Today we Europeans have an opportunity to make the European Union the first democratic, multinational and multilingual power, built by citizens and open to the world.

Let’s seize that opportunity.

The Covid crisis has made us all too aware of both our precarity and our interdependent destinies.  

It has shown us the importance of Europe in this new multipolar world, and the need to unite against the immense ecological, economic, social, health and security challenges facing our societies. 

It has revealed the unique character of our economic and social model.

In these unprecedented times, and despite powerful though illusory temptations to turn inwards, the EU has chosen to face outward, and understands the utter vanity of every man for himself.

During the first wave of the pandemic, Europeans dared to invent new forms of solidarity, establishing  a collective support system for struggling enterprises and unemployed citizens, as well as conceiving a recovery plan unprecedented in its size, philosophy and respect for rule of law. A Union that takes stock from its crises to strengthen its resilience and better protect its citizens.

While we are pleased about all this, we are also aware that these actions and plans only make sense if they serve the lasting interests of the citizens of the Union and are part of a perspective of regeneration of the European project. 

There is a huge risk of having rules and lifestyles imposed on us that we do not want, especially in the digital domain dominated by a few systemic platforms.

What alternative?

First of all, giving us the means to succeed in the concrete implementation of the European recovery plan, while keeping, in the meantime, the economy. support systems; the extension of the coverage of employment and income support for all categories of workers, including those in precarious, atypical or self-employed work.

Its financial magnitude is major but a real reflection on the quality of the investments required to have a strong impact on sustainable and socially inclusive growth has not taken place.

As they stand, the national recovery plans that are currently being drafted and that will be notably financed by European money, take up old, outdated digital and ecological projects.

There is an urgent need to correct the situation and better involve the social partners and citizens in the choices to be made, while promoting investments with a truly European dimension, capable of forging a New European Deal, including an ambitious Green New Deal.

It is the success of this plan that will break the mistrust between frugal and spending  Member States and create the conditions for a real, long term European budget, the only one able to make Europe an economic, ecological and cultural power of the 21st century.  

Secondly, it is a question of making the Conference on the Future of Europe an experience of real democratic citizen participation.

Its ambition must be clear: to build a forward-looking, bold and shared vision of our future for the coming decades. 

The WeEuropeans experience, which has reached 38 million citizens in 27 countries and in 24 languages, shows a real appetite of European citizens to participate in defining our common future through a new form of continuous participatory and deliberative democracy, which complements our representative democracies.   

Only this new democratic impetus, which engenders genuine European citizenship, can lead to a Union of well-being, of peace and solidarity, providing opportunities for everyone. A Union which, by mobilising citizens, States, public authorities and social partners, will be able to provide concrete solutions to the rise in inequalities and unemployment; which contributes to the preservation of the planet; which guarantees and defends its fundamental values of unity, freedom, solidarity and democracy.

The urgency today is to give us the means to decide in a more legitimate, efficient and rapid way. This decision-making capacity is indispensable at a time when the technological transformations and the rebalancing of the world’s major powers are accelerating.

The current Treaties allow us to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting system in certain areas. 

Let us apply qualified majority voting to all the Union’s policies and actions as soon as possible.

Let us move from a system of weak cooperation to a project of common construction!

We regret the departure of our British friends and we are convinced that a special and extremely close relationship will be established with London. 

But if there is one lesson to be learned from their accession and departure, it is that the more exceptions are accepted for a Member State, the less it grows in European unity and solidarity.

The time has undoubtedly come to make the unity of our Union a real reality.

Let us be clear: this will only be possible if we truly value our diversity and the cultural, economic, social and historical contributions of each and every one of us.

Let us finally have the audacity to put culture at the heart of European software to once again become this major centre of world creation capable of attracting the best talent in the world.

But once again, this new European stage will only be possible if every citizen takes ownership of the European project through the institutionalisation of a process of deliberative democracy that is continuous, transparent, inclusive and guarantees concrete implementation of the decisions taken. This is an essential condition for making the Union everyone’s project!

The window of opportunity is narrow but the context is favourable at European and global level.

Our collective responsibility is immense. 

While there is still time, let us bring together the millions of citizens from the four corners of our Union who are ready to commit themselves.   

* Signatories

On the initiative of the co-Presidents of CIVICO Europa, Guillaume Klossa, former sherpa for the reflection group on the future of Europe (European Council) and former Director of the European  Broadcasting Union, and Francesca Ratti, former Secretary general of the European Parliament : 

László Andor (HU),  Economist, former European Commissioner;

Lionel Baier (CH), film Director; 

Brando Benifei (IT), Member of the European Parliament, S&D group, President of the Spinelli Group;

Massimo Cacciari (IT), Philosopher, former Mayor of Venice, former Member of the European Parliament;

Jasmina Cibic (SI),  Artist;

Daniel Cohn-Bendit (FR/DE), former President of the Greens group in the European Parliament;

Jože P. Damijan (SI), Economist;

Axel Dauchez (FR), Founder of Make.org;

Philippe de Buck (BE), former Director General of Business Europe; 

Paul Dujardin (BE), Director General of BOZAR; 

Pascal Durand (FR), Member of the European Parliament, Renew Europe group;

Anthony Ferreira (FR), Secretary General of CIVICO Europa;

Michele Fiorillo (IT), Philosopher, Coordinator of CIVICO Europa network;

Cynthia Fleury (FR), Philosopher;

Markus Gabriel (DE), Philosopher; 

Costa-Gavras (FR/GR), Film Director;

Felipe González (ES), former Prime Minister, former President of the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe;

Sandro Gozi (IT), Member of the European Parliament, Renew Europe group, President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF), former European Affairs Minister;

Ulrike Guérot (DE), Political Scientist, Director of the European Democracy Lab;

Danuta Hübner (PL), former European Commissioner, Member of the European Parliament, EPP group ;

Aleksander Kwaśniewski (PL), former President of the Republic;

Philippe Lamberts (BE), Co-President of The Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament;

Jernej Lorenci (SI), Theater Director;

Robert Menasse (AT), European Writer in German;

Jonathan Moskovic (BE), former Coordinator of G1000, Adviser for democratic innovation;

Stojan Pelko (SI), former Secretary of State for Culture;

Janez Pipan (SI) Theater Director;

Rossen Plevneliev (BG), former President of the Republic;

Janez Potočnik (SI), former European Commissioner;

Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović(NL/RS), Secretary General of Europa Nostra; 

Nina Rawal (SE), Founder of “Emerging Health Ventures”;

Maria João Rodrigues (PT), President of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), former Member of the European Parliament;

Petre Roman (RO), former Prime Minister;

Yvan Sagnet (CM), Writer, Founder of NoCap Association;

Fernando Savater (ES),  Philosopher; 

Roberto Saviano (IT), Writer; 

Elly Schlein (IT), Vice-President of the Emilia Romagna Region, former Member of the   European Parliament;

Andreas Schwab (DE), Member of the European Parliament, EPP group;

Gesine Schwan (DE), President of the Humboldt-Viadrina governance platform;

Daniela Schwarzer (DE), Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP);

Denis Simonneau (FR), President of EuropaNova;

Claus Haugaard Sørensen (DK), former Director General of the European Commission; 

Farid Tabarki (NL), Founder of Studio Zeitgeist; 

Danilo Türk (SI),former President of Republic, President of the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid;

Guy Verhofstadt (BE), former Prime Minister, Member of the European Parliament, Renew Europe group; 

Boštjan Videmšek (SI), Journalist, EU Climate Pact Ambassador;

Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (LV), former President of the Republic;

Cédric Villani (FR), Mathematician, Fields Medal, Member of Parliament ;

Pietro Vimont (FR), Founder Member of CIVICO Europa;

Luca Visentini (IT), General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation;

Sasha Waltz & Jochen Sandig (DE), respectively Choreographer and Director of the Sasha Waltz Company;

Alenka Zupančič (SI), Philosopher;

Samuel Žbogar (SI),Head of EU Delegation in Skopje, former EU Special Representative in Kosovo, former Minister of Foreign Affairs;

Slavoj Žižek (SI), Philosopher.

This appeal can be supported at:   www.civico.eu 

Contact: [email protected] – [email protected] 

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• €200 million EIB-loan for new construction and renovation of ’s Heeren Loo’s care facilities.
• Financing is first EIB-investment in The Netherlands specifically targeting care for people with intellectual disabilities.

’s Heeren Loo, market leader in care for people with intellectual disabilities in The Netherlands, will be the first party in its sector to borrow from the European Investment Bank (EIB). In first instance, this will regard a €200 million loan agreement used for s’ Heeren Loo’s medium-term investment plans. The financing will be used for direct investments in new construction of living quarters and daytime activities locations for its clients. The investments will create better care conditions for its residents and will also reduce CO₂-emissions of s’ Heeren Loo’s various premises.

With this agreement,’s Heeren Loo is the first institution that takes care of people with intellectual disabilities to sign a European loan. “That is something we’re proud of, and we worked hard for this.”, says CFO Ernst Klunder. “For our organisation this represents a good addition to the financing possibilities we already have with regular Dutch banks. Our Fitch AA-rating, which we obtained earlier this year, allows us to split our financing needs over different financiers. This new collaboration shows that there is trust in our organisation with big parties even outside our own country. That is not just a compliment for our organisation, but also for our sector.”

“The investments of the European Investment Bank has, as their ultimate goal, to improve people’s lives.”, added vice-president Christian Thomsen of the EIB. “The EIB has financed quite a number of healthcare institutions in The Netherlands in recent years, but this is the first time a projects focuses specifically on care for people with disabilities. Not only is that something to be proud of, it is also very much in line with European priorities in the social field. ’s Heeren Loo is investing heavily in further improving her service and we are glad to be able to support these plans.”

For the 2021-2025 period, ’s Heeren Loo has investment ambitions totalling €555 million. The lion share of this, some €380 million, is meant for real estate plans in the regions where it operates. The living facilities of the organisation’s clients will be adapted to the newest demands and wishes. For example, clients who currently still share sanitary facilities, will obtain private bathrooms and larger bedrooms. To implement this, a new housing concept has been developed, with the overarching idea of ‘renovation where it is possible, new construction where it is necessary’. This last point is specifically relevant for the province of Zeeland, where ’s Heeren Loo merged with care institution Arduin in 2019. Apart from living facilities, ’s Heeren Loo is also working on the functional improvement of a number of daytime activities locations.

’s Heeren Loo is the largest organization when it comes to guiding, caring for and providing housing to people with an intellectual disability. With a working area of ​​nearly 300 municipalities and nearly 650 locations, the organisation is active throughout the Netherlands and delivers care to more than 14,000 clients with 17,000 employees. ’s Heeren Loo distinguishes itself by offering complex care to a diverse client group. The vast majority of clients fall under the Long-term Care Act (84% of turnover). Many of them live with ‘s Heeren Loo all their lives. We mainly support clients with complex care needs. In addition, we provide care to clients who fall under the Social Support Act (WMO) and to clients who fall under the Youth Act, a client group experiencing strong growth.

Together with the Advisium knowledge center, ‘s Heeren Loo invests heavily in scientific research and innovation. This gives employees the knowledge and expertise to continuously improve the quality of treatments. The organization also has partnerships with universities through academic workshops to link theory and practice.

An EU-funded project aiming to boost food safety for infants in the European Union and China has begun.

The Safe Food for Infants in the EU and China (SAFFI) project is planned to run until the end of August 2024 and involves academia, food safety authorities, infant food companies, and technology and data-science SMEs. EU funding in the Horizon 2020 project is almost €4 million ($4.9 million) with an overall budget of €6.75 million ($8.2 million).

Work from 20 partners, led by the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), is targeting food for the EU’s 15 million and China’s 45 million children younger than age three.

Project plan
The aim is to develop an approach to boost the identification, assessment, detection and mitigation of safety risks posed by microbial and chemical hazards along EU and China infant food chains.

Partners will benchmark the main risks through a hazard identification system based on multiple data sources and a risk ranking procedure. Four case studies will be selected to cover priority hazards, main ingredients, processes and control steps of the infant food chain.

The hope is to discover any unexpected contaminants by predictive toxicology and improve risk-based food safety management of biohazards by omics and predictive microbiology. The end result should be a decision support system designed to enhance safety control along the food chain.

Resulting databases, tools and procedures will be shared, cross-validated, linked, benchmarked and harmonized for further use in the EU and China.

SAFFI will also set up training and knowledge transfer activities to help EU-China harmonization of good practices, regulations, standards and technologies, and will work with other projects under the EU-China FAB Flagship initiative on food safety control.

Partners include the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), Wageningen University in the Netherlands, Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology (IRTA) in Spain, Fraunhofer in Germany, manufacturers HiPP International and FrieslandCampina as well as Zhejiang University, Yangzhou Fangguang Food Co. and Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences in China.

Similar project ongoing
Another project looking at food safety and authenticity in Europe and China is ongoing. The effort, called EU-China-Safe and coordinated by Queen’s University Belfast, began in 2017 and is scheduled to end in August 2021.

It involves 15 participants from the EU and 18 from China including the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Nestlé, Fera Science, Danone, Nofima in Norway, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the China National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA).

The aim is to build the core components needed for a joint EU-China food safety system including control management, food legislation, inspection, food control laboratories, and food safety and quality information, education and communication.

It will develop an EU-China Joint Laboratory Network to demonstrate equivalency of results, and a virtual lab, with interchangeable staff from two continents, as a showcase to communicate and demonstrate best practices.

Trade barriers caused by food safety and fraud issues are being analyzed with recommendations made on how to predict and prevent future issues. The project is looking at the most commonly reported foods linked to chemical and microbiological contamination and fraud such as infant formula, processed meat, fruits, vegetables, wine, honey and spices.

Digital tech project
Finally, the EU-funded DiTECT project also recently launched with 33 participants and a budget of €4 million ($4.9 million).

The Agricultural University of Athens is leading the project with another 20 partners from the EU and 12 from China.

This work will develop a big data-enabled platform capable of predicting food safety parameters of a given product based on data collected in real time via sensors related to crops, grain storage, livestock and in the food supply. Methods will monitor and control environmental pollutants as well as chemical and biological hazards.

Digital Technologies as an enabler for a continuous transformation of food safety system (DiTECT) is a cloud-enabled storage system to predict food safety and will also incorporate blockchain.

Other partners are Cranfield University, Shandong Agricultural University, Videometer, Nemis Technologies, Glanbia and the Ministry of Health in Cyprus.

(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)

The British economy will not “prosper mightily” outside the EU, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised, but it won’t collapse either. Photo / AP