Abstract:

General literacy as well as media, digital, financial and health literacies have been part of the European Union (EU) agenda for several decades now. Citizens are becoming more aware of the problems regarding fake news, phishing schemes, and misinformation. However, the more political and economics information regarding the policies, role, and objectives of the EU is out there it seems that it is a mystery for a vast majority of the population.
Studies show that the more information and knowledge regarding policy, parties, participation are provided to the citizens the less likely they are to withdrawal from engaging with these topics and their European citizenship participation. The same principal is valid for the EU as a political and economic alliance. Without access or knowledge regarding access to the information, citizens will not participate and understand the role the EU plays in their daily lives and their role and participation in EU life.
This paper aims to present the level of literacy among undergraduate and master students on European Union policies, as well as the knowledge and interest that they show towards European Union news, its role internationally, as well as the role that Portugal has today in EU and in its future. Our study uses a mixed methodological design. A survey, presenting open and closed questions, was carried out to undergraduate and master students from several majors in Portugal, who represent the young adults of the Portuguese population as they come from different social and economic backgrounds as well as different genders. Their ages rage from 18 years old until 30 years.
For the analysis process, coding method was used allowing to identify patterns, and the SPSS program enabling to create a better understating of the results. In this case of study, it is possible to identify a profile of student’s knowledge and interests about European Union, including key factors to enhance European Union literacy, not only in Portugal, but also at European level.
This is a very important knowledge in times of European elections because, as we have seen in the past couple years, the low levels of political participation have been increasing since the beginning of the century, as well as the absence of knowledge regarding the importance that elections represent towards a member state own future.

Keywords:

citizen participation, European elections, competences.