Paris, 18 February 2019
General Meeting of 18 February 2019
The Chairman, Jean-Paul Doguet, opened the meeting by reading out the agenda and presenting the Board's report, followed by the draft 2019 programme.
MORAL REPORT FOR 2018
This year was inaugurated by our AGM on 22 January 2018 at the François Coppée, followed by a now traditional dinner at the restaurant "Au chien qui fume". It was an ordinary AGM with no vote to renew the bureau. This year, however, we will have to hold such a vote. The members remain unchanged, with the exception of the post of Treasurer, which has until now been held by Jean-Claude NOUEL. The responsibilities of the rest of the Bureau remain unchanged: the President is Jean-Paul DOGUET, the General Secretary Isabelle de SERRE and the Vice-President Olga IMBERT with a second Vice-President, Jean-Pierre MORIZOT. This year, however, we will have to renew the position of Treasurer, and elect Maria-Luise FESER, who has agreed to replace Jean-Claude NOUEL.
We also regularly held our monthly meetings in 2018, with a Café Paris-Europe for some of them. On 19 February 2018, Jean-Paul DOGUET addressed the issue of "The new Silk Road: a challenge for Europe". On 19 March, Henri ALLIEZ presented his project for inter-European discussion groups. On 26 June, J-P MORIZOT spoke to us about the "Gurlitt Fund, the search for looted works". On 15 October 2018, Jean-Paul DOGUET spoke about the consequences of Brexit for the French economy, essentially repeating what he had said in English in Athens. On 19 November, Olga IMBERT spoke about "The Dutch economy in the face of Brexit" and on 17 December, Jean-Paul DOGUET spoke about the Romanian economy, following his trip to that country. On 21 January 2019 we had a very interesting and high-quality contribution from Michel RIQUIER, from AGE Europe, on pension schemes in Europe.For Europe Day, we screened Hannes STÖHR's film "Un jour en Europe" (A day in Europe) at the Lycée Henri IV on 9 May 2018, followed by a debate. We regretted the low number of spectators and an unexpected problem with the sound system, which was a little embarrassing.
Our EUROCAPITALES party was held at Christine DORING's home in Morainvilliers on Sunday 2 July.
On the weekend of 16-17 and 18 September 2018, our 19th Eurocapitales Multilateral took place in Athens. The themes were those we had proposed: "Facing Brexit" and "Unemployment policies in Europe". The proceedings were chaired by the President of the University of Athens, Mr Salapatas. The first part of the conference, which took place on Friday 16th, included contributions from France (JP Doguet), the Netherlands (Olga Imbert), Greece (Mikael Kartsounis), the UK (Richard Witt, our old friend), Finland (A. Pekkalin) and Switzerland (Joëlle de Seppibus). There was also the official in charge of monitoring Brexit at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On Saturday 17, we had a guided tour of the Acropolis Museum. The evening was devoted to anti-unemployment policies in Europe, with contributions from I. de Serre (for France), Mikko Kymalainen (for Finland) and N. Bais (for Greece). The following morning, we visited the Braurion site in Attica, which has just been reopened to the public.
On Friday 19 October 2018, EUROCAPITALES was associated with a citizens' consultation on the theme of "What kind of Europe do we want in ten years' time". It was a success in terms of attendance and participation, with a very large number of participants, around 130 people, mostly students, but also members of MEF Paris, the Eurocapitales association and teachers, who had passed on the information to their students and often came with them. It was divided into 4 questions: environment, institutions, defence and education, with clearly fewer proposals for defence than for the rest.
On Sunday 21 October, there was another consultation in Epernon along the same lines, but without the name Eurocapitales being associated with it, and with at most 30 participants, in collaboration with the Café Citoyen Val Drouette.
In addition, the President reported the results and was invited to the activities that followed, on 30 October at Ces and on 4 December at the Quai d'Orsay (presentation of the results).
Dear friends, Eurocapitales lives and renews itself. We were saddened to lose one of our very active former members, Claude ZAJDELA-BUFFET, this year. But new members are arriving and the association is renewing itself. MEF presidents come and go, but we're still here. We are even the only association to have survived the 1998 working groups, and we owe this to our motivation, our efficiency and that of our partners. I would personally like - as I have often said - to be able to hand over this presidency one day to anyone who is interested, and I have already made this known, on the understanding that he or she can count on my support after this handover. In the meantime, I would like to express my legitimate satisfaction with what we do every year, and I would ask you to approve this report.
I would also like to ask you to take a number of other votes:
1) To approve the new membership fee for the coming year, which will be €20 instead of the current €15. This does not apply to the current membership fee, but to the fee payable in 2020.
2) To approve the new composition of the association's executive committee, with Maria-Luise FESER replacing J-C NOUEL.
