Tools and resources to manage a European documentation centre

Abstract

This excellent edition of the 2020 Vademecum of the Italian network of European Documentation Centres (EDCs) has come at a delicate and crucial time for the European Union and the entire world. To these challenges, the European Commission led by Ursula Von der Leyen responded with unprecedented measures to tackle the emergencies, but also with major initiatives that are much more than contingency provisions, such as the European Green Deal and the Conference on the Future of Europe. Faced with all these processes, the possibility for citizens to access clear, accurate and above all correct information is ever more important. This is borne out by the many provisions taken in recent years by the Commission and other international institutions to combat misinformation. During these months of global health emergency, the United Nations and the World Health Organization have coined a new and eloquent term to describe the problem: “infodemic”, the uncontrolled and pervasive spread of information that is not only not correct or false but is also dangerous sometimes. Just like an epidemic, it endangers each and every one of us, our society and our institutions. This is why the Commission’s information networks are playing an ever more important part in guaranteeing that the relationship between European institutions and citizens is open and healthy. Among these networks, the EDCs make a unique and indispensable contribution not only by providing citizens, students and researchers with a privileged channel to access EU official documents and material, as they have always done, but also by becoming proactive key players able to stimulate more and more frequently an informed public debate on the major issues facing Europe. The EDCs are therefore fostering times of greater openness towards citizens and civil society, inaugurated between 2018 and 2019 with the signing of the new agreements between the Commission and the EDCs. In the specific case of the Italian EDCs, this partnership – which they far-sightedly signed immediately – boosts an acceleration already undertaken upon their own initiative some years previously and the many network Projects in this Vademecum are evidence of this. It is initiatives of this kind that clearly show the synergy between the “third mission” of academia – dialogue with society – and the Commission’s renewed incentives for local networks to commit to greater interaction with their citizens. In their capacity as European information networks hosted mainly by universities, the EDCs are the ideal place for these parallel channels to build synergies. In the next months, the importance of the EDCs’ proactive engagement will become ever more obvious with the opening of the aforementioned Conference on the Future of Europe, for which the participation of citizens will be fundamental. In this context, the EDCs, along with the Europe Direct and Team Europe networks, can become the engine driving a continuous, informed and constructive dialogue at local level. In fact, during the Conference, many Europe Direct and Team Europe centres will become hubs that will host and foster structured discussions with citizens on the various subjects on the Conference agenda. The EDCs will follow a progressive disclosure criterion - whereby information material will be distributed to participants gradually before the discussion – thus providing the fundamental contents upon which to build a structured dialogue with civil society and also fostering contacts between citizens and academia. While doing so, the EDCs will be constantly supported by the Commission, which will ensure rapid and continuous updates on the major initiatives on-going at European level, from the Green Deal to the Next Generation EU, and will provide its own networks with the most appropriate instruments to carry out their role. The many activities illustrated on the pages of this Vademecum, but also its very creation, demonstrate the high quality of the Italian EDCs: a network that has proven their uniqueness and their ability to adapt to new and more complex social, political and cultural environments. This document is not only a precious testimony of the work done these last years, but also a guide and a compendium of best practices from which all European EDCs can benefit.