Liaison Group Newsletter September 2026

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Editorial

Dear Members of the Liaison Group,

I hope you all enjoyed a restful summer break! Autumn began with the State of the Union address. I will not summarise President von der Leyen's speech of 16 September – you have all followed it; I would rather treat it as raw material. Preparedness, artificial intelligence, climate adaptation, the Care Deal and a Congress of Europe – all to be shaped and delivered in the months ahead. On every one, there is a civil society voice that nobody else will provide, and making it heard is precisely what this Group exists to do.

A first test comes on 29–30 September, when the Parliamentary Democracy Forum in the European Parliament devotes a session to the EU Strategy for Civil Society – our President Séamus Boland will speak about embedding civil society in democratic decision-making. Not a courtesy, but recognition that democracy is a whole-of-society enterprise – I hope many of you will be there.

What does embedding civil society in democratic decision-making mean in practice? Not consultation on request, but structured engagement by default. Civil society is not simply another stakeholder to be heard when convenient: it is the connective tissue between citizens and institutions – CSOs through which people act together, and the delivery arm of much of what the State of the Union address promised, from preparedness and digital inclusion to climate adaptation and care. Policies designed without that connective tissue arrive on the doorsteps of people they have never met. This is why civil dialogue is so important, and why the EU Strategy for Civil Society matters so much: it offers an opportunity to move from episodic consultation to genuine co-creation, and from dialogue as an event to dialogue as a method.

A whole-of-society democracy also asks something of civil society itself: to speak with a collective voice, to bring the lived experience of the communities we represent, and to be in the room from the outset – not only when institutions seek legitimacy for decisions already taken. From the debates on the future of the EU budget to the broader reflection on the direction of our democratic model as the anniversary of the Treaty of Rome approaches, civil society has earned its place in these conversations. Our task is to ensure that place becomes impossible to take away.

A State of the Union address to answer, a democracy to build together – I look forward to both.

With warm regards,

Piotr SADOWSKI
Co-chair of the Liaison Group