The purpose of EYID 2008 is to promote intercultural dialogue as a tool helping to acquire knowledge and capabilities, whereby all Europeans and citizens of the European Union will have an opportunity to meet the requirements of functioning in an increasingly open and complex society. The purpose of the year is also to increase awareness of how important it is to shape active civic attitudes, open to the world, full of esteem for cultural diversity and based on common EU values.

Globalization, integrated market and the principle of free flow of people, services, goods and capital, being the foundation of the European Union as well as constantly growing mobility of people from all around the world do not remain separated from affecting the demographic structure in Europe. EU extension by new member countries in 2004 enabled migration within the Community. A phenomenon confirming this tendency one may note also among Poles who in recent years have dynamically conquered European labor markets.

In reply to challenges of the contemporary times, the European Union takes actions to ensure consistent co-existence and agreement between citizens representing different nationalities, grown up in different cultures, practicing different religions and cultivating different customs. One of key values assumed in the process of Community integration is intercultural dialogue. EU actions aim to enable participation in dialogue and provide possibilities for development in a diverse, solidary and dynamic society to all inhabitants of the Community as well as to promote the idea of intercultural dialogue worldwide.

Actions with regard to dissemination of dialogue in Europe find their justification in historical experiences of each country and its contemporary geopolitical situation. So understood, a decentralized approach to the issue of dialogue should lead, however, to a common purpose which is to build an aware European civic society, one based on the principle of cooperation, tolerance and mutual respect for rights, regardless of cultural, religious or ethnic differences. In the global context it is nothing else but a mature society and significant potential intellectual of the inhabitants that are to become one of the most valuable resources of the Old Continent.

Intercultural dialogue is an element of many programs and initiatives of the European Union. By virtue of the decision of the European Commission and the Council of 18 December 2006, the European Commission decided to start more systemic and decentralized actions to promote dialogue, which not only public institutions, but the citizens of Europe would be involved in. Actions to promote dialogue shall include:

• Collection, promotion and exchange of best practice with regard to dialogue
• The introduction of intercultural dialogue to goals of community programs (in particular to community programs focusing on issues of culture, education, directed to teenagers, used for building civic attitudes)
• Establishing the year 2008 as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, under which initiatives related to promotion, reflection and implementation of the idea of dialogue will receive support.
  

For more information about the initiative of the European Commission, see the European site devoted to the celebrations of the Year.