Every EU citizen has the right to work and live in another member state without suffering discrimination for their nationality. The free circulation of people is one of the fundamental liberties guaranteed by the European Union Treaty (Articles 3, 39 and 40) and community regulations. With over 17 million EU citizens residing in another member state, the issue of mobility is of daily interest to many European citizens. Indeed, it is the very paradigm of European citizenship insofar as it concerns many aspects from common identity to the rights of European citizens when they are, either stably or temporarily, outside their country of birth.
Notwithstanding this, there is limited attention to the problems and issues encountered by EU citizens in intra-European mobility, not only in terms of participation and social insertion, but also in terms of access to services (from look for housing and work to access to public certificates and health services). In the effort to overcome the pandemic, as is happening with the vaccination campaign, even this mobility has come under scrutiny and is now subordinated to the possession of a green pass, a further disincentive to travel in addition to the risk of Covid-19 contagion and the economic and bureaucratic difficulties that have been accentuated by the health emergency and the repeated lockdowns in various member states.
The partnership of Project EUReKA has put together a manual on good digital practices to support the development of questions and answers, gathering explorative data on the obstacles encountered by mobile citizens in the EU trying to exercise their right to free circulation. The handbook, entitled “EU Mobile Citizens Go Digital”), employed a specific benchmarking methodology to map and evaluate the existing technological tools and proposes practical recommendations in terms of their visibility, multilingualism, simplicity, utility and updating, as well as access to content.
In order to operatively encourage mobility amongst member states to bring families back together, incentivise social integration policy, support the removal of practical obstacles related to the search for housing, employment, medical services, incentivise new living and working solutions, and improve the quality of life of citizens, the project also developed an app and the key4mobility.eu portal. These two innovative digital tools will help provide easy access to information, services and orientation for EU citizens and their families, also thanks to a geo-referenced, multilingual system.
“EUReKA – A Key Access to EU Rights” is funded by the European Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme – REC (GA826666) and is coordinated by the Centro Studi e Ricerche IDOS. The “EU Mobile Citizens Go Digital” handbook, the portal and the “Key4mobility” app are a result of the work conducted by Italian (ACLI Italia and Patronato ACLI, Fondazione Mondo Digitale, ANCI Lazio), German (the German ACLI Office), Romanian (Institutul European din Romania, Novapolis, Cartel ALFA), Croatian (Zagreb Grad), French and Portuguese (Tandem Plus) partners.
