: individuals with higher levels of education were overrepresented. More importantly, KBR members did not reflect the diversity of the population as a whole with regard to their climate attitudes, political opinions, or their degree of acceptance of participatory processes and their outcomes. This lack of attitudinal diversity was acknowledged by the members themselves and was at times questioned by the media and by some members of parliament.
The organisation of the KBR was outsourced through a public call for tenders to Oxygen & Partners, Pétillances, and AccentAigu. These service providers were respectively mandated to handle the design, facilitation, moderation, and communication of the KBR. Initially planned to last six months (from January to June 2022), the KBR was extended until October 2022.
During the first phase (from February to June 2022), members deliberated and developed recommendations across five thematic cycles corresponding to the sectors of the National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP): agriculture and forestry (weekend 1), renewable energy (weekend 2), sustainable construction (weekend 3), waste management (weekend 4), and mobility and transport (weekend 5).
Saturdays focused on identifying the challenges associated with these themes for Luxembourg, while Sundays were devoted to reflecting on possible solutions. Deliberations took place in plenary sessions and in small groups of 12 to 15 members, facilitated by professional moderators.
During the second phase, members finalised their recommendations in six more autonomous and self-organised groups. Online feedback mechanisms enabled all members to review and contribute to the proposals drafted by these groups.
The University of Luxembourg, through the PLDP, assembled a research team tasked with the following missions:
Establishing a supervisory committee
Ensuring the scientific monitoring of the consultation
Conducting a survey among a representative sample of the population
Drafting a final evaluation report
Ultimately, the PLDP and the University of Luxembourg developed an in-depth evaluation of the quality of the process in terms of input (who participated and through which recruitment methods), throughput (how participants took part in the process: quality of deliberation, facilitation, and design), and output (why they participated and what the impacts were on participating and non-participating citizens, the media, political staff and parties, as well as on public policies—particularly the National Energy and Climate Plan, NECP).
Thanks to a comprehensive evaluation framework, a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, and a substantial investment of resources, the PLDP was able to deliver a highly robust evaluation from an analytical standpoint. In parallel, a significant number of scientific publications were produced on the basis of the data collected through this evaluation, thereby placing Luxembourg on the map of the scholarly community studying democratic innovations.
Database
The database associated with the study conducted on the Luxembourg population during the KBR (with Ilres) is now open access.
Publications