In drawing together experts and citizens, Participative Technological Assessment – PTA – is the symbol of a major opening in the traditional rapport between science, ethics and society at large. This contribution draws on a set of literature that evaluates PTA’s European procedures and research; the author introduces and explores the criteria used in these secondary assessment communications to eventually come up with a number of critiques: PTA’s technical and evaluating poles are discarded, to the advantage of participation. These communications request the participation of the affected publics together with this of a multiplicity of actors, but do not give them the means to respond to cognitive and ethical pluralist assessment. Obviously, such limitations question participative and deliberative democracy political theories.