ELDR Focus Year

As we defended time ago, LYMEC would have rather seen our mother party focused on the important crisis of identity that Europe is facing today. We would have liked to see how our political project should counter rest the huge lack of credibility on the European political Idea and the increasing gap between EU citizens and institutions, which has provoked a major failure of the European Constitution. Nonetheless, economic reform continues to be one of the main challenges that European political actors and societies still have to undergo.

The ELDR Congress will not only discuss about economic reform but LYMEC has also tabled three resolutions that we hope they will be debated and endorsed eventually by ELDR. One is about the service directive proposed by the European Commission a few months ago and the need to reopen this debate in order to push for this reform, the second one is about the upcoming elections in Azerbaijan and the need to ensure free and fair elections. The third resolution calls for freedom of research, especially on the scope of stem cells. With these three resolution the bureau aims at broadening the debate at the Congress and position the ELDR on certain fields where we believe that the ELDR should have a stronger stand.

But this Congress will also deal with a challenging election: a new President, four vice-president and a treasurer will have to be elected. After five years, Werner Hoyer has decided not to seek re-election. We as LYMEC have expressed in various occasions our most immense gratitude for these five years in office to the outgoing president. Now it is time to elect a new leadership that can bring the ELDR further away.

We believe that our new leader will have to ensure that the ELDR becomes more political, stronger in both message and actions, better established across the continent and more influential and visible:

- It is necessary to redefine the relations, level of cooperation and division of labour between ELDR and its parliamentary group ALDE.
- It is necessary to improve the level of services and cooperation with ELDR member parties.
- It is necessary to increase the external visibility of ELDR through media and organised civil society.
- It is necessary to better define the political objectives of the party, how to achieve them and how to influence public debate.
- It is necessary to strengthen the ties with member parties from the European Democrats whose MEPs are sitting alongside our MEPs in the European Parliament.

And we are convinced that we have a very good opportunity now to show that this transformation of ELDR into a more competitive party is possible. We as LYMEC are looking forward to meet and work with the new elected leadership and the new platform, as cooperative as always and bearing in mind that our project is called European Liberal Democrats.