The European Commission, European Parliament, and Committee of the Regions have been committed to empowering sub-national level actors in EU cohesion policymaking (Moodie et al 2021a). This has been achieved through introducing policy concepts and instruments that promote policymaking at regional and local levels, including territorial governance, active subsidiarity, place-based policymaking, the partnership principle, smart specialization, LEADER, community led local developments (CLLD), and integrated territorial investments (ITIs; Mendez et al 2019). While these different concepts and instruments have enhanced the territorial focus of cohesion policy, they have not proactively engaged citizens in cohesion policymaking processes beyond the “usual suspect” stakeholders/beneficiaries. Consequently, the direct engagement of citizens in cohesion policy has become a more salient topic of discussion in policy and academic circles, including the 2020 EU high-level conference on ‘Engaging Citizens for good governance in Cohesion Policy’ (European Commission 2020; Moodie et al 2022; Mendez et al 2024). Discussions at the March 2023 Cohesion Alliance High Level Event - “Cohesion as a bridge to a united and fairer Europe”, also focused on how to engage citizens in cohesion policy (Cohesion Alliance 2023).
More recently, there has been a shift from general discussions towards the search for practical solutions and tools for engaging citizens. Working together with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Commission launched two pilot actions in 2020-2021 to provide EU cohesion policy Managing Authorities (MAs) across Europe with practical knowledge and financial support to improve their citizen engagement skills and capacities (OECD 2022). The European Commission followed this up in 2024 by offering training sessions for MAs on the application of different citizen engagement methods in cohesion policy. The REGIO Peer2Peer + scheme also provides a platform for MAs to share knowledge and best practices on citizen engagement. While political and practical support for enhancing citizen engagement is strong amongst EU institutions and sub-national level actors, national governments remain a firm obstacle to bottom-up cohesion policy processes due to their unwillingness to devolve policymaking responsibility to the sub-national level (Bache 2010). A stronger role for sub-national actors and citizens is especially challenging in EU member states with centralized governance systems, where cohesion policy programmes are controlled by central governments (Dabrowski 2014).