How do young people learn to navigate democracy, not just in their own communities, but within the EU's unique system of shared governance? How can schools help learners understand their rights as EU citizens, engage with institutions that shape their daily lives, and participate meaningfully in democratic processes that span from the local to the European level?
These are the questions driving a major new study that PPMI | Part of Verian Group is carrying out for the European Commission (DG EAC): the development of EU-level guidelines for democratic citizenship education and a complementary EU citizenship competence framework with an explicit EU dimension.
The project responds to the 2023 Council Conclusions on strengthening common values and democratic citizenship, and the 2021 European Parliament Resolution on the European Education Area. Building on the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) and seeking synergies with the EU competence family (DigComp, GreenComp, LifeComp, EntreComp), it will deliver practical, evidence-based tools that can serve as a shared reference across all 27 Member States.
Citizenship is now recognised as one of five basic skills (alongside reading, writing, numeracy, and digital literacy) in the EU's 2025 Union of Skills Communication and Basic Skills Action Plan, reinforcing its foundational role from the earliest stages of education. This elevation comes at a critical moment: increasing political polarisation, declining trust in democratic institutions, the spread of disinformation amplified by AI, and a visible backlash against fundamental rights (including gender equality) are placing democratic culture under sustained pressure across the Union. Yes, across the EU, approaches remain uneven: definitions differ from one country to the next, teachers often lack a common reference for what they are working towards, and the EU dimension itself (how democratic participation works across multiple levels of governance) is inconsistently addressed in curricula. A shared framework and practical guidelines can help change this, giving educators, policymakers, and teacher trainers a clearer foundation to work from while fully respecting national contexts and identities.
The project is built on a rigorous, participatory approach. A comprehensive scoping phase (including a structured literature review, 10 country case studies, and an analysis of EU-funded citizenship education projects) establishes the evidence base. This informs an extensive co-creation process involving scoping focus groups and thematic co-creation workshops with educators, policymakers, researchers, and civil society, to school-based reality check, a two-round Delphi validation survey with approximately 200 participants, and a final expert validation workshop.
The project runs until early 2027 and will deliver the EU guidelines, the citizenship competence framework, with supporting implementation guidelines, and a curated digital repository of resources to support educator training and pedagogical practice across the EU.
