Today, Members of the European Parliament are going to vote on ALDE MEP Teresa Giménez Barbat’s report on the implementation of the program “Europe for Citizens“, which has now been running for two years. The aim of the program is to bring the EU closer to its 500 million citizens and to promote a better understanding of the EU while strengthening the sense of European citizenship. To this end, the program finances and supports a wide range of projects, such as town twinning and e-democracy projects, proposed by civil society organisations, think tanks and local administrations. The ALDE group calls for a budget increase to ensure that the program remains relevant and becomes an even more effective tool in order to fight euro scepticism.
Rapporteur Teresa Giménez Barbat (ALDE, Spain) highlights: “In times of rising populism and nationalism, it is now more important than ever that we raise awareness for our European history and the European idea as such. To achieve this, we have to involve all citizens of the EU.”
“The integrative aim of this program, to which every European can contribute, is to work on a unified Europe, which we have to improve and to defend. With this program, we not only stimulate an exchange of views on the European project as such, we can also use it to reflect on our process of drawing up European policies.”
