A Structured Approach to Participation

The present chapter will provide a condensed presentation of the envisioned participatory design of the governance of food safety and, in doing so extend considerations on how to tailor participation to the purposes served at the different governance stages. Firstly, it will highlight the special value that is assigned to the interface institutions as formal mechanisms for putting the idea of inclusive governance advocated by this book into practice. Secondly, this chapter will present a guiding tool designed to assist the Interface Committee, or the European Commission solely (if no Interface Committee were to be set up), to specify whether it is required to resort to more extensive participation in a given case, i.e. to select additional participatory processes (extending beyond the inclusion of stakeholders and the wider public through the Interface Committee and web-based consultations and deliberations). This guiding tool, which will be set out in more detail below, distinguishes between different purposes of participation, specific to the respective governance stage, and different levels of intensity of participation depending on the levels of uncertainty and ambiguity.