Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-20-Speech-2-412"
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"en.20080520.29.2-412"2
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"I can say that Plan D played a key role in testing new methods for civil society organisations to involve citizens from all walks of life in debates on the future of Europe.
It gave us examples of consultation that we never had before, inviting randomly-chosen citizens from all Member States to sit down together and discuss the European Union’s agenda. It was indeed a very exciting experience. One of the key lessons from this experience was that we need to strengthen the interface between citizens and EU decision-makers because, if we promise to listen better, what do we do with what we hear? This is what they want to know.
We decided to prolong Plan D in the period leading up to the European parliamentary elections in June next year. This new phase is called ‘Debate Europe’. We have allocated EUR 7.2 million to Debate Europe, EUR 2 million of which to cofinance transnational projects and EUR 5.2 million to cofinance decentralised calls and actions supporting local projects administered by the representations.
We do not decide in advance how much money is available per Member State or which beneficiaries will run these pan-European consultation projects. This depends on the results of the calls for proposals which the Commission is presently launching, both centrally and via our representations.
We think that Debate Europe should also provide an effective framework for interinstitutional cooperation. One model was the concluding conference that was held on the first phase of Plan D last December. Here not only the Parliament, the Commission, but also the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee were involved. I think it proved complementary in addressing the specific citizens’ concerns and that this kind of cooperation should become the rule in the framework of Debate Europe, also at national or regional level.
We also hope that we can engage Members of the European Parliament much more in these local and regional activities. I have just informed this group – the so-called ‘IGI’ – about the request from this Parliament to engage in a pilot information network. We have prepared and will present to the European Parliament the outcome of our project very soon: preparing for such a network, joining national and European parliamentarians and we hope also inviting journalists to take part in the debate on European issues.
I have already mentioned the public spheres, the European public spaces, in the pilot project. Along these lines we can continue Plan D, learn from the experience so far and engage with citizens on a number of projects and models that we hopefully can establish permanently – not only as something that runs for six months or so – and ensure that we can involve decision-makers with European citizens in these ways."@en1
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