The overall objective of the CINEFOGO Network is to provide knowledge about the relationship between civil society and citizenship in an increasingly diversified and multi-cultural Europe. A Europe that at the same time try to accomplish greater integration between the different regions – East and West, South and North – and between a diversity of social groups divided by class, ethnicity, gender and age.

At the EU level, the hope is that it will be possible to combine integration with respect for diversity. We, in the CINEFOGO Network, are concerned with the questions of how European citizens learn to deal with different forms of belonging and identification, and how different social groups will be able to maintain their cohesion in societies so diversified and fragmentised that even the majority has lost sight of an overarching project and solidarity.

In the CINEFOGO network we want to monitor the scientific and policy debates concerning the dynamics of European integration and the enlargement of the European Union with respect to the role of civil society and active civic participation. In order to accomplish its mission, CINEFOGO has set up two equally important programmes: A programme for Integrating Research Activities (PIRA) and a programme for Spread of Excellence (SoE).

The Network has three general goals:

• Minimizing barriers for joint European integrated and coordinated research. Research capacities is build up with participation of outstanding scholars and institutions from a variety of European universities and research institutions.
• Involvement of previous EU-research under the heading ‘Governance and Citizenship’. The CINEFOGO Network would like to establish a dialogue with EU-financed projects in the research area of ‘Civil Society, Citizenship and Governance’.
• Providing institutional capacity for a continued dialogue between researchers, policy makers, public service institutions and organized civil society on the political future of the European Union.

Integration of partners in the CINEFOGO Network

The integration of all partners in the scientific activities has been one of the most important issues. Due to the size of the CINEFOGO Network, including 42 institutions, 138 researchers and 60 Ph.D. students, it has been a challenge ensuring an equal engagement from all participating institutions. To support this effort, the Network Council has advocated for an increase in the information flow from the WP responsible to the SoE office, being in charge of publishing external and internal news. The WP responsibles are encouraged in planning activities to ensure as much openness in access to workshops and conferences as possible, and to diminish the participation costs. Furthermore, the coordination team has encouraged the organisers of conferences and workshops to especially invite speakers and paper givers from the Central, Eastern and Southern parts of Europe.

The Scientific Activities under the PIRA programme

A manifold of scientific activities have been generated within the CINEFOGO Network in the second year, in terms of conferences, seminars, working papers, scientific reports, etc. Descriptions of individual activities can be found elsewhere (consult e.g. the full Activity Report, cf. note 1), or the Outcome Database at http://cinefogo.cuni.cz. During CINEFOGO’s second year, conferences, workshops or seminars have been organised and all with a high number of participants. In the Spring term of 2008 the level of activity will be even higher – more than 10 conferences, seminars or workshops are planned for the period January – July 2008. All activities are organized around three theme areas. At this place we will abstain from detailed activity reporting, and instead give an overall picture of the issues and topics CINEFOGO activities have addressed, through brief presentations of the three theme areas based on the Second year activity report.

Thematic area 1: Identities, Values and Civic Cultures in Europe – Integration and Diversity

The activities under this thematic area focus on understanding of European citizenship and participation in civil society. The breakdown of the authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe created new conditions for citizenship in the countries in the region. Citizens were freed from paternalistic control by the state, but also from its welfare support. New opportunities were mixed with new risks and tensions. - The new conception of active citizenship promoted in both the Western and Eastern part of Europe, envisages citizenship not as a passive conferring of social rights and responsibilities, but as the active inclusion of the social groups previously excluded from them. Citizenship is linked to people’s willingness and ability to actively participate in society. Citizenship also requires subjective definition of the polity people identify with – the locality, the region, the continent, and the world. The mass emigrations, double citizenship, rise of nationalism and ethnic conflicts have all questioned the previous straightforward understanding of national citizenship in its different forms.

The scientific work in CINEFOGO’s activities address this theme through secondary analysis of existing data sources and employing more qualitative approaches to a number of aspects of  importance in formation of civic cultures and European identities. The differences in values and attitudes among different regions in Europe are examined more closely in the next stages of work within this thematic area. Another focus of the work will be on dissemination – participating in workshops and academic journals on the local level, in each country, as well as addressing the European public sphere.

Thematic Area 2: Citizenship and Civic Participation in Relation to Social Protection

This thematic area links the three broad items – civil society, new forms of governance, and citizenship to welfare issues, both with respect to national contexts and at the level of the European Union. Under this thematic area three items are discussed:

• Firstly, forms of organized welfare, be it in terms of service-provision or of associating with solidarity and philanthropic aims, that have taken shape outside state institutions.
• Secondly, in many state-public organisations forms of citizens’ participation are part of the picture. Alongside with social policies and welfare services, participative mechanisms, and additional forums for negotiation have evolved, partly substituting, partly complementing representative political decision-making.
• Thirdly, this broader view of citizens´ participation, that is not restricted to the political aspect of participation in deliberations and decision-making processes or to the civil society as a public sphere, will also include various forms of volunteering, i.e. various forms of social and material participation and cooperative self-organisation.

The main impression of the scientific activities which have taken place under this thematic area is, that within a rather wide thematic framework there has been much diversity. Going through the three thematic areas there is as much nearness and distance between the conference topics within a thematic area as it can be found across the borders of the three areas.

Thematic area 3: Multi-Level Governance and Organized Civil Society

Theme area 3 is concerned with relations between non-state actors belonging to civil society and political institutions and actors involved in decision-making activities at different territorial levels, Of particular interest is the transition from government to governance. Governance is a contested concept. It might be broadly described as “governing without a government”. This implies, that collective decisions can be made by a large number of actors, and that decisions are made outside of political institutions and at different sites. In this light, Europeanisation, understood as the impact of the process of European integration on polities, policies and politics, represents a powerful source of transformation of established governmental arrangements and dynamics towards new forms of governance.

The role of civil society within democratic institutions can be understood in a number of ways, according to different conceptions of what a legitimate political process should be. The literature lists a number of advantages that derive from the inclusion of civil society in political processes: engagement in dialogue with civil society is seen as a viable way to enhance public participation. Civil society organisations should also be involved in the implementation of policies, because public authorities are often no longer able to deliver services that meet the needs of an increasingly differentiated population. At the EU level, the participation of civil society is said to be a useful way to address the perceived democratic deficit of the Union.

The notion of civil society itself is somehow contested. In this context we in thematic area 3 use a broad definition of civil society, which includes public interest organizations, social movement organizations, churches, NGOs, and promotional associations. The main interest is in non-business organizations, but, when relevant, we will consider business organizations, industrial lobbies and other economic associations.

Spread of Excellence during the second year of CINEFOGO Network of Excellence

We have been aware of the importance of the strengthening the integration between the two programmes. Several initiatives have been taken to strengthen the integration of PIRA and SoE and to make the dissemination of the scientific achievements of the CINEFOGO Network more efficient.  A few illustrations of our achievements in this respect during the last 12 months are following:

• A toolkit to WP SoE responsible has been published – explaining what kind of materials to be collected and reported in the activity reporting system.
• A specification on CINEFOGO target groups and guidelines on how each WP should proceed when defining their target groups within the CINEFOGO general target group has been presented and published.
• In addition the National coordinators has the obligation to facilitate news about CINEFOGO to collegues in academia, and assist WP responsibles who address them for advice on how to reach the national audience.
• The Webpage has been evaluated and a changed to make it more user friendly for the Network members as well as to the general public.
• The first Transaact Training (part of WP6) was launched which included a series of lectures on general aspects associated with bridge building between social science and society, i.e. dissemination of outcome of scientific research to interested contractors.
• The establishment of the Student Corner (WP22) – a student supporting environment which aim is to make information about civil society and third sector research easily available in a “student corner”, a website specifically target at PhD and master students and linked to the CINEFOGO main web-site – www.civilsociety.se
• The dissemination platform and the management activity reporting tool have been integrated into one, The Outcomes Database. The Outcomes Database was developed to assist the Work Package responsible in fulfilling their responsibility to actively spread and disseminate the activities within and outside the Network - http://cinefogo.cuni.cz
• The SoE coordinator at CESES aims at integrating more closely the different work packages focusing on dissemination such as WP5 on TV-series, WP7 on Civic cultures and the mass media, and WP9 on E-learning combating civic apathy.

Closely related to these efforts was the topic of the Midterm Conference: “European Citizenship – Challenges and Possibilities”. This is one of the main themes that the CINEFOGO Network wants to focus on during the remaining time of the Network. Furthermore in order to facilitate integration in the wider research community and ensure a variety of perspectives, the conference was organised as an open event, other networks were invited, and external plenary speakers addressed the theme of European Citizenship.

This article is an abbreviated version of the ’Executive Summary of the Second 12 Month Periodic Activity Report, (September 2007).