Which objective(s) does the Commission pursue?

The Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme aims at protecting and promoting rights and values as enshrined in the EU Treaties and in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, including by supporting civil society organisations, in order to sustain open, democratic and inclusive societies.

More specifically, the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme aims to protect values and rights, such as non-discrimination, equality and the rights of the child. It will also support citizens’ participation in the democratic life of the Union, raise awareness on the common European history as well as prevent and combat gender based violence against women as well as all forms of violence against children and other group at risk.

Estimated savings and benefits

This new programme, together with the Justice Programme, will help to sustain open, democratic, pluralist and inclusive societies. It will also help to empower people by protecting and promoting rights and values and by further developing an EU area of justice.

The Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme is the result of grouping together two programmes under the 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework: the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme and the Europe for Citizens Programme. These two programmes were small instruments, which could not reach a critical mass and whose effectiveness was constrained by their relatively low budgets. Therefore, bringing them together means simplification, synergies and mutual reinforcement and helps to make funding in these fields more effective. The programme has integrated a gender perspective into its financial support via grants to further increase the programme’s impact and effectiveness. Additional measures are piloted on procurement and indirect management to mainstream all funding instruments and improve their effectiveness.

In particular, the new architecture aims at:

– developing synergies among policies, finding a common ground for action, while respecting their specific features;

– reducing overlap and fragmentation;

– ensuring flexibility in the allocation of funds, while ensuring a certain degree of predictability of funding dedicated to each policy;

– fostering cross-sectoral and innovative actions;

– ensuring a critical mass of resources to promote values, taking also into account the needs of each policy.

The Europe for Citizens Programme has already undergone substantial simplification with measures such as lump sums and flat rates, e-form applications and grant decisions. The new Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme continued with this practice, gradually extending the use of lump sums to most of the calls for proposals. Grants are managed via the corporate IT tools (e-grants).

Objectives

The Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme seeks to protect and promote rights and values as enshrined in the EU Treaties and in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in order to sustain open, rights-based, democratic, equal and inclusive societies based on the rule of law.

With its four specific objetcives or strands, the programme:

• Contributes to protecting and promoting Union values by providing financial support to civil society organisations active at local, regional and transnational level (Union values strand);

• Promotes rights, non-discrimination, equality, including gender equality, and advance gender and non-discrimination mainstreaming; protect and promote the rights of the child, the rights of people with disabilities, EU citizenship rights and the right to the protection of personal data (Equality, rights and gender equality strand);

• Promotes citizens engagement and participation in the democratic life of the Union and exchanges between citizens of different Member States and raise awareness of the common European history (Citizens' engagement and participation strand).

• Fights violence, including gender-based violence and violence against children and other groups at risk (Daphne strand).