Civil Society and European Union Policy and Practice in the Field of Transportation

Look out. This time our friends over at the European Economic and Social Committee (JDE62) in Brussels are doing a terrific thing. Tomorrow morning they open their doors for a one day conference and peer brainstorm on Civil Society and European Union Policy and Practice in the Field of Transportation (my title).  As latest background information you will find here the final copy of their program and a list of their speakers, panelists, etc.

 Program - http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/2012-12-06---programme---conference-achieving-the-goals-of-the-white-paper-on-transport.pdf

Speaker list - http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/2012-11-29---biographies.pdf

Now this is a splendid list of speakers and what I am hoping is that they will act like not like a bunch of tame ponies ready to jump through the usual government hoops. but rather act a bunch of wild horses, with each one of them reaching down deep and share with the others what they have learned when it comes to find ways to better link the brains and perspectives of civil society with the decisions and actions of our policy makers at the three most relevant levels of government: city, nation, Europe.

We all have a lot to learn, since for the most part many of the players are playing the game as if it was still the old 20th century. However a lot has changed since then -- new tools, new practices, new attitudes -- and we should be taking full advantage of all of them.

We very much hope that the EESC team will be making available all of the presentations and reports of the participants, which we hope to share and comment here as well.

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For more contact on the conference and follow-up:

Nuno Quental
European Economic and Social Committee
Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society
JDE 2008 - 99, rue Belliard - 1040 Brussels
Tel: +32 (0) 2 546 9347. nuno.quental@eesc.europa.eu
nuno.quental@eesc.europa.eu

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