Interview to Cillian Lohan, EESC Vice President for Communication

EESC AND POST COVID RECOVERY

I think it is important that we take hope from what has been a difficult year over a year now. We have worked together, we have rediscovered our communities in many ways, and I think we can take those lessons that we've learnt and know that we can deal with a crisis by working together.

The post Covid Recovery for the Committee will focus very much on the citizens and the civil society organizations that we represent.  The key added value that we can bring is our connection to communities and civil society organizations. So, we need to ensure that the recovery is relevant for people in communities as it's designed.

What is the EESC Civil Solidarity Prize?

Every year at the Economic and Social Committee, we recognise the work of civil society organizations in different ways. In order to recognise the role of civil society organisations in dealing with the global pandemic, the Covid crisis, we wanted to give a prize to as many different organisations as we could to recognise that and to reflect all of the work that has been done on the ground.

This year’s EESC Civil Solidarity Prize recognised 23 winners  

We have got applications from all different areas, including people who are working on food supply issues, ensuring people could access food during the different lockdowns that happened and also work carried out on supplying medical supplies, but also groups who are working on issues like ensuring people had accurate information in relation to the pandemic. We also managed to get applications and give prizes to NGOs and companies who were active in the cultural space in responding to Covid.

What are your expectations for the recovery?

We are going to have a difficult economic period following from the setbacks economically due to Covid, but also, we have the climate crisis which hasn't gone away and needs to be dealt with. So, I think we can take the valuable lessons we have learned from how we've dealt with this crisis and use it as a template, as a basis for dealing with further crises that will come down the line.