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
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