Who are we?

The ‘’Forwarding Democratic EU Participation- FORCEP’’ is a 24 months project which seeks to foster European citizenship and to improve conditions for civic and democratic participation at the Union level. To achieve this, the project aims to develop a network of municipalities, to strengthen the e-democracy process so as to make citizens understand the Union policy making- process and to promote opportunities for societal engagement of a specific target group: the unemployed. The project‘s aim is to promote intercultural exchange in the employment field and develop citizens‘ understanding of key EU policy objectives including the EU 2021 strategy that emphasizes smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.The effects of Covid-19 include high unemployment, which has created great social inequalities and pushed some people to the line of poverty and social exclusion.

As a result, these people are not socially active, as they have to deal with the problem of their living. During the implementation of the program there will be exchanges between participants from different countries to reinforce mutual understanding and tolerance. Also, the participants will be given the opportunity to broaden their perspective and to develop a sense of European belonging and identity. Active citizenship has a clear and critical role to play not only in enabling us to emerge strongly from this crisis, but also in helping us understand it and, crucially, think beyond it, to a future that is likely to be different, though in ways that are as yet indeterminate. Crises of this sort often result in far-reaching social and economic change.

And we need critical, compassionate citizens to ensure the future is both fair and inclusive.The project‘s aim is to promote inter cultural exchange in the employment field and develop citizens‘ understanding of key EU policy objectives including the EU 2021 strategy that emphasizes smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. FORCEP aims to establish a network of towns among Greece, Slovenia, Romania, Italy, Hungary, Croatia, Spain that have to cope with a common target: to get the unemployed involved in the Union making process with the aim of reducing the unemployed social exclusion by European legislation and policies. All the involved parties get involved in structuring thematic co-operation on ways of combating the unemployed s social exclusion and get the unemployed as well as the community engaged in the European democratic process through the e- democracy and mainly the e-consultation and the e-initiative, enabling them to take part in union policy making process. The partners are in an active collaboration with different relevant factors such as local/national and European authorities, NGOs, experts, citizens and citizens‘ groups, trade unions as the diversity of actors helps to deliver the active citizenship message to multiple groups of citizens.