Reinvesting in European Citizenship Through Entrepreneurship and Frugal Innovation

At a time when international issues are at stake and Europe is moving in the direction of environmental protection. The energy crisis, as well as in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, have inhanced being a citizen of Europe becomes particularly meaningful for individuals. The study conducted here compares the feeling of being a European citizen vs. a citizen of one's native country among students from three European countries and includes entrepreneurial initiative as an explanatory vector for the results obtained. Being a citizen means being aware of the system in which each individual evolves, but does Europe currently allow any European student to invest in the project it proposes for the future? We study this axis through the concept of innovation and especially frugal innovation encouraged by the conjunctural and fundamental elements. The empirical study is conducted with 171 students from Bulgaria, France and Slovakia. The results indicate that the majority of students consider the European Union as a structure of citizenship. Personally, they call themselves primarily citizens of their countries and very few mention their European citizenship. Entrepreneurship is understood in very different ways in different countries and frugal innovation is still a very unknown area. The European project would therefore be well advised to target the younger generations of European entrepreneurs and to allow citizenship to be manifested in the territories it covers.