A.L.T.I.U.S. Act Locally, Think Internationally. Union (S)Elections

More than half century ago, six countries initiated a perpetual process of unification of a – destroyed by the two World Wars – Europe. What started as the European Coal and Steel Community with Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands and West Germany, now is a European Union (from now on EU) of 28 member states.
Despite the impressive expansion in geographic terms, the EU seems that needs a lot of effort to achieve the active participation of its citizens in the policy-making process. Indicative of this, is the 43% of participation in the recent elections for the European Parliament, which – by the way – is a positive outcome since it seems that it is the first time since the first elections, back in 1979, that we have a higher turnout.
This observation can probably lead to many kinds of conclusions. Nevertheless, the reality is that EU citizens seem to consider EU as an external factor in their daily life, which in cases of – the so called – euroscepticism is an external factor that suppresses national identity. Consequently, millions of people can’t see themselves as part of the EU, and therefore, they do not feel the need to participate in the decision making.
This project focuses on EU citizens and to citizens of the Candidate Countries, regardless of nationality, race, gender, age, sexual and other orientation, religion or any other possible discriminatory identity. What we seek to achieve working together with the potential participants is to provide them with space, time and tools for expressing their view of EU, and help them understand that EU is them. Thus, we will attempt to show them that acting locally and for the common good of their local communities, they can actually be thinking about the good of the wider European community, without needing to reconsider their local traditions.
The idea of the project is to motivate EU and Candidate Countries’ citizens to think internationally while acting locally, to eventually (s)elect the EU they dream for them and for the future generations.