Economisch en Sociaal Comité houdt deze herfst een stakeholder-forum 'Communicating Europe' (en)

European public opinion and the
EU's Communication strategy

- President Anne-Marie SIGMUND announces major Stakeholders' Forum to be held at the Committee in the autumn;

- European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee decides to ask the EESC for an exploratory opinion on how the European debate can be taken forward;

- Extraordinary Plenary Session debate addresses the questions... and starts to identify some answers.

Speaking at the July plenary session of the EESC, President Anne-Marie Sigmund announced that in the autumn the Committee would be holding a major stakeholders' forum on the theme of `communicating Europe'. The announcement follows a recent very constructive meeting between Ms Sigmund and Ms Margot Wallström i, Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for communication policy, on the issue of the EU's emerging communication strategy and the vital role of organised civil society. In the autumn Ms Wallström will be taking her much-anticipated White Paper on an EU Communication Strategy to the European Commission, and in her meeting with Ms Sigmund she expressed a strong desire to have prior input of the sort that a stakeholders' forum could bring.

The Committee intends to build on the highly successful results of the new `Open Space Method' which it used in an April stakeholders' forum on the theme of sustainable development. President Barroso, Ms Wallström and Commissioner Dimas were among the participants on that occasion. The Open Space Method is characterised by the absence of a pre-established agenda. Rather, participants in the forum themselves identify the issues they feel are most salient and the most appropriate way to deal with them. Said Ms Sigmund: `The forum will bring together a large number of representatives of organised civil society and will enable them to enter into a genuine dialogue with the European institutions. It will facilitate the listening process which is so vital if we are to begin to bridge the gap between Europe and its citizens.'

President Sigmund went on to announce to the plenary that the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee had just decided to ask the European Economic and Social Committee to draft an exploratory opinion on the subject of the reflection period decided by the 16-17 June meeting of the European Council and, in particular, on the structure, the subjects and the framework for an evaluation of the debate on the European Union. The plenary immediately decided on the establishment and composition of a sub-committee to begin work, since the Parliament would like the opinion to be fed into its work by mid-November.

President Sigmund announced the stakeholders' forum and the exploratory opinion at the beginning of an extraordinary plenary session debate on the current situation in Europe and the challenge of communicating Europe. Common themes expressed in the debate included the need for member state governments to get away from the `blame Brussels' habit and the need to embark on a general, but differentiated, debate using terms, and at a level that would not discourage citizens from participating. Several speakers called for the Committee, and hence organised civil society, to be involved more systematically upstream of the legislative process; others underlined the fact that the EESC, like other Brussels-based institutions, could only play a complementary role, albeit an important one: `we are a bridge,' said one speaker to general applause, `between Europe and organised civil society, and the best part of that is that we bring public opinion into this room.'

Rounding up the debate, President Sigmund observed that the Committee's Communication Group and its President, Roger Briesch, together with the newly-established Sub-Committee, would be taking work forward rapidly on the stakeholders' forum and on the exploratory opinion. `Margot Wallström has called for Europe to listen more carefully,' she declared after the plenary, `this Committee will continue to help ensure that the voices of organised civil society are heard.'

For more details, please contact:
Christian Weger at the EESC Press Office
99 rue Belliard, B-1040 Brussels
Tel.: 02 546 9396/9586; Mobile: 0475 753 202
e-mail: press@esc.eu.int

Website: http://www.esc.eu.int/press/index_en.asp