ENAR Secretariat Diary Update

ENAR Secretariat Diary Update

January 2004

Date	Event / Venue / Organiser	Participants from Secretariat/Board	Brief description of subjects discussed, outcome / impact
6/01/04	European Socio-economic Committee, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	Section for employment, social affairs and citizenship: during this meeting Mrs. Odile Quintin, Director General, Employment DG, introduced the Work Programme of the Commission’s DG employment and social affairs for 2004. In the specific area of combating racism and racial discrimination she mentioned the follow up of the implementation of the 2 Equality Directives; the future of anti-discrimination policies; the reform of the EUMC. Disappointingly NGO’s were not allowed to participate in the debate that followed this introduction.
12/01/04	Meeting with Irish Presidency, Dublin	Vera Egenberger	The meeting was organized by the Irish co-ordination and focused on the Presidency priorities concerning anti-discrimination, migration and asylum. The meeting was attended by more than 50 persons and three representatives of the relevant Ministry as well as the former Irish BM Anastasia Crickley and Vera spoke on the panel. Points such as the transposition of the RD and ED, the Framework Decision, the changed scope of the EUMC and the alarming decrease of attention on racism were raised. The meeting was overall very well prepared and successful. It might guide other NC’s to hold such meetings when their country holds the presidency.
15/01/04	Social Platform meeting on Structural Funds, Employment strategy and EQUAL, Social Platform, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	The purpose of the meeting was to explore how the Social Platform could contribute better to the impact or understanding its members have on the structural funds, the employment strategy and the EQUAL fund. The structural funds are currently under scrutiny and the European Commission is about to issue her Communication on social cohesion, in which she is going to set out for the first time the objectives and priorities of the structural funds after 2007. It was decided that the Platform would contribute to that mid term review process, by organizing high level meetings and by lobbying the Commission. It was also decided that the Platform would organize an informative seminar to raise the knowledge of members on the structural funds.
15/01/04	Meeting trainer of training seminar on media relations, Brussels	Vera, Anoush, Bernhard, Diana	It was the first but very helpful contact wit the external trainer to clarify the content and methodology for the upcoming training seminar. Role and responsibilities are clarified and the preparation can move on.
16/01/04	Anti-discrimination working party, Social platform, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	Main items on the agenda of the meeting: update on the (Media Consulta) EC information campaign on combating discriminations; first discussion on social platform conference on anti-discrimination that will take place on the 26^th July 2004, social platform toolkit on the Equality Directives; news from Age, EDF, ENAR and ILGA Europe.
20/01/04	Meeting with member of Diamantopoulou cabinet, Brussels	Vera Egenberger	It was an informal meeting with Barbara Helferrich discussing issues related to round tables held by the DG EPML on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, funding issues, change of scope of EUMC and other issues.
20/01/04	Social Policy Working Group, Social Platform, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	The following issues were discussed a.o.: the mid term review of the structural funds ; the gender directive, social protection, the organisation of the conference on anti-discrimination; the change of mandate of the EUMC.
20/01/04	Meeting Amnesty International, European office, Brussels	Vera Egenberger, Sophie De Jonckheere	The purpose of the meeting was to explore possible ways of collaboration on the issue of the change of mandate of the EUMC. It was decided to produce a joint letter to Commissioners Prodi and Vitorino as well as to the Irish Presidency raising some key questions on the issue. It was also decided to issue a joint press release at the same time.
22/01/04	Meeting Deirdre Hodgson, DG EMPL, Brussles	Vera Egenberger	The meeting focused on the introduction of the adopted work program of ENAR, in the context of the upcoming application for the next budget period.
22/01/04	European Socio-Economic Committee, debriefing on the IGC	Sophie De Jonckheere	This was an opportunity to meet Andrew Duff and Jean-Luc Dehaene and to get their analysis of the IGC meeting and the failure to find an agreement on the European Constitution. Sophie raised a question with regard to the veto as it was reintroduced by the Italian presidency in its compromised proposal of the Constitution with regard to judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Both Dehaene and Duff encouraged us to lobby the Irish Presidency to restart discussion on this issue on the basis of the Convention’s proposal and not on the basis of the Italian presidency’s proposal
23/01/04	Informal meeting with Cecil Sacre	Vera Egenberger	Cecile Sacre works in a Belgian NGO focusing on development and migration. The meeting aimed to see, which cooperation could be established.
26/01/04	European Policy Centre and King Baudoin Foundation, Dialogue on migration in the EU, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	This meeting fits into a series of meetings that the EPC and the KBC co-organize on the subject of migration. It is always a good opportunity to meet key politicians on the subject and to raise issues of concern to ENAR such as the integration of migrants or citizenship of residence.
27/01/04	Informal meeting with PICUM	Vera Egenberger, Sophie de Jonckheere	PICUM is a Brussels based NGO working on undocumented migrants. The short meeting aimed to exchange current developments and to introduce what are the core issues for both NGOs in the moment.
27/01/04	Meeting MEP Alima Boumediene-Thierry, European Parliament, Brussels	Vera Egenberger, Sophie De Jonckheere	Alima is the rapporteur for the EP’s report on human rights in the European Union in 2003. The purpose of the meeting therefore is to make a direct input in that report. Particular importance has been given to the general weak political commitment to combat racism and xenophobia through European Policies. Other main issues raised: common concerns for 2004, the campaign on citizenship of residence, the changed mandate of the EUMC, the intergroup against racism after the EP elections.
28/01/04	Meeting of British Council on diversity index	Vera Egenberger	The meeting aimed to introduce an index how to measure diversity in a company. This index is used in the UK context and was introduced to NGOs and companies on the EU level.
29 to31/01/04	European Academy, Conference on “Minority protection of the EU, the way forward”, Bolzano Italy	Sophie De Jonckheere	In view of enlargement and new types of discrimination possibly emerging in the work of ENAR (discrimination of ethnic “minorities”), it proved important to participate in this conference. Beside dealing with the legal concept of “minority protection” the conference also dealt in lectures with the status of 3^rd Country nationals in the EU and how this would need to evolve after enlargement. It was also an opportunity to make the link with the citizenship of residence campaign of ENAR.
29/01/04	International Trade Union Organisation, Brussels	Patricia Curzi	The organisation wanted to share some practices on how Trade Unions are dealing with discrimination in various European countries. They created an action plan for future strategy. They are also building a website where Trade Unions can check what is being done in other European countries, including accession countries.

ENAR Secretariat Diary Update

February 2004

Date	Event / Venue / Organiser	Participants from Secretariat/Board	Brief description of subjects discussed, outcome / impact
04/02/04	Meeting Claude Moraes, MEP, Brussels	Vera	The meeting aimed to clarify issues related to the Intergroup, which will be reestablished in the new term of the EP. Claude is willing to take over a coordination role and requested ENAR to see which capacities could be put into this grouping. It was agreed that Vera would write a short proposal to develop this further.
04/02/04	MiraMedia meeting	Bashy, Vera	MiraMedia invited to this meeting to bring the EUMC, the International Federation of Journalists, ENAR and people working on the monitoring week together to discuss possibilities on the launch of the monitoring report in March. The EUMC did not see the possibility to support the launch and report but the IFJ committed itself to strongly support the launch of the report and a press event. ENAR will be involved in this event through Bashy.
04/02/04	Meeting Bertelsmann Foundation, Brussels	Vera	The meeting was held to see which follow up could be envisaged for the meeting held in November on Civic citizenship. It was discussed that 4 further informal meetings with experts and EC representatives would be planned in Brussels in the 12 months to come and specify the sub items of this rather broad topic. Vera volunteered to draft a short proposal on these meetings.
10/02/04	European Foundation Centre, Migration interest group, “Closing the communication gap, strategies for a dialogue between, migration stakeholders and the media”, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere, Anoush der Boghossian	The purpose of the meeting was to explore the role of foundations in closing the communication gap between the media and migration stakeholders. The keynote speaker introduced strategies to address this communication gap as the ngo community on migration in the USA had used them. This was followed by an intensive debate where contributions of press representatives were particularly interesting. It was a good networking possibility and an opportunity to get to know representatives of European press agencies. We brought up that we were organizing a media training and the foundations were very interested in this initiative and thought it would be a best practice that could be supported in other NGO’s.
11/02/04	Informal meeting with German Human Rights Institute	Vera	Vera met the Policy Officer of the Institute to exchange information on current works of both organizations and to assess the situation concerning national action plans in Germany.
11/02/04	DGB conference on transposition of RD in Germany, Berlin	Vera	The trade union federation organized this meeting to publicly discuss the rather slow transposition process in Germany. The meeting focused on shift of burden of proof and the specialized body. Vera was able to make several statements concerning scope of the body and the possibility of litigation for victims of ethnic discrimination.
	Seminar of CEDAG, St Pölten, Austria	Tarafa Baghajati	Tarafa attended the seminar of CEDAG (organization working on elderly). He introduced ENAR, disseminated ENAR material and invited NGOs from the accession countries to contact the Secretariats. He contributed to the debate with issues related to racism and migration in the context of enlargement and on Islam and Muslims in Europe.
12/02/04	Meeting with Jo Shaw, the author of our upcoming publication on mainstreaming, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm on the issue of mainstreaming equality in order to feed into the publication that Jo is supposed to write by the 15th March. Jo was also updated on the discussions that took place during the last board meeting on the issue.
12/02/04	Launch of Transatlantic Institute	Vera, Pascale	The US based American Jewish Committee opened the transatlantic Institute to foster dialogue between US and Europe. We were invited to a reception and dinner where, Javier Solanas, Ana Palacio and other high level speakers contributed.
13/02/04	Informal meeting with Jan Niessen	Vera	This meeting aimed to update ourselves on activities undertaken by MPG and ENAR in order to avoid overlaps and to see where both organizations can complement each other.
16/02/04	Meeting with Joke Swiebel, MEP, European parliament, Brussels	Vera Egenberger, Sophie De Jonkcheere	Mrs. Swiebel is the current rapporteur for the European Parliament on the reform of the EUMC. The purpose of the meeting was to identify what is going to happen now that the EUMC will be broadened to a Human Rights agency and what her role would be in this new procedure. She will prepare a working document on the issue for the next parliament since she will not stand for elections again.
16/02/04	Steering Group meeting of Platform	Vera	The steering group tried to discuss issues related to the values of the platform, cooperation with the ESC and representation in the NGO contact group.
17/02/04	Social Platform meeting on Civil dialogue, Social Plaftform, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	ENAR has brought up the issue of the change of mandate of the EUMC and this was discussed intensively. The Platform decided to send a letter to the Commission/Council/EP and Irish presidency to complain about the process of adoption of this decision and the lack of consultation of civil society.
18/02/04	Enlargement working group, Social Platform, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	This working group prepared the upcoming study visit of the social platform to the Baltic countries, to which ENAR will participate. It also discussed a first draft of the platform document on enlargement. Finally the WG also looked at the Commission proposal on “mapping capacity of civil society dealing with anti-discrimination in new member states”
18/02/04	Contact visit Hungary	Vera and Anoush	The meeting was prepared well in advance and aimed to meet with NGOs of Hungary to introduce ENAR and see if membership in the network is of their interest. Even though 5 persons confirmed their attendance only 2 persons from the same organization came. After the official meeting we arranged individual meetings with the people that confirmed but did not attend the meeting. Those meetings where fruitful and helped to identify the NGOs scene working in our field much better. The experience made there will be assessed and used for future meetings in other accession countries.
19/02/04	European conference on anti-semitism, European Parliament, Brussels	Sophie De Jonckheere	This conference was organized by the cabinet of Commissioner Prodi and by the European Jewish Congress in response to the recent disagreements/statements/scandals of the EUMC and the EC on anti-Semitism. Although the event did not fit into a strategic objective, it was an ideal occasion for ENAR to raise the profile of anti-racism and especially of the Framework Decision against racism and xenophobia at the EU level and in the media. A high number of speakers took up the issue and Prodi committed to take a series of new measures to combat anti-Semitism and racism.
27 – 28/02/04	Training seminar on media relations	Anoush, Vera	This seminar was organized and prepared by Anoush der Boghossian, communications officer of ENAR. The seminar’s purpose was to train ENAR’s members on overcoming the challenge and the difficulties in conducting media relations, on developing appropriate communication/media strategies to maximise participants chances of getting their stories published in the media and on improving communication skills of NCs and other member organisations.