EESC Conference: Turn up the volume for civil society! – Key actions for the EU’s new political cycle
03 March
03/03/2025
This page is also available in: FR
Location: Rue Belliard 99-101, Brussels, Belgium
On 3 March 2025, from 14.30 to 17.30 CET, the European Economic and Social Committee’s (EESC) Civil Society Organisations’ Group will be holding a conference at the EESC premises in Brussels entitled Turn up the volume for civil society! Key actions for the EU’s new political cycle.
The conference will build on the work of the Civil Society Organisations’ Group (CSO Group) for strengthening civil society and democracy, with the aim of setting out priority actions for the EU’s recently started political cycle 2024-2029.
The event will bring together approximately 120 participants, including members of the CSO Group and civil society organisations at European and national level. Discussions will centre on two topics:
Funding civil society organisations, their financial health and independence being a precondition for their impact and contribution to democracy.
Reinforcing effective and sustainable civil dialogue, based on the Group’s track record in promoting civil dialogue, as well as the presentation of intermediate results of a new study on Mapping civil dialogue practices in the EU institutions. The study was commissioned by the EESC at the CSO Group’s request and is being carried out by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).
The CSO Group and the EESC have in recent years extensively explored and promoted civil dialogue. The most recent initiatives are the EESC’s contribution to the 2025 European Commission Work Programme, its exploratory opinion on Strengthening civil dialogue and participatory democracy in the EU: a path forward, which was requested by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU, as well as an open letter published in 2024 by the CSO Group and Civil Society Europe and signed by over 156 civil organisations and civil society representatives from 26 Member States.
For more information, please see the draft programme. This event is an in-person conference. Registration is now closed. We invite you to follow live via webstreaming (English, French and German).
Simultaneous interpreting will be available in various languages in the room.
For further information, please write to: Events-CSOGroup(at)eesc(dot)europa(dot)eu
Downloads: Biographies of speakers and moderators – EN
Agenda
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