In recognition of its good work over the past years on the Europe Direct Contact Centre (EDCC), ESN has been awarded a new four-year contract valued at €20 million. The EDCC is a unique managed service within ESN. Our team of some 40 experts respond in all official EU languages to questions from citizens and businesses on every aspect of the Union’s policies, activities and institutions, by email, telephone and web chat. At the same time, it provides the European Commission with an unparalleled source of fine-grained, real-time intelligence about the interests and concerns expressed spontaneously by its citizens.

ESN’s sister company Poplar has launched a new series of workshops as well as a web platform to promote collaborative innovation projects. The project ‘Co-creation camp’ brings together the public sector, private corporations and creative people – the ‘public-private-people’ nexus – to prepare Europe’s innovation landscape for the times ahead. The project launch took place in Copenhagen last September and was followed by the first symposium and workshop hosted in Brussels on 20 and 21 November. This was a successful entrée to a follow-up event scheduled to take place in Helsinki during May.