Dialogue with the EU - The voices of the European Citizens

Project Partners

• Romania Society for Lifelong Learning (SREP) - Romania
• Ballybeen Women’s Centre—Northern Ireland
• IAT—Germany
• KMOP—Greece
• AKLUB—Czech Republic

Background

The European Union and its institutions are perceived differently by Europeans citizens. Although the European Institutions are open to  dialogue with its citizens, due to a lack of information and confidence. the latter do not fully with them.
However based on research from previous European projects  EU citizens are willing to find out about the challenges that form the basis of European policies as well as the future of the EU.

Project Aim

To empower citizens with the necessary knowledge and civic competences to express their opinions on issues for example on the European integration process or EU policies and their impact. This will involve participants taking part in a series of activities where they will learn what mechanisms the EU makes available for them to give their opinions (forums, opinion polls, etc).

Project Work-packages

• Project Management.
• Start-up phase.
• Needs analysis at the level of the target group.
• Preparation of awareness raising activities.
• Implementation of the awareness raising  activities (6 in each country).
• Preparation and implementation of 2 national and 3 international conferences.
• Production of project deliverables –CD,  booklet, website etc..
• Dissemination and valorization of the project.

This project meets the following objectives and priorities of the ’Europe for Citizens’ Programme:

• Giving citizens the opportunity to interact and participate in constructing a tighter knit Europe.
• Enhancing tolerance and mutual understanding between European citizens.
• Collecting the opinion of citizens on some key challenges for the future.
• Creating mechanisms that allow European citizens to develop civic competences.
• Encouraging dialogue between European citizens and the institutions of EU..
• Well-being in Europe: employment, social cohesion and sustainable development.
• Combating Poverty and Social Inclusion (2010)
• Promoting European Values.
• Contributing to informal learning for active European citizenship.
• Making the programme accessible to all.

Project conferences

This project included a series of international conferences. Choose below to access conference materials.

• Active European Citizenship conference: 19 February 2010, Athens, Greece [1]
• Education and diversity in the European Constitution conference: 11 June 2010, Gelsenkirchen [2]

Visit the project website for more information: http://www.srep.ro/dialogeu [3]

This project is co-financed by the European Commission within the Europe for Citizen’s Programme, Actions 2; Measure 3.