Brussels, 01/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - At the initiative of its President, Roger Briesch, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) unanimously adopted, on 23 February, proposals for enhanced and more structured cooperation with the European civil society networks and organisations (Rapporteur: Jean-Michel Bloch-Lainé, general inspector of finance and UNIOPS President, France). These proposals, to be examined at the conference on "Participatory Democracy and European Constitution", on 8 and 9 March in Brussels (see EUROPE of 18 February, p.18), represents an opening to the outside on the part of the EESC.
On several occasions, the Committee has hoped cooperation would be strengthened with European civil society organisations and has sought to go further along this road. Its approach has mainly been backed by the European Commission which would like it to be able to become a "privileged intermediary between the Union institutions and organised civil society". As the Bloch-Lainé report stresses, there is within European organised civil society a potential of know-how, expertise and experience that should be taken more into consideration by the Committee. The EESC, for its part, could provide useful support for these organisations. With this in mind, the Bureau decided on 25 February 2003 to create an ad hoc group chaired by Giacomina Cassina entrusted with studying the modalities and procedures to be implemented for structured cooperation with these organisations and networks. The final report of this ad hoc group (the Bloch-Lainé report) proposes that, to achieve this, a liaison group with the European organisations and networks should be created, with details of the functions, composition and operating arrangements.