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The prevalence of anti-EU integration and anti-immigration rhetoric across the continent, the increased presence of Eurosceptic parties in the European Parliament, and most importantly Brexit suggest that the European Union is having an existential crisis. This chapter debates the role of the EU citizenship regime on this crisis, by resting its central thesis that there is a fundamental mismatch between the way that EU citizenship is at present derived from Member State citizenship, and the transnational affinity of the EU citizenry that is invited by the internal market and migration. As a remedy, the chapter projects a supranational EU citizenship regime that coexists with the current EU citizenship regime. Focussing on the social and political imperatives, the chapter brings forward tangible policy recommendations for the proposed EU citizenship regime and expounds how it can be an effective policy instrument for the EU’s internal and external struggles.

The purpose of this paper is to research the key role of eParticipation and social media in the construction and diffusion of a European identity for European citizens, as a valuable means of acculturalisation, through the creation of a common sense of belonging and self-identifying with the European ideals.

The paper argues that the limited success of current EU institutions' communication strategy and eParticipation initiatives could be partly attributed to a communication gap between the means currently used on the one hand, and the preferences of targeted audiences on the other.

This communication gap is demonstrated by combining empirical data on EU eParticipation initiatives addressing young people, young citizens' involvement in EU affairs, the penetration of social media on young citizen groups and the social media presence of EU political entities.

These empirical data could be enriched with more detailed statistics, and monitored across time to identity advancements and changing trends.

The paper proposes, therefore, that the focus for eParticipation instruments be redirected to social media due to their comparative advantages as regards their great visibility, their notable level of penetration into current social groups and their potential of targeting specific audiences and becoming an integral part of these audiences' everyday life.

The paper believes this approach can contribute to improving eParticipation ventures in terms of their actual appeal to young citizens and contribution to the construction and diffusion of a European identity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain public preferences for different public procurement practices. The paper looks into public support for cost-effectiveness, discriminatory procurement in favour of domestic suppliers and sustainable procurement.

This study uses Eurobarometer public opinion data on 26.836 EU citizens from 27 EU countries.

This paper shows that EU citizens want public authorities to evaluate multiple aspects of any procurement offer in their public procurement decisions. It also found that, although cost-effectiveness and domestic favouritism are still important to EU citizens, citizens are most supportive of the objectives of sustainable procurement. Some associations between citizens’ procurement preferences and their social characteristics and political attitudes were found, but these only explain citizen procurement preferences to a limited extent. Country of residence has the strongest association with citizens’ acceptance of the objectives of sustainable procurement.

Even though the data contain information on the procurement preferences of a large number of EU citizens, it is a topic of inquiry that is sensitive to social desirability bias.

This paper contributes to the empirical understanding of public attitudes towards public procurement. It is one of few studies on citizen attitudes towards different public procurement practices.

This paper starts by presenting a theoretical framework based on the evolution of this problem through the EU treaties and a literature review. The focus is then turned to the role of some European institutions, namely, the European Parliament, through the Committee on Petitions, and the European Ombudsman for their close relationship: the information and communications technology (ICT)channels that introduced new mechanisms of communication and information; and what level of use this system of dialogue assures citizens’ rights to petition and to complain.

The first decades of the history of the European Union did not consider the link with citizens as a central priority in the evolution of the European integration process. The idea of Europe, built step by step, was much more dependent on the states’ political elites and bureaucratic European institutions. The democratic deficit, however, changed the perspectives of the different actors involved in the institutional framework. New initiatives were introduced alongside treaties to make the integration process more transparent and closer to European citizens.

Those results can be confirmed through the statistics and reports presented annually by those institutions.

Due to innovation in the use of ICT, transparency and dialogue with citizens became much more effective.

The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyse the roles of foreign origin and citizenship in the labor markets of Eastern and Eestern Member States of the EU.

The EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions is used to evaluate the roles of foreign origin and citizenship on employment and earnings using the standard Probit and OLS econometric models. The native/non‐native labor market divide is measured using Fairlie and Oaxaca‐Blinder decomposition techniques.

The results indicate that, while predominantly foreign origin is of key importance in the Western EU Member States, both foreign origin and citizenship matter in the Eastern EU Member States, their roles depending on gender. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the effects of citizenship in the EU8 may be driven by the (predominantly ethnic Russian) non‐citizens in Estonia and Latvia.

Further analysis is necessary to evaluate the observed associations as causal relationships.

The study is the first to shed light on the role of foreign origin and citizenship in the EU8 and the EU15 in the comparative East‐West perspective. The findings have noteworthy implications for the targeting of national as well as EU‐wide integration policies.

The contribution draws upon the protests against a proposed trade deal between the European Union (EU) and the United States as an example of the potential to identify as European citizens. It is relevant given the multiple challenges the EU is currently facing, particularly a crisis of democratic legitimacy. While trust in EU institutions is at a historic low, some citizens – such as the Anti-Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) protestors – want to have a say in EU decision-making. The resulting conflicts should not be misunderstood as a threat. Instead, the author’s suggestion here is that democratic conflict has the potential to contribute to the politicisation and the identification of citizens with the European project. Following this line of thought, the potential of the Anti-TTIP protests lies in a civic democratisation of the EU through conflict. The author focusses on protestors’ participation experiences and their self-understanding processes as European citizens. The author explores the different ways in which protestors experience themselves as European citizens which aims to open up the discourse about the multiplicity of European citizenship. This variety of meanings ascribed to European citizenship is not regarded as a danger, but as the potential to enrich Europe with new ways of being and acting as European citizens.

This chapter aims at contributing to the promotion of education for competent and responsible citizenship with regard to the European Dimension. It takes into consideration five points: (1) the expected profile of the active European citizen in a reliable European cooperation project; (2) the attitude of people in Europe to the European Union (EU) and to the other member countries, according to Eurobarometer and other surveys, keeping in mind the international scenario, and the internal cooperation among the EU states; (3) the situation of citizenship education, as reported by European and international studies as Eurydice (2017); (4) suitable innovative and technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning excellence, aiming at Education of Responsible Competent European Citizenship, including digital citizenship, focusing on knowledge, skills, attitudes, values of responsible citizenship in a democratic society, and developing thinking processes: information management, judgment and decision-making processes, working constantly under European point of view, strengthening contacts, and exchanges among EU member countries; and (5) non-formal and informal learning, influences from the family, the social environment and the mass media on the attitude of people in Europe to the European cooperation. Proposals are developed for improvement in the field of teaching/learning, teacher training, and communication, fostering interaction, engagement, and competent citizenship for the common future.

The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory study whose aim was to investigate the role of public libraries in the provision of European Union (EU) information in an EU acceding country (Croatia).

Study was conducted via online questionnaire in public libraries across country.

The findings revealed that majority of respondents (83.7 percent) think it is an important task of public libraries to provide citizens with materials about the EU, and that almost all responding libraries (98 percent) have EU materials. In general, respondents think that provision of EU materials in their library does not compromise its role of politically neutral institution. The results also indicate that libraries quite rarely (10 percent) maintain links to relevant EU online sources on their websites. EU collections in responding libraries are promoted actively most frequently in the library itself and on its website, and very rarely in the local media.

Findings are expected to be of interest to European administration in charge of the development of effective communication policies, national authorities in EU candidate and acceding countries, and information professionals in general.

This is the first study to investigate the role of public libraries in EU information provision in an EU acceding country.