Brussels, 16 November. After participating in the roubtable on 'Voices from civil society', Italian Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrizia Sentinelli, had a quick chat with Euforic.
Unfortunately there was no time for a real interview, as Ms. Sentinelli was expected to take part in another rountable. Nevertheless, we managed to ask her why Italy was the only country of the 'old' Europe (together with Denmark) not present with a stand in the development village. "It's true" she said "we are not here with a stand; but in fact I am here, and I would like this to be seen as a sign of Italy's commitments on development cooperation. Besides, these EU development days take place while in Italy we are debating the new bugdet for 2007: we preferred to focus our energies on that, making sure we have more money for development cooperation before we actually show ourselves".
In these regards, we asked Ms. Sentinelli how she values the role of communication in development cooperation: "In fact, we, as European Union and Member States, need to invest more in this, making sure we effectively communicate all we do in development cooperation. In these regards, the DG for Development Cooperation under my responsibility is now in the process of relaunching its website, to be as much as possible informative and up-to-date on our activities and initiatives. We also plan to issue twelve bulletins, each focussing on a specific issue, such as decentralised cooperation and gender and development, just to name two".
More information on the Euforic's Italy dossier.
Story contributed by Pier Andrea Pirani.
