A new push for European democracy: How the voice of citizens is included
Open Data strengthens transparency and counters disinformation
The European Commission is committed to protecting and fostering democracy as the EU faces challenges like election interference, threats against journalists and the spread of manipulative information. After introducing the European Democracy Action Plan in 2020, the Commission adopted the Defence of Democracy Package in 2023. These initiatives promote citizen and civil society participation in policymaking to empower them.
This participation is enabled by the Citizen’s Engagement Platform of the Commission. Here, citizens can engage and debate with each other on EU policies, which are then taken into consideration in the European policymaking process. Another platform where citizens could speak up was the Conference on the Future of Europe, which took place in May 2022. The European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission are following up on ideas discussed during this conference on different topics like climate change, health, and European democracy.
The Commission supports media freedom and pluralism, for example with the Media Pluralism Monitor. This project is an initiative from the European Media Freedom Act and evaluates current threats in the media landscape by using open data sets and researchers' expertise. With this data, an interactive map with indicators is created that contributes to transparency about the state of European democracy.
Sharing information with citizens helps them understand decisions and leads to informed participation. Data.europa.eu helps to counter disinformation by making policy data from Member States publicly available. Moreover, survey data representing the voice of citizens is accessible through more than 1,000 Eurobarometer results, including the results of the survey on democracy. This survey contains data on the opinions of citizens about the state of democracy in their country and possible threats it may face.
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