The Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb) has published the book “Civic Education and Democratisation in Eastern Partnership Countries“. The publication is available as a free e-book in English and Russian language.

Civic education is often regarded with scepticism in the formerly socialist Eastern Partnership countries. However, a vibrant civil society has developed in several states.

The texts of this volume examine the relationship between civic education and democratization in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

The English version can be downloaded here: www.bpb.de/222223
The Russian version can be downloaded here: www.bpb.de/222930

A clear challenge for our educational systems is to better adapt to the needs of modern societies. Today’s learners expect “complimentary chains” between formal, non-formal and informal learning, which involves better-designed innovative and collaborative learning methodologies and assessment procedures, going beyond the traditional “one-size-fits-all” approach.
These can contribute to improving learning participation, well-being and educational attainment. Read more in the new Lifelong Learning Platform position paper!

LLLP Position Paper on Learning Participation

The Erasmus+ programme is a unique funding opportunity and a great step forward to modernise education policies at the local, national and European level.  To embrace its full potential, the LLLPlatform believes that the programme could benefit from more clarity, a stronger lifelong learning approach and a fairer budget distribution, in order to have a greater added value.

Moreover, policy development and civil society cooperation should be better supported in order to increase its policy impact and relevance. Considered to be one of the success stories of the European construction, the programme and its successor require a bigger investment from EU Member States to broaden its positive impact. We thus strongly call for a set of adjustments on the Erasmus+ programme to improve its efficiency as well as for a stronger and more ambitious programme for 2020 building on the success of its predecessors.

The European Commission has published new Eurobarometer on EU citizenship and the electoral rights that come with it.

The survey shows that more Europeans (87%) than ever are familiar with their status as EU citizens. The report also shows that a similar number (88%) thinks that the EU should give citizens a stronger voice in democratic decision-making, an advocacy long defended by the European Civic Forum and other civil society organisations.

The respondents also showed their interest in playing a more active role in the European political life, which would not be limited to European elections. Online consultations and other dialogue mechanisms were notably quoted several times.
The Flash Eurobarometer on EU citizenship was conducted in October 2015 among 26,555 citizens in all 28 Member States. The European Commission took the opportunity to reiterate its commitment to ensuring that EU citizenship rights translate into concrete added-value for European citizens.

Eurobarometer on EU citizenship