EU Citizenship Building: The Role of Education and its Governance

The multi-level governance infrastructure provides good elements for the promotion of citizenship and education governance: citing the White Paper on the Multi-level Governance of the CoR: “Multilevel governance also look as though it could be extremely useful for promoting active citizenship [...] by gradually helping to bridge the gap separating people from the community institutions and their political leaders”.
Hence, is observable how the multi-level governance infrastructure is an open space in which persons are able to speak up to the EU level in order to secure their rights. In this sense the multi-level governance architecture represents an important tool in the building up of a concrete and active EU citizenship. Is overly curious to see how good practises taken at the local level can influence the EU level.
In fact it is important to point out that (formally) the multi-level governance seems to be a channel through which an effective EU citizenship from below can be built up, containing a good governance of the education system.
As already said, the governance and the multi-level governance concepts take in consideration not only different layers of administration, but even different actors: also this elements is important in the building of an European Citizenship. The possibility given to NGO’s and civil society’s actors, social parts and enterprises to fully participate in the political debate from the local to the European level, contributes to the creation of a sense of European identity and enhances practical cooperation between different actors.
The exchange of ideas, values and good practises between different actors and within a multi-level governance setting can promote a non-formal education to the European dimension of citizenship and also improve the formalisation of intercultural, civil and social dialogue. Without going too much into the matter, however it has to be said that the continuous stimulation to an open dialogue and discussion is a fundamental element that provides and strengthens education to the EU context and, consequently, to the EU Citizenship.