Europe for Citizens

City to City for Building Our Europe - C2C4EU 

The Municipality of Heraklion participated in a working meeting in the Teruel region of Spain, as part of the Europe for Citizens Program «City to City for Building our Europe». The thematic module/unit of the work was the Cohesion Policy and the Structural Funds' contribution to the development of the partner cities of each country in the programme. Good practices were presented by each municipality in the country participating in the Program. The Municipality of Heraklion is the only Municipality in Greece participating in the Europe for Citizens Program entitled "City to City for Building our Europe". In the framework of the Open Forum, the Municipality of Heraklion participated with a presentation entitled "Cohesion Policy - Good Practices at Local Level" by speaker Renia Drosou Msc Sociologist, Director of the European Programmes Department of the Municipality of Heraklion and presentation entitled "Demoscopio as a cohesion policy approach for iDemocreating" by speakers Dr. Alexander Christakis Professor of Social Systems and Ms. Maria Kakoulaki Social Policy Designer, Journalist.

The Municipality of Heraklion (the Greek Delegation), was represented by the Deputy Mayor of Technical Services and European Programmes Mr. Yiannis Anastasakis. In addition, in the delegation participated the Deputy Mayor of Town Planning Mr. Yiannis Rasoulis, the Director of European Programmes of the Municipality of Heraklion and project manager, Mrs. Renia Drosou, the Professor of Social Systems Dr. Alexander Christakis and the Social Policy Designer, Journalist Ms. Maria Kakoulaki.

Partners of the Programme are:

• The Municipality of Gerace -Italy (Lead Partner)

• The Municipality of Heraklion - Greece

• The Municipality of Kistelek - Hungary

• The Municipality of Barcellos (Portugal)

• The Municipality of Narva - Estonian Development and Economy Department

• Province of Teruel

The project is being implemented within the framework of the Europe for Citizens Programme and Strand 2: Participation in democratic processes and public affairs: Encouragement of citizens' participation in democratic processes and in the public at EU level. The overall objective of the project is to develop a strong, dynamic and long-lasting network of cities participating in the program, united by a common challenge of creating a continuous dialogue between citizens and local public institutions. This project aims to increase the citizens' skills on methods and means for involving citizens at local and European level. The project aims to improve knowledge about the European Citizens' Initiative as well as innovative e- participation channels. By organizing the European Open Forum, seminars and the use of new digital media citizens from different countries can share their practices and learn from each other about citizen participation issues.

For the achievement of the objectives of this project, six European forums, four seminars will be organized. In addition, an electronic platform for exchange of practices and opinions between municipal officials, citizens and policy makers will be created.

Duration of project implementation: 01/07/2016 to 30/06/2018

The project is funded by the European Commission with 100% funding for the Municipality of Heraklion.

Website of the Program: http://www.c2c4eu.eu/