“Restart Europe!” This motto had the congress of European Liberal Democrat and Reform party (ELDR) in Barcelona held 19-20 of November.
Currently the ELDR is one of the most influential powers in European Union and its representatives have their places in a third biggest fraction in the European Parliament. According to the speech of the ELDR president Annemie Neyts, the voting public stayed deaf to those who predicted financial crisis would put an end to liberalism. That was also proved by the number of representatives of liberal parties sent to the European parliament this year which stayed the same.
European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party as a transnational organization was created in 1993. By its structure it is rather a confederation of 56 national political parties. Ideologically these are liberal and centrist national alliances of Europe. On the country level parties members of ELDR participate in 9 governments out of 27 EU member states.
Politically ELDR is represented in the European Parliament by the group of delegates ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) which has been formed together with the Centrist European Democratic party.
Video report from ELDR Congress, Barcelona (Russian) ()
More than 500 delegates and guests from ELDR, including party leaders, European commissioners and parliamentarians took part in the congress. There were key political figures among them like: Annemie Neyts the president of ELDR; Guy Verhofstadt the leader of the parliament fraction of liberal democrats; Olli Rehn—the European Comisioner for Enlargement; Arthur Mass—leader of Catalan party Convergencia Democratica; Sharon Bowles—the vice president of ELDR and the chairman of the European Parliamentary Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Kristiina Ojuland, deputy of European Parliament, member of Estonian Reform Party had the floor and in her speech emphasized that the program of economic transformations should be concrete and obvious for the electorate. There were also delegates of Russian People’s Democratic Union in the lead by Mikhail Kasyanov at the congress. They issued two political resolutions concerning current state of affairs of election system and death penalty abolishment in Russian Federation. During the congress the intraparty elections took place: Annemie Neyts was elected the chairman of ELDR for the third time.
Among the guests of the congress was also the leader of the liberal community “The Third Way” and the network “Belarusian reformists” Pavel Marozau, who expressed his hope for choosing the liberal and pragmatic orientation by the government of Belarus. “It is certainly too naive to think that we shall eliminate all the problems in this way. But international experience shows that free market and human rights respect – is the only possible way for European civilized state development.”
On the agenda there were challenges set by the world financial crisis, medical system problems, environment and human rights protection. The delegates of the congress in Barcelona discussed key political issues and by the absolute majority of voices passed the resolution named “Liberal answers for new prosperity”
