The “Citizens’ Dialogues” of the European Commission

In the context of the European Year of Citizens 2013, the European Commission launched a new public instrument, the “Citizens’ Dialogues”. A series of public consultations were organised in the member states in order to restore the confidence after several years of crises. This article is based on the observation of dialogues that took place in Belgium in 2013 and 2014. It aims at understanding better which feelings such an initiative was supposed to strengthen in its initial justifications, at the first rank of which, feelings of belonging. Using Norbert Elias’s reflections on national and post-national integration, the authors show that this experimentation eventually revealed in the chief of citizens a feeling of powerlessness more complex than expected.