Ms. Anna Rurka, President of the Conference of INGOS has written to EN-RE and the other 320 accredited international NGOs asking us which working groups and transversal groups we want to participate in over the next 3 years from 2018 to 2021.

EN-RE members have a lot of expertise and valuable knowledge to share with the Conference of INGOS and I invite you to participate with your suggestions both with your choice of working & transversal group and if you would be prepared to join a working group as an EN-RE member without necessarily travelling to Strasbourg for the meetings of the working groups in January, April, June and October every year.

Written communications with the working/transversal groups would need to be in French or English, the official languages of the Council of Europe. Other than the official meetings of the thematic committees and the plenary of the Conference of INGOS where there is simultaneous translation in English and French, all the other meetings are conducted in French since most of the INGO representatives live in or near Strasbourg to reduce expenses.

The INGOs in the COING have a double workload: On the one hand, within the Council of Europe they work to draft recommendations which, following adoption, are transmitted by the COING to the Committee of Ministers, the body of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the 47 member States, and, on the other, they work to incorporate these and other recommendations in the national laws of our own home countries.

Kindly pass on this message to all the NGOs with which you work so they can cooperate with EN-RE or other accredited INGOS of the Conference of INGOS which you can find by clicking on NGO Database. Incidently, the 4th December edition of the Newsroom mentions the COING's recommendation that EN-RE piloted and with a photo of our colleague Christophe Spreng.

If you want to see the Chairs and Vice-Chairs of each thematic committee, see the Newsroom article of 7th July and click on the elected candidates.

Please send me an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

with the title "Suggestions for INGO Conference"

Now click on New Roadmap for INGO Conference 2018-2021  to read Anna Rurka's letter