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Glimpses of Europe
Glimpses of Europe offers you information, written both by EPF and other organisations or supporters, about exciting new initiatives and organisations, events you might not have heard about and new policy visions, which all prioritise to involve citizens in improving democracy at European and national level.
May 2022
Project name: Youth Voice: Empowering Positive Change (Youth4Change)
Youth Voice: Empowering Positive Change (Youth4Change)
Duration: 01/03/2022 - 01/03/2024(24 months)
The objective: to empower children and youth to take participate at the political level by reflecting their needs, creating an innovative tool of open dialogue with decision-makers, and stimulating democracy andinclusive democratic participation.
The project's outcomes are the following: the guide of best practice, the study of youthempowerment in politics, policy paper.
The project is developed by the Lithuanian College of Democracy in association with Europe’s Peoples’ Forum. Lithuanian College of Democracy, founded in 1997, is a voluntary non-governmental scientific association, seeking to promote the ideas of democracy in society and social innovation. The College organizes seminars, develops projects for the promotion of democracy, civic education and development, carries out programs of public education, organizes public debates. Lithuanian College of Democracy' mission is the initiation of positive social changes by performing fundamental and applied research as well as implementing related initiatives and programmes in the spheres of social development, education and children wellbeing.
Europe’s Peoples’ Forum and its two European networks of 35 professional participatory organisations and more than 50 national civil society organisations forms a center of excellence for the development of participatory designs and implementation. The Europe’s People’s Forum and its partners has been heavily involved in design, management and facilitation of the Conference on the Future of Europe as well as with the national and regional authorities on the preparation and implementation of participatory processes and deliberative dialogues. The EPF has currently submitted 4 bids for the Horizon 2022 calls with a particular focus on citizens engagement, civil society and media’s role in democratic debates. The EPF has actively advised the European parliament in preparation of its now agreed resolution on Citizen’s Dialogue and Citizen’s Participation in the EU Decision-Making.
Funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union
April 2020
Citizens Looking for Multidimensional Migration Challenges (CITIMIG)
Europe’s Peoples’ Forum is an active partner in this 18 months project that has been co-financed by the Europe for Citizens programme. The project aims to promote citizen participation in the EU policy-making process regarding migration from different perspectives such as economic, security and environmental among others. The goal is to gather experts, citizens and political leaders to discuss, give their views and achieve a policy briefing together. Following this strategy, the project aims to be innovative, inclusive and interactive.
The project will involve citizens in the EU policy-making process and encourage them to take active role in initiating policy actions. Bringing at one table political leaders, experts and citizens, presenting each other their views on policies and measures, elaborating each aspect within small working groups, involving them in intense discussions, we wish them to come to conclusions what should best serve to citizens as well as to the future of Europe. With the project, we will enhance the bottom-up approach, empower citizens to better understand the EU policy-making process, foster mutual cooperation between citizens, raise the level of societal engagement and offer an open space for drafting policy proposals for better and common European politics.
Project partners
Paneuropean Movement Austria(lead partner)
Slovenian Paneuropean Movement
Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium
Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association, Spain
Europe's Peoples' Forum, Denmark
Institute of Advanced Studies, Hungary
Paneuropean Union Hungary
ESDES – Lyon Business School, France
March 2020
Platforms for citizens engagement:
Make.org
Make.org is a civic, European and independent initiative that aims to engage citizens in the improvement of society by collective action and participation in order to improve a democratic weakening. In order to achieve this aim, Make.org uses three different operations: causes, debates and engagement consultations using a consensus approach.
By creating a causes operation this organisation aims to transform society directly through civil society by gathering institutions, citizens, businesses and the media in a program that gives voice to topics that are of interest to society.
Regarding the debates, Make.org wants to transform institutions and democracy by the citizens. One of their most prominent consultations has been WeEuropeans, in which 10 proposals were prioritised by citizens in 27 member states and presented as means to improve European citizens’ democracy. 38 million citizens were reached by the communication campaign and 1.7 million participated.
In the engagement consultations, Make.org aims to transform businesses and administrations by their employees and by citizens by making projects that facilitate a positive development of businesses and administrations.
Simplified the methodology of Make.org publishes a small article illustrating the topic of discussion and encouraging the participants to bring up new proposals that everybody is invited to prioritise by voting through the website. The results are then presented to the relevant decision makers and to citizens that are invited to submit their comments.
For more information: https://make.org/ & https://weeuropeans.eu/fr/fr
Cap Collectif:
Funded in 2008, Cap Collectif aims to confront the crisis of a shaking democracy. In order to do so, this organisation built a digital platform in which they draft transparent and inclusive law. By making this law transparent and inclusive, Cap Collectif includes both politicians and citizens in this drafting, hence creating a citizens parliament.
Their first experiment was Parliament & Citizens, a platform that allowed the collaborative elaboration of the law by members of Parliament and citizens. This platform lunched different consultations in which citizens can participate and vote.
Their methodology consists on collecting participatory applications on questionnaires, online consultations, call for projects, ideas box and more. Since this initiative started, Cap Collectif has already more than 2 million contributions, more than 1 million participants, more than 3 million votes and more than 800 projects.
For more information: https://cap-collectif.com/