The move follows rejection of Europe’s proposed Constitutional Treaty in 2005. The push for ’agoras’ was initiated by the parliament’s vice president, French Green MEP Gerard Onesta.
Under his proposal, the parliament would organise five or six fora per year, with a total of 1,800 participants discussing current legislative issues. According to him, this would be a way to make lobbying activities more transparent, visible and public.
He also believes that agoras would also allow a smoother discussion between civil society organisations and the European Parliament.
Significantly, those permitted to attend the agoras would be decided by the particular parliamentary committee dealing with the debated issue of the agora session concerned. REACH is one of the examples mentioned by Mr Onesta.
There has been much critism of the proposed initiative, with critics arguing that debate should not be managed by MEPs but rather from the bottom-up.
The European Parliament is going to experiment the proposal with two ’agoras’ (one per semester) in 2007.
Briefing note on the agoras (in French only)
Reforming the EU policy-making: current initiatives
Cutting red tape for contracts and grants;
Increasing the transparency of EU institutions
Conference on civil dialogue at EU level: make civil dialogue work better
