A French politician has called for participatory budgeting to part of how the country recovers from the impact of Covid-19.

Speaking in response to the recent 'reshuffle' by the French government, Paula Forteza, member of the centre-left Écologie Democratie Solidarité party, called for PB to be part of how the €100 billion recovery fund is spent.

She said (machine translated):

"To do with them, we could start by imagining a national participative budget out of a share of the 100 billion planned for the recovery. Each citizen could decide on the use of these funds by prioritizing spending or by voting for projects he considers useful for building the next world. It would be a profound democratic innovation, which we find today at the local level or in countries like Portugal or Canada.

"Doing with them will obviously be subject to debate in Parliament at the start of the parliamentary term, starting the session earlier if necessary, all of the proposals of the Citizen Climate Convention. Without filter or selection. In block. And without trimming ambition."

France has long experience using PB, with the current mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, having committed 100m euros of capital funding to be spent through PB over five years – a total of 500m euros.

You can read the full speech here (French).

Paula Forteza was also involved in a paper on digital democracy, including participatory budgeting, which was part of a parliamentary review into democratic reform.