OVER-SEES is a multi-stakeholder consortium gathering four diverse EU insular territories (The Azores, Portugal; West Region, Ireland; Aegean Islands, Greece; Sicily, Italy) to establish a model of VET excellence in EU islands to accelerate Smart Specialization (S3) activities associated with the twin transition.

The main focus of this project is on the perceptions, emotions and behaviours of older people regarding different urban street designs. In specific, we are interested in exploring perceived discrimination due to age (ageism), a topic studied from a socio-psychological perspective. Hence, psychology is the main scientific area for this project. However, the multidisciplinary nature of the team is a major advantage, creating the opportunity to investigate people-place factors more deeply and use methodologies commonly used in other fields (architecture, computer science) in order to test our hypotheses (e.g., virtual reality studies).

Our aim is to deliver an evaluation model of the effectiveness of Public Employment Services (PES) tracking support types - digital, human-mediated or mixed - in improving employability among rural NEETs aged 25-29. Our project is submitted under support Area 3 - Analysis and Research, based on interdependent management, engagement & dissemination, and scientific work packages to fulfill three contributions. Our aim is to broaden knowledge of the effects of employment initiatives targeting rural NEETs, by creating a cross-country model of how policies influence PES tracking deliverance. Another goal is to enlarge the capacity of evaluating effects of employment initiatives for NEETs in rural areas, by validating impact assessment protocols for the most replicable programs of on-the-ground PES tracking support types, considering overall and specific groups of NEETs. A further target is to increase transnational use of impact studies among policymakers and researchers, by supporting their participation in developing/incorporating evidence-based impact methods for PES tracking evaluation. We address the Fund call vision by focusing on rural NEETs. These youths are ignored by research, hard to engage with, and challenged by multiple structural risk factors. We will concentrate on their vulnerabilities in the short-term by establishing a baseline for PES support types’ effectiveness in their employability indicators and, in the long-run, by setting an evaluation framework for effective PES tracking development. The consortium will rely on a sound multidisciplinary, theoretical and methodological approach, by concentrating on Baltic, South and Southeastern States with disparate rural NEETs’ proportions and different degrees of PES digitalization, adding meaningful variability to comparative analyses. Our outputs will be streamed into a working group dedicated to PES tracking impact evaluation to tie in with a parallel initiative, the Rural NEET Youth Observatory, b...

In recent times the world witnessed dramatic changes in the ways personal data are accessed, processed and used. Personal data are a key asset of the information economy. The amount and variety of personal information in administrations’ databases and systems also escalated. At the same time, the general public became increasingly aware of the related risks for both individuals and society. Normative issues thereby arose about how to define the correct balance between the interests and values at stake, a tension first addressed by the Data Protection Directive - DPD (1995). Later on, a number of measures as part of the EU Space for Freedom, Security and Justice raised mounting concerns about their bearing on privacy and individual freedoms, namely: new information systems for control of individuals’ movements within the EU and across its borders, identity cards containing biometrical data, and the Data Retention Directive. The need to reassess the DPD was therefore acknowledged. This call emerged whilst the Charter of Fundamental Rights entered into force (2010). A challenging theoretical target for this project thus was to critically analyse the principles, rights and guarantees contained in the EU data protection law and under the Space of Freedom, Security and Justice and to proceed to an evaluation of the underlying balancing of values and rights in the light of the Charter. A complementary goal was to deepen our understanding of the related social values. Designing and applying a questionnaire survey to a quota sample of Portuguese respondents pursued this goal.