23/11/2010
Brussels, November 9th 2010 - Hall Amazone, Brussels, hosted the final conference of the project "Promoting debates in support of strengthening the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on social protection and social inclusion", funded by the European Commission through the PROGRESS program, run by Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. The moderator was Denis Stokkink, president of the European Think Tank "Pour la Solidarité, the conference organizer and the project leader.
Foundation PACT, together with partners and participants from Belgium and Bulgaria, tried to find an answer to the question "how can we reduce the poverty by 20 million by 2020?", as part of the development strategy of the European Union, EU2020 . The conference was attended by personalities from the European and national public authorities, representatives of NGOs and trade unions of the three countries. Madalina Ene, project manager at Foundation PACT, presented the audience the Romanian Working Group for the OMC on social inclusion, set up in November 2009 and stressed the basic concern of the group members to improve social inclusion measures in Romania. Diana Berceanu, representative of Civil Society Development Foundation (Romania) presented the latest study of its organization on the non-profit sector in Romania and stressed the conclusion that emerges from this study, namely the need for capacity building of non-profit sector to participate in public policy processes.
The debates tackled highly interesting topics, an a honest and direct way in which social differences have been addressed, both at European level and at Member States level. The topics addressed was defining the most effective "policy mix" (inter-governmental methods, European directives and social dialogue) and, in this context, the participants sought ways to promote participatory democracy through the OMC. The panelists were: Antoine Saint-Denis (European Commission), Marie Arena (Belgian senator), Evelyne Pichenot (member of the Economic and Social Council of Europe) and Mathias Maucher (Solidarity - European Network of NGOs fighting for social justice in Europan and globally, with 52 member organizations from 25 countries including 20 EU Member States).
