The Final User Conference of the PIREDEU Design Study took place in Brussels on 18 and 19 November 2010.
The conference evaluated the PIREDEU pilot study and its added value for the European social science community and other stakeholders. Experts from the PIREDEU community were invited to employ the data collected in the pilot studies and to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed infrastructure for auditing the functioning of democracy in the EU. The conference included ‘proof of concept’ validation sessions for the planned infrastructure viewing software. The conference provided an important input into the PIREDEU feasibility study in view of the establishment of a permanent infrastructure for European research on elections. |
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The conference was held in parallel with the annual dissemination conference of the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO). EUDO is an independent and interdisciplinary academic organisation whose goal is to produce a permanent and periodic assessment of democratic practices within the EU. It is a forum where ideas and good practices can be exchanged, and a resource for policy-makers, academics and EU citizens. EUDO is a fully-integrated part of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) and was launched in 2006.
The combination of the two events allowed bringing together more than 150 experts from the PIREDEU community, representatives of each of the EUDO Observatories and other experts, policy-makers, civil-society representatives and media exponents in the field of European democracy and the quality of electoral democracy in Europe.
A for the PIREDEU Final User Conference resulted in more than 40 submitted paper proposals. On of these, the PIREDEU conference team selected 37 papers which were presented at the conference.
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