The EESC issues between 160 and 190 opinions and information reports a year.
It also organises several annual initiatives and events with a focus on civil society and citizens’ participation such as the Civil Society Prize, the Civil Society Days, the Your Europe, Your Say youth plenary and the ECI Day.
Here you can find news and information about the EESC'swork, including its social media accounts, the EESC Info newsletter, photo galleries and videos.
The EESC brings together representatives from all areas of organised civil society, who give their independent advice on EU policies and legislation. The EESC's326 Members are organised into three groups: Employers, Workers and Various Interests.
The EESC has six sections, specialising in concrete topics of relevance to the citizens of the European Union, ranging from social to economic affairs, energy, environment, external relations or the internal market.
An interview with Josep Puxeu Rocamora, member of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) from the Employers' Group, representing the Spanish Food and Drink Industry Federation (FIAB). He is currently one of the Vice Presidents of the NAT Bureau and his work focuses in particular on balanced territorial development.
The Diversity Europe Group recently organised a structured brainstorming session aiming at encouraging its Members to think out of the box and to come up with ideas to feed into proposals for the Sibiu Summit on the Future of Europe. This session kick-started our Group's contribution to the EESC Roadmap 'From Cracow to Sibiu and beyond'.
On the invitation of Staffan Nilsson, a former president of the EESC (currently Co-President of the Swedish Rural Parliament, a civil society movement), Istvan Komoroczki, a member of the Employers’ Group and EESC sections NAT andREX, attended the three day meeting in Örnsköldsvik, 440 km north of Stockholm. This event, organised every second year, coincided with the start of the election campaign and so all Swedish political party leaders – facing elections on September 9, 2018 – gladly accepted a call to express their views about the need to develop areas of the Swedish country-side and the ways and means of doing so. A brief report by Istvan Komoroczki will follow.
EESC calls for flexible and effective support programmes from the Commission and Member States
Better rural development is possible, and local people are willing to deliver, but they need a support. EU and national authorities need to empower villages and small towns with new programmes that are flexible enough to be adapted to the diverse needs of Europe's rural areas. Positive examples should be promoted – for instance through a yearly celebratory day – in order to encourage other communities. With its opinion "Villages and small towns as catalysts for rural development", adopted at its last plenary session, the EESC wants to contribute to a revitalisation of Europe's rural areas.
Exactly 20 years since the first Cork Declaration, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR) organised a joint conference on balanced territorial development under the title ...
The EU-China Round Table's 14th meeting was hosted by the EESC in Brussels on 18-19 May 2016. The Round Table was set up in 2007 following a Decision taken by the 9th EU-China Summit, which acknowledged that the exchanges and cooperation between the EESC and its Chinese counterpart, the China Economic and Social Council (CESC), formed an integral part of the EU-China relationship. Topics on the agenda included ...