A working group, meeting at the EPA in Istanbul on September 23^th, supported the Assembly on The Charter of principles of another Europe. The aim of the Florence Assembly, in particular, will be the elaboration of a draft of the Charter, which will be discussed and approved in an Assembly during the FSE 2006 in Athens.
The Charter will not be a simple repetition of the demands of our movements and of their political documents - although they are very important ones. It aims at deepening the understanding, systematizing and writing the common core of our values and beliefs, shared by millions of people. These values and beliefs have guided the Social movements since Seattle 1999 and Genoa 2001.

The Florence Assembly will be organised in 7 sessions, each of which will last 2 hours and will be introduced by two speakers followed by interventions and final decisions on how to write the principles connected with that particular session.

The themes will be:
1. peace and security;
2. Europe in the world;
3. citizenship, equality and difference;
4. workers and social rights;
5. democracy and participation;
6. for another economy: commons and environment;
7. for another economy: social commons (e.g. public services).

The speakers will be in charge of preparing written proposals before the Florence Assembly so as to have them known in advance on the Website. They should briefly explain them at the beginning of the session and collect observations and amendments in order to re-write the proposals.

It’s very important and urgent that all networks send to the Italian Committee the names of possible speakers (1 woman, 1 man), so as to decide them all together.
All the proposals will form a draft, which will put at disposal of all European networks interested in the writing-process of the Charter. It will be very useful if the European networks discuss the draft and propose amendments or new formulations before the next ESF 2006.

The working group decided to organise 7 specific seminars - one for each theme - in the first days of the Athens FSE and a Charter Assembly on Saturday, in which the draft will be finally discussed and signed by networks, associations, unions, Social Forums, political forces and so on, which agree to the Charter of principles. The Charter will be put at disposal of the European anticorporate globalization movements for the continuation, enlargement and reinforcement of the struggle for another Europe.

The Assembly will start punctually at 9 am on Saturday 12 and will finish at 2 pm on Sunday 13 so as to have 14 hours for the 7 sessions, as above specified.

[ed. by Franco Russo]

September 25^th, 2005

Assembly on The Charter of Principles of Another Europe
November 12^th-13^th, 2005
Florence
Piazza Tasso 1, Complesso ex Leopoldine-Altana

The Florence Assembly is subdivided into 7 sessions (2 hours each), introduced by two speakers (7 minutes each) followed by a number of speeches (5 minutes each) and final decisions on how to lay out the principles concerning that particular session.

Themes:

1. peace and security (R. Bolini, L. Gabriel);

2. Europe in the world (E. Gauthier, A. Mecozzi);
3. citizenship, equality and difference (I. Barbarossa, H. Wainwright);

4. workers and social rights (P. Bronzini, A. Klein);

5. democracy and participation (Manitakis, L. Menapace);

6. for another economy: common goods and environment (A. Botàr, M.Gubbiotti);

7. for another economy: social common goods (P. Bernocchi, A. Coupé).

Chairs: L. Clark, E. Crome, F. Russo, N. Theorakopoulou

Schedule:

Saturday November 12^th: h 9-13 h 14-20

Sunday November 13^th: h 9-15

Languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish (translation by Babels Italia)

We kindly request participants to be on time