Guidelines for Joint activities
1. General requirements
The Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions is aware of its limited personnel and financial resources. This is manifested in a conscientious selection of common projects. In order to be suitable, projects must have an exemplary, subsidiary, innovative character and must be of relevance to the qualified majority of the Conference.
The Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions unites very different experiences and mentalities, working methods and cultures. This constitutes its wealth and at the same time makes high demands on the Conference as far as the development of common forms of work is concerned. The concrete development of such forms of work will be conducive to the growth of a European culture.
2. Forms of external operation as JP Europe
The Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions operates externally:
a) by its general assemblies and the related workshops connected with, actions and symbolic acts. The intention of these projects is to make our church and European community visible and noticeable as a learning and mutually supportive community. They are meant to set effective signs that indicate the scope of our hope.
b) by realizing concerted actions, agreed upon and bindingly adopted at European level and implemented by the national commissions at national level. In this context, the national commissions commit themselves to approach their national members of the European Parliament, the delegations of the Council of Europe and, if necessary, the national parliaments and governments in the matter concerned. The European Conference’s presidency supports these concerted actions by organizing appropriate events at European level, approaching for instance the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the Council of Europe. Participatory status within the Council of Europe offers particular opportunities for advocating our concerns. A number of prerequisites will have to be fulfilled for a concerted action to be successful: relevance to the qualified majority of Commissions, professional preparation of the material, participation of the commissions in the preparation as well as acceptance within the European Conference.
For the thematic and political preparation of concerted actions, the European Conference will install European working groups each with a clear thematic and political mission for a limited period of time. These working groups, which will be supported and guided by the presidency, are supposed to reflect the variety of the European Conference. They will make sure that the specific actions meet with broad acceptance within the Conference and that they are implemented with a high degree of professionalism. The subjects to be dealt with will be selected according to the criteria mentioned above.
