Open Budget: new approaches to inform young people about EU budget

Eighty percent of the world’s governments fail to provide adequate information for the public to hold them accountable for managing their money, as shown in independent research by the International Budget Partnership (http://www.openbudgetindex.org/). EU budget information is officially available online in form of reports stating facts and figures of EU financial situation, but it is presented in a not easily accessible form.

The current project, named Open Budget, has as its main objective to develop new approaches to inform mainly, but not exclusively, young people about EU Budget and budget control matters through interactive web 2.0 technologies.

The final aim of the "Open Budget" project is to create an attractive web-based platform offering valuable information about the EU Budget and budget control matters using state of the art visualisation techniques. This easily understandable display of information, together with stories and contributions coming from trained facilitators, will be a solid basis for stimulating discussions about the EU budgetary matters, as well as contributions by the citizens. Citizens will also have the opportunity to get feedback about budgetary issues from the MEPs belonging to the EU Budgetary Control Committee.

The project’s target groups are people under 30, be it youth, members of European Organisations and institutions, researchers or journalists.

Since information is a necessary condition to civic participation, this initiative will also have the effect of raising awareness of young people, building a ground for their active interest in European matters in general.

The main activities to achieve this goal of the project are divided in different phases: initially the platform will be developed conceptually, technically and content wise. Then a group of youth information agents (members from partner organisations) will be trained by experts and it will continuously supply the platform with articles, blog posts, podcast and other content.

To further enhance the functioning and information content of the platform, Youth Agora will use its strategic partnerships with other youth organisations (ESN, ERYICA, EYCA, UNICA) and institutions in order to increase the number of users and contributors of the platform. This will allow to reach out to at least 10,000 young people in Europe.