E U A C C E S S I O N
By Betsy Hoffmeister
Everyone knows that accession to the European Union will bring economic prosperity and higher living standards for all. Or will it? What do you think?
NGOs in six of the 10 associate countries will spend the next year creating an open dialogue where journalists, NGO members and the public at large will discuss and debate the ramifications of EU enlargement for society and the environment. These NGOs recognise that public access to the governments and institutions facilitating the integration process is limited, and that, consequently, the level of awareness is significantly low. Therefore, organisations from Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia have prepared a long-term program for getting the public involved in EU accession, coordinated by the National Society of Conservationists in Budapest.
In 1998, the work focuses on training environmental NGOs and raising awareness among stakeholders. Discussion groups on key topics for EU accession — including waste, nature protection and biodiversity, transport, agriculture, energy and EU structural fund expenditures — are now being established. In each country, the NGOs will translate, print and distribute EU accession information kits, organise lecture cycles and maintain and publicise websites.
Research evaluating the opinion of NGO leaders about EU accession and assessing the status of access to information and training needs will influence the direction of the project. Ultimately, NGOs will prepare a concrete statement on the potential ecological consequences of EU accession based on the results of their research and will use this statement as the foundation for a later campaign. National NGO conferences will then be held where national campaigns on each program topic will be initiated. Next, public debates will be organised, media actions will be continued and the survey will be repeated to compare the status of awareness after one year of campaign activities.
The project is sponsored by the European Commission's DG XI and Phare Programme. The REC Grants Department was requested by Phare to monitor the program, which will provide ECU 200,000 to six NGOs for one year. For further information, please contact Erzsebet Schmuck and Zsuzsanna Pato at the National Society for Conservationists. Tel: (36-1) 395-7684, e-mail: mtvsz@elender.hu.