Last Tuesday Civil Society Europe had two meetings the Vice Presidents of the European Parliament, Mr Othmar Karas and Ms Katerina Barley responsible for relations with Citizens, as a follow up of exchange of correspondence with EP President Mr Sassoli.

It was the opportunity for CSE to present them with our roadmap to civil dialogue in the EU and with our call including in the VP of the Commission mandate the protection and the promotion of civil society, as well as the implementation of article 11.2 on an open, transparent and structured dialogue with civil society through a framework agreement.

We have also discussed concrete steps and ideas to reinforce civil dialogue within the European Parliament with European associations and NGOs, the work of the national liaison offices and relations with national associations, the development of guidelines for Committees or improving access to information and transparency.

With Vice President Karas we discussed in particular the possibility of annual structured dialogue events and the conference on the future of Europe proposed by the elected President of the European Commission, Ms Von der Leyen, while with Ms Barley we also spoke about shrinking civic space in Europe and ways to address this.