This Friday the Plenary Assembly of the Conference of Regional Legislative Assemblies of the European Union in which the election of the Parliament that will hold the Presidency of CALRE in 2018 was carried out, as well as the coordinators of the Working Groups for 2018. The presidency of CALRE will be in charge of the Parliament of Azores –Ana Luis- who will give replacement of the Parliament of Andalusia.
After the presentation of the Seville Declaration, approved on Thursday, the II Stars of Europe Awards were presented, whose objective is to express the best practices and initiatives adopted by the European Regional Assemblies members of the Conference, which are improving an aspect or sector of the economic, cultural and social life of their territories and communities, underlining the positive impact of European institutions on regional realities.
The evaluation of the projects was carried out in Brussels during the II Permanent Committee and the first prize went to the VIII Atlantic Parliamentary Conferences presented by the Legislative Assemblies of the Azores and Madeira (Portugal) and the Parliament of the Canary Islands (Spain). Two second prizes were awarded to the Assembly of Extremadura (Spain) for the project ‘First School Plenary against Buylling by LGTBIFobia’ and to the Flemish Parliament (Belgium) for the Flemish Parliament’s EU Database project ‘Help members of Parliament (and Flemish citizens) to examine the European legislative process’.
Two mentions were also awarded, one to the Regional Council of Lombardy (Italy) for the project ‘Selection and placement of graduate students in the Regional Council of Lombardy (in Milan and Brussels) to support European policies’; and another to the Legislative Assembly of Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy) for the ‘Nicosia Initiative: meeting with representatives of Libyan municipalities on training in the field of fishing cooperatives’.
Immediately before the closing of the Assembly session, led by Juan Pablo Durán, two panels of experts were held who left their reflections on the future of Europe, one of them on the principle of subsidiarity in the definition of the common European project , moderated by the editor-in-chief of the Canal Sur News and presenter of the Andalusian Parliament television program, Isabel Gómez, and another on the contributions from the regions to the challenges of the Union, moderated by the president of the Assembly of Extremadura, Blanca Martín, who in her role stated that all “the answers that the European Union must find depend on its closeness to citizens.”