THE PROMOTERS - SEIZE THE EU’S TRANSFORMATIVE POWER

PLEASE NOTE THAT ONLY APPLICATIONS SUBMITTED THROUGH THE GOOGLE FORM (c4ep.eu/erasmus) WILL BE CONSIDERED

The prospect of EU membership is acting as a powerful anchor for reform. It offers a reassuring framework to help identify priorities, set targets, and allocate resources. The EU involvement in the Western Balkans and Turkey is a long-term process, with a heavy EU commitment. It operates via a continual process of analysis, planning and assessment of delivery, maximising involvement with the beneficiary partners in the region. A bigger EU will be better placed to make its voice and its values respected.

Successive enlargements have enriched and invigorated the European Union.However the controversy over the EU’s capacity for continued enlargement brings into question whether the EU can take in new members without jeopardizing the political and policy objectives established in the treaties. It also raises the question of whether or not continued enlargement can still be one of EU’s main goals. Hence, if ‘enlargement fatigue’ constitutes the most significant challenge to the EU, ‘accession fatigue’ constitutes its concomitant malady in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

Much of the opposition towards enlargement is caused by the prospect of a large-scale immigration from new accession countries. These complex considerations can be tackled by a new enlargement strategy. Regardless of these divisions and differences, the future enlargement seems a crucial step because it is closely linked to the stability and long run prosperity in Europe. This rhetoric in itself should be perceived as leap forward to overcome enlargement fatigue and accelerate the enlargement process in terms of institutional reform or financial support for applicant countries.

CFEP considers EU enlargement as the panacea of the crisis plaguing Europe and strongly supports the notion that the entire negotiation process will bring great benefits primarily to the citizens through reforms, modernisation and development, although the citizens need to understand that reforms may be painful, but they should be viewed through the long-term effects. Former EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, Stefan Füle, insists that enlargement is progressing through the four ‘C-words’ – credibility, consistency, commitment and courage. These ‘C-words’ will be the source of inspiration of our project in pursuance of a fruitful outcome for the sake of a better EU.CFEP will be promoting non-formal education and innovative ways to advance and enhance EU integration, social policy and cohesion during the whole procedure.
 
Description and scope of the project:
• Our project will gather leaders from 8 different youth organisations from Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia and the acceding and candidate countries(Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey). We firmly believe that young citizens can play a crucial role in the construction of a new Europe by promoting EU’s transformative power in order to recuperate the enlargement momentum.
Overall objective:Aim of CFEP’s project is to prepare the new EU leaders/Promoters and empower involved organisations to debate, discuss and promote EU citizenship, European values, integration, enlargement, active participation of citizens in EU decision-making and democracy. Project will result with innovative approaches to process of participation of citizens in reforms and integration of Western Balkans and Turkey.

Specific objectives:
• Enhance leadership skills of young people to assume their role as advocates of EU enlargement.
• Inform youngsters about EU benefits and commitments toenlargement; Improve access to information about pre- and post-accession financial instruments and the knowledge about EU, its policies and programmes; Decrease the euroscepticism of youth; Enhance communication between youth and regional institutions ; Produce audiovisual materials to promote the countries’ accession to the EU.
The main activities of the project include an opening conference on the topic, ‘’EU integration – a European question on the future“ in Brussels, training seminars and workshops on EU integration and pre-accession assistance to take place in each partner’s country including EU Ambassadors' visitsand a EU quiz in secondary schools and universities, and a wrap up event in Brussels.

Through these activities, it is expected to achieve improved public awareness and knowledge of actual benefits of EU integration, increased information provision about the effects of EU funded projects, improved outreach and information dissemination on EU integration issues.

We hope to increase the number of cross-sectoral partnerships and issue based networking for underpinning reform process, and improved public dialogue for common understanding of EU values. Citizens will experience that we are on the same continent, we are facing the same challenges and the more we develop common policies, the better off we will be. Continuation of the accession process is vital to maintaining the momentum of reconciliation efforts.

If you are interested, please send your application with your PIF form to info@c4ep.eu.

Please note that we are looking for partners from EU Candidate and Potential Candidate Countries