To prepare you for Spring Agora Patra we already wrote a series of articles under the name of Proposal for Dummies, and with Autumn Agora Cagliari coming close it’s time to do it again! This time, we decided to include the people who know the most about the proposals, namely the proposers! Read on to find more about the proposals dealing with the nationalities in the Juridical Commission and formally establishing the Policy Officers.
The first proposal is named Required nationalities in the Juridical Commission and was proposed by Glòria Llopart, Claudio Gennaro and Joris Veenhuis on behalf of the Juridical Commission. As Glòria explains us: “I thought it could be a problem for the future of the JC that in a team of four people, there must be three nationalities represented. Actually that would not be a problem if the JC would have more candidates that apply, but that’s not the case. The current JC team of Commissioners and Subcommissioners shows this potential problem very well, so let’s give an example: there are two Dutch, two Italians, one Polish and one Spanish in the team, so in the next Spring Agora it can turn out that the two Dutch apply. The third candidate and the appointed CD member must have not only a nationality that is not Dutch, but also a different one between both. What would happen if the third candidate is Dutch and nobody else applied? Could (s)he not be elected because of her/his nationality although (s)he has well-founded legal knowledge? The CIA should ensure the future of the JC.”
The Juridical Commission therefore proposes to change the minimum required nationalities in the JC from three to two. “If the proposal is accepted the continuity of the JC will be more guaranteed”, Glòria explains us. “Moreover, there will be more possibilities to build a good team because the rules will be more flexible. The most important characteristic of a Commissioner is to have legal background. Other requirements should be taken in a second level.” The changes to the Statutes of AEGEE-Europe for this proposal can be found here.
The second proposal is named Formally establishing Policy Officers and was proposed by Paul Smits and Antonija Parat on behalf of the Comité Directeur. As the name already says, it aims to formally establish the Policy Officers. As Antonija explains: “In our Activity Plan, we stated that we aim to clarify the role of Policy Officers, and in line with that, we were discussing the possibility to introduce definitions on Policy Officers in the CIA, since their role is not regulated at this moment. We were planning to do it during Agora Oviedo, but we saw that there was a need for clear definitions as soon as possible. Policy and advocacy is defined as one of the means we use to achieve our goals, and we need Policy Officers’ contribution for this. Therefore we believe that we need to officially introduce the position of Policy Officers in the CIA and set up some basic rules.” To do this, the rights and responsibilities of the Policy Officer will be added to the CIA, with the desired effect of bringing more continuity to the policy and advocacy work of AEGEE, better execution of this work and clearer definitions of the role of Policy Officers.
The full proposal and the changes made to the CIA when it’s accepted can be found here.
Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen