More than 40 participants from 7 countries, including NGOs, representatives of governments, private sector, universities and energy agencies, discussed the importance of participatory processes in development and implementation of climate and energy strategies. Main emphasis of the event was sharing of good practices, success stories and common issues in 7 CEE countries. Participants agreed that different approaches and methodologies of various countries regarding participatory processes were beneficial for good practice sharing. Presented good practices thus motivated the participants and gave them ideas for new projects.

At the ending session of the workshop we concluded that capacity building is key for governments to make public participation more successful (not only tick in the box), since one of the main barriers for successful public participation is lack of know-how. It is also important that someone is made responsible during the participatory process, while we also agreed that the public should push governments to include citizens and not only NGOs in participatory processes. All the stakeholders should be included in the starting point of the participatory processes. We concluded that language and tools are also important for successful participatory processes and that it is important to work more on online tools and use as simple language as possible.