The project "Empowering Participatory Budgeting in the Baltic Sea Region" (EmPaci) focuses on the development of participatory budgeting in the Baltic region. From January 2019, 13 partners and 3 associated organisations from Germany, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland will work on this over a period of 2.5 years. At the University of Rostock the chair for ABWL: Corporate Accounting and Controlling (Prof. Dr. Peter C. Lorson, consortium leader) and the Juniorprofessor for Business Informatics (Prof. Dr. Michael Fellmann) are involved in the project. The project is funded by the EU under the "Baltic Sea Region" (BSR) programme, with the University of Rostock accounting for EUR 306 thousand of the total funding of around EUR 1.5 million.
The aim of EmPaci is to involve more municipalities and various groups of citizens in participatory budgeting through the development of municipal skills, transnational clusters and community/citizen cooperation. By identifying citizens' needs and participatory budgeting concepts for different types of municipalities, close involvement of municipalities and citizens should be achieved right from the start of the project.