From students to cities: Building a civic ecosystem for better EU policies

As part of the final event of the AwareEU project on May 23 at the European Commission Representation in Rome, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on civic monitoring and its role in shaping a more transparent, evidence-based, and citizen-oriented implementation of European funds.

This session brought together three perspectives that, taken together, form the basis of what I believe is a civic ecosystem capable of improving accountability and participation in EU policies: the role of students and civic communities, the evolution of journalism beyond traditional newsrooms, and the public administrations that choose to engage with them.

Why monitoring matters: A view from the European Commission

Before opening the panel, we had the pleasure of hearing from Francesco Rossi Salvemini, representative of the European Commission in Italy. His remarks offered a valuable institutional perspective that grounded the conversation in the broader goals of EU transparency and civic engagement.

He began by emphasizing that initiatives aimed at bringing citizens closer to how public money is spent — especially EU funds — are not only welcome but essential. In his words:

“Personally, I find it extremely valuable to involve citizens in tracking how public money is used — whether national or European. How many of us, even myself, actually know who’s responsible for what’s happening in our own neighborhoods? Who manages the projects? Which municipality or local authority? This type of monitoring isn’t just important for EU funding — it should apply to all public resources. We often waste our intellectual energies on gossip or football, when we could focus more on understanding where our resources come from and how they’re spent.”

He acknowledged that, paradoxically, monitoring how EU funds are used is in some ways easier than doing the same for national funds, thanks to systems like OpenCoesione. In fact, he praised OpenCoesione as a best practice that allows citizens to see clearly what projects are planned, where they’re located, and what their status is — information that is often far less accessible for nationally funded interventions.

Speaking about the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the PNRR, he highlighted a structural limitation: unlike EU Cohesion Policy, the RRF lacks a centralized platform equivalent to OpenCoesione, even though some information is there, on national and EU portals.

Lastly, he noted that while tools like REGIS and the national project map may not yet be perfect, they already represent a positive example at the EU level, offering a centralized view of spending progress, beneficiaries, and procurement.

Civic monitoring as a tool for journalism

Antonella Ciociola (Monithon) introduced the AwareEU project and some of the results achieved.

The project analyzed cases of initiatives financed through EU Cohesion Funds from the 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 programming periods, as well as through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) in Italy, and their impacts, starting from the civic monitoring reports published on Monithon by students and civil society organizations.

Through a mentoring program organized by info.nodes, young journalists used techniques from storytelling and data journalism to develop and adapt those contents for broader audiences. Further data analysis and visualization was supported by the experience of onData.

There are also four videos available online, produced with the supervision of Monithon, that explain how EU Cohesion Policy and the PNRR work, and the positive impact that EU funds have had on local communities and society:

• What is the PNRR and how does it work?
• What are Cohesion Policies and how do they work?
• What is OpenCoesione? Find out how EU funds are spent
• What is civic monitoring? Learn how you can do it too

Civic monitoring as a learning and relational practice

Prof. Marinella Belluati (University of Turin) opened the discussion by sharing insights from her long-standing experience in running a civic monitoring lab at UniTo, involving over 500 students in the past five years.

“Civic monitoring adds the kind of concreteness that’s often missing when we try to communicate Europe.”

She described how students develop a growing awareness of their agency as citizens, especially when they realize that EU-funded projects actually shape their own lives. What she called the “wow effect” occurs on both sides: students feel empowered, and public administrations appreciate being observed and supported—not out of suspicion, but with empathy.

Her point was clear: if we want these practices to grow, we need national networks that can connect efforts across territories. And we need to go beyond collecting data — we must foster meaningful dialogue. As she put it, “democracy lives through participation, not just information.”

Journalism “beyond the newsroom” meets civic media

Prof. Elena Valentini (Sapienza University of Rome) connected the panel to broader trends in journalism studies. In closing a recent special issue on Journalism beyond the newsroom, she emphasized the need to recognize new spaces and actors in the production of public information.

Valentini pointed to Monithon’s work as a tangible example of this shift: a “beyond journalism” approach where citizens become protagonists, not in search of becoming journalists themselves, but out of a civic drive to contribute.

She argued for moving past the traditional media-centric viewpoint, highlighting instead the value of the audience—citizens, communities, students—as active players. This shift, often called the “audience turn”, places civic initiatives like Monithon at the heart of a redefined ecosystem for information.

She concluded by calling for alliances across sectors: between civic media, journalists, institutions, and academia. Only through collaboration, she suggested, can we restore the complexity of public discourse and avoid fragmentary or simplified narratives.

The institutional perspective: early involvement and structured dialogue

Giorgio Martini, former Managing Authority of the PON Metro programme, shared practical reflections from years of hands-on policy implementation.

He acknowledged that civic monitoring—when it occurs—is often sporadic and unstructured, especially at the scale of national programmes. Yet he also offered compelling examples of when it worked: from joint visits to project sites with citizen groups (like the Vele di Scampia in Naples), to local debates on mobility projects in Milan.

“Civic monitoring should be part of the programme design from the start. Not just for transparency, but to imagine projects together, monitor them during implementation, and evaluate them after they’re done.”

He emphasized the need for structured communication and education efforts, especially in schools and universities, and the role of public authorities in providing data, images, and clear project narratives.

Importantly, he reminded us that public authorities act as mediators between competing interests. Yet when citizens show strong, organized support for a project, that consensus can endure beyond political cycles.

My take: Civic monitoring as part of a participatory data ecosystem

Students, civic media, and public institutions are not isolated actors—they are co-dependent components of a system where open data are used to inform, engage, and shape public action.

This panel confirmed that such an ecosystem is not just a theoretical construct: it is already emerging. But its success depends on one condition: we must acknowledge and support the relationships that make it work—between curiosity and professionalism, between bottom-up energy and institutional capacity, and above all, between those who produce data and those who use it for the public good.

The insights that emerged help us—building on Prof. Belluati’s proposal and the success of ongoing experiences—to sharpen the idea of strengthening a national network of universities that promote civic monitoring as a learning activity, using Monithon’s formalized methodology as the core framework and our team as a hub supporting the actors involved.