Welcome to the heartbeat of ‘Yourspace’: an open consultation by the Party of European Socialists on priorities and progressive policies for our common manifesto for the European elections in June 2009. For more detailed discussion see the four themes at the top of this page.
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Published Saturday, July 5, 2008 at 11:51
by
negrescuvictor 
in New Social Europe (26 views and 0 comments)
I have participated
in a lot of debates regarding Europe but unfortunately everyone
is tending to forget the rural and small cities communities. We
often talk about agriculture but we don't discuss enough the
problems of peple living there.
In Romania around 40% of the population lives in rural areas and in countries like Poland or Bulgaria the percentage is similar.
PES activists Romania organised an internal debate on this and we have identified some of their problems:
- difficulties regarding the access to high level education
- exclusion from technological evolution
- development problems / sanitary access
Tags: blogger of the week, rural areas
Published Friday, July 4, 2008 at 10:23
by
franciscopolo
in New Social Europe (76 views and 0 comments)
As you all know the
European Central Bank has its main goal to control the interest
rates, that is to say, the price of money in the eurozone. The
matter is that the Federal Reserve of the United States is
keeping an interest rate much lower than the European ones. While
we are having a 4% interest rate, in the States the interest rate
is around 2%.
This has several consequences but the most important ones are that our companies can’t invest so they can’t become more competitive and that our products become more expensive abroad Europe so our companies become even less competitive.
If we add to all that the fact that oil is having peak prices almost everyday so everything is becoming more expensive for them, the result is easy to see: they are trapped.
In order to face this situation “the European Central Bank should ask itself not only about inflation but also about economic growth”, Mr. Sarkozy said. “You can double interest rates and that will not make go down the price of the Brent barrel”.
This is a position held by Sarko. I wrote about it yesterday in my blog. And then I wondered…
What’s our political response to the economy crisis?
Tags: blogger of the week, economy, employment, investment
Published Friday, July 4, 2008 at 10:12
by
negrescuvictor
in European democracy & diversity (54 views and 2 comments)
An important
part of PES activists Romania proposal
for the Manifesto2009 is given to the Roma community issues. This
theme is considered an important social issue by the Romanian
social democrats and this is why our MEPs are supporting several
solutions included in our manifesto proposal like:
- the creation of the European Agency for Roma
- education projects for the Roma community
- promotion of the Roma culture as an European culture (the Roma community is not only a... » read more ...
Tags: blogger of the week, discrimination, diversity, equality, fundamental rights
Published Friday, July 4, 2008 at 10:05
by
Editor
In the spotlight (43 views and 0 comments)
Vienna receives this weekend the first PES activists Forum. “Vienna 2008 – a strong voice for European social democracy” gathers together leading politicians from PES member parties, activists and experts to discuss the outcome of the manifesto2009 campaign. They will draw-up their ideas for a strong campaign for the next European elections.
The opening session of the Forum is scheduled for this afternoon. Tomorrow, four parallel sessions will take place on both “Manifesto” and “Campaigning” themes.
During the day, participants will discuss not only the four consultation themes – “Save our World, “New Social Europe”, “Europe in the World” and “European democracy and diversity” – but also other transversal issues such as “Experience in Europe – Cross-border campaign exchanges”, “Strike back on ultraconservative speech”, “Social networking over Internet or “A European dimension in European election campaigns”.
The Forum, organised together with the SPÖ, the Renner Institute and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), will close the PES manifesto consultation.
Published Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 10:57
by
rikkeindenmark
in European democracy & diversity (154 views and 5 comments)
This weekend I will
be doing a presentation on social networking tools at the
PES activist forum in Vienna. I was glad to find out
that there’ll be a workshop dedicated to online campaigning - and
now I'm looking very much forward to debating the topic with
other PES activists. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate
with a few words on online campaigning and my particular
‘campaigning speciality’, namely social networking sites.
The US elections usually say a thing or two about upcoming
campaigning tools and methods. In the primaries social networks
turned out to be really hot - as a voter you could connect to
candidates pretty much everywhere: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn... you
name the network and Clinton and Obama would be
there!... » read more
...
Tags: blogger of the week, campaigning, elections
File:
social_networks_campaigning.pdf
Published Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 10:01
by
rikkeindenmark
In the spotlight (178 views and 0 comments)
Not long ago I learned
about the PES Group in the Committee of the Regions. To be
honest I didn't know about the group's existence until a year ago
(ignorance is not always bliss), but it's a forum for local and
regional politicians to meet and discuss EU politics. It's an
interesting organization because many EU decisions impact greatly
on the local level - and the PES Group is a chance for local and
regional social democrats to meet and work together to influence EU
policies.
I admit that this was a digression from the topic that I actually wanted to address in this post! The reason why I brought up the PES Group in the Committee of the Regions is that the group has its own PES manifesto consultation - and in this consultation there's a fifth point of discussion, in addition to the four 'traditional' themes - namely the gender dimension.
I agree very much with the view-point of the PES Group - that there's a significant gender aspect to all four manifesto themes - and I hope the 'pervasiveness' of gender issues will be taken into... » read more ...
Tags: blogger of the week, child care, conflict, consumer, diversity, human rights, media, public services, transport, wages, women
Published Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 17:10
by
Rui Miguel
in EU in the world (304 views and 0 comments)
The future of Europe is to become a country, not the United States of Europe but an European Union. Together we are the richest, the biggest democracy and the most powerful country in the world.
The 21st century is the globalization century and we are killing ourselves. With some influential powerful countries arising (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the United States, Europe as it is today will die very fast. The EU way of act is still having good results in European economies, but in a globalized world we need to have a single voice and act as a single force.
As from the 15th century we conquered the world, we cannot allow others to conquer us. We are good but we need more. We need to act as a continental nation constructed by many others nations (Spain, UK…)!
We Are, In Varietate Concordi
Tags: democracy, EU, Multilareralism
Published Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 08:04
by
Joel Cordier
in EU in the world (358 views and 4 comments)
Par 369 voix pour, 197
contre et 106 abstentions, le Parlement européen a adopté, ce
mercredi 18 juin, la directive sur le retour des immigrés illégaux.
Ce texte qui a été massivement soutenu par la droite prévoit :
- une durée de rétention excessivement longue ;
- la détention d'enfants en centres fermés ;
- l’absence d'obligation pour les États d'organiser une assistance juridique gratuite ;
- la possibilité d'expulser des personnes gravement malades vers des pays où elles seront privées des soins pourtant nécessaires à leur survie ;
- l'interdiction de séjour sur le territoire européen de 5 ans pour toutes les personnes qui ont reçu un ordre de quitter le territoire.
La seule porte de sortie face à ce texte scandaleux est la faculté laissée aux Etats membres d’appliquer des normes plus favorables.
Il y a des jours où j’ai honte d’être citoyen de cette Europe là.
Allez, courage, la lutte continue !
Tags: blogger of the week, human rights, immigration, rights
Published Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 23:23
by
Editor
in Save our planet (373 views and 3 comments)
The issues raised by the speakers fuelled a very lively debate. Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economics trends and advisor of different European governments on environmental and economic issues, said that “we have to leave aside a burden sharing and benchmarks approaches and start to talk about commercial opportunities, otherwise in Copenhagen in 2009 we will fail”.
EU... » read more ...
Published Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 09:36
by
Editor
in Save our planet (470 views and 0 comments)
Last months, participants agreed on the need for a radical shift both on the production and the consumption side. The whole exploitation and processing of resources mustbe rethought.
Setting standards for measuring the risk of a pollutant manufacturing process or use of a product was proposed by several manifesto supporters. Another alternative is the use of a 'climate label’ for products which are, for example, produced in climate... » read more ...
Tags: activists, barometer, energy, environment, transport
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