The issue

Mobile EU citizens settling in another Member State need support to ease their democratic inclusion in the host society. Currently, support is often made available to third-country nationals and mobile EU citizens as a specific group often lack sufficient support.

We aim to strengthen instruments for mobile EU citizens and expats to engage in EU political life on an everyday basis.

The project targets mobile EU citizens and expats, helping to address the systemic underrepresentation of their views and low levels of democratic participation at national and EU levels.

Project supports and proactively encourages democratic participation of 

• Mobile citizens, i.e. EU nationals residing in another European country,
• Under-represented groups, including young and senior European expats,
• EU level policy makers.

Project period: November, 2022 – April 2024

Our practical solution will be implemented through the Partner’s network in communities of our focus: Latvian expats abroad, Swedish expats abroad, expat communities living in Brussels. This bottom-up approach will ensure wide geographical coverage of member states and bring high value for further EU level engagement.

Three essential project elements

1. Understanding the needs and challenges faced by EU mobile citizens when engaging on EU-level issues in order to select suitable topics of discussion.
2. Engaging mobile citizens in deliberation processes. Establishing a practical tool at the Open2Vote platform for EU mobile citizens to learn about their rights and opportunities as well as practically engage in deliberation processes (expressing their opinions and attitudes on important topics through voting).
3. Improve the representation of the interests of mobile EU citizens by awareness raising among EU public authorities. Considerable benefits from the practical engagement of target groups – project will ensure valuable results – data on people’s attitudes towards certain questions that will be asked to them using Open2Vote.eu platform. These results must be used further in communication with EU institutions and integrated in lobbying processes.

Partners

• “Foundation of Public Participation” or organisation MyVoice, Latvia. Grassroots NGO working in the field of civic digital participation and public engagement. Develops digital tools for better civic participation. 
• Europeans Throughout the World, Belgium. Umbrella organisation gathering Civil society organizations uniting mobile Europeans and engaged in civic interest representation vis-a-vis EU institutional stakeholders.
• Open Knowledge Sweden, Sweden. Works with the community in the areas of open knowledge, civic participation and open data. Carries out research and policy-related work.
• The ECIT Foundation– European Citizen’s rights, Involvement and Trust, Belgium. Youth-driven think tank that focuses on issues relating to European citizenship issues, works with a range of different stakeholders to ensure European citizenship becomes more than the sum of its parts.