North Sweden in meeting with the European Parliament Research Service
On January 20, a meeting was held with the Swedish regional offices in Brussels and a delegation from the European Parliament Research Service, EPRS, on the initiative of North Sweden. The meeting concerned how the dialogue between the regional level and the European Parliament can be made more effective and strengthened within thematic issues where the regional offices have expertise.
The European Parliament Research Service’s, EPRS, so-called Linking the Levels Unit, LINK, strives to expand the dialogue with regional representatives in order to include the regional voice in the European Parliament's policy work to a greater extent and establish effective channels by establishing contact with European regional offices based in Brussels.
The meeting with the delegation from LINK, which was led by Klemen Zumer, discussed how the Swedish regional offices can help the EPRS in their work to provide information to committees in the European Parliament. Sten Ramstedt, from the EPRS evaluation unit, talked about LINK's willingness to link different circles of political decision-making where concrete examples and useful material from Europe's regions and cities can be further elucidated.
The Swedish regional EU-offices were given the task to inform about what is on the agenda for their regional EU work, which issues are prioritized and to provide views or position papers in various policy processes, which LINK can, in turn, provide the European Parliament with, as it is not uncommon for certain expertise to be requested in certain thematic areas in different policy processes.
North Sweden aims for increased dialogue with the European Parliament's inquiry service
The Swedish regional offices are positively attuned to EPRS's ambitions to find new ways to put forward regional perspectives. We at North Sweden see it as a good opportunity to further link up with the European Parliament through our contacts at LINK and thereby be able to raise important issues such as the Arctic, innovation, and infrastructure in a more systematic way. A couple of ideas are to provide EPRS with the material in the form of partly position papers that the network for Europaforum Northern Sweden, EFNS, produces annually, and partly strategic posts from North Sweden's Linkedin account, which will in future be created with the aim of capturing readers in the English-speaking Brussels arena.
Read more about the European Parliament's Investigation Service, EPRS, here.
/Julia Hanson