AFTERNOON SESSION AT THE EP: MR. PATRIZIO PAOLETTI

Mr. Patrizio Paoletti – President of Fondazione L’Albero della Vita, speaker at the European Parliament in the Afternoon session of the Conference ‘Left Behind’.

Read the translation of Mr. Paoletti’s speech:

‘After many hours of sharing today I would like to invite you to think about five key words for this Third millennium: they are ‘role‘, ‘responsibility‘, ‘priority‘, ‘delegation‘ and ‘control‘.

Theese are key words for the life of every man and woman, they are also keywords for all Organizations, even more if promoted by citizens, therefore I suppose these words are key also for the European Union.

Roles. The European Union’s role is to be able to set a clear, simple, comprehensible, interpretable and realizable orientation. I would like to create a link between this word, ‘role’, – which is well represented by MEPs’ every-day commitment – and the first of five priorities that we – Fondazione L’Albero della Vita and Fondazione Patrizio Paoletti and a lot of other Organizations – hope will be included in the EU 2020 Agenda. The mentioned priority is the safeguard of employment in the whole EU. Only safeguarding, presenting and promoting again jobs opportunities in the EU it will be possible to control migration flows.

Second, ‘responsibilities’. In Italian, the meaning of ‘responsibility’ is ‘capacity to answer’. What we expect from the EU is to give answers, simply to give answers. The first and most important answer is to educate on development cooperation. This is a crucial point. There’s no sustainable development without development education, without stimulating everyone’s relational skills to manifest, every person’s ability of integrating with new and different ideas thereby turning them into a new operational ability.

Third, what can we expect from the European Parliament but an Agenda made of priorities? Priority means also to be able to tell the difference between what is central from what is marginal, something that could be done later and could be delegated to someone else. Priority is for sure to state the right of children, to affirm the protection of children’s rights, which is definitely not avoidable.

Delegation. We are among those Organizations that are prepared and ready to be delegated to act on the field. We have been operating for more than 25 years, we have gone a long way and so have many other Organizations with also more years of experience. We can be delegated in building the kind of safe enviroments within the rights context and circumstances, necessary to encourage child growth and development. We should not forget that we all grew up thanks to favorable conditions like these and if we manage to express our thanks to life for this it means we are aware we have been lucky. Others cannot thank life because they were mistreated and not loved.

Last point: ‘control’. We ask the EU keeps control over its actions and makes sure that planned activities are implemented, are realized to the best of the ability of all stakeholder’s involved. Therefore we ask that the actions of every stakeholder be checked in reading the obtained results, the fruits produced. First of all, the EU has to keep high attention in ensuring to every child a family able to love him/her therby creating the necessary conditions to grow up healthy and pro-active towards the future. We believe in this fundamental right of children to grow up in a loving family enabling a positive look to the future, and we call the EU to keep control on this right, verifying that things are done.

Finally, I would like to thank everybody – institutional and non istitutional stakeholders – in particular VP Ms. Angelilli and all MEPs who are present here today, and who have highlighted this important issue and who have been committing themselves with such issue and in developing a new Europe. Last, I would like to thak L’Albero della Vita’s staff, who made our being here today possible.’