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The year 2018 represented for the Europuls volunteer team, a series of individual and collective efforts that also turned into major achievements. The rewards of the 20 volunteers from Bucharest and Brussels came right before Christmas in the form of 2 awards obtained for the “The best volunteer project of the year in the field of civic engagement and human rights” at the National Gala of Volunteers 2018 in Bucharest and the “Pro Bono Professional Award Runner-up” award at The Good Lobby Awards ceremony in Brussels.
We are proud that in 2018 we organized the Eurosfat forum, bringing to the forefront a debate about Romania’s contribution in relaunching the European project and the steps to be taken until and after the Sibiu Summit in May 2019. Through the plenary debate of the Forum, Europuls managed to gather, for the first time since 1995 (Snagov Declaration signed by all fourteen major political parties declaring their full support for EU membership), representatives of all major political parties in Romania at the same table, to discuss about the Future of Europe and Romania’s place in setting its direction. We appreciated the attendance of 350 participants at the plenary debate that afterwards continued with 9 workshops and a cultural event.
The RO2019 Platform has continued its monitoring activity, being directly involved in consultations with the Minister-Delegate for European Affairs regarding the priorities of the Romanian Presidency to the Council of the EU. Moreover, our experts provided trainings to civil society on the EU decision-making process and on all the elements of a rotating Presidency. Europuls organized a roundtable with Romanian MEPs in order to discuss about Romania’s priorities during the 6-month mandate. The Minister-Delegate was shortly after replaced, launching an uncertainty period highly condemned by our organization. Europuls sent a letter to reiterate our commitment for a successful rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU to the newly appointed Minister-Delegate.
Europuls extended its activity in the Republic of Moldova through a Fake News project, aiming to combat fake news and anti-Western propaganda by targeting information vectors in the Republic of Moldova (journalists, bloggers) and empowering them through trainings and contacts with regional experts and leading organizations in debunking fake news from Eastern Europe. In 2019, Europuls will launch the first app, functional on Android and iOS that will alert the users when a new piece of fake news appears and will provide the debunk elements and explanations of the disinformation.
We organized a brainstorming session with experts in Bucharest entitled “How does Romania manage the transition towards a sustainable and digitized energy system?”. We also contributed to the European Policy Centre report on the European Citizens’ Consultations in the EU member states with a case-study on Romania
Our experts continued with their written contributions on current topics of the EU agenda, articles on elections campaign in the EU member states and their implication for the future of Europe. We also started a fact-checking series related to national politicians’ declarations about the EU, in the framework of the information campaign for the European elections. We are proud that our 26 articles, interviews and studies were read by over 56000 citizens.
More information about our 2018 activity can be consulted here.
