Centre Albert Borschette - Salle 0A
Rue Froissart 36
B1049 Brussels

For more information, go to: http://ec.europa.eu/eparticipation

The objectives of the eParticipation Preparatory Action
are to demonstrate how using modern ICT tools and applications can make
it easier for people to participate in decision-making and can
contribute to better legislation. The action was initiated by the
European Parliament and launched in 2006. It supports pilot projects in
real-life environments that demonstrate the use of Information and
Communication Technologies to bolster citizens’ participation in
democratic decision-making.

The
Preparatory Action lasts for three years (2006-2008). Through a set of
trials in real environments, the action promotes the use of ICTs in the
legislative and decision-making processes at local, regional, national
and EU level. . The trial projects are using new digital technologies
to make legislative texts clearer and to help citizens have easier
access to information about new ideas for legislation and to give them
the tools to express their opinions.

So far,
14 projects have been funded. In the first year six trial projects were
selected and in 2007 a further seven trial projects as well as a
support action to coordinate and promote the eParticipation projects
were chosen. The European Parliament, national parliaments and local
and regional authorities are actively involved. State-of-the-art ICT
tools are being tested to facilitate the writing of legal texts,
including translation into different languages, and the drafting of
amendments as well as making the texts easier for non-specialists to
find and understand. New digital technologies are also being used to
give citizens easier access to information and the more opportunity to
try to influence decisions that affect their lives.

To be announced soon…

The
adoption of the Work Programme for 2008 and the launch of a new call
for proposals are scheduled for April. More information on this will be
announced shortly. An Information Day will be organised to give
interested applicants further information. It is scheduled to be held
in Brussels on 20th May 2008, pending formal adoption of the work
programme, at the Centre Albert Borschette.

More information soon.

2007

In
2007, the preparatory action was granted a budget of €5 million. Eight
projects were selected for funding and started on 1st January 2008:

CitizenScape
'eParticipation in Legislation Implementation': helping citizens to
debate and engage with the implementation of EU environmental
legislation at a local level with the use of state-of-the-art Web 2.0
social networking tools.

Read more. http://www.citizenscape.org/

Demos@Work
'European-wide discussion between elected representatives and civil
society': facilitating European-wide discussions between elected
representatives and civil society on emerging policy issues in the
field of public health, particularly the harmful effects of smoking.
Read more. http://www.demosatwork.org/project.htm

FEED
'Federated eParticipation Systems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on
Environmental and Energy Issues': provides users with seamless access
to existing federated content that matches their information search
requirements, with a focus on Environmental and Energy issues. Read
more. http://www.feed-project.eu

Ideal-EU
'Integrating the Drivers of e-Participation at Regional Level in
Europe': raising awareness on the latest evidence on climate change,
and appropriate policy responses, together with assessments of the
financial impact and costs of inaction. Read more. http://www.ideal-eu.net

VEP
'The Virtual European Parliament': creates a virtual European
Parliament in which young citizens can participate via mobiles and
web2.0 technologies and tools. Read more http://www.virtualep.eu/

VOICE
'Giving European People a voice in EU-legislation': enhancing the
participation of citizens from regions in Germany and Spain in EU
decision-making in the area of consumer protection. Read more. http://www.give-your-voice.eu/

eCommittee:
provides citizens with the opportunity to follow issues in the European
Parliament's Environment Committee and to interact with MEPs. The focus
will be on climate change. Read more. http://www.ourclimate.eu/ourclimate/ecp.aspx

Momentum: a support action to help monitor, coordinate and promote the EU eParticipation initiative. Read more. http://www.smartup.gr/momentum/

See also:

Work Programme 2007

2006

The budget available in 2006 was €2 million, and six projects were selected for funding:

DALOS
'Drafting legislation with ontology-base support': the project aims to
provide law-makers and European citizens with linguistic and knowledge
management tools to assist in accessing and retrieving as well as
drafting legal texts.

Read more.

SEAL
'Smart Environment for Assisting the drafting and debating of
Legislation': developing an integrated working environment to help
those involved in drafting legal texts. The project provides the tools
to make it easier to create legal drafts and connections from and to
existing legal sources.Read more.

LEGESE
'Easing participation in legislative processes': this project provides
easier access to, and understanding of, EU legislation and processes.

Read more.

LEX-IS
'Enabling participation of youth in the public debate of legislation
among Parliaments, citizens and businesses in the European Union':
enhancing public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation
formation and debate), specifically targeting the participation of
younger citizens.

Read more.

LEXIPATION
'An advanced ICT tool for enhancing Citizen's participation in the
legislative process': this project provides tools to aid interaction
between members of parliaments and citizens or groups of citizens at
the regional level in four member states (Germany, Greece, Italy, and
UK)Read more.

TID+
'Enabling citizens' initiative to eParticipation': based on an Estonian
experience (Today I Decide) which enables citizens to propose, discuss
and express views on new legislation initiatives, while allowing
decision-makers to deliver a response to them, this project will adapt
and make available this service in a cross-border environment. Read more.

See also:

Work programme 2006

The
eParticipation Info Day is provisionally scheduled for 20 May 2008,
following the publication of the 2008 Work Programme, which is expected
to be adopted by the end of April. Further information will be
available on http://ec.europa.eu/eparticipation.

Renewed eGovernment website

The new eGovernment website is now online at http://ec.europa.eu/egovernment.
Many updated pages offer you interesting reading material and an
insight to the activities undertaken and supported by the European
Commission in this field. Please let us know what you think by
contacting the eGovernment Communication Team and by frequently visiting the website.

eGovernment for the people

Today,
democracy and democratic processes in Europe are facing a number of
challenges. Many citizens are losing interest and confidence in the way
their countries are being governed. eParticipation provides new tools
to reconnect citizens with governments and to increase their
involvement in the decision-making which affects their lives.

In
many European countries, where voting is not mandatory, turnouts at
national and European elections are falling. There are numerous reasons
for this. Perhaps voters feel there is little difference between the
political choices available to them, or perhaps they feel their vote
will not “make a difference”. More widely, lack of confidence in public
servants, government and other institutions, increasing expectations of
public services which citizens feel are not being met, and insufficient
transparency in public institutions, are just some of the reasons
fuelling disaffection amongst the public.

Governments are
working with citizens to identify and test ways of giving them more of
a stake in the policy-shaping process, such as through public
consultations on new legislation. ICTs provide a range of routes to
foster communication between politicians and government bodies on the
one side, and citizens on the other. Internet, mobile phones and
interactive television can be used to channel information to citizens
and canvass their views informally, and even to conduct formal votes.
Increasing public participation benefits democracy. It is also good for
the cohesion of European society because participation promotes a sense
of ownership of the political process, making implementation easier.

Democratic quests

In
recent years, the EU and its Member States have mounted a concerted
effort to find workable mechanisms and solutions to enhance and boost
eParticipation. Under the Fifth and Sixth Framework Programmes for
Research (FP5 and FP6), which ran from 1998 to 2006, the Commission
funded around 20 ICT research projects in this area.

At the end
of 2005, the European Parliament asked the Commission to launch an
eParticipation Preparatory Action, which promotes the development and
use of Information and Communication Technologies in legislative and
decision-making processes within parliamentary and government
environments. In June 2006, the Council of Ministers, when agreeing the
i2010 eGovernment action plan, recognised “the growing interest in
eParticipation and the impact of ICT on activities in the political
sphere”. It is expected that eParticipation activities will be fully
integrated into the ICT Policy Support Programme in coming years.

A call for proposals published in July 2006 received 36 eligible proposals of which six were selected.
They cover a number of important areas, such as the participation of
the general public and youth in the legislative process, the
multilingual drafting of European legislation, and ‘smart’ legislative
environments.
In 2007, the Commission published a second call for
proposals with a €5 million budget, in which it sought to support trial
projects (expected to start in 2008) which apply ICT tools to real-life
legislative and decision-making processes. Projects could be
‘citizen-driven’, providing new methods for individual citizens and
groups to initiate and contribute to policy proposals, or
‘decision-maker driven’, in which policy-makers open up their activity
to greater outside scrutiny and offer opportunities to citizens to
contribute.