Porto Alegre, 30/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - Ensuring closer coordination between politics and the social movement: that is the goal that the "International Network of Parliamentarians" has set itself, Network whose constitution was announced at the end of the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre, kind of "counter-Davos Summit". Francis Wurtz, President of the European Parliament's European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group, welcomed this, when speaking at the World Parliamentary Forum, one of the largest components o the Porto Algere Forum.
The International Parliamentary Network will enable the latter to coordinate their action on subjects such as the debt, the Tobin tax on the speculative movements of international capital, tax havens, the follow-up to the Rio Conference on climate change, the reform of financial and trade institutions, the patenting of live beings, as well as the situation of women in the world. The parliamentarians members of the network have undertaken to back the action of social movements and citizens more effectively and to make of them the preferred interlocutors in their respective assemblies, to consider alternative solutions together.
Stressing that the holding of the World Parliamentary Forum was significant and encouraging progress in relations between social movements and progressive politicians, Mr. Wurtz rejected the term "anti-globalisation" used to describe the Porto Algere Forum, placing emphasis, on the contrary, on "the spirit of openness to the world of tolerance, the spontaneously internationalist climate, modernity in the good sense of the word" that were marked throughout this event.