" WHERE IS EUROPE GOING ? "

110 conferences :10 months - 25 countries - 100 European towns
October 2002- July 2003
Debate with Franck Biancheri
around the 14 propositions of "Vision pour l'Europe 2020"

 

The NDM opened the way to that central challenge of Europe in the coming decades : « bringing democracy to new frontiers size-wise and diversity-wise », those of a European Union of 500 million citizens from 30 different cultures, languages and nationalities.

On the model of Europe’s diversity and size, the Marathon is remarkable by some impressive figures for an event initiated over 4 months and achieved over 8 months:

Quantities:

. 150.000 kmcovered by Franck Biancheri, among which 40.000 by car, in 8 months
. close to 10.000 Europeans met all along some 300 hours of debate
. 25 countries, 100 conferences, some 150 partner organisations:23 local authorities, 31 universities, 45 associations, 15 media-organisations .....
. 100 forums shared by Franck Biancheri with 115 co-panelists (MPs, elected officials, university professors, experts, journalists,…)

Diversity:

. All sorts of people met: young people, students, elder people, experts, migrants, ethnic minorities, handicapped people, farmers, workers, politicians, academics, civil servants, liberal professionals, students, city-dwellers, country people, inhabitants of metropolises, towns or villages, from central or peripheral regions of greater-EU…
. All means of transports used: from bicycle (Utrecht) to Concorde (New-York), walking (crossing the serbo-hungarian frontier), by car (mostly), high-speed train (for the Euroring cities) and plane (for most of the other places)…

Records :

. The smallest village visited: Perinaldo in Italy (500 inhabitants)
. The frontier places: Falticeni on the moldavo-romanian border, Tartu on the russo-estonian border…
. The most Southern: Amadora (Portugal), and the most Northern: Tallinn (Estonia) : 4.000 km between those two extremes
. The most Western: New-York (US), and the most Eastern: Bucharest (Romania): 10.000 km
. The most extensive coverage: Italy (12 towns visited)
. The two great absents: Ireland and Sweden (not that we didn’t try hard!)
. The most incredible situation: crossing by foot the serbo-hungarian frontier to make to Novi-Sad conference
. The strongest souvenir: the conference with the deaf people of Valmiera (Latvia)
. The biggest stage-fright: the farmers of Arriach (Austria)
. The most motivated partner: Eussor, organized 8 conferences on its own in San Remo, Perinaldo, Imperia, Todi, Perugia, Foligno and Terni
. The technical exploit: the video-conference between the towns of Plasencia, Cuacos de Yuste and Hervas (Spain)
. The event: the debate in the Slovenian Assembly’s hemicycle with more than 200 students from the ZIP network

Cost / Efficiency:

All that with a very “citizen” budget: 150.000 Euros, all included: preparation, coordination, organisation, documentation, website, travels, ... , ie 15 Euros per citizen met.

One more proof of the fact that if properly designed, supported by motivated partners, and using the assets of networking and new technologies, European democracy can be cheap.

Europe 2020 wishes to thank the Fondation Hippocrène, Bernard Rossmann and the Groupe Accor for their financial support to the Newropeans Democracy Marathon; as well as all our partners who covered the local cost of organization conferences’ organisation costs locally.