Brussels, 02/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Swedish Prime Minster Gorän Persson will chair the first meeting of the high-level working group on sustainable development (set up by the Party of European Socialists - PES) in Stockholm on 3 October. The working group is to submit its proposals to PES leaders at the Socialist Summit in Barcelona in March 2002 on the eve of the EU Council meeting. The proposals will focus on means of integrating social, economic and environmental policy in order to maintain stability and protect jobs, according to a press release, and will also form the basis of a distinctive PES submission to the Rio+10 Conference in South Africa next year, signalled PES President, Robin Cook.
Participants in the working group include Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk and his British and Norwegian counterparts Michael Meacher and Siri Bjerke, as well as the Belgian Social Affairs Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, the French Planning Minister Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, the Lithuanian Culture Minister Roma Dovydeniene and the Romanian Minister for European Integration Hildegard Puwak.