"TheMayor.EU – The European Portal for Cities and Citizens" project is the Bulgarian winner of The European Citizen's Prize. The award is given by the European Parliament for contribution to European cooperation and the promotion of common values and integration between citizens of different EU Member States.

In 2017, Euro Advance Association set ambitious goals for its web space: to improve communication and understanding between citizens, local authorities and European institutions; to stimulate the exchange of good practices between the European authorities; to make efforts for transparent urban governance more visible and to increase trust in decision-makers. For four years TheMayor.EU - the European Portal for Cities and Citizens has published hundreds of stories about successful projects and has showed thousands of examples of how European regions find constructive solutions addressing climate change, pollution, depopulation, technological backwardness, and issues related to cultural heritage protection.

"The portal was created in order to promote some of the most important values - transparency and good governance,” Aseniya Dimitrova, project manager in the association says.

“It allows each municipality to freely share the good news, ideas and projects related to regional government in our online space. In this way, they show responsibility to citizens, but also encourage other cities and regional authorities in Europe to do the same.”

The situation which European cities are placed in, encourages them to have creative approach towards finding solutions, as wasteful spending of public funds is not acceptable anywhere.

"Generally, European municipalities work with limited budgets and limited powers," Aseniya Dimitrova says. “However, expectations of the citizens are huge when it comes to topics discussed in the portal - smart city, green city, social city. Perhaps, the most attractive category for us is related to intelligent sustainable development through technological solutions. Unfortunately, things are happening slowly in Bulgaria, but we believe that with initiatives like ours and their development over time, this process will become more active."

What innovative solutions can European cities offer and is their implementation always a matter of money?

"It is a matter of exchanging ideas and good practices," Bulgarian MEP Tsvetelina Penkova says.

“When we talk about this type of pan-European projects, it is good to focus on long-term investments, which are not measured only in money. Of course, money is important and necessary, but sometimes a transparent exchange of ideas and even the network of contacts that is created can be much more crucial for the successful implementation of a project.”

It is still too early to talk about active cooperation between citizens and local authorities. "However, the dialogue is being facilitated," Aseniya Dimitrova says. “It is easier for citizens to see that if a project was realized in some European city, then it would be possible to do the same in this country. Then one can ask the local authorities about this idea. It is this cooperation that TheMayor.EU - the European Portal for Cities and Citizens is trying to provoke.”

Author: Diana Tsankova

English: Alexander Markov