Twenty people and the question of who the street belongs to
Râmnicu Vâlcea has piloted Romania’s first randomly selected Citizens’ Jury. Twenty citizens were asked to consider how buses, cycling and walking could be made more attractive. They produced 24 recommendations – and an unusually concrete promise from politicians to address every single one. It is now also possible to see what became of them.
Two thousand letters were sent out across Râmnicu Vâlcea in February 2024. The sender was Mayor Mircia Gutău. The recipients had not been selected because they belonged to an association or a political party, or because they had been particularly vocal in complaining about traffic. Their addresses had been chosen at random.
The city on the edge of the Southern Carpathians wanted to try something that had never been done in Romania before: a randomly selected Citizens’ Jury. Its Romanian name, Juriul Cetățenilor, sounds a little like something from a courtroom. But nobody was being asked to decide on guilt or innocence. The question was instead: What does Râmnicu Vâlcea need to do to encourage people to use buses and other environmentally friendly forms of transport more often – and their cars less?
A European experiment
The idea had not originated in Râmnicu Vâlcea alone. As early as 2022, the city had successfully applied for support under a joint initiative of the European Commission and the OECD. The aim was to ensure that European regional policy was not merely made for citizens, but increasingly with them. The city worked with the Fundația Comunitară Vâlcea and the H.appy Cities association, while OECD experts supported the process.
The subject was anything but theoretical. Râmnicu Vâlcea had used European funding to modernise its bus fleet and was planning investments of around €32 million in more sustainable urban mobility. Yet public transport’s share of journeys remained low, while congestion, air pollution and unsafe streets were part of everyday life. So the question arose: if so much money was already being spent, why not ask the people who move through the city every day?
In November 2023, the City Council established the legal basis for the process through a separate resolution. This was necessary because Romania had no general legal framework for this kind of randomly selected deliberative process. That was another reason why Râmnicu Vâlcea became something of a testing ground.
From 2,000 to 20
The first sobering moment arrived with the post. Of the 2,000 citizens who received invitations, only 36 responded. It was a useful reminder that random selection alone does not magically produce a representative democracy. Because response rates differed considerably between women and men, the organisers had to compensate for this imbalance in the final selection. On 18 March, 20 citizens were eventually chosen.
The group was intended to reflect the city as closely as possible. Gender, age groups and existing travel habits were taken into account, and different parts of the city were also to be represented. The lottery was broadcast publicly, making it possible to see how the 20 people who would deliberate on transport policy were selected from among those who had expressed an interest.
Listening comes first
The selected citizens met for the first time on 23 March. Mayor Gutău welcomed them at City Hall and promised support for the implementation of the recommendations they would eventually produce. Then came the less ceremonial part: learning. City officials, employees of the ETA public transport company and external experts explained transport planning, current projects and the possibilities for more environmentally friendly mobility.
Altogether, the group met on six days between March and April, sometimes on Saturdays and sometimes in the late afternoon. The process followed a structure typical of citizens’ assemblies: information, discussion, joint deliberation and, finally, recommendations. The Fundația Comunitară Vâlcea and H.appy Cities were responsible for facilitating the discussions.
Looking back, Radu Puchiu of H.appy Cities described the process as an attempt to take citizen participation beyond simple consultation: towards “informed dialogue, concrete recommendations and public accountability”. The last point is particularly important. Asking citizens for their opinions is comparatively easy. Things become more difficult when politicians then have to explain what they intend to do with those opinions.
Who does the city belong to?
The 20 citizens first worked through the problems facing their city. Five broad areas emerged: public transport, other forms of transport such as cycling, infrastructure, the behaviour of citizens and pedestrians, and nature and urban planning.
They then formulated principles that they believed should guide future decisions. One amounted to this: nature should come before transport infrastructure. Another was equally straightforward: it should be possible to get anywhere safely by bicycle.
24 proposals
These principles eventually produced 24 specific recommendations. The proposals were not simply approved by a show of hands. Members assessed them individually and anonymously according to their level of support or opposition. On 8 May, they presented the results to the City Council.
The list is striking because it goes far beyond the question of whether another bus stop is needed somewhere. The citizens called for more electric buses, better connections with surrounding communities, dedicated or priority lanes for buses and more cycle paths. They proposed stronger promotion of public transport, adapting timetables to actual usage data and experimenting with free bus travel one day a week.
Other proposals included underground pedestrian crossings, parking arrangements that consume less space, protection of existing green areas and regular measurements of air pollution and noise. The city should also embrace the idea of the “15-minute city”: important everyday destinations should be quickly accessible on foot or by bicycle.
“I never thought I would sit here”
The Citizens’ Jury had thus turned a question about public transport into a more fundamental one: how much urban space should be given to cars?
On 27 June, the members returned to City Hall. Representatives of the European Commission, the OECD and Romanian politics were present. For some of those selected, simply being in that room was unfamiliar. “I never thought I would one day be sitting here in the council chamber,” one member said at the closing event. Another described participation as a civic duty that should be open to everyone.
An unusual iroup
Sorin Zamfirescu, one of the 20 randomly selected participants and himself a former mayor of the city, described the group as remarkably diverse. It was “not very easy”, he said, to bring together people from across the city and turn them into a functioning group. Precisely for that reason, he hoped similar processes would also be used for other public services. Citizens’ views, he said, were “extremely important” for improving them.
The OECD observed another change. Some members’ initial scepticism had, over the course of the meetings, turned into pride at having genuinely contributed to shaping their city. This is one of the effects of citizens’ assemblies that is harder to measure in kilometres of cycle lanes or additional bus routes.
Then It was the politicians’ turn
That was when the more difficult part of the experiment began. The city had promised to examine every recommendation and respond publicly. The proposals were initially to be divided into three categories: those that could be implemented quickly without additional expenditure, those requiring extra budget funds in the medium term, and those that should be incorporated into longer-term planning.
It took longer than initially announced. It was not until 29 January 2025 that the City Council formally considered the entire package. All 21 councillors present voted to acknowledge the recommendations and place alongside them a detailed response from the city administration. The citizens’ recommendations had thus at least become an official part of the municipality’s political record.
Mayor Gutău promised during the meeting that “every recommendation” would be carefully examined. Depending on the budget situation, proposals were to be taken into account as early as 2025 and 2026. He was particularly proud, he said, that people “from all sections of society” had participated. The views of citizens, he added, meant “an enormous amount” to him.
What can be attributed to the Citizens’ Jury?
The city’s response also illustrates one of the difficulties involved in measuring impact. Some of the jury’s demands coincided with projects that had already been planned or begun. In response to the call for more electric buses and a better regional network, for example, the administration pointed to existing plans to acquire 26 electric buses and 13 electric minibuses for connections with surrounding communities, as well as a further 15 electric minibuses. New cycling links and the redesign of public spaces were also already included in existing programmes.
It would therefore be wrong to attribute every new bus route to the Citizens’ Jury. Part of its impact lies elsewhere: it confirmed certain projects, shifted priorities and obliged the administration to publicly address each of the 24 proposals.
20 of 24 recommendations supported
According to H.appy Cities, the City Council ultimately committed to supporting and implementing 20 of the 24 recommendations. Four were therefore not adopted or did not receive a corresponding commitment to implementation.
That is an unusually high rate of political acceptance. It does not, however, mean that 20 recommendations have already been fully implemented. There is a considerable difference between “supported”, “planned”, “covered by an existing project” and “fully implemented”.
The publicly available documents have so far not provided a sufficiently detailed progress report to establish reliably how many of the 24 proposals have actually been completed. In the case of transport projects that had already been planned, moreover, a distinction needs to be made between implementation after the Citizens’ Jury and implementation because of the Citizens’ Jury.
From experiment to model
In August 2026, the small Romanian experiment received international attention after the fact. The OECD included Râmnicu Vâlcea in its report on eleven European experiments in citizen participation in EU regional policy. The Citizens’ Jury was one of three examples of randomly selected deliberative processes given particular attention. The OECD especially emphasised that such processes must not end when recommendations are handed over: politicians and public authorities need to respond and make clear what happens next.
That sounds self-evident. In citizen participation, it is not. All too often a process ends with a final report, a group photograph and a promise that the proposals will “feed into the further process”. Râmnicu Vâlcea at least tried to finish that sentence.
The twenty seats in city hall
Whether this will develop into a lasting new form of Romanian local democracy remains an open question. But the first experiment demonstrates something else quite clearly: 20 randomly selected people do not need to be transport planners to deliberate sensibly about transport. They need time, information, different perspectives – and politicians who subsequently explain what will happen to their proposals.
Perhaps the most unusual number in this experiment was therefore neither the 2,000 letters sent out nor the 24 recommendations. It was the 20 people who eventually found themselves sitting in City Hall, even though at least one of them had never imagined being there.
About Râmnicu Vâlcea
Râmnicu Vâlcea is the capital of Vâlcea County in Romania. The city is located about 180 kilometres from Bucharest. The population in 2021 was 93,151.