From Deliberation to Action: The Role of European Climate Assemblies in Strengthening Democratic Climate Governance

This paper examines the impacts of deliberative mini-publics on climate action and democratic governance in Estonia and Poland and contrasts the findings to a companion study looking at Belgium, Ireland and Sweden. Using a framework combining the seven characteristics of climate democracy from the RETOOL analytical framework with the impact types from the KNOCA Impact Evaluation Framework, the study draws on desk review, RETOOL workshops, and 26 semi-structured interviews across both countries. In Estonia, the paper examines the Tartu and Tallinn climate assemblies and the national Opinion Journey (Arvamusrännak) dialogue. In Poland, it focuses on the Narada Obywatelska o Kosztach Energii (Civic Council on Energy Costs), the first national citizens’ assembly and the first organised by an NGO rather than government. The most consistent finding across both cases is that deliberative participation processes on energy and climate generate stronger conceptual and capacity impacts than instrumental ones. Locally commissioned processes showed stronger connections between deliberation and implementation, pointing to a structural tension: deliberation is most feasible at the local level, where political authority for systemic change is weakest, and could be most consequential at the national level, where deliberation is hardest to sustain. Both cases also reveal the importance of political will and highlight a gap in the accountability infrastructure surrounding deliberative processes. They also challenge a simplistic hypothesis of younger democracies being more fragile or more receptive to deliberative innovation. Instead, the legacy of authoritarianism and the post-1989 transition to democracy shape the conditions for deliberative climate governance.