State of Europe<\/a>” event in Brussels<\/strong>, where we brought participants to some of our Focus Groups, who were able to attend and speak in the various sessions. There was a lot of enthusiasm because people stood up and listened to “real people,” not someone living in the “Brussels bubble.” <\/p>\nCivic participation is at the heart of many European programs and projects. How do you make sure it is “real” and “felt”? <\/h3>\n
In what we do, and in what is done on European projects, there is a real risk of “citizen-washing<\/strong>,” i.e., promoting fictitious or “window dressing” civic participation.<\/p>\nTo avoid falling into this trap, we consider clarity of purpose<\/strong> first and foremost, that is, clarity in front of those involved in the project with respect to what is intended to be done with their input, what path it will take, and what impact it can have. This is at the heart of Debating Europe’s mission, which systematically uses what it collects from citizens for structured dialogue activities with European institutions. <\/p>\nAnother key aspect is to address issues close to reality<\/strong>. If you talk about issues too high, everything becomes abstract. For example, if you ask citizens, “what should the EU do?”, in most cases they will only be able to give superficial and “token” answers, because few people know the workings and constraints of European institutions. On the other hand, if you ask them, “what would you do for your school, your hospital, your park?” then they will answer. And they will answer willingly, in an involved and informed way, making a real contribution to the debate. The contribution of so many local focus groups, addressing close and real issues, allows us to give a vivid and real picture of what is being heard and proposed at the European level. <\/p>\nNone of this would be possible without first building an<\/strong> effective and extensive network<\/strong> in the different countries, in the different local realities, where we work with civil society partners, foundations and youth organizations. Without them, we would never be able to replicate the same level of involvement and participation in each country. We work with and train these networks of partners to be able to carry out the programs we develop, giving them the tools to facilitate a focus group, using a common methodology<\/strong>, that can produce an accurate global return. <\/p>\nYou then have to be able to wear different “hats”<\/strong>: work with both civil society and citizens and politicians in language they understand and that is concrete from their respective points of view, and then try to connect the dots. There is no point in running citizens’ groups and hoping that the energy that comes out of them will be understood by a politician. It will never happen. You have to understand what the language<\/strong> is and what the levers<\/strong> are that will “trigger” something in a politician on a specific issue. To do that, you have to know where that legislation or policy stands, and what will trigger interest. <\/p>\nIt is also important to make sure that the right politicians are involved. Not the ones who don’t say, or think, “yes, good, that’s all very nice, but now we’re going back to decide.” Someone who really believes in the process, and in its usefulness: which also lies in making his or her own role as a representative and as a politician more effective and credible in the eyes of the citizens. This is a challenge, both in Brussels and in the member states. But it is also a challenge that politicians and officials have begun to take up. <\/p>\n
We talked about challenges, for Europe and for citizens. What are the “big challenges” in your day-to-day work? <\/h3>\n
The main ones are precisely the ones we just talked about: “staying the course,” in terms of consistency and clarity of purpose; staying close to reality and animating local networks; and focusing on the right language, levers and interlocutors.<\/p>\n
But there are others as well. One of the big challenges that we focus on, and that sums up in different terms the meaning of everything we have been saying, is to depolarize society<\/strong>. In some ways, the goal of everything we do is to be able to bring people together to find common ground, de-polarizing the debate, and bring it to a larger scale. It’s not really about “saving democracy,” nor is it even about finding “alternatives to democracy,” but rather about depolarizing society and fostering the dialogue-between<\/strong> citizens, and between citizens and their representatives-that is at the heart of the proper functioning of democracy. <\/p>\nIt is an approach that takes time and energy, but it works. And it can be a small light of hope in the current context of increasing polarization<\/strong>. I bring an example from a few years ago: we had organized a series of focus groups in Germany that deliberately brought together voters from the center, the radical left, and the far right. We wanted to see what would happen by putting them together in a facilitated session. After an hour and a half, 80 percent of voters from both extremes began to gravitate toward the center on issues they had in common, because they had suddenly begun to “humanize” the issues. They were talking to people they had never talked to before: not “devilish” figures, but people with a point of view, on small issues, that could be discussed, and shared. These are small pieces of ” trust building<\/strong>,” confidence building<\/strong>, that can help stitch up small pieces of society<\/strong>, starting at the local level. <\/p>\nThis brings us to another crucial challenge we are working on, which is to scale our activity<\/strong>: to be able to move from focus groups of 10 to 20 people to engaging thousands of people, which is the only way to achieve value, real impact. Scaling this so that it’s not just a few people in different countries doing it, but hundreds of thousands, constantly, with clear goals and results. To accomplish this requires commitment, vision, rigor, people and funding. We need to collect massive amounts of data from citizens, which are extremely important to create a structured and continuous system of exchange<\/strong> between citizens and policy makers. We are looking for the most efficient resources and ways to do this, such as using artificial intelligence platforms to engage more people and to translate, synthesize and analyze the data. <\/p>\nWe talked about many crucial challenges for the European Union. What role do European projects play in addressing them? <\/h3>\n
EU funding for these types of projects is critical. The ability to keep European and local civil society projects alive has never been more important than it is today. Civil society organizations and their projects are the lifeblood of democracy in Europe and are fundamentally dependent on European funds to exist, and to try to make a difference. <\/p>\n
In addition to the scarcity of funds, organizations active in this area complain about a lack of flexibility in calls and projects, which often bind them to maintain activities or structures that are no longer responsive to needs, and reporting and accountability processes that are often burdensome, especially for small organizations. Friends of Europe is a fortunate organization because it is relatively large, has staff dedicated to working on proposals and reporting, established processes, and funding from governments and institutions. But many small associations have to spend 30 percent of their time reporting instead of implementing what they got the funds for. Civil society organizations are asking for flexibility and trust<\/strong>. They demand that the European Union invest and believe in their role in defending democracy and – ultimately – society. Any prospect of cutting or diverting funds would mean taking sap and life out of what has always been, and remains, the EU’s truest and most authentic advocacy tool<\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Europe Day, let’s find out about Debating Europe’s activities: giving young people and citizens a voice, looking to the future together<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[731,2189],"tags":[2314,2330],"class_list":["post-41701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive-archive","category-archive-stories","tag-experiences","tag-sector-european-citizenship"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41706,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41701\/revisions\/41706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euknow.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}