Politica
EU: Debate Europe! Discussing the future of Europe
An online forum, with live discussions between European Commissioners and EU citizens, will be discussing their views on the future of Europe this afternoon
di Staff
EU Commissioners are participating today to a discussion about the future of Europe on a new online forum. Today, the 29th January 2008, the Commission?s Vicepresident Margot Wallström and the Commissioners Stavros Dimas (environment) and Andris Piebalgs (energy) together with other representatives of the Commission, will be online between 15.00 and 17.00 (central EU time) to talk to European citizens.
?With this forum?, says Margot Wallström, ?we want to continue the discussion with European citizens that we began during plan D?. The Debate Europe forum was, in fact, originally part of the European Commission?s plan D, an initiative aimed at promoting democracy, debate and dialogue between Europe?s institutions and citizens. Since its inauguration in March 2006 the forum has received thousands of posts and has been visited more that 1,3 million times.
Debate Europe, now in a revamped version that aims to be more user-friendly, for now will concentrate on three main themes: the future of Europe, Energy and climate change and intercultural dialogue. There will also be a ?miscellaneous? channel that allows citizens to discuss any other theme tied to the EU.
The forum works in all of the 23 official EU languages, and as with the previous forum will also be available in Catalan.
The new forum has set itself the task of re-launching debate and of helping the Commission and European citizens to commit to a constructive dialogue giving the Commission the possibility of hearing first hand what European citizens most care about, and giving them direct answers. The EU has adopted a new ?being global going local? strategy that it believes is embodied by the online forum, a space accessible to all.
It is expected that this afternoon there will be a lively online exchange between the general public and the Commission?s representatives. But it will not end here. The Commission representatives will continue to follow the discussions in the future to guarantee a true debate and real follow-up.
More info:
http://europa.eu/debateeurope/
