“Decision Integrity for Democracy of the Youth“ - DIDY

TITLE: “Decision Integrity for Democracy of the Youth“
ACRONYM: DIDY
FUNDING PROGRAMME: HORIZON 2020
CALL FOR PROPOSALS: YOUNG-5.a-2014: Societal and political engagement of young people and their perspectives on Europe
In the aftermath of the European Elections, Europe is all caught up by one conclusion - European integration that once seemed inevitable, from now on it is no longer so. Early results show that right-wing anti-EU parties of various flavours have won in many countries. After the years of financial crisis, the biggest danger to the European project is now economic stagnation and, above all, political and citizenship rejection. All this said, the blunt reality is that Europe's political fault-line is shifting: from left versus right, to pro-Europeans against anti-Europeans. Nevertheless the Eurosceptics now have momentum – the turnout of the elections is of the lowest in the Union’s history since the elections in 1979 and despite all the funding and campaigning, which the EU provided through its various programmes, many of its young citizens (aged 18-30) did not go to vote.
This fact provokes the questions - is the European Idea still actual, clear and favorable for the young people of the Union and how should we assess and address properly their perceptions and integrity issues within the member states.
Main objectives:
Tackling the challenge of bringing the European Union closer to its citizens through a better understanding of the different factors influencing the perspectives of young people in Europe and of the ways in which young people engage and integrate in society.
Specific objectives:
 Elaboration of tools to integrate young people’s perceptions into various areas of policy-making, via an innovative online research platform and a mobile opinion application.
 Boosting the participation of young people in society and increasing the democratic accountability of the decisions taken at the EU level by promoting the active usage of the mobile app and the research platform.
 Building public support for EU policies via showing the youngsters that their opinion is visible and taken into account.
The project seeks to contribute to the greater visibility of young people in line with the European Youth Pact, and the development of focused strategies for youth at national and European level. This will be accomplished by publishing reports, which will based on in-depth thematical studies carried out via the web page and the mobile application and integrated in the Standard Study's polling waves. They will be distributed to the European Youth Forum, the national youth forums of the countries participating in the project and other institutions to achieve greater visibility of results and taking into account the views of young people in the implementation of the various policies of the Union.