Events

The 10th meeting of the EU Advisory Group for the EU-Colombia, Peru and Ecuador Free Trade Agreement took place on 29 November 2018 in Brussels. Please click on the programme tab to consult the topics on the agenda.

With a view to gathering as much input as possible during the preparatory process for the proposed opinion from a wide range of experts, the hearing will include preliminary presentation on the governance, functioning and structure of the WTO with an exploration towards the strategic role that civil society can represent in a wider plurality of interests and a larger scope of collaboration.

Following the signature of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) on 17 July this year, the EU-Japan Follow-up Committee organised a mission to Japan (Tokyo and Kobe) from 13 to 15 November, with the aim to continue to strengthen cooperation and ties between the EESC and its main partners in Japan and to prepare for the establishment of Domestic Advisory Groups (DAGs) and the Joint Dialogue with the civil society in the framework of the Trade and Sustainable Development Chapter of the EU-Japan EPA.

A high-level conference took place in Tokyo on 13-14 November. With focus on the EPA, discussions covered the role of the civil society in monitoring the EU-Japan EPA as well as opportunities for trade, investment and cooperation following the signature of the agreement. A second part of the conference was dedicated to Technological change and its impact on the labour market. In Tokyo, the EU-Japan Follow-up Committee members also had bilateral meetings with the EESC's main partner organisations in Japan, and on 15 November in Kobe, a seminar took place on Technological change and its impact on the labour market, organised in cooperation with the University of Kobe.

On the basis of the Cotonou agreement, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is mandated to organise consultation sessions and meetings of ACP-EU economic and social interest groups in order to voice these actors' views on the ACP-EU partnership and foster cooperation between civil society organisations.

Within this framework, the EESC organises regional seminars every year in one of the ACP regions.

This year, the EESC is organising a regional seminar in Windhoek (Namibia) on 8-9 November 2018.

The purpose of the conference is to raise awareness, across the EU, on how multi-stakeholder actions can boost the achievement of the SDGs, to identify success factors, and to develop follow-up actions for upscaling these to EU-level.

The specific conference objectives are:

• Firstly, to identify and share experiences in relation to national instruments and initiatives designed to foster responsible business conduct in international value chains, and to explore which initiatives could possibly be scaled up to EU-level.
• Secondly, to higlight the importance of improved and sustained coherence between relevant internal and external EU policies - which is paramount to the effective implementation of initiatives on responsible business conduct, as the replication of a variety of initiatives might impact both the EU internal market (e.g. calling for guidance how tension with competition law can be avoided) and the EU’s external policies, including trade, development, and environmental policies.
• Thirdly, to explore how these existing approaches can feed into and complement the work of the European Commission's Multistakeholder Platform on SDG implementation efforts across sectors, as announced in Next steps for a sustainable European future, November 2016.

Finally yet importantly, the concept of the conference dovetails with the idea to highlight the role of civil society and industry organisations in contributing to the achievement of the SDGs.

The conference is co-organised with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands (SER).

The 5th meeting of the EU Domestic Advisory Group under the EU-Ukraine DCFTA took place on 29 October 2018 in Brussels. Please click on the programme tab to consult the topics on the agenda.

The Civil Society Platform complements the political bodies existing within the framework of the EU-Moldova Association Agreement, and it allows civil society organisations from both sides to monitor the implementation process and prepare their recommendations to the relevant authorities both in the Republic of Moldova as well as in the European Union. At this fourth meeting, participants discussed Human rights and democratic institutions in Moldova.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and Serbia held the 7^th meeting of their Civil Society Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) in Belgrade. This civil society platform between the EESC and civil society in Serbia was established within the institutional framework of the EU-Serbia Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) in order to allow civil society organisations on both sides to monitor the country's accession negotiations. It is also a platform to discuss issues of common interest and to inform the public at large of the challenges ahead during the accession period. Besides the current state of play in EU-Serbia relations and the accession process, main topic of the 7^th JCC meeting were: Decreasing of Inequality and Promotion of Equal Opportunities in Social Policy and Employment and Enabling civic space and overview of the civil society situation in Serbia. A common declaration of the JCC was issued after the meeting.

The 13th meeting of the EU Advisory Group for the EU-Central America Association Agreement took place on 4 October 2018 in Brussels.  Please click on the programme tab to consult the topics on the agenda.