For many people of today Europe is identified with the European Union which gives the impression of being too far away from the ordinary citizen and which seems to have become a symbol for bureaucracy and distant governance. 

In order to address these challenges and to safeguard the founding principles of the European project, we need to overcome this negative feeling about Europe: we must develop new ways of communicating Europe to our citizens, to our children, to our young people, to our grandparents - in short, to all the members of our society.

AER believes that best practices must be collected and ways of communication be compared. In particular regions can use the chance to come up with creative and modern ways of letting citizens participate in the construction of Europe.

In order to meet this communication challenge the AER has developed the AER Communicating Europe Award which is awarding every year regions that are best at communicating Europe to its citizens.

The aim of this award is to showcase and communicate best practices of regional communication strategies on Europe and to demonstrate to regional governments what could be done to make Europe relevant.