According to the latest public opinion poll carried out (January 2013) most of the citizens asses the work of parliament as partially efficient (40,3%) or completely inefficient (17,3%). When citizens were asked if the Members of Parliament from their district have instigated any initiative in Parliament for a problem their municipality is facing, 44,3% answered no and 24,2% said that they didn’t know. This is not only an indicator of the non-responsiveness of the MPs, but it also shows the low level of citizens’ awareness on the mandate and powers of the MPs
It’s more than necessary for MPs to continuously maintain close relations and communication with their constituencies in order to really address true citizens’ needs. The two way channel of communication between citizens and their elected representatives will not only be a valuable resource for the MPs but it also provide citizens with needed feeling of ownership of the policy creation and decision making process.
The overall objective of the action is therefore to increase confidence in democracy, through improved communication between citizens, citizens’ groups, members of Parliament and local authorities and to support a democratic debate. The project aims at increasing the responsibility and accountability of elected representatives towards the citizens, to enable specific groups such as women, farmers, environment protection groups, children’s rights protectors and Roma rights’ groups to effectively advocate for positive change on local and national level and to increase the impact of these groups on policy creation through recommendations for sustainable solutions.
The project includes a total of 20 meetings in 20 cities and 100 recommendations on local problems incorporated in 20 reports. The reports with recommendations will be disseminated to members of parliament and LSG representative, while 20.000 leaflets will be given to citizens. The aim is to reach at least 500 decision makers and 200.000 citizens.
