Building democratic resilience and citizenship education are becoming increasingly relevant for our societies. They enable citizens to debate and decide on complex socio-political issues with mutual respect for each other and the rule of law. However, the approaches and measures as well as the monitoring in these areas differ from country to country.

The authors of this expert report and policy brief (“Handreichung”) conduct a comprehensive examination of different monitoring strategies within European countries and European organisations. They question how such monitoring can, in turn, contribute to strengthening the measures.
Through in-depth analysis and expert insights, they identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the existing approaches and derive recommendations for action for the national contexts on the one hand and discuss how monitoring can be strengthened at European level on the other.

Maria Magdalena Isac, Dr., is a Senior Researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium, and Director of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2027 at the University of Bath in the UK. Her work focuses on the comparative evaluation of school systems, with an emphasis on understanding how different formal and informal educational approaches and teaching practices contribute to young people’s citizenship learning and citizenship competences.

Susanne Zels is a political analyst and consultant working in the European and German policy field. She founded the initiative Values Unite, which advocates to enhance democratic competences and promote European values through greater investment in citizenship education by European and national policy-makers.

Hermann J. Abs, Dr., is a Professor of Education Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, since 2013. The main focus of his work is on research in teaching and citizenship education. He has been a National Research Coordinator for the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2016 and ICCS 2022) and served as the head of the scientific advisory board to the German Federal Agency for Citizenship Education (BpB 2018–2023).