21 Amendments of Laurence FARRENG related to 2023/2018(INI)
Amendment 2 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
Aa. whereas ‘solidarity project’ means an unpaid solidarity activity that takes place for a period of up to 12 months and that is carried out by groups of at least five participants with a view to addressing key challenges within their communities while presenting a clear European added value;
Amendment 3 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas solidarity activities should present potential European added value, benefit communities and foster participants’ personal, educational, social, civic and professional development; whereas volunteering, both within and beyond the Union, is an enriching experience in a non-formal and informal learning context, while promoting solidarity, European values and equal opportunities;
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Ba. whereas ‘solidarity activity’ means a high-quality, inclusive activity that addresses important societal challenges, that contributes to the achievement of the Programme objectives, that takes the form of volunteering, a solidarity project or a networking activity in various fields, including in the field of humanitarian aid, that ensures European added value and that complies with occupational health and safety regulations and relevant security rules;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B b (new)
Recital B b (new)
Bb. whereas ‘volunteering’ means a solidarity activity that takes place, for a period of up to 12 months, as a voluntary unpaid activity that contributes to the achievement of the common good;
Amendment 7 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas the effects of the COVID- 19 pandemic did not impact the mobility aspect of the programme and delayed several projects; whereas the interest in the programme, but rather was not affected which highlighted its potential and proved the importance of young people’s engagement on the ground in solidarity activities, including blended volunteering;
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the visibility of the programme is still relatively low; whereas the European Year of Youth in 2022 proved to be a unique opportunity to enhance the programme’s visibility; highlights therefore the need to employ sufficient means to promote the programme more widely and create a recognizable brand;
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. Notes that the COVID-19 pandemic showed that means should be found to make the programme more resilient in anticipation of force majeure by, among others, evaluating the consequences of the interrupted traineeships and the follow up with the participants affected;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas one of the main policy priorities is including young people with fewer opportunities; whereas in 2021-2022, a total of 14 060 participants belonged to this category, of whom 8 622 were awarded places as individual volunteers and 5 438 were awarded places on volunteering teams; expects continued efforts to reach out to youth with fewer opportunities and provide them the support needed;
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Calls on the Commission, the Member States, NAs and engaged organisations to help raise awareness about the programme and its individual strands, to further build its brand and to reach out to more young people, particularly those with fewer opportunities; calls on the Commission to provide support to NAs and provide expertise and guidance to promote the programme;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Believes the programme’s upcoming 10th anniversary in 2026 and the possibility of designating 2025 the European Year of Volunteers should further improve the visibility of volunteering and of opportunities for active youth engagement as creating a year of volunteers is particularly important following the multiple crises Europe has been through where the value of volunteers and their work was immense;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Notes that solidarity projects attract less interest and are less visible, resulting in uneven budget distribution; calls on the Commission, NAs and volunteering organisations to promote short-term activities and calls for more flexibility in the budget allocation between the project strands;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Urges the European Commission and Member States to strengthen the European civic mobility or transnational volunteering capabilities of the European Solidarity Corps; thereby acting as a driving force for cooperation and recognition between national volunteering schemes or civic services that earmark European mobility experiences;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Welcomes the programme’s inclusive nature and the implementation guidelines for its inclusion and diversity strategy; calls on the Commission to consider adopting a more flexible and inclusive approach to individual volunteering, enabling participants to mix and match countries, areas of activity and experiences in order to make the programme more inclusive; and notes the inadequacy of the current search and match tools on the platform which do not allow to use the potential of the platform sufficiently;
Amendment 56 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to include specific initiatives for EU volunteers to contribute to the post-war rebuilding of Ukraine;
Amendment 58 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Urges the Commission to ensure that the digital tools and systems currently used to manage and implement the programme are working properly and to their full potential and invites it to tackle, without delay, the persistent serious issues with the European Solidarity Corps IT tools, which are a significant obstacle not only to the participation of smaller organisations and of young people with fewer opportunities, but also to the participation of all kinds of beneficiaries; calls on the Commission to simplify the process for the IT tools and make it accessible to all groups, more user friendly, and to test IT tools on a sufficiently large scale before they are rolled out further; notes that Erasmus+ and other EU-funded programmes have encountered similar issues with IT tools;
Amendment 62 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Urges the Commission to improve the quality and quantity of online linguistic support for participants, by making the information available in all EU languages, to integrate better sorting and filtering tools into the placement administration and support system, to simplify and shorten the application process for the new quality label, to set more frequent re-accreditation deadlines and to reduce the time and administrative burden involved in re- accreditation;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to facilitate the expansion of mutual recognition of learning outcomes, notably soft skills, from volunteering activities by registering them in Europass and by encouraging higher and vocational education institutions to award credits under the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS credits) or micro-credentials for these activities;
Amendment 65 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to facilitate the expansion of mutual recognition of learning outcomes from volunteering activities by registering them in Europass and by encouraging higher education institutions to award credits under the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS credits) for these activities; calls for more cooperation with educational institutions in creating these synergies;
Amendment 71 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to provide the European Solidarity Corps with an adequate budget that will be able to accommodate increasing interest in the programme and allow it to address unexpected challenges, such as rising inflation and higher living costs; and inadequate amount of pocket money for participants who have no sufficient financial means to sustain themselves; calls in this regard to increase the budget of the European Solidarity Corps in the next MFF 2028 - 2034;
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15 a (new)
Paragraph 15 a (new)
15a. Calls on the Commission to facilitate creating more synergies with other EU programmes, notably Erasmus+, Horizon Europe and European Social Fund;