Engaging with the world’s lawmakers is a new, expanding and crucial field for European Commission staffers working on democracy assistance. That was the message heard by dozens of participants at a recent pilot workshop on supporting parliaments around the globe.
“Parliamentary support and working with parliaments and engaging with parliaments is still something relatively new for the Commission,” says Thomas Huyghebaert, an EC Democracy Support Expert who helped organise the conference.
The objective of the training workshop, which took place in the European Parliament in Brussels, was to familiarise staff with parliamentary development, so that they may become better equipped when implementing parliamentary support programmes. Participants also learned about different ways in which parliaments can be engaged in furtherance of development aid and national development strategies.
“If we want to do democracy assistance well, we need to have a comprehensive approach,” Mr Huyghebaert says in a video about the Sept. 23-24 conference, which included about 50 staffers from EC delegations, headquarters and the European Parliament, as well as external experts.
“This comprehensive approach means of course doing electoral assistance which we do already a lot. But we do a lot of other things and we need to connect them,” he said. “That’s the aim through this seminar is to give people some instruments, tools, to be able to be more confident in engaging with parliaments in third countries.”
According to Mr Huyghebaert, feedback from this pilot training workshop has been overwhelmingly positive with attendees welcoming the balance between presentations, group exercises and discussions. Further trainings are planned for the future, which will be opened up to EU Member States, he said.
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