01/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - In his intervention at the conference on European realities in the here and now of 28/29 June, Pier Virgilio Dastoli, spokesperson for the Standing Civil Society Forum, said that the latter supported the idea of a second circle (the "Forum" from the Laeken Declaration) outside the Convention which should be organized by civil society itself and not by the Convention. He said that a pathway should be built between this second circle and the Convention and that the Convention Praesidium should ensure permanent structured dialogue with the second circle. He called for participatory democracy not to be confused with representative democracy, noting that in the current exercise of Convention/civil society dialogue, some civil society representatives implied that the objective was to replace part of representative democracy with some forms (as yet undetermined) of participatory democracy.