European Parliament
Dear Friends,
With a view to preparing our meeting on 29 October next in Sao Paulo, I should like take a more in-depth look at the issue I raised at the WSF International Council meeting in Bangkok.
Of course the World Parliamentary Forum (WPF) was organised for the most part in Brazil. That said, from the very outset we at the European Parliament have been putting a lot of effort into this area and into forming the International Parliamentary Network (IPN). This year the network’s European branch has begun to take shape. It instigated an international declaration on the challenges facing the Johannesburg conference (Rio + 10) and is currently doing the same with regard to the GATS talks at the WTO. Both declarations have been or will be distributed to those on the e-mail list that we have created for the Parliamentary network and its regional branches.
A meeting in Brussels on 28 and 29 November next with national parliamentarians will help us to advance further towards organising the network at European level and defining its activities.
We find ourselves, therefore, at a turning point. The 3rd WPF must build on the work already accomplished in getting the parliament network up and running, make it a genuinely international network and provide impetus for its activities in 2003. Failure to do so may prevent us from capitalising on what we have already accomplished.
Because of the Brazilian elections we have not been able to undertake the necessary dialogue with our parliamentary partners in Brazil, and the fact that we have still not had a proper chance to discuss our projects with you at the WSF secretariat could well have been a mistake. Time is now marching on, and it would seem that many issues relating to the very concept of the parliamentary forum and its relationship to the social forum have yet be clarified. Unless we do clarify them we may well find that, come November or December, we will each have been preparing for the WPF in markedly different ways.
The European delegation did not feel as satisfied with the 2nd WPF in 2002 as it had with the first. Different types of problems arose. There was the political issue of the war in Afghanistan, and then there were the organisational problems that meant that we had to spend a great deal of time resolving the ‘ Afghan crisis’ and contend with long delays in the distribution of draft resolutions. The tiresome succession of monologues that characterised the debate in plenary also led to disappointment. So although the 2nd WPF was a success in terms of numbers, it nonetheless sent out a political warning.
The 3rd WPF must take a different format; our idea is to combine workshops with meetings in plenary, draw up a timetable of activities, plan proper political debates and so forth. We have made some initial proposals in this regard, but first we need to gain a clear understanding of the concept actually underpinning the parliamentary forum.
In simple terms, we have two basic concepts available to us. In modern parlance we might say that they relate to giving priority to the ‘event’ or the ‘process’.
It goes without saying that a WPF meeting will always be an ‘event’, particularly for the host country. However, our starting point is the ‘process’, by which we forming and sustaining the International Parliamentary Network. This is our prime objective: we must strive to establish a network that can take initiatives and pursue ongoing activity in the legislative field, in conjunction with campaigns by civil society and in support of social movements. In our view such is the spirit and letter of the resolution adopted at the 1st World Parliamentary Forum, which initiated the formation of the network with a view to future action, and also of the resolution adopted at the 2nd WPF on the operation of the network.
In this vein, the parliamentary forum must evolve. It must reflect the network’s current state and potential ever more closely, and must tend towards becoming a sort of world assembly for the network. Whilst being open, it must also clearly state its ambitions to be politically active (through its choice of campaigns, its annual timetable of activities and its declared support for civil society and social movements). It must be capable also of facilitating debate and frank exchanges of views on topical issues, even if this means not arriving at conclusions where differences of opinion are too wide.
Also in this vein, the link between the parliamentary forum and the social forum must be maintained. The parliamentary forum is of course secondary to the social forum. The WPF does owe its existence solely to the creation of the WSF; the WPF has met ‘within’ the WSF. Yet the link between the two forms part of the very identity of the parliamentary network started up at the first two WPFs.
Now, the political (or symbolic) link suggests a physical link as well, if only for practical reasons. We cannot expect parliamentarians to be able spend 10 days or more in Porto Alegre. If the parliamentary forum is held several days prior to the social forum, some will go to the former but will not stay for the latter, whilst others with more commitments will skip the former so that they can attend the latter; few will be present for both.
If the parliamentary forum is detached from the social forum, it will be drained of any substance as a campaigning body and amount to nothing more than a media ‘event’ devoid of the ‘process’ that drives such campaigning. It will no longer provide an opportunity for strengthening the IPN and its capacity for lasting action, and will therefore lose much of its interest for us. Without the backing of the WPF ‘event’, we will risk failing to build up the IPN.
So, to take up the resolutions adopted at the first two WPFs, we emphasise the direct relationship between the WPF and the formation of the IPN, as well as the solidarity that ties the network together with the campaigns waged by civil society and social movements.
Even with this basic issue clarified, much remains to be discussed. In particular we must address two somewhat contradictory requirements, namely those of bringing the WPF together ‘within’ the WSF and of allowing parliamentarians the time to emerge from the parliamentary ‘bubble’ and involve themselves fully in the WSF. A number of options are available. One idea that we have, for instance, is to stage the WPF on the eve of the opening day of the WSF, on the opening day itself and in the afternoon of the second day, with workshops (focusing on campaigns and the timetable of activities) and plenary debates (summarizing the workshops’ activities and addressing major topical issues) being held alternately. Alternatively, more original approaches could be tried out.
The agenda of the WPF would be dictated in part by this basic concept. It would first and foremost reflect campaigns under way - such as that on GATS - and would take account of the timetable of activities both of parliamentarians and of civil society. It would allow for debate with civil society as to how to link together common initiatives (as is already happening in Europe on GATS itself), as well as for discussions between parliamentarians on topical issues, which might or might not conclude with voting on resolutions.
We will be bringing proposals regarding a possible agenda for the next WPF to the meeting in Sao Paulo. However, in our view it is important that we begin by clarifying our basic expectations for the parliamentary forum as they relate to the formation of the international network.
We believe further that the Sao Paulo meeting should be a stock-taking exercise, in the light of the Brazilian elections, so that we can look into the problems we might have to prepare for and pinpoint the processes we might be able to tap into.
Lastly, we hope that the meeting will give us an insight into how we can begin in November to prepare Port Alegre 3 together to ensure the best possible outcome. We will have very little time in which to do so! With the date of the WPF still not set, we cannot even issue invitations. We need partners to work with in Brazil!
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions that you feel need to be raised ahead of our meeting. I hope that you will find this letter helpful.
Yours in solidarity,