Oriol Miralbell's_research

Approaching te last session of the PDF_EU forum (Personal Democracy Forum Europe, 09) celebrated at the Torre Agbar in Barcelona, I start to feel that things get repeated, though the final outcome is incredibly reach.
During two days, this forum that started in New York some years ago in its US version,the European one has taken advantage of the knowledge and excperience of US professionals and organizations in making e-democracy and e-activism something useful for society, but also has shown the most emerging and succesful examples of e-activism inicitaitives in Europe, giving their promoters and managers he opportunity to explain their insights and to speak abou their experience.
In the debates, many issues came into foreground, but especially the specific reality of Europe’s politics compared to the ones in the US. The Obama campaign that has been the star for months among the e-democracy campaigns (and still is) has shed lots of doubts and disapointments to Europeans when looking at our e-political reality, right when the new and first EU President has been elected in such a dark and undemocratic way.
The deficit of democracy in European Institutions and the problems to separe citizens’ democratic avtivism and institutional policy, brought us also to more empirical discussions like the communication problem that cause 23 different official languages inside the EU. There’s a discouraged view of most experts in regards on making Europe’s e-democracy strategies coherently active at a global European level, however there exist several good projects at a national level.

I want to go through the positngs of most participants in PDF_EU and then make a broader and deeper report on what has been discussed in this forum, though I’d like to advance that many new things have been said in PDF_EU that will, probably change the attitudes and hopes of many of the activists that make e-democracy posible in Europe. Or at least, I hope so!