A third citizens’ summit under the euPrevent COVID-19 project took place on 12 June.
Although also heavily impacted by the pandemic, compared to the experiences of the citizens from Aachen and Maastricht, the citizens of Liège had less difficulties when the cross-border activity was forbidden or restricted. This is probably because they base their lives more centered around the Francophone region. What poses more challenge to the Liège citizens is not the physical border of a country, but the language issue. For most citizens of Liège, they see themselves as citizens of “Europe”, therefore, they asked for more solidarity at an EU level for coordinated actions to tackle COVID-19. Most people of Liège showed not only a lot of respect for the health care workers and professionals, they had full confidence with their doctors. When it comes to difficult decision like vaccination, they completely rely on the advices of their general practitioners. However, the way they were informed about vaccination from the governmental level was so diversified that people found it confusing.
The next citizens’ summit will take place digitally on 19 June. For more information about the project and related citizens’ summits, see the website: https://euprevent.eu/summits-covid/.
Special thanks to our French-speaking moderators who took care of the citizens in small groups to have in-depth discussions, including the staff members of University of Liège, and some multi-lingual health professionals from Maastricht.