An Europe closer to its citizens and able to ensure them real opportunities to improve their life.
This is the need stressed by the participants to the project E-Panels, promoted by ALDA.
In all the discussions implemented on the different national forums and on the final conference, that was held in Zagreb (HR) is possible to extrapolate some really interesting recommendations for the European policy makers.
First of all, in most of the forums was highlighted the need to bring the EU institutions more closer to the citizens through a better dissemination of the information about EU, European citizen rights and opportunities for its citizens.
Programmes addressing youth and youth unemployment, moving resources from the military expenses to key sectors as education, industry and agriculture, strengthen minorities rights and to respect ethnic and religious groups, more educational and mobility opportunities for youths in order to improve their skill to face the difficult situation of the labour market, protecting the environment, are the main needs expressed.
The project “e-panels: fostering citizens’ participation and volunteering in a wider Europe” was designed to address the issue of bridging the gap between citizens and the European Union in an innovative way. Bringing theEU closer to the citizens is one of the biggest challenges the EU is facing today. The need to promote and explain the “European project” to citizens, but also to involve them in its definition itself, is well understood by the partners of this project.
The project tried to foster citizens’ participation and interaction between citizens’ and EU institutions through debates about how to improve citizen participation, with a focus on tools or processes such as ICT tools and the process of volunteering. e-panels aimed at producing opinions and recommendations on these issues in order to collect and submit them to EU institutions. The precise aim of creating e-panels was to enable the citizens fromEU countries, but also from candidates countries, to be directly involved and to participate.
Partner of this project were Maison de l’Europe (FR), FIB, Fundacion Insula Barataria (SP), AEP, Association for European Partnership (BG), Local Democracy Agency Osijek (HR), Local Democracy Agency Sisak (HR), “Studiorum”, Center for Regional Policy Research andCooperation (MK),“Horizont”, NGO (AL).