Comité Económico e Social Europeu
The EESC's engagement with civil society organisations in Russia is governed by the five guiding principles for EU-Russia relations agreed between EU foreign ministers and the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. One of these guiding principles is "support for people-to-people contacts".
Dialogue and the exchange of experiences between civil society representatives from the EU and Russia contribute in a significant way to the continued implementation of the EU-Russia Strategic Partnership. The EESC has adopted a two-stranded approach to its relations with Russian civil society in order to engage with as wide a range of civil society representatives as possible. On the one hand, it maintains relations with the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, its official Russian counterpart, and organises – amongst other things – annual joint seminars on topics of interest to civil society on both sides. The EESC's other partner is the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, which brings together a different set of civil society organisations.
The EU-Russia Follow-up Committee is an internal EESC body, which acts as a steering group, and is responsible for developing and maintaining relations and organising meetings and joint seminars with civil society in Russia.
The EESC has called for a European stimulus package for the labour market policy, amounting to 2% of GDP. We recognise that the "Compact for Growth and Jobs" adopted at the European Council summit in June 2012 is a first important step in that direction. This must be further fleshed out to create the needed room for manoeuvre for sustainable growth and employment across the Europe.
Speech by President Luca Jahier at the inaugural session of an event organised by ADICONSUM in Rome on 18 February 2014
On 17-18 March 2016, students from schools in all 28 EU Member States and, for the first time, from the 5 EU candidate countries (Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey) met at the EESC in Brussels for Your Europe, Your Say!. They came to debate an issue that has been one of the most important topics on the European political agenda for some time: migration and integration. The key question for this year’s event was “How can we better integrate migrants and refugees in our societies?”.
Bulletin d'information de Groupe III (en anglais)
The EESC believes that Northern Dimension cooperation should not only comprise actors from governmental and regional levels but it should also involve business organisations, trade unions and non-governmental organisations. Civil society is an important Northern Dimension actor: the role of civil society organisations in the implementation of the different projects is essential.
