Raising concerns about the EU's new Resilience Communication

The EU is developing a new Communication on Resilience for adoption in May 2017. As part of the process, the European Commission held a consultation with civil society organisations (CSOs), which VOICE helped facilitate, and ensured VOICE members were included.

VOICE expertise on resilience is being widely recognised, as VOICE Director Kathrin Schick was invited to speak in the European Parliament Development Committee on the issue. Ms Schick was also invited to an exchange with peacebuilding/EU neighbourhood experts at the Centre for European Policy Studies.

As part of the consultation, VOICE also produced a consolidated input document with key recommendations from the network and its members.

Click here to read it

Some key recommendations:

• Ensure continued implementation of the current Resilience Action Plan, its mid-term review and ask for lessons-learned to be reflected in new Communication
• The current definition of resilience should be maintained and the focus should be on community (and societal) resilience.
• This communication should not limit the geographical scope of EU resilience actions, and sustainable stability is a more useful term than just security or stability.
• The EU should recognise and value the different roles and mandates of different actors engaging in resilience building, and the principles that should guide their respective actions.