INTER PARES Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations (PMO) Workshop

The INTER PARES Project Team is pleased to announce that an interactive PMO workshop will take place on 17 January 2020 at the Hellenic Parliament in Athens,Greece.

Introduction

One of the priority themes of INTER PARES, the EU’s Global Programme to Strengthen the Capacity of Parliaments, is support to enhanced engagement of citizens and civil society in partner Parliaments. Effective Parliaments operate in constructive collaboration with citizens and civil society to fulfil their core functions of law-making, representation and oversight of government. In both form and function, effective Parliaments strive to be transparent, responsive, and accountable to the citizens they represent and serve.

This workshop will bring together EU Member State Parliaments and PMOs to explore these issues in greater detail. Questions to be explored include:

• What should citizens know about Parliament, and how should that information be shared?
• What are meaningful indicators of integrity, transparency, and Parliamentary performance, and can Parliaments and PMOs agree together on such indicators and how they can be measured? 
• How can Parliaments and PMOs work together in enhancing institutional transparency and citizen awareness and understanding of Parliaments, and what does collaboration look like in practice?

Dialogue and debate around these questions will provide a framework for INTER PARES programming and inform EU MSPs and PMOs in peer exchanges with partner Parliaments.

Objectives

The objective is to explore the ways in which Parliaments can partner with PMOs to build more effective, inclusive Parliamentary institutions. The workshop will

1) identify means and mechanisms for PMOs and Parliaments to establish partnerships;

2) explore how PMOs and Parliaments can strengthen each other’s work; and

3) inform INTER PARES resources and programming, including the integration of PMOs in peer exchanges with partner Parliaments.

Registration: By invitation only.

Agenda: The PMO workshop draft agenda.

The PMO workshop follows the first INTER PARES Steering Committee (closed) meeting on 16 January 2020 which is taking place at the same venue. The Steering Committee Meeting will be chaired by the European Commission and International IDEA, and will bring together representatives from European Union Member States Parliaments and the other project partners, including the European Parliament, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the European External Action Service. This meeting is a unique opportunity to exchange on the progress and future partnership plans of INTER PARES programme.