PanARMENIAN.Net
Armenian NGOs to participate in conference on European democracy support
09.03.2009 22:34 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
European Commission are organizing a conference on 9 and 10 March 2009
in Prague about the European approach to democracy support. The event
was opened today with speeches by Karel Schwarzenberg, Czech Minister
of Foreign Affairs, and Václav Havel, former President of the
Czech Republic, under whose auspices the conference is held. It will
bring over one hundred democracy experts from EU institutions, Member
States and non-governmental organizations to Prague.
The conference is organized in collaboration with the European
Partnership for Democracy (EPD), a European platform of organizations
active in democracy assistance and the Czech Association for Democracy
Assistance and Human Rights (DEMAS).
The conference will also be attended by representatives of European
non-governmental organizations who will present their recommendations
on democracy assistance. The receiver countries will also be
represented in the panels by NGOs from countries like Russia, Armenia,
Zimbabwe and Lebanon. Democracy assistance is among the EU’s and the
Czech Republic’s foreign policy priorities and therefore the Czech
Ministry of Foreign Affairs has invited experts from the EU Member
States and institutions like the European Commission, the General
Secretariat of the Council of the EU and the European Parliament to
discuss how the individual policies and programmes can be made more
effective.