When: 15 November 2024, 10am-12pm CET
Where: Online (Teams)
At a glance
Objective of the capacity-building session: To strengthen the overall capacity of civil society organisations to engage in and influence the social, employment, economic and environmental policies shaped in the European Semester.
Who should attend?
Interested Social Platform members and their national member organisations, interested external civil society organisations at EU and national level, other interested partners.
Pricing: The session will be free for Social Platform’s European member organisations and their national members, but they are asked to make a voluntary donation, to help Social Platform’s fundraising efforts, enabling us to offer further trainings in the future. Co-organising Social Platform members and their national members are participating for free.
Other interested stakeholders who are not members of Social Platform or their national members will be asked to pay a participation fee of 100 Euro via an invoice. Registered participants who paid for the session will then receive the link to the session after the registration deadline.
Register now!
Deadline to register: 8 November 5pm CET
Background
This training is co-hosted with Eurodiaconia, Diakonie Germany and the European Disability Forum.
The European Semester is the EU’s governance tool that coordinates Member States’ economic, fiscal, employment and social policies and reforms, while increasingly integrating environmental and energy concerns. It monitors the implementation of a variety of EU and global instruments: the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), the European Pillar of Social Rights (Social Pillar) and its Action Plan, the European Green Deal, the Recovery & Resilience Facility (RRF) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), making recommendations on how to turn them into reality.
The involvement of civil society organisations in the development, implementation and evaluation of policies is key to ensure they are evidence-based and correspond to the situation of the people they concern and help improve their lives. Unfortunately, involvement of civil society organisations in the European Semester process at EU and especially at national level is generally ad-hoc and dependent on the political will of decision-makers. At the same time, civil society organisations, especially at national level, often lack the knowledge of and capacity to engage in this fast-moving process.
These capacity-building sessions aim at giving interested civil society organisations at EU and national level an introduction into the European Semester process, its importance for policy-making, its functioning and key moments and ways to engage.
Learning outcomes:
- To learn what is at stake for civil society organisations in the European Semester and why it is important to engage;
- To identify the objectives, key moments of and stakeholders in the European Semester;
- To gain knowledge on effective methods to influence the process at EU and national levels;
- For EU civil society organisations: to learn about ways to engage national level member organisations in the European Semester.
Draft agenda
10:00
1. Plenary session with all participants
- Welcome & introduction of Social Platform
- Interactive opening: knowledge of the Semester & biggest barriers to engaging
- Setting the scene: What is at stake for civil society organisations in the Semester? Why is it important to engage?
- Introduction to the Semester: objectives, content, key moments, links with other EU processes (Recovery & Resilience Facility; Social Convergence Framework, Economic Governance review), ways to engage
- Social Platform’s work on the Semester
- Questions & Answers
11:00
2. Examples of EU and national CSO work on the European Semester
- Clotilde Clark-Foulquier, Eurodiaconia
- Stephanie Scholz, Diakonie Germany
- Haydn Hammersley, European Disability Forum
- Questions & Answers
- Exchange between participants on how they engage in the Semester
11:50
3. Evaluation & closing
- Interactive closing: Evaluation & further learning needs
- Closing remarks & next steps
Any questions?
Still wondering if this training session is for you or how you can benefit? Why not drop an email to our Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer, Katja Reuter at katja.reuter@socialplatform.org with any questions you may have.
