Franziska Brantner debates with experts review of the EU neighbourhood policy, democracy promotion and enhanced mobility

ENP Review: Make Democracy Promotion and Mobility Work

Public Round Table with Commissioner Štefan Füle

Franziska Brantner hosted a round table discussion on the revie of the European Neighbourhood Policy. The discussion centred around the questions of how to promote democracy more effectively and enhance the mobility of people. A video recording of the conference is available here (in English); an audio recording is available here (in original language (EN/FR)).

Background

On June 14th, MEPs Franziska Brantner, Hélène Flautre and Ulrike Lunacek hosted a  round table on the review of the European Neighbourhood Policy (East and West) at the European Parliament in Brussels. The conference brought together Štefan Füle, Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, officials from the Commission’s Home Affairs departments, experts from civil society, researchers and Members of Parliament.

The European Commission’s recently published review of the European Neighbourhood Policy promises to put human rights and democracy at the heart of the new policy and to offer enhanced mobility for citizens from the EU’s partner countries. The conference took a critical look at these promises and tried to map out ways of putting the proposals into practice, while also asking whether the Commission’s level of ambition really measures up to the challenges Europe faces in its neighbourhood.

According to the Commission’s proposals, the support of “deep democracy” in the EU’s neighbourhood is to be based on the principles of “more for more” and “mutual accountability”. The round table’s first panel discussed how these concepts can be implemented effectively, and it asked whether the EU can muster the political will to break with the past and take conditionality seriously even in difficult circumstances (where conditionality might mean “less for less”):

Štefan Füle, Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy
Michelle Pace, Researcher, University of Birmingham
Lorand Bartels, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

The aspirations and expectations with regard to Europe of the populations in the Eastern and Southern neighbourhood focus largely on prospects of greater mobility. A second panel therefore looked into ways of enhancing mobility for citizens that go beyond the prospects of visa facilitation exclusively for targeted groups such as students. While policy-makers often rigidly link visa facilitation to readmission agreements, the panel also discuss edmore ambitious alternatives:

Luigi Soreca, Head of Unit International Affairs, Directorate-General for Home Affairs, European Commission
Claire Rodier, Co-founder, Migreurop
Omeyya Seddic, Board Member, Fédération des Tunisiens pour une Citoyenneté des deux rives

Video recording of the conference (in EN)
Audio recording of the conferenec (in original language (EN/FR))
Conference programme (PDF)
Speakers’ iographies (PDF)