Now's the time for the EU to improve communication with citizens 

A new era ushered in by the Lisbon Treaty will grant a "new efficiency" to the EU, believes Dr. del Río, and her recent paper , entitled "Communicating with citizens: the framework for European renovation," calls for "increased participation by EU citizens in the European project". 

The paper describes participatory democracy as an "essential labour" that will give fresh impetus to the EU institutions. It will also give citizens the means to achieve a "common and coherent European idea," it adds. 

Dr. del Río outlines a number of ways in which communications between the EU institutions and the citizens they serve can be improved. She particularly mentions the need for the institutions to provide more instruments to give citizens a voice, and also stresses the important role played by associations and NGOs as "information multipliers in European society". 

According to her paper, the key moment arrived when France and the Netherlands rejected the European Constitution in 2005, which made clear the need for EU institutions to engage citizens in their day-to-day activities. 

Dr. del Río is encouraged by the steps already taken by the institutions, hailing the Commission's recent communications strategies. She reserves particular praise for the European Parliament's 'Citizens' Agora on the Future of Europe,' a two-day forum which sought the input of 400 civil society organisations. 

"Europe transcends our orbit, but at the same time, it is in our daily lives," writes Dr. del Río, highlighting the importance of the Agora in providing important ideas for this new period of the EU's development. 

She concludes that the challenge currently facing the EU is finding a way to "reinvent its actions to make them more attractive to Europeans".