Small But Perfect Toolkit: Policy Dialogue

Policy dialogue toolkit

SMALL BUT PERFECT

Fair Trade Advocacy Office and Fashion Revolution CIC

• Foreword

• Introduction

• Chapter 1: What is a Policy Dialogue?

• Chapter 2: How to plan a Policy Dialogue?

• Chapter 3: How to run a Policy Dialogue?

• Chapter 4: How to assess and follow-up a Policy Dialogue?

• Chapter 5: How to develop and communicate the outcomes of the Policy Dialogue?

• Chapter 6: Case studies at EU level

• Annex – The EU Decision Making Process

Acknowledgements

This toolkit was drafted thanks to the financial support of the European Innovation Council and Small and Medium Enterprises Executive Agency (EISMEA) COSME Programme, under the Call for proposals COS-CIRCFASH-2019-3-02.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution we received from:

• The consortium of the project

• Fashion Revolution

• The Fair Trade Movement

• The participants in the project’s Policy Dialogues we held in Berlin and Athens in 2022

• All other stakeholders we have engaged with in the drafting process

Foreword

If you got up and dressed this morning, you have already done something political today.

That is because the clothes you, I, and just about everyone else on this planet wear are inevitably political. Clothes, textiles, fashion – all of it is a product of a certain political and economic context. The fashion industry, particularly, comes out of political decisions, power dynamics, and global exchange. This is nothing new. Fashion history is tied closely to the history of countries and trades, for better or worse.

Now, I understand that this may sound a bit overwhelming, but there’s a particular beauty in it. While it is true that, because of the above, fashion and our clothes can reinforce the existing power dynamics and political ideas, they can also challenge them!

Because you are wearing clothes, you already have one advantage. You are a part of the fashion industry and everything that shapes it. Do not take that power for granted. Learn to use it to thread the change you wish to see.

And aim high! Go straight to the decision-makers, policymakers and those who can help make room for voices like yours. The industry desperately needs to hear citizens, consumers, makers, designers, workers, farmers, and seamstresses. So, it seems to me that you are in the right place.

The Toolkit you are about to read will set you off in the right direction. Policymaking is not always easy to understand, let alone approach. It is confusing. It is complex and, frankly, doesn’t always make sense to those outside of it. This Toolkit is an attempt to change that. You will find approachable and practical information on how and where to start. It will help you turn your ideas and passion into actions that can help to move the needle.

I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it!

TENA LAVRENČIĆ

Thinking Threads Young Fair Trade Advocate

Introduction

Why this toolkit?

Today, fashion is one of the most globalised industries. It also relies on many other industries (e.g. agriculture, chemicals, oil, transport), thus affecting many lives, from farmers to factory workers to final consumers. Moreover, fashion is one of the major polluting industries in the world, thus having an impact on the environment and people’s health and wellbeing. That is why sustainability in fashion, better human rights and environmental practices and a more mindful approach to how we make, buy and wear our clothes benefits us all and the planet.

At global, European, national, and local level, policy makers can play a key role in setting the goals, upholding standards, and enforcing the laws and regulations that shape the global fashion industry. Policies — such as laws, regulations, government directives and standards — have the power to transform our world, actively reducing poverty, creating sustainable livelihoods, promoting human well-being, changing power relations and gender norms, and protecting ecosystems. That is why Policy Dialogues between decision makers, civil society organisations, and other relevant stakeholders are crucial to ensure that the fashion industry contributes positively to society and our planet.

However, many voices are often left out of policy discussions. Consumers, producers and factory workers, creative professionals, artisans, farmers and other stakeholders should be an integral part of policymaking as they each hold valuable insights, experience and knowledge — but often these groups are not consulted, especially not by those who make laws and influence fashion industry norms.

Who should read it?

This toolkit intends to provide campaigners (individual citizens, civil society organisations, networks, and other stakeholders) with background information and tips on how to influence relevant textile strategies, policies, and initiatives through policy dialogues. Even if the toolkit prioritises examples from the fashion industry and focuses especially on influencing EU policies, it can be used by all campaigners and stakeholders willing to participate in the public policy debates at local, national, and international level, and it can be applied to supply chains and sectors other than textiles.

How is the information organised?

Building on the Fashion Revolution ‘Policy Dialogue toolkit’, this guide aims to provide a checklist on how to plan (Chapter 2), run (Chapter 3), and follow-up (Chapters 4-5) Policy Dialogues. The publication also showcases specific examples (Chapter 6) on how policy dialogues can be organised in the framework of current EU policy debates on textile. For those who are not familiar with the EU framework, the toolkit contains a short explanation of the EU decision making process at the end (annex).

Chapter 1: What is a Policy Dialogue?

For the purpose of this document, we will define a Policy Dialogue as a structured discussion that helps a group of people to develop or implement policy change.

There are different kinds of Policy Dialogues:

1. evidence-based discussions;

2. interviews;

3. focus groups;

4. panel discussions;

5. workshops;

6. webinars;

7. informal consultations (e.g. through email, coffee meetings, and event networking);

8. any communication or contact between people who are contributing in some way, shape or form to the discussions around the issue and policy recommendation.

Their length can also vary according to the format and the objectives: you can foresee a webinar of one hour to present a position paper or a two-day conference to create a multi stakeholder dialogue on a policy challenge. For a successful policy dialogue, it is important to focus on one key outcome rather than several. A Policy Dialogue can have multiple objectives:

• to raise awareness on a topic among relevant policy makers and stakeholders;

• to create interactions, mutual understanding, and trust amongst stakeholders over an issue;

• to gather needs and challenges on a specific issue;

• to develop policy recommendations and joint policy actions;

• to increases buy-in and ownership by certain stakeholders around a policy change;

• to build coalitions and alliances;

• to exchange good practices, experiences, and knowledge.

When done well and at the right time, a Policy Dialogue can be a powerful advocacy platform, a valuable source of information and provide solutions which take into account many different views. It can allow organisations and citizens to start a conversation with the relevant policy makers and to put new items in the policy agenda. The ultimate goal of the Policy Dialogue is to enable a wide range of different voices to engage in a policy debate and contribute to policy changes.

The effective organisation of a Policy Dialogue implies:

• different phases:

• planning;

• implementation;

• assessment;

• communication of the results.

In the following pages, you will find a list of guiding questions that will help you plan (Chapter 2), run (Chapter 3), evaluate (Chapter 4) and disseminate the outcomes of your Policy Dialogue. In each chapter, you will find questions grouped into macro areas to help you further divide your work flow.

Chapter 2: How to plan a Policy Dialogue?

1. Definition of the topic

• What topic would you like to raise during your Policy Dialogue?

• What are the unmet needs you would like policy makers to address?

• Is there an existing policy already addressing these needs? If so, should it be updated to better tackle them? If not, should a new policy initiative be started?

• What aspect of the topic would you like to focus on?

• Is it specific enough to be discussed within the time of the event (maximum 2 days)?

Is it easy to understand and to comment on?

2. Definition of the target/s and the objectives

• What policy makers have responsibilities on the topic? At what decision making level/s (e.g. local, national, European)?

• What actions would you like them to take at the relevant decision making level/s?

• What are the actions you would like to focus on within the time of the Policy Dialogue? Would you like to address one or more decision making levels?

• Do you want policymakers only to be aware of the issue, engage with it or do you want to hold them accountable for what they promised to do?

Are they easy to understand and discuss within the time of the initiative?

3. Preliminary consultation of relevant stakeholders and identification of allies

• Do you have colleagues who are knowledgeable on the topic? How can they be involved in the process?

• Do you have any existing connections to key stakeholders working on the topic or affected by the issues? How can you involve them?

• Have you identified other relevant stakeholders through interviews, social media, databases?

4. Definition of coalitions and alliances

• What other organisations or stakeholders could support your Policy Dialogue?

• How should they be recruited?

• How should the cooperation take place? How should decisions be taken? What role could they plan in the organisation of the initiative?

• What organisations/stakeholders could help you reach out the target/s of your initiatives? Why should they join you and what do you expect from them?

6. Definition of the right format and venue of the Policy Dialogue

• How much time can your target group devote to you?

• What are the incentives for them to engage with you?

• Is it more effective to organise your Policy Dialogue online or offline? How would this affect the type of conversation possible?

• What is possible according to your budget?

5. Definition of the budget

• What financial and human resources do you have? Are they sufficient to the organisation of the Policy Dialogue and the related costs (e.g. renting of the room, speakers’ travel costs, etc)

• Can further funds be gathered to organise it?

• Can synergies with other projects or initiatives be created?

7. Preliminary research on the topic

• How much research already exists on the topic?

• What data/information have you gathered on the unmet needs you want to address and how (e.g. through interviews, focus groups, desk research)?

• What data/information have you gathered on the possible policies, initiatives and other good practices that can effectively address these needs?

8. Identification of the right speakers

• What and how many stakeholders should be represented in your Policy Dialogue?

• What are the responsibilities of your speakers on the topic?

• Are your speakers representing different political ideas and views (e.g. is gender/geographical/age balance ensured?)

• Is there a balance of actors from different parts of the sector or relation to the textile sector (workers, brands, suppliers, trade unions, civil society, policy makers)?

• Do your speakers have existing expertise on the topic or existing connections with policy makers to help you shape the dialogue?

9. Identification of the right moderator

• What is the moderator’s background on the topic? How should s/he be briefed before the Policy Dialogue?

• What is the capacity of the moderator of balancing different views/ managing the discussion time/ wrapping up the key points of the discussion?

• If the moderation is online, does s/he have the right digital skills to allow participants to engage with the discussion? If not, do you have somebody on your team that could aid keeping track of Q&A?

10. Identification of the right participants

• Do you want the policy dialogue to be open to everybody or a smaller group?

• What stakeholders are affected by/have an impact on the topic?

• How can they be reached?

• How can they benefit from the exchange?

Key tips

Make sure that the topic you choose for your Policy Dialogue is ‘manageable’. Participants should have enough time to understand it and to provide views on it. If the topic you want to tackle is too complex, you will obtain poor results.

Toolbox

There are several series of tools that can help you plan your Policy Dialogue. Please find below some examples.

• SMART analysis, a technique which helps you check that the objectives of your Policy Dialogue are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-framed (Find more information here and here).

• Mindmaps, diagrams you can develop through Miro, MindMeister, or other softwares you can find online in order to visually represent the information you want to share in the Policy Dialogue. Usually, they contain a central idea in the middle and associated ideas around it.

• Power vs interest matrix (Mendelow’s matrix), a widely used model which helps you identify your stakeholders, divide them into groups, and plan a tailored treatment for each of them.

• SWOT analysis, a technique frequently used in strategic planning. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and is a structured planning method which helps assess these four elements of a situation, a policy initiative, project, etc.

Chapter 3: How to run a Policy Dialogue?

Before the policy dialogue

The implementation of a Policy Dialogue starts with logistical aspects

1. Agenda setting

• When and where will the Policy Dialogue take place?

• How long should the dialogue last?

• What should be its agenda? Is the topic specific enough to be discussed within the time frame?

• How can the Policy Dialogue be interactive? Are you foreseeing quizzes or other tools?

• Does the agenda contain enough breaks (every 2 hours for physical meetings and every 50 minutes for online ones)?

2. Venue setting

• If the Policy Dialogue is online, who will be responsible for the technical aspects of the gathering? How will the speakers, the moderator, and the participants be briefed on the technical aspects? Is a technical check with speakers foreseen?

• If the Policy Dialogue is in presence, are laptops, microphones, beamers, and other devices needed for the success of the initiative?

• Is the room (online or physically) accessible for people with disabilities or special needs?

3. Invitations

• Are speakers, the moderators, participants, and eventually the interpreters/technicians invited well in advance to the Policy Dialogue (at least one month and a half)?

• Are reminders for participants and speakers foreseen?

• Are there translations going to be available? If so, this should be added to the invitation, it will increase the chance to have more people take part in the dialogue.

Promotional activities

• How many participants do you want to involve?

• Are you addressing targeted participants, or do you need to widely promote your event?

• What are the right communication channels to reach your target/s? Are you communicating in the right language to reach the right targets?

Briefing of the speakers and the moderator

• Are you preparing info packages for them (to be sent at least two weeks in advance)?

• Have you made your expectations clear?

• Have you made sure to connect the moderator and speakers? Have you discussed what issues you’d like discussed and those that should not be brought forward?

• Are you planning a preparatory call with them at least one week in advance to make sure that everything is clear?

Briefing of the participants

• Have you prepared a background document for your participants to make sure they have sufficient information on the subject?

• Are the objectives of the Policy Dialogue detailed? Have you specified the input you expect from them?

The day of the policy dialogue

1. Last logistical aspects

• Have you foreseen arriving at the meeting/to connect to the online meeting 1 hour/30 minutes in advance for a final technical check?

• For the day of the meeting, have you shared the logistical tasks among your team? Who is the person responsible for the note taking, the communication aspects (such as taking pictures and preparing tweets on the event), etc?

• If the meeting is online, is there a person admitting participants in the call and checking the chat? For more tips on webinars click here.

• If the meeting is in presence, have you foreseen a space for the registration desk and the coffee breaks?

2. Engagement of the participants

• If you have a large group (over 20 participants), how are you going to break it into sub-groups of maximum 7-10 participants in

person (or 5-7 maximum online)? After the break-out sessions, are you organising a plenary session to summarise the received feedback?

• ping participants to contribute in different ways to the discussion (e.g., through post-its/ polls/ Q&A sessions)?

• Are coffee breaks organised to allow participants to network with each other and get

3. Moderation

• How is the moderator helping to break the ice at the beginning of the Policy Dialogue?

• Is the moderator briefed on how to:

1. ensure that any raised ideas or questions get noted/ recorded

2. allow a balanced share of views in the debate

3. deal with any disagreements during the exchange

4. keep the time

• If the moderation is online, is there any person who can help the moderator keep track of the inputs from the chat?

In order to be effective, a Policy Dialogue always needs to be

• Inclusive: all voices are heard, especially those sharing opposing views and the most marginalised;

• Respectful: all participants listen and are listened to;

• Solution-driven: challenges are tackled with a constructive and positive attitude;

• Participatory: those most affected by an issue should be key players in understanding and addressing it.

We suggest organising half-day Policy Dialogues. They offer quite a substantial amount of time for discussion, whilst allowing people time to return to their workplace/life for the other half of the day. The success of a Policy Dialogue also depends on the capacity of the moderator to manage differing opinions and perspectives with calm and empathy. Moreover, keeping track of time during the policy dialogue is crucial to gather all the views and to get the time to wrap-up the key points of the debate. In this sense, the use of sub-groups can help offer a space for people to share views in parallel and to effectively manage the agenda of the meeting. Finally, it can be very helpful to have some sort of visual support and interactive sections. However, policy makers normally cannot commit to longer events so it is important to organise it so that the decision makers are there at the important parts.

Toolbox

There are several tools that can help you facilitate the exchange during the Policy Dialogue. Please find here some examples and look here to find more.

For in-person meetings:

• Yes/No/Maybe, a series of quickfire questions (or hands up, hands down) to break the ice and to get some first insights on the opinions of your participants. Questions should not be polarising in order to make stakeholders feel at ease.

• Flip charts, dashboards, post-its, physical supports that can help record any ideas and thoughts that may be related to the topic under discussion. They can also be used as ‘parking spaces’, where discussion points can be written down to be brought up later.

• Role-playing, a technique which allows dividing participants into smaller groups and assigning them different roles (e.g. policymakers, NGOs, brands, factory owners, workers, etc.). It helps analyse an issue from different perspectives.

• The ‘Problem tree’ and the ‘Solution tree’, visual methods that allow participants to understand the cause and effects of a problem within a group. They help break down an issue into more manageable chunks. They also reveal the interconnectedness of causes.

For online meetings:

• Mural, Miro or a Jamboard, online whiteboards where people can add post-its or move them around. They can be used to gather feedback on specific issues, as well as to rate priorities or needs in a specific field.

• Padlet, an online noticeboard which allows participants to write down and share thoughts in response to a question or issue.

• Mentimeter, a tool which allows your participants to contribute to polls, word clouds, Q&A’s anonymously through their devices. The results can be instantly displayed on a screen in front of them.

Chapter 4: How to assess and follow-up a Policy Dialogue?

1. Definition of the next steps

• When you leave the meeting, is it clear for everyone who is going to do what and when?

• Are the main gathered recommendations and thoughts shared and summarised?

• Is there an appointed person keeping the overview of the next steps, and their deadlines?

2. Assessment

• Are you planning a questionnaire or an online poll to gather the participants’ feedback on the initiative?

• Are you foreseeing follow-up exchanges with key participants to gather further views on the Policy Dialogue?

• Are you taking note of the Policy Dialogue’s lessons learned?

• Have we learned about new initiatives? What are their pros and cons?

• Have we learned about new relevant stakeholders? How can they become allies?

• Have we learned about obstacles we did not consider? Have we learned strategies to overcome them?

3. Follow-up

• How are you going to keep the discussion alive after the policy dialogue?

• Are your planning specific collaborations with speakers and/or participants?

• Are you foreseen the development of policy recommendations after the Policy Dialogue? How will speakers/participants/other stakeholders contribute to them?

• How can you contact participants after the Policy Dialogue?

• How will the minutes/ recording of the Policy Dialogue be shared?

After a Policy Dialogue, write together a document in the coming weeks that is shared with all participants so that all can contribute to the text until you have found a document that everyone agrees with. If the dialogue is more meant to give you insights and perspectives to policy recommendations that you are writing it is still good to share the document with the participants to get additional feedback, but the need to look for compromises on a detailed level is less.

Toolbox

You can use a series of tools that can help you assess the Policy Dialogue and prepare your next steps. Please find here some examples.

• SurveyMonkey and Google Form, online survey tools used to create online surveys, polls, and quizzes.

• Policy Recommendation Templates, supporting documents you can find online to structure your recommendations.

Chapter 5: How to develop and communicate the outcomes of the Policy Dialogue and its policy recommendations?

1. Drafting of the recommendations

• Are your recommendations taking into account all the views of the Policy Dialogue?

• Are your recommendations supported with evidence?

• Do they include examples of existing successful policies/ initiatives targeting the topic of the Policy Dialogue?

• Are they solution-driven? Are they providing decision makers with concrete actions to be carried out?

• What is the cost of your recommendations? Are they economically feasible? Try to show that you have thought about the costs, pros, and cons.

• How do your recommendations tie into existing areas of policy focus (e.g. implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals or other international policies)?

2. Validation of the recommendations

• How are the Policy Dialogue’s participants getting to contribute to the recommendations?

• How are other relevant stakeholders validating your Policy Dialogue’s outcomes?

3. Dissemination of the recommendations and the Policy Dialogue’s outcomes

• Are there stakeholders that can help you influence your target? How can they be engaged in the Policy Dialogue? How can they become allies?

• What is/are the right platform/s to share the Policy Dialogue’s outcomes (e.g. local press, social media, website)

• Are you tagging the right policy makers to reach the relevant actors with the message?

Toolbox

In this last phase, you can refer to the 7 actions by PayUp campaign to plan your advocacy actions

Communications tips:

• Keep it clear and simple. Use bullet points and short impactful sentences.

• Speak as a collective, address a clear target and ask for concrete actions (‘we demand EU policy-makers to work on legislation for…” or “we ask national governments to support initiatives to…”).

• Give voice to the people involved! For instance, you can use quotes from different stakeholders (consumers, activists, workers) to create visuals for social media

Recommendations need to be owned by the participants of the Policy Dialogue. Do not hesitate to provide participants with opportunities to follow-up with the Policy Dialogue’s discussion and to help you disseminate its results. Make sure that your allies are also involved in the communication activities so that a wider number of policy makers and stakeholders can be reached.

• On social media, tag influencers and politicians: it’ll amplify your message and make your audience much bigger!

• Brand your comms materials. Use always the same font, colours etc. so people can easily identify you and your message

Chapter 6: Case studies

Case Study 1: Fair Trade Breakfasts with policy makers

Each year the FTAO organises an annual gathering with MEPs in the framework of the Belgian Fair Trade Week. In order to take into account the busy agenda of MEPs, meetings are organised early in the morning, during breakfast time. The meeting is an annual occasion to take stock of the progress made on relevant policy agendas, and to keep the motivation of MEPs to engage with civil society organisations to make value chains more sustainable. This practice is also adopted by other Fair Trade actors that organise these meetings at national or regional level (e.g. Belgian Fair Trade breakfast)

Strengths:

• Short meeting

• Regular meeting (once per year)

• Networking opportunity for civil society representatives and MEPs

Weaknesses

• Need to select a very specific topic in order to keep the meeting focused on a subject

• Need to invest time to get the participation of MEPs confirmed

Case Study 2: The Fair Fashion Walk

In 2022, a group of Belgian Young Fair Trade Advocates (a programme of the FTAO), organised a fair fashion walk in the frame of the Fair Fashion Festival in Gent. During the walk, the advocates showcased the work of sustainable fashion SMEs and presented an awareness raising video. The festival was a

good platform for networking between brands, citizens, and policy makers. After the event, the group wrote a policy statement on the proposed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive that was then shared with the brands participating in the fair festival. 11 SMEs signed the statement and The Young Fair Trade Advocates, together with the brands, reached out to Belgian MEPs and rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive asking together for SMEs to be included in the legislation, for and purchasing practices to be part of the Due Diligence requirements.

Case study 3: Finding common ground and views for an EU textile strategy

In November 2020 the FTAO organised, jointly with the Policy Hub, a policy dialogue with the objective of understanding what was the common ground that could be found among stakeholders who would often be seen as antagonists. The two organisers having themselves different perspectives on the topic – civil society and business – they also wished to clarify areas in which participants would “agree to disagree” without this automatically blocking all other potential discussions. This policy dialogue brought together representatives from large businesses, industry associations, and NGOs working in topics ranging from environmental issues to recycling and labour rights.

Strengths:

Weaknesses

• Having both an aspect of raising awareness and reaching out to policy makers

• Being planned and organised by young people

• Showing good alternatives to the problems in the fashion industry

• Hard to know before how many brands would be supportive of their policy asks

• Many different skills needed in the organisation phase

In the policy dialogue the large topic of “an EU textile strategy” was broken into 3 chapters: waste, new business models, and transparency and traceability. Each of them was discussed under Chatham house rules and the facilitators would keep track of potential agreements in the room that were read out loud at the end of each of the blocks, to see if everyone agreed there was consensus on a given statement; while the most delicate points that required more discussion, were isolated and written in a list of topics for future meetings.

Case Study 2 cont... Case study 4: Textile

This policy dialogue had two concrete outputs: the list of “common ground statements” and topics to be discussed in the future, and secondly a joint letter to the European Commission regarding the work on the EU Textile Strategy, which had an important role on pushing the Commission to deliver in this strategy in a moment in which many doubted that such an EU strategy would ever see the light.

Coalition

In 2019, Oxfam-Magasins du monde (OMdm), the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) and The World Fair Trade Organization-Europe (WFTO-Europe) jointly commissioned a research on the policy options for the textile sector to the thinktank ECDPM. Following the publication of this research, FTAO held a policy dialogue in which civil society organisations with expertise in each of the areas discussed on the paper would participate.

The policy dialogue resulted in a first draft of an European Civil Society Strategy for Sustainable Textiles. As part of the policy dialogue, the topic of “who else should be sitting around this table” was discussed, and those who were identified were invited to further rounds to improve the text. The final document was disseminated among Members of the European Parliament and gathered remarkable support (over 57 MEPs of five political groups supported the text).

The coalition then held two policy dialogues with European Commission officials, including from DG TRADE, DG ENVI, DG GROW, DG DEVCO and the European Parliament Research Center. In these policy dialogues, each of the proposals of the Civil Society Textile Strategy was discussed.

Strengths:

Weaknesses

Strengths:

Weaknesses

• Very broad range of stakeholders made the discussions rich and deep. And avoided a situation of “preaching to the converted”

• The policy dialogue had concrete outputs. One of them (the joint letter to the Commission) is considered to have had an important role in pushing the Commission to release its textile strategy.

• The only way for this to be possible was to have a meeting that was by invitation only and under Chatham House Rules, while limiting the ability to involve stakeholders

• Many of the organisations in the room (and in particular industry associations) did not have the mandate from their own members to pronounce themselves in all the topics under debate

• The first policy dialogue resulted in a core group of civil society organisations, which was expanded with a “layer by layer approach” as time went on, reaching a very large amount of organisations being involved

• The civil society policy dialogue was followed by a policy dialogue with Commission Officials that proved to be a very useful advocacy activity

• The “layer by layer approach” and open ended list of participants was extremely complex to manage and very time consuming

Annex –The EU Decision Making Process

The main EU institutions are the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission (representing the EU).

The European Parliament is elected by universal suffrage every five years. It has three main roles:

• Passing European laws: jointly with the Council in many policy areas, the EP has the power to approve, reject or amend legislation proposed by the European Commission

• Supervising over the other EU institutions, and in particular the Commission (e.g. it approves or rejects the nomination of commissioners)

• Influencing EU spending by sharing with the Council authority over the EU budget

The European Council is composed of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States, together with its President and the President of the Commission. It has the role to define the general political direction and priorities of the European Union.

The Council of the European Union is composed of one representative of each national government, at ministerial level and is the EU institution representing the Member States. It is the EU’s main decisionmaking body and jointly with the Parliament, it has the power to adopt, amend or reject laws, which are initiated by the European Commission. Most decisions of the Council are made by qualified majority voting (a weighted voting system based on the populations of Member States). However, unanimity remains applicable in a limited number of areas such as taxation and defence.

The European Commission represents and defends the common interests of all EU citizens. It acts as the executive of the European Union. It is responsible for proposing legislation (right of initiative), implementing decisions, upholding the Union’s treaties (guardian of the treaties), managing the EU budget, programmes and the day-to-day running of the Union.

Concerning the EU legislative procedures, there are three main ones. The ordinary legislative procedure is the default procedure. It requires official approval from both the Parliament and the Council. Both bodies are on an equal footing and have the chance to propose amendments to the text. When the Treaties indicate otherwise one of the special legislative procedures is used. You can find more details about them by clicking here.

Please find below the link to useful videos:

• The EU decision-making process

• How can you make your voice heard?

• How does the EU pass new laws?

For more information on how the EU works, you can check the following short videos on the European Parliament website. Concerning the EU policies that are relevant for the promotion of a fairer textile sector, please visit the FTAO website