Empowering Participatory Budgeting in the Baltic Sea Region (EmPaci)

A majority of the BSR areas is characterized by largely fragmented living areas of their inhabitants. This leads to challenges for public authorities and councils when it comes to involving all citizens into joint projects and to discuss relevant issues with all citizen groups. Instruments are needed that enable and encourage the entire citizenry to take part in decisions of their municipality such as decisions regarding expenditures and revenues in the local budget.

Participatory budgeting is a process of democratic decision-making in which ordinary people take part in preparing and adopting a municipal or public budget. In the Baltic Sea region, only a few municipalities have applied participatory budgeting to date. A typical type of citizen in such a process is male, politically active, well-educated, and 35-65 years old. The objective of EmPaci is to get more municipalities involved and mobilise different types of citizens by building municipal capacities, transnational clusters and municipality-citizen cooperation.