Rio+20

... "The method of democracy – inasfar as it is that of organised intelligence – is to bring … conflicts [of interest] out into the open where their special claims can be seen and appraised...” (John Dewey). We are all stakeholders!

The European Economic and Social Committee has been actively preparing for this moment, in particular through fostering dialogue aiming at a joint understanding of the issues at stake and at common civil society recommendations. I am pleased to say that this work has been particularly fruitful with our Brazilian partners. We have been working for more than one year with the Brazilian Council for Economic and Social Development on our views on sustainable development. All this work has been synthesised in a joint report by the two organisations, which aims at contributing to the debates in Rio.

Partnerships are a very important model for involving civil society actors in sustainable development. They bring together governmental authorities and non-governmental actors, in particular NGOs and stakeholders from businesses in order to pursue common objectives. This makes transformative partnerships so important to us, the EESC.

We have in place for many years now the EU-China Round Table. Within this framework (which was started10 years ago, and was supported in the EU-China summit 2004), the EESC meets regularly with the Chinese Economic and Social Council. Just a few weeks ago we had our EU –China Round Table in Hangzhou. Our declaration adopted by the end of our discussions in April focused on sustainable urban development. Our two rapporteurs, Evelyne Pichenot on the European side, and Professor Zou Ji on the Chinese side, have done a huge work together.