Approach

Since its establishment, the EWPPP has been cooperating with parliaments and representatives of civil society throughout Eastern/Southeastern Europe, Eurasia, North Africa and the Middle East. The demand-driven methodology advocated by the EWPPP is designed to deal with individual concerns and common challenges, reflecting the reality that each country faces its own constraints and opportunities. Broad and flexible guidelines have enabled the EWPPP to adapt fluidly in an ever changing domestic, regional and international environment.

EWPPP programmes are the product of calculated responses to the needs expressed by beneficiary parliaments and CSOs. At the same time, all programmes advance a regional approach and demonstrate the importance of East-East exchanges among target countries to address a variety of political, organizational, procedural and policy issues. The non-partisan and pluralistic approach of the EWPPP guarantees a high cross-party parliamentary participation rate in EWPPP programmes and has garnered a high level of trust from numerous parliamentary leaders. The politically neutral platform for informal exchanges between MPs has resulted in the resolution of disputes between parties in the political process. For example, the 2001 EWPPP Dutch-Albanian inter-parliamentary programme succeeded in bringing the government and opposition parties in the Albanian Parliament together for the first time for negotiations after a comprehensive boycott by opposition members. The extensive EWPPP network of MPs, former MPs and experts from various participating countries continue to be a useful source of information, ideas and feedback.

Every attempt is made to include women and ethnic minorities in our activities. Moreover, women are well represented in the EWPPP Steering Committee, Local Consultative Committees (LCCs) and professional staff at the Secretariat.

As mentioned above, the EWPPP adheres to a flexible approach enabling programmes to respond in a timely fashion to changing needs as voiced by parliaments in target countries. These guidelines have resulted in a considerable expansion of EWPPP programmes over time, in respect to the number of parliaments involved and also the range of thematic issues addressed. The EWPPP prides itself on a consistent approach over time and countries; this includes programmes for individual parliaments, as well as regional programmes which promote common approaches to common problems. All programmes are conducted in-country, regionally and in Western Europe, emphasizing European integration by expanding contacts between participants and their European counterparts.