Bottom-Up Initiatives for a Living Democracy and Fair Futures in Digitalisation and Migration

ongoing

BUILD FAIR empowers citizens to bring fairness back to the heart of EU policymaking. At a time when efficiency, security and competitiveness dominate public debate, the project refocuses attention on how fairness must shape the Union’s digital and migration agendas. Operating across Czechia, Estonia, Ireland, Romania and Spain, BUILD FAIR creates inclusive, cross-border spaces where citizens, stakeholders, journalists and policymakers rethink rights, access and solidarity. Structured around a one-way bottom-up consultation process, the project amplifies the voices of citizens most affected by the digital divide and of vulnerable groups navigating asylum systems, ensuring their experiences and perspectives inform public discourse and the implementation of the EU’s Digital Decade and Migration and Asylum Strategy. Citizens will deliberate on key fairness challenges, including bridging digital inequalities, designing accessible and user-centered public services, ensuring equitable asylum procedures and strengthening solidarity in migration policy across Member States. Their ideas and expectations will feed into national and EU-level debates through a strategic mix of dissemination, engagement and targeted policy dialogue. By grounding the process in distributive, procedural and recognitional fairness, BUILD FAIR strengthens civic ownership of EU values, fosters democratic renewal and promotes mutual understanding across Europe. Policy dialogue workshops and a final conference in Brussels will facilitate structured dialogue between citizens and policymakers by presenting findings and citizen perspectives, contributing to informed public debate. Beyond its implementation, BUILD FAIR fosters lasting shifts in how fairness is understood and applied in EU policymaking. By injecting citizen-driven perspectives into key debates on digitalisation and migration, it helps shape more inclusive and just policies that will resonate and evolve beyond the project.