During early May a cross-sectional random survey, developed over recent months and with a questionnaire translated into 23 languages focusing on immigration and on climate change, will be administered by telephone to a sample of some 4,300 EU citizens in 27 countries, representative of the EU’s adult population.
At the same time a random sub-sample of some 400 of those citizens will be invited to attend a deliberation event in Brussels at the end of May, just a week before the European Parliament elections.
Those accepting the invitation will receive background materials to inform them in advance about the issues to be discussed (immigration, climate change and the institutional design of the European Union and its policy-making processes), and to provoke reflection.
On Friday May 29 the 400 participants will be transported to Brussels, and spend that evening, the whole of Saturday May 30, and the morning of Sunday May 31 in a series of debates on immigration and climate change and on more general EU matters.
After the event, highlights of the process will be communicated to the wider community – the public, opinion-leaders and policy-makers.
After the European Parliament elections, a further telephone survey will be undertaken, covering the 400 participants of the Deliberative Polling event and 1,000 randomly selected subjects from the May survey who were not invited to participate in the event. This final survey will primarily allow an assessment of the impact of the Deliberative Polling experiment on levels of turnout and general voting behaviour.