Webinar – Romania – Scoala Nationala de Studii Politice si Administrative – Liliana Rodrigues

The FMA and the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA) co-organised an EP to Campus lecture on the topic “European Political Community: the missing voice(s)”. The speaker was Liliana Rodrigues.

On May 16, 2023, the Faculty of Political Sciences together with the European Parliament Former Members Association organized a hybrid debate addressed to students, within the EP to Campus program initiative.

The guest was Mrs. Liliana Rodrigues, member of the European Parliament in the period 2014-2019, with a rich activity in the parliamentary committees “Culture and education”, “Regional development”, “Human rights”. The title of her address was “European Political Community, Democracy and Development”, an extremely current and interesting topic in the context of the second meeting of the European Political Community which will take place on June 1, 2023 in Chisinau, in the Republic of Moldova.

We had (online and in class) students from various master’s programs belonging to two different structures of SNSPA. It is about students enrolled in specializations in the area of Political Sciences and in the area of International Relations, as we aim to encourage interdisciplinary debates between our university students, and to investigate a topical issue from several theoretical and practical perspectives in order to maximize the quality of the analysis and of its results.

The topic we chose is that of the European Political Community (EPC), because it represents a real interest for all the selected programmes. Taking into consideration the current EPC agenda, we consider that the role of the European Parliament and its representativeness towards people’s interests are fundamental to create a democratic and efficient, therefore legitimate, EPC. We are glad that such a debate benefited from the point of view of an MEP in order to find out how political figures related to the European Parliament itself see its possible involvement in this EPC project. In this respect, our guest speaker presented a peculiar aspect that is both related to EPC and to the EU, within the Democracy and Development context, and that is the cohesion policy.

Mrs. Rodrigues conclusions pointed that „creating a European Political Community may be a possibility to overcome asymmetries in the EU and promote greater political and social integration among member states. However, this will require continuous commitment to citizen participation, transparency, and accountability to ensure that democratic systems are effective in promoting resilience and cohesion in the EU. (…) Citizen participation is one of the fundamental pillars of democracy and should be encouraged in all spheres of society, including in the political sphere and in the development of EU public policies”.

Student Georgiana Horobeanur from the SNSPA in Romania talks about the EP to Campus programme with former MEP Liliana Rodrigues.

Other testimonials are available here.