The mission of WWWforEurope - First signals for transition and recent rebounds

The research project started in April 2012 and a large group of researchers have produced a considerable amount of papers up to now. It makes sense to start with an overview of the research already carried out and currently being undertaken to then connect the papers, to discuss synergies and conflicting results and to get some feedback from the stakeholders, academic community and policy experts. The feedback conference also to some extent wants to build a bridge between the analytical results (which dominate the research in the first two years) and the policy conclusions which mark the next phase before we can present a Synthesis Report of this 4 years project. The four goals of the Feedback Conference in Vienna in September 2013 were the overview of individual papers, connecting research, a first round of feedback from stakeholders, academia policy makers and to build the bridge between analysis and policy conclusions. This volume summarizes the main results of the discussion, cross cutting issues and open questions. Section 2 recalls the mission of the project and its importance, then we describe current developments along the three pillars of the project, (i) economic development, (ii) social inclusion and (iii) sustainability and some policy reactions so far. Section 5 summarizes recent positive developments but also obstacles and backlashes on a strategy for new more inclusive and more sustainable dynamics of Europe. We conclude with open questions to be investigated by future research. This chapter is based on the introduction given by the coordinator to the conference; combining it with some results of the conference and developments thereafter. The more detailed results can be found in the chapters that follow in this feedback volume.