Paul Țap & Sergiu Gherghina: “Improving the participatory budgeting process in Cluj-Napoca”, Center for Governance and Security Policy, Policy Brief 1 / 2022, pp. 1-7.
Participatory budgeting in Cluj-Napoca is the largest exercise of its kind in Romania. Participants can propose projects designed to change the community, and those that win are funded from the local budget. Since 2017, Cluj-Napoca City Hall has created an online platform exclusively for participatory budgeting. Although there are multiple benefits for the municipality and citizens, interviews with participants in the process reveal some issues related to visibility, promoting participatory budgeting, creating spaces for deliberation, amounts allocated to projects, introducing new sections or reducing project implementation time. This policy brief provides some recommendations that can be used by the local government to improve the process.
