Citizens' forum on "crisis-proof society"

10. October 2022

In the German state of Baden-Württemberg, the randomly selected citizens' forum "Crisis-proof Society" has been meeting since 8 October 2022. The forum is intended to gather opinions and moods from the population and make them visible.

The citizens thereby accompany the work of the Enquete Commission "Crisis-proof Society", in which members of the state parliament as well as representatives from science and civil society also pursue the question of how the state and society in Baden-Württemberg can be made future-proof.

Demands on politics

The participants of the citizens' forum are to discuss together what steps are needed to prepare state and society for potentially developing danger situations in the future. What do citizens expect from their state? Finally, concrete demands will be addressed to politicians and especially to the members of the enquete commission.

The forum participants will deal with questions from the following subject areas:

Health care
State crisis prevention (early recognition and combating of crises with the involvement of science and civil society)
Protection of vulnerable population groups and strengthening of social cohesion
Strengthening the resilience of the economy and using its potential for crisis prevention and crisis management.

Citizens themselves decide which areas are important to them and how they set their priorities.

Participation of children and youth

The participants of the forum will meet on a total of six Saturdays between October and January 2022. At the same time, children and young people from all over Baden-Württemberg will also be concerned with how the state and society can be made future-proof. Delegates of a youth conference on the topic of "Crisis-proof Society" will participate in two sessions of the Citizens' Forum and represent the opinion of young people.

The Citizens' Forum is an initiative of Landtag President Muhterem Aras and Enquete Chair Alexander Salomon (both Greens).

3,500 people randomly selected

For the forum, 3,500 randomly selected women and men were contacted by the state parliament. From the 220 responses, 60 people were selected according to characteristics such as gender, age, migration background and educational attainment.

The final event of the citizens' forum will probably take place in January 2023 in the House of the State Parliament in Stuttgart.