–ARC Process

The ARC started with a call for action which was signed up to by a number of supporting civil society organisations and networks on 26 April 2010. The idea is to run this process for at least a year during the start-up phase of reforms of European policies, focussing on the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and related fields.

Our initiative is complementary to that of the European Commission, which has launched a public debate and a website on CAP reform. However, that debate is supposed to end in June and will be concluded with a conference in mid July 2010. We suggest continuing discussions beyond this date. We envisage drawing first conclusions of the ARC in July in order to contribute to the conference of the Commission, but to continue working on a common message to be adopted in October this year. The idea is to deliver a “communication of European civil society to the European institutions”, to be available when the Commission adopts its Communication to the Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

You may send your ideas and proposals to this website at any time before our deadline. Based on your proposals, you may also create working groups in which you can exchange views or be joined by other interested people or organisations. Some working groups are already established and have produced common position papers prior to this process.

 

Geographical and Thematic Working Groups

Those who have initiated a working group should offer to moderate this group on the specific site created within the ARC framework. The working group decides about the working language and the theme or region they wish to deal with. Each geographical or thematic Working Group should provide weekly feedback to the Moderator Team.

The ARC Moderator team hopes to receive from the registered Working Groups short summaries of the proposals for a common message they have agreed upon (not more than 800 characters). These will contribute to the common text, which will evolve over time. We will edit a draft “Communication of European Citizens to the European Institutions on the Future of Agriculture and Rural Regions” which will show agreements and will highlight those contradictions which need to be discussed further. Only contributions from working groups registered on the ARC website will be taken into account.

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