DemEcol22

Democratic participation and Ecology: Project to develop European consciousness and democratic behaviour in a sustainable environment

Europe is facing increasing challenges in democratic and environmental issues. Since decisions in these areas are only meaningful or comprehensible if they are supported by the majority of EU citizens, it seems important to the participating partner schools in Spain, Austria, France, Hungary and Germany to make a contribution to the promotion of European awareness by considering and implementing ecological questions in the school environment.

We think it makes sense that our students practice and internalise democratic behaviour and at the same time implement democratic decisions. This is to be understood as participation. Participation and the awareness of self-efficacy strengthen the motivation to participate in decision-making processes.

This is how we want to achieve project results in all partner schools in the sense of a three-step approach. All three steps take place nationally, i.e. between the project meetings, and at European level, i.e. during the meetings.

Planned phases (steps) are: 1. democracy and participation; 2. decision-making process in Europe; 3. implementation of ecologically sustainable projects. We will practice democratic decision-making procedures, taking into account ecological aspects. In the next step we will deal with decisionmaking procedures in the European context (procedures of European legislation or EU regulations and directives) and finally we will turn to the implementation of concrete ecological projects in the partner schools.

The aim of the project is therefore not only to increase the European political awareness of our students, but also to implement concrete ecologically sustainable projects in the European context. In analogy to European procedures, these projects are on the one hand binding for all partners, but on the other hand their implementation can also be realised in part school-specific.

Conclusion: We are trying to bring transparency into European decision-making processes with the focus on „sustainability“, so that in the future, at least among our students, there will be greater tolerance for these procedures and thus acceptance of our Europe.