Campaign for Europe

Details

Hits: 339

Zagreb, 16th of November 2013 – "No matter if CPP will run for EU elections independently or in a coalition, I'm sure CPP will be recognized by its liberal message that will be sent to the public", said Kamran Ullah, VVD coach at the Academy's seminar titled "Campaign for Europe".

At the beginning Ullah has described in a few sentences the work and activities of VVD party, and continued about the structure, activities and work of the EU parliament.

"In the current session of Parliament the majority have European People's Party, the Party of European Socialists and ALDE party", began VVD coach.

It brings together members of the European parliament from the ranks of liberal parties and, together with members of the European Parliament from the Democratic Party makes the third largest political force in Parliament. ALDE group consists of 97 members, and 75 of them come from the ALDE party.

"ALDE stands for European integration and single European market and is a pro-European party. However, this does not mean that it will close its doors and borders to markets across the globe. The freedom of each country individually is to decide with who they will trade for the benefit of citizens", said VVD coach.

Leading to a thesis why do liberals need the EU, when on the other side it is too expensive, or people ask what are the advantages of joining the EU, Ullah said it is important, among other things, to think about how the EU provides a greater number of jobs, but on the other hand, it must reduce bureaucracy.

"We must think in the direction of how the EU works for the citizens of each state member and to be effective for all of them", said Ullah.

Talking about the qualities for the EU parliament that candidates should have, he said they are the same as for the candidates who are runing for the national parliament. Plus the candidate must be a good listener and have excellent negotiation skills. He also pointed out that the important thing in the campaign is to define the key messages that we want to send to voters.

Hereinafter he conducted a workshop on the campaign for EU elections where he divided participants into eight working groups. Each group had the task to bring a key campaign message, define the target group it addresses, as well as the two issues on which the party will be recognized in the EU campaign.

The seminar started with an introduction to the topic of the Croatian legislation for the EU elections where Goran Vojković, Chairman Committee of the Legislative, Judiciary and Administration has explained the system.

Vojković pointed out that on the upcoming EU elections in Croatia citizens will elect 11 members, unlike 12 in previous elections. He also noted the importance of preferential voting.

"Preferred votes for individual candidates are respected if the number of preference votes for each candidate is at least 10% of the vote won by a single leaf. Those candidates from each list of candidates who get the highest number of preference votes are elected", said Vojković.

Vojković ended his lecture by explaining how preferential vote is assigned and why these elections are additionally important.

The seminar was co-organized by the Academy and the Dutch liberal party VVD. Once again thanks to VVD and Kamran Ullah for a great education!