EUROPE is now observing the erosion of democratic systems and internal attempts at its unity’s destabilisation.
This being the case, if the European Union aspires to retain duration and secure its development and expansion, its member states badly need (1) educational solutions serving the civic agency of all generations, with democracy taught through active practice in various formal and extra-formal settings; (2) upbringing strategies strengthening identification and the sense of community on a local, national, and the European scale; (3) education helping citizens to counteract disinformation by developing their cognitive abilities and critical thinking under lifewide lifelong learning; (4) schools developing the legal and economic awareness of citizens enhancing their social trust.
The democratisation of societies is the most urgent and most vital task of the 21st century, and to achieve these goals, extensive international cooperation on the educational level is required. Europe clearly needs an international centre creating pro-democratic educational strategies.
Poland has made a substantial contribution to the development and protection of democracy – in the past and over the recent years, which can be regarded from two complementary perspectives:
(A) external perspective: whilst in the past it is in Poland that Solidarity was born and sparked the democratisation of different European states, now Poland is the state where pro-democratic formations have won the parliamentary, local, and European elections – despite the opposite, i.e. nationalistic and isolationistic trend gaining popularity in Europe and around the world. Poland is the state which has recently been showing its far-reaching solidarity to millions of Ukrainians fleeing their war-stricken motherland, whereby Poland has demonstrated the profound sense of community. Hence, Poland has become the brightest point of the democratic map of Europe and ECED aims to build upon these pro-democratic wins and to solidify and to transfer the Polish pro-unity experience on the level of education.
(B) internal perspective: Poland is furthermore the state where numerous other pro-democratic developments have been observed carried out by different groups of people on different strata, including:
It all makes Poland a highly suitable location of the European Centre for the Education for Democracy and justifies the Polish claims to the role of the leader in solidifying the heavily-jeopardised EU unity.