Joint Session in Antwerp as seen by French delegation

On March 22, the French delegation of I AM EUROPE project went to Anwerpen to meet the other participants of the project, from Bulgaria, Romania, Sweden, Span, Poland, Germany and Belgium. The goal of the delegations’ first joint meeting was to start a collective reflexion on the notion of European citizenship.

We kicked off by presenting our projects – the civic initiatives that we have developed locally and for which we invited by the Evens foundation to join the project.  The French delegation presented the Civic Factory (Animafac), The European Youth Parliament (PEJ) and the Organisation pour la Souveraineté Populaire (OSP), and learnt in return about other innovative civic projects launched by the participating organisations.

During the lunch time, another gathering took place – the first meeting of the European editorial team consisting of a representative of each delegation and 2 professional journalists. Their objective – to determine the leading lines of the upcoming newspaper I AM EUROPE, articulated around 3 themes: identity, citizenship and participative democracy. The launch of the newspaper – Mid June 2013 !

As the I AM EUROPE project was built on the idea that the citizens’ local initiatives could be the essential motor to reinforce the European identity, we decided to think over the different ways to empower citizens, focusing on several fields of action: housing rights, civic education, or sustainable development. They will be our fields of experimentation during the next meetings.

During the second day, we received Machteld Boussemaere from Belgian movement Ryckevelde Vzw and Jeroen Jochems, from Europe Direct Antwerp. They discussed together what values a state/a society should promote : the freedom, the solidary, the equality… We also learnt more about the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties and had a short history flashback on the creation of Europe – all this contributed get a more informed overview on the European policies and values. In addition, the goal of these workshops was to clarify the functioning of the EU institutions in order to measure the possible impact of our proposals during the upcoming final conference in Brussels, where all the participants will have an opportunity to dialogue with decision makers.
We finished the day by composing the working groups dedicated to different fields of action and then left Antwerpen excited by all these ideas and encounters. Next stop: Paris !
See You Soon !
Benjamin Fauquet

Joint Session in Antwerp – from the local to the European level

After a series of local citizens meetings in 9 cities, we have finally crossed borders and met face-to-face in Antwerp for the first Joint Session of I AM EUROPE. Every local group was represented by 5 delegates, together with the EVENS foundation organiser's team and facilitators we were with more than 50 people altogether. 

           

We started with exchanging our personal backgrounds. We had first talks on what PARTICIPATION means to us, personally. We  also created a common ground of understanding the project – much still needed to be clarified, many questions remain unanswered for now, but this is a challenge for all participatory projects.  We will discover and develop the uncertain parts of the project together during the next meetings.

We then smoothly went to the carousel of good practices where each delegation had the opportunity to present their „local story” and tools for enhancing citizens’ participation at the local level. That is how we learned the story of Citizens Participation Forum in Bulgaria, the story from Poland about empowering citizens’ participation in a cross-generational approach, the Swedish story of how to make participation easy, not too sophisticated but really effective and fun (wonderful example of Örebro Klassikern!). The delegation from Germany showed us several stories that ended up with talks on topics that do matter for all of us, regardless the age, background, nationality etc. A really practical example of how to encourage people to participate! Mr Kowalski from Brussels presented a variety of approaches and solutions for enhancing participation among migrants.

During the open space we got a bit more room for asking specific questions and for a genuine dialogue, which is not easy to organize in a big group. Some good practices and tools were presented and discussed here in more detail, such as Kod pokoleń (generation code) idea presented by Stefan and Marek from Poland, but there has been also space for discussion launched by citizens. For instance, the Catalan team showed a very citizens perspective on the housing problems in Spain in the times of crisis.

Next day has brought us debates about the overwhelming impact of the EU on our lives facilitated by Jeroen Jochems from Europe Direct Antwerpen and about the values, those personal and European and about how they correspond with the EU policies (facilitated by Machteld Boussemaere – Ryckevelde).

It was a very intense weekend, we had an ambitious schedule that we tried to make happen under a permanent time pressure. Many important issues still remain open, which is a good forecast for the next Joint Session in Paris! See you in one month!

Marta Gawinek - Dagargulia

Project facilitator