The meeting was organised by the Economic and Social Committee, in particular by Ms Anne Marie Sigmund (President of Group III) in cooperation with the ESC Secretariat. Mr Dehaene was invited to the meeting with various representatives from NGOs, to present which are the main priorities for the Convention in the next months, and how to develop some concrete ideas for a direct cooperation between civil society and the Convention. JEF was present at this meeting, together with other youth NGOs and the representatives from the youth political parties.

Mr Dehaene explained how he sees this cooperation, in order to be realistic but at the same time effective. Then representatives from a lot of different NGOs took the floor presenting their expectations regarding the outcomes and the cooperation with the Convention. He presented as well the Youth Convention that will take place in Brussels in July 2002.

The last part of the meeting, when unfortunately Mr Dehaene had already left, was dedicated to discussing different strategies and possible ways of cooperation among civil society and between the Economic and Social Committee and civil society.

Ms Sigmund proposed to create at least three different working groups in order to gather together the several proposals and ideas elaborated by the different NGOs. Since the role of the Economic and Social Committee should be to facilitate the dialogue between civil society and the Convention, the ESC will actively help to coordinate these meetings and their work, in order to being able to try to influence the decisions that the Convention will take.

The next meeting will take place 26 May at h15:00.

Barbara Goldoni