PES Manifesto

PES manifesto – this weekend you’ll get the Nordic perspective

Published Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 13:44
by rikkeindenmark in European democracy & diversity (555 views and 0 comments)

This weekend stands a good chance at becoming a turning point for the PES activists movement!

I’m in a small village called ‘Jørlunde’ in Denmark - it’s about one hour by train from Copenhagen. Small place, big thoughts! Together with 80 other social democrats I’m attending a conference on Europe and the PES manifesto. What’s extraordinary about this event is that it gathers social democrats from three Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) – and tomorrow we will debate the possibilities for cooperation between Nordic PES activists. How can Nordic social democrats help each other out when we start campaigning for the 2009 European elections?

The conference is organized by the Danish Social Democrats and attended by members of the Swedish and Norwegian parties - among these Eric Sundström, former blogger of the week on Yourspace. Actually he is about to begin his presentation on European democracy in a few minutes…

Right now we are debating Turkey and the EU – a discussion triggered by a very interesting presentation by Anne Mette Vestergaard from the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Later today we’ll split into four smaller groups and start talking about the four PES manifesto themes. Each group will have to come up with three priorities for their theme. I’m excited to see the outcomes.

Tags: activists, citizens, democracy, elections, manifesto, political parties