Brussels, 06/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is calling on the EU27 and the European Commission to strengthen development education for European citizens in order to reinforce global citizenship in the service of the fight against poverty. This invitation was made in Strasbourg on Thursday 5 July, via a written declaration adopted by an absolute majority and welcomed by NGOs.
More specifically, the Commission and Council are called upon to draft a long-term, trans-sectorial European strategy for development education, awareness-raising and active global citizenship. The member states are invited to create or strengthen national development education strategies.
The network of NGOs led by CONCORD (the European NGO Confederation for relief and development) and DEEP (a project of CONCORD's Development Education Forum, co-funded by the EU) see this text as a “very positive response of the European Parliament” to a campaign carried out for four months on development education and global citizenship, and which sets the framework for new political debates on the role of European citizens within development.
In a press release, these NGOs stress how positive this is, because while European citizens show strong support for development (according to Eurobarometer, this is the case with 89% of them), personal commitment to global justice remains low (just 4% are involved in volunteering). Furthermore, although the EU is the world's largest donor of public development aid (more than half of all ODA) and one of the major donors to development and education funding (the Commission spends €30 million a year on this), the EU still has no strategy on development education for Europeans.
The draft written declaration was proposed by Filip Kaczmarek (EPP, Poland), Catherine Grèze (Greens/EFA, France), Fiona Hall (ADLE, United Kingdom), Maria Badia i Cutchet (S&D, Spain) and Michael Gahler (EPP, Germany). Written declarations allow the Parliament to launch or relaunch a debate on a subject within the competences of the EU. (AN/transl.fl)