We now have an important opportunity to contribute to the democratic legitimation of the European Parliament and the European Union, by letting the people know we are representing them, and their ideas. ´Your voice, promoting your interests and championing your causes´ is our promise. In order to keep this promise, political participation is needed, from all different groups within the member states. In this PSE Group Conference we would like to focus on inclusion and political participation, in Belgium specifically. We want to encourage participation of different groups, which are not actively participating or not able to participate in political life.
First we can see that Belgian citizens, with an origin which lies in a no EU Member State, are less participating in political society because they do not really feel integrated. Moreover, even for people coming from other EU Member States, the inclusion is less than what expected. The questions why this happens and how we can encourage people to get more involved in political and social life, are extremely important and they should be discussed. The Socialist Group wants to involve- socially, politically and economically- all different groups in order to create a society based on the essential rights and duties of the principle of citizenship. The first panel of this Conference is for this purpose "Multiculturalism and dual nationalities: The challenge of integration in the European Union" .
Second, immigrants from other EU member states living in Belgium, face problems in voting for EU elections, while this fundamental right has been established since the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. For the last decade, the group of people from other EU member states living in Belgium has increased exponentially and this group is much bigger in Belgium that in other Member States. Moreover the II and III generation of immigrants seem to miss the opportunities given by the EU citizenship. Therefore it is important to deal with the situation, also in order to increase the turnout in the EU elections. The second panel of this Conference is for this purpose "Political Participation in the EU: The opportunity of EU citizenship and the right to vote"
We would like to invite young people from these two groups in Belgium together with young Belgian socialists to talk about these issues. Beside, we would like to invite Officials of Belgian politic (national and local) and public figures of the two groups. Bringing these different people together would be a great opportunity for all people involved to improve their perspective on participation in political life and on problems of people with different origins in day to day society.
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