The European Commission's eParticipation Intiative

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The European Commission's eParticipation
Intiative
Council of EuropeSymposium on eDemocracye-Democ
racy new opportunities for increased
participationStrasbourg, 23 April 2007

Thanassis Chrissafis European Commission DG
INFSO eGovernment and CIP Operations athanassios.
chrissafis_at_ec.europa.eu
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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

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2 core challenges

• Democratic deficit
• European citizenship

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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

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Turnout trends in European Elections
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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

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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.

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• 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.

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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

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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!

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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
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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

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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)

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information available at

• http//europa.eu.int/information_society/activitie
  s/egovernment_research/eparticipation/index_en.htm
  
• Thank you for your attention