Dear all, We are in the process of preparing a proposal for an EU RTD project on e-democracy in Europe which will be submitted into the key action of the 5th FP called Improving Human Research Potential & the Socio-economic Knowledge Base. The deadline of submission is January 15, 2002. Those interested in joining the forming consortium are kindly invited to contact me. Note that in the EU projects only organizations from the 15 European Union countries can participate. In particular, we are interested in the third theme of the above mentioned call whic is entitled: Citizenship, governance and the dynamics of European integration and enlargement This covers research on the following issues: 1. Relations between representative institutes and participatory procedures, changing role of political parties, social movements and NGOs, citizens involvement in economic and political decisions and processes. 2. Multi-level (local, regional, national, European and global) governance issues in various policy fields (such as health, labour standards, environment, organised crime etc.) in terms of the accountability of European and international institutions, assessments of constituencies and evaluations of impacts. 3. Assessment of changes in regulatory competences (including public/private sectors differences), comparative analysis of risk regulation, assessment of socio-economic impacts of regulation. 4. European citizenship's provisions analyses of legal, social, cultural etc. iterpretation of 'rights' - the role of media - new threads to established rights and their violation. 5. Prevention and early warning of and resolution of conflicts including analysis of causes, experiences of organisations and various forms of European cooperation. 6. Social, economic and cultural impacts of EU enlargement including implications for welfare systems and for social and economic cohesion and problems of integration. A few months ago we had submitted a similar proposal to an IST call. That proposal, called eGOIST, although it passed the evaluation, was not finally funded because of last minute financial shortcuts. The eGOIST proposal, which might be the basis of the new bid, is available online at: http://nicomedia.math.upatras.gr/~mab/egoist/eGOISTproposal.pdf Those (from EU countries) interested in participating at the new e-democracy bid that we would like to submit to the January IHP call should contact me and indicate their interests as well as their possible contributions to the bid. Best, --Moses A. Boudourides Associate Professor Department of Mathematics University of Patras 265 00 Rio-Patras Greece Tel.: +30-61-996318 Fax: +30-61-992965 http://www.math.upatras.gr/~mboudour