Sitra’s statement on the EU Civil Society Strategy

Sitra welcomes the European Commission’s timely initiative to develop a comprehensive EU Civil Society Strategy, as outlined in the Call for Evidence document of the Commission. We strongly support the strategy’s objectives to foster meaningful engagement, provide protection, and promote support for civil society organisations (CSOs), whose work is increasingly vital in safeguarding democracy and fundamental rights.

As the Commission’s Call for Evidence document emphasises, CSOs continue to face significant obstacles in many European countries: shrinking civic space, negative media campaigns, online harassment, strategic lawsuits, surveillance, and often diminishing and precarious funding. Additionally, in many instances, there remains a lack of channels and tools for CSOs to effectively engage with policymakers, especially at the national and local levels.

Civic Tech solutions represent an under-utilised, but highly promising means to address some of these challenges and offer complementary tools that foster engagement and dialogue with the European civil society. Digital participatory tools, which adhere to European values and legislation, and open source and open data initiatives, can empower CSOs to: 

• Reach wider audiences and facilitate inclusive participation. 
• Improve dialogue between public authorities and citizens. 
• Increase transparency, accountability, and trust in public decision-making. 

New forms of digital citizen participation have been successfully tested in recent years by the EU institutions, member states, regions, cities and numerous CSOs. Sitra warmly welcomes this development. However, despite the potential that these tools have shown, the wider uptake and scaling of Civic Tech tools has been slow, fragmented, and often dependent on short-term national, regional or local initiatives.  

The next phase in the use of Civic Tech should therefore include at least two things. First, it should combine broad digital mass participation with deeper participation of small groups. Secondly, it should strengthen the policy translation, meaning that there should be an effort to increase the effect of participatory mechanisms on actual policy decisions.  To truly drive these changes and leverage Civic Tech for democratic renewal and civic engagement, coordinated action at the EU level is needed.

Building on our earlier contribution to the European Democracy Shield Initiative, Sitra reiterates its proposal for the establishment of a European Civic Tech Hub (CTH).  To ensure that the Hub would strengthen European democracy, the Hub should be based on the European values enshrined in the Treaty and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.  

CTH would operate at the interface of public administrations at all levels, CSOs, the Civic Tech industry, and citizens. It would support public administrations’ and CSOs’ adoption and maintenance of Civic Tech tools, and assist CSOs and Civic Tech companies, on a competition-neutral basis, in navigating regulations. It could also support hosting and maintaining open-source Civic Tech applications that adhere to European values and comply with relevant EU legislation such as GDPR, AI Act, Digital Services Act and Interoperability Act. CTH would promote best practices, certification, and compliance with EU values and essential legislation.  

The exact service offering would be co-developed and validated with partners and stakeholders.

A European Civic Tech Hub would directly address several priorities identified in the Commission’s Call for Evidence: boosting the enabling environment for civil society, fostering dialogue and participation and ensuring accountability and transparency.  

We look forward to further collaboration and dialogue on this important topic.