EP seminar on development cooperation challenges for new member states

The European parliamentary group ALDE (the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) held a seminar on 12 November 2008. The meeting followed up the EP report written by Lithuanian MEP Danute Budreikaite earlier in the year on the challenges for new member states (see link below), and featured speakers from the national and European parliaments, the European Commission, CONCORD and the media.

Annamaria Kekesi, a board member from the Hungarian platform, was at the seminar representing CONCORD. She introduced the confederation and described the close contact with TRIALOG in relation to supporting the particular challenges new member states face in the field of development cooperation. She supported the conclusions that were made in the report and focused on four main challenges facing new member states: restricted capacity; low levels of awareness; limited national budgets and the lack of diverse funding for civil society organisations (CSOs) and platforms.

The presentation ended with an appeal to members of the ALDE party to provide support and political will needed to strengthen the role of CSOs in the newer EU member states. Annamaria asked that the MEPs support giving opportunities to organisations from new member states such as through weaker eligibility criteria for funding, and amounts directed specifically at them.

She also restated the important role CSOs play as development actors, highlighting their importance in development education and awareness raising and encouraging their inclusion in development policy making and programming, as well as the implementation of development projects.

Links:
Full text of the speech given by Annamaria Kekesi at the ALDE seminar: http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/alde-speech-annamaria-kekesi.pdf
EP resolution on "The challenge of EU Development Cooperation Policy for the new Member States" (adopted in March 2008): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2008-0097+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN
European Parliament: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/
ALDE political group: http://www.alde.eu/

Information provided by Rebecca Steel, TRIALOG