Closing conference in Brussels – we start a new Europe now

By Marta Gawinek - Dagargulia

 













Every day we hear more and more about the crisis of the belief in the European concept. Lack of understanding of the EU, no feeling of belonging... In fact, it is difficult to love Europe today. A remedy would be more participation of European citizens that creates stronger feeling of belonging and understanding of the EU. 

However, the postulate for more participation in the EU has been demanded so many times. Therefore the participants of the I AM EUROPE project decided to take matters into their own hands and instead of talking about change start being this change from now on.

They made specific proposals in several areas of how to enhace participation of European citizens in the policy making. They presented them at the Closing Conference in Brussels on 22^nd June. Let me mention a few of them:

I AM EUROPE newspaper launched at the conference is one of the bridges to make the distance between European Union and its citizens smaller. The newspaper makes the EU citizenship more accessable by giving specific answers of what does Europe mean to real individuals. It covers issues  burning in the hearts of Europeans – how to empower communities, how to foster transparency, cope with ageing society, create public spaces developed with community participation? The European citizens report directly from their sites trying to criticise constructively, i.e. while reporting about the vicitims of housing crisis in Spain and their ways of protest and participation.

How to enhance EU functioning awareness? Let us use the experience from Belgium of G1000 meetings or organise town hall meetings once every year on the Day of Europe - 9^th May to discuss the future of Europe and to foster more colaboration between politics and citizens.

How to make allocation of the EU funds into public spaces more participatory? Following the good local practice from Bulgaria of Community Participation Forum let us organise meetings of different stakeholders in the field of urban planning and involve local communities into the planning process and priorities setting of EU grant allocations for public spaces. As a result, the local authorities might be obliged to ensure a code of conduct which foresees participation process in budgeting and implementation of the projects for public spaces.  This will make the idea of public spaces for people and by people come true.

How to foster social inclusion? Let us use mapping tool created by the I AM EUROPE citizens as a social change platform. Showing civic engagement initatives from all over Europe will be a bottom up approach to involve those who have so far been marginalised, such as lonely mothers, the poor ones, Roma minority. Everyone can share good practices related to social inclusion initiatives in a very easy way and promote them all around Europe.

2013, the year of European citizens is an additional occasion to this about what European citizenship exactly means to the people and instead of convincing the citizens to believe in the concept, encourage them to create another Europe they will really love. The citizens gathered around I AM EUROPE has just started to make Europe really lovely.