In August 2011, the European Commission announced 2013 as the "European Year of Citizens". We want to contribute to this event with our “YOURopa” project by promoting the concept of Active European Citizenship (AEC) as well as EU projects dealing with this idea and For many years now, AEC is on the agenda of many education and social policies on EU and national levels, and it became an integrated part of the specific objectives in several EU programmes (e.g. LLP, Youth, Europe for Citizens etc.). These initiatives underline the EC's commitment to foster AEC in awareness, self-understanding and daily activities of EU citizens. However in recent years, the EU is suffering from a severe loss of reputation which also affects the citizens attitude towards AEC; some relevant key data are:• only 43% of EU citizens know the term 'citizen of the European Union' and 48% of them indicate that they are ‘not well informed’ about their rights and duties• participation in political life is decreasing all over Europe (e.g. voters participations at EU elections decreased from 61.9% in 1979 to 43.0% in 2009)• generally, NGO's and associations depending on volunteer work observe an decrease of citizens engaging themselves for social and charity issues• in many EU countries a general decrease of democratic culture and standards is seen, giving way to antidemocrat movements"YOURopa” wants to push back such developments by promoting AEC and its benefits for the general public. Our main activities are:- Selection of 30 best practise examples of EU funded project dealing with AEC from different perspectives- Organisation of a 2 days conference and several workshops about AEC and these projects in London/UK- Publication of an own magazine and a video clip promoting ACE and these projects throughout Europe- Gathering of most relevant representatives of target groups, stakeholders and experts and providing them with a platform for discussing and improving modern AEC.