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The European Commission's eParticipation Intiative

Council of Europe Symposium on eDemocracy “e-Democracy: new opportunities for increased participation Strasbourg, 23 April 2007. The European Commission's eParticipation Intiative. Thanassis Chrissafis European Commission DG INFSO eGovernment and CIP Operations

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The European Commission's eParticipation Intiative

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  1. Council of EuropeSymposium on eDemocracy“e-Democracy: new opportunities for increased participationStrasbourg, 23 April 2007 The European Commission's eParticipation Intiative Thanassis Chrissafis European Commission DG INFSO eGovernment and CIP Operations athanassios.chrissafis@ec.europa.eu

  2. Policy Context • Lisbon agenda - Key to Competitiveness • eGovernment An eGovernment Action Plan was launched last year, helping to offer better public services. A high level Ministerial conference in September 2007 • Reconnect with Citizens: eParticipation

  3. 2 core challenges • Democratic deficit • European citizenship

  4. Closing the democratic deficit • Inform • Accountability • Open procedures, open decisions, • Involve • ICT has great potential to involve large numbers of citizens and businesses in public debate and decision-making, from municipal to European level • Emergence of new communities, within and across geographic borders • Strengthen European citizenship via Citizens involvement in EU level decisions • Engage • Active citizens, shared decisions & shared responsibilities • It can lead to better legislation • It can change the way Parliaments interact with Citizens & Businesses

  5. Turnout trends in European Elections

  6. European Citizenship • An increasing number of EU level legislations affect citizens’ local life and work • An increasing number of cross-border issues require EU level solutions • Both of the above are always implemented and impact on local level • The future of Europe is the future of regions

  7. 10 years of European Research on eParticipation • 11 FP5 IST projects with 15 m€ • 8 FP6 IST projects (19 m€ funding) now running • Call 6 on INCO, included eParticipation in Western Balkans, new projects startedon Jan. ‘07 • A strong basis of results to date and on-going research and networking activities over the next 3 years.

  8. The eParticipation Preparatory Action • The Preparatory Action is launched for the first time in 2006 based on the Budget Amendment made by the European Parliament end of December 2005, which underlines the importance of this field • This action will last up to three years. The next steps is to launch the WP 2007 • After that, it may become a program, depending on the outcome of the 3 year period.

  9. Preparatory Action overall objectives to demonstrate concrete cases where, with the help of modern ICT tools and applications, • improvements of the legislative/legislation process and its outcomes can be achieved, • and at the same time, enhance the participation of the public in the decision-making process amongst others through improved interaction with decision-makers. • both topics, legislation and public participation, are relevant at EU, Member State and local level

  10. Focus of the 2006 WP • Visualisation of arguments, dialogues and impacts of legislation • Tools to assess costs and benefits of proposed or adopted legislation • Tools to reduce complexity of legislation in order to improve access to its content by non-specialists • Possible ways to organise and structure legislative information, thus improving use and content access, through e.g. standardisation and harmonisation techniques. • Tools and services to allow access to relevant legislation content according to specific needs of citizens, socio-economic groups of geographical areas • Tools and services to enable the interaction between members of parliaments and citizens or socio-economic groups on cross-border EU level issues PS: “on cross-border EU level issues”: beyond the boundaries of individual municipalities, regions and/or Member States; a true European dimension!

  11. Preparatory Action: outcome of the 2006 Calls Call for proposals launched in July 2006 36 proposals received, 6 projects started in January 2007 Call for tenders launched in November 2006 3 studies will start in May – June 2007

  12. eParticipation: actions in 2007 • Preparatory Action (increased budget from EP) • New Work Programme for 2007 • Consultations in early 2007 • a Call for Proposals will be launched in 2nd quarter 2007 • New projects will be launched in 4th quarter 2007 • Implementation of 2006 projects: • Results will be available in a number of decision-making bodies across the EU • CIP programme • A thematic network on regional and local eParticipation Initiatives

  13. New focus of the 2007 WP • We plan to maintain the 2006 parts which were not covered (e.g. visualisation of impacts) • We add however the citizen-driven initiatives (e.g. web2.0 type of social networking)

  14. information available at http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/egovernment_research/eparticipation/index_en.htm Thank you for your attention

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