Deliberative bias of Citizens Consultations?

Can citizens be wrong in predicting EU:s social and economic future? This seems to be the case when looking at the aggregate results of ECC 2009, that brought together more than 1600 citizens from all 27 EU Member States to debate the question: What can the EU do to shape our economic and social future in a globalized world?

I was the facilitator of European Citizens Consultation in Finland, and we ranked both the issue of  climate change and the need of financial regulation on the top. At that time, global financial crisis starting in the US was widely acknowledged, but it didn´t seem to worry European citizens that much at that time: climate change, health care, working conditions were top 3-issues, followed by education, unemployment, agriculture , social inequality, crime and transparency of EU-politics. The financial crisis was voted as rank 10 (sic!) out of 15 recommendations in this all-EU-citizens deliberation at the European Citizens Summit in Brussels in May 2009. Jatka lukemista “Deliberative bias of Citizens Consultations?”