Europe is facing complex and difficult problems. The euro crisis has unvealed that the European Union is suffering from severe democratic and institutional deficits that endangers the whole European project. Furthermore the prism scandal has shown that Europe needs strong institutions in order to defend or common values in the global arena.

However, scholars and politicians claim that a strong, democratic Europe is not possible. They claim that a European public sphere where a European opinion forming process could take place does not exist. AEGEE can demonstrate that this claim is not true. Therefore it is time to change something, it is time to launch ‘The European Democracy Project’.

The only instrument existing at the moment to prove that a European decision-making process is possible is the European Citizens Initiative. It is an instrument that connects European citizens for a common political goal. AEGEE, as the only pure European student organization, should use the ECI – despite all discussed weaknesses of this instrument – to show in a visionary campaign that European Democracy is possible. A successful ECI, promoted by AEGEE, could show that the involvement of European citizens should be a corrective to adjust wrong decision taken by a small group of national leaders.

Nowadays, European citizens face paternalism especially when it comes to great economical or political project. The claim is that an average citizen of the EU is not capable of understanding such things well enough in order to make sophisticated and rational decisions. However, on the other side we witness how heavy economical and political interests inflict our lives in an uncomforting, sometimes disturbing way since the great majority of the decision makers in high political ranks either lack themselves knowledge of what we, the people, need or face our needs with arrogance for a “higher” purpose. The outcomes are protests such as Blockupy, unrest in Spain or Greece, even in Stockholm and – the most famous one in the recent newspapers – the Gezi protests in Turkey (since Turkey is greatly intertwined politically and economically with the EU the effects in this country should also be taken into account). It is our aim to strive for equilibrium between economical/political and basic peoples interests, for the possibility to fill the term “democracy” with more life also between elections. Especially for the younger generation the decisions made today will be of large importance for their future well-being.

Of course it is important to have a specific topic for an ECI, which makes it possible to really change something. Another problem is to address particularly those people who are inflicted by such a change the most – hence, the ECI about more democracy in the EU must reach also the younger generation. Since it may be difficult to raise awareness of such an abstract topic of more involvement of citizens in EU politics the idea is to first gain attention with another ECI about a more youth related topic before the second major one will be initiated.

We think that an ECI regarding the social media/ prism discussion could be especially interesting, as it upsets many European and also the European Commission (Viviane Reding) and the European Parliament (see Link 1 and 2 below) have an high interest to change something. However, they would need a strong rear cover from the European citizens in order to have strong position against the opposition of several national governments. This and the reasons stated above are why we officially want to ask the Commission with an ‘OpenFacebook’ ECI to launch an anti-trust procedure against Facebook.

The reason why Facebook is able to collect such a flood of information and can force its clients to reveal this information to Facebook and the whole ‘Facebook’ community is the simple application of a so-called vendor-lock-in that makes a customer dependent on a vendor. Facebook is a closed network which means that it does not allow clients of other social networks to get in contact with facebook-users. If a customer wants to take part in the social life of the web 2.0 he has to become a member of Facebook and accept Facebook’s conditions. This undermines the competition in the social media market as the lock-in costs create barriers to market entry. That a competition between social media is possible shows the example of diaspora or friendica. In these social networks you can easily contact users of other social medias, just like you can send an e-mail from one e-mail provider to another.

Antitrust and competition affairs are an exclusively responsibility of the European Commission. Europe has strong and powerful institutions to regulate companies that are applying monopolistic policies to undermine market competition. A European Citizens Initiative, launched by AEGEE, could therefore show that it is possible to change European politics if you have strong institutions and a good connection to and between the people.

If you wish to be part of this project just let us know. We are happy about everybody who wants to help! Together we can change something! You find more information in the attached program description and in the links below. If you would like to get deeper explanation, please read the attached PDF file below.

MORE INFO HERE: The European Democracy Project (PDF file)

With best regards,

Thilo, Armin and Ivan

Link 1: http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/reding/multimedia/news/2013/06/20130612_en.htm

Link 2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-eu-usasecurity-idUSBRE95I17S20130619

Link 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock_in

Link 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens%27_Initiative