Workshop C - Session 1

Title: Promoting Social Inclusion and Active Citizenship Chair: Haroon Saad, Birmingham City Council, UK Angela Vegliante, European Commission, Belgium

Angela Vegliante working until recently with the European Commission in DG22 which is responsible for education, training and youth. In particular she was responsible for the action on other education within the SOCRATES programme.

I will try to identify the main approaches to citizenship that are at present being developed in the different European programmes. There are 3, the first one is the most traditional one which is connected to the economic integration which has been the main aim of European communities since the Treaty of Rome. This is the approach that sees employment as the predominant economic component of citizenship and therefore the key for addressing the problem of social exclusion. If we look at the Amsterdam Treaty and of the employment provision which is contained in the treaty, that is another proof of this approach. The measures that have been adopted and suggested within this employment-based approach consist mainly of upgrading citizens levels of skills and employability, and of targeted work-oriented schemes. This is the one which has had more funding and I think more consideration at political and organisational level in the community.

The other approach that I would like to talk about is the formalistic, legalistic approach. That concerns rights which are given to citizens. The European Union has gradually conferred on the people new rights which have been written into the Treaties at various stages, reflecting the development of the union of the union activities and the inheritance from most member states. Citizenship of the union is designed to make the process of European integration more relevant in individual citizens by intensifying their participation in the European construction and promoting the idea of a European identity. These rights which have been quite recently conferred are the right to vote and to stand for a European Parliament, the right to participation, the right to appeal to a European Ombudsman.

'Citizen First'

However, a recent survey has demonstrated that these rights have been used very little. Conferring rights therefore is not the way to ensure citizen participation at political level. A massive information campaign was launched 'Citizen First' to inform European citizens of their rights and to try improve participation. Now if we look at these two concepts of that citizenship that I have been talking about now, we see that they are rather discriminatory and exclusive rather than inclusive.

The employment-based approach is also the one that sees citizens to be workers. We exclude most of the people if you adopt this approach in the European union: immigrants, unemployed, all the people who do not participate in the traditional way, in the way of working, in the economic construction of Europe. However, if we look at the Amsterdam Treaty, we find another concept, a dual concept of citizenship, one which is based on rights, and one which is based on the principles that the European Union is based on, the principals of freedom, democracy, respect of human rights and on the fundamental freedoms, all principals which are shared by the member states. This is a much wider culturally-based approach which has really been at the basis of other policies of the European Union, policies which are not central, which have had only recently a legal base, the cultural policies, the education policy within which I have been operating in the last 3 years.

Cultural Heritage

These are policies which do take into account all the challenges which are facing the European Union now; they are part of our cultural heritage. There is a common cultural heritage we want to pass on to new member states now with the enlargement. In Brussels, we intend the thousands of directives regulations, all the legislative bodies which have to be accepted by new incoming countries to have access to what is now called a European social model.

Our settled values is something we should keep in mind when talking of citizenship, when defining citizenship not in terms of citizenship of a member state, but in terms of entitlements for individuals who live in a chosen place and that it should be the only criterion to define citizenship, 'belonging participation'.

Actually a number of people who have been working on the 101 projects that we have financed in the last three years are present here in Manchester. The projects include one aimed at transferring, and also looking into the possibility of transferring, the experience to other European member states, such as the learning boutiques we heard about this morning. We have addressed central issues like multiculturalism, racism, gender issues and of course the question of tools, how you can face all these issues not only through transnational projects, through widespread opportunities for learning for adults, through a very flexible and a very differentiated system. This is what we have been trying to encourage through the SOCRATES programme.

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