Democracy is the core of our living together and the civic and political participation its more natural expression.

Since several years the European Commission and the other European Institutions have been raising the worry of low electoral participation and the consequences on the quality of European democracy.

AER and regions are aware of this issues. How to increase the democratic participation is one of the driving goals of our network. AER and member regions made a clear choice when choosing to focus on “Revitalizing democracy”. In several events of this year, 2016 AER General Assembly and Spring Bureau and AER Youth Regional Network, the discussion around citizens participations, digital democracy and others were the focus of the agenda.

The call for proposals on “Action grants to foster the successful inclusion and participation of European citizens in their host EU country’s civic and political life” gives the opportunity to develop projects on this topic.

Under the “Rights, equality and citizenship” programme, this call aims to foster the successful inclusion and participation of EU citizens in their host EU country, and its civic and political life.

A specific focus is on mobile EU citizens and the combination to exercise their free movement and electoral rights deriving from Union citizenship in their host country.

The call gives priority to proposals seeking the increase of participation of EU citizens in the democratic process, particularly proposals tackling low voter turnout.

Activities funded by the call are the exchange and dissemination of best practices implemented across the EU at local/regional/national level.

Maximum length of the projects is 24 months.  The deadline is 17 January 2017.

If you are interested to apply take a look of the Guide of Applicants.

Get in contact with AER Secretariat to share your project idea with other regions!