On October 3^rd the Council of the EU adopted Conclusions on the role of voluntary activities in social policy. Its preparation by the Polish Presidency was recommended and supported by the IPA.

Council conclusion is a document which indicates the most important current facts and desirable courses of the EU’s policy concerning the topic of the conclusion. Conclusions on the voluntary service emphasize its significance in various realms of life, specify obstacles that volunteer work comes across in Europe and suggest solutions how to support it. They contain analyses of the current situation and recommendations for the institutions of the EU and its Member States. The impulse for adopting Conclusions came from the ongoing European Year of Voluntary Activities Promoting Active Citizenship 2011.

IPA is very content that this document has been released. We recommended undertaking the process of preparing the Conclusions in our expertise for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “enacting this kind of document has always a good impact on the image of a country that has current leadership in the EU and credits for important and specific accomplishments of the Presidency.” According to IPA, the fact that Poland brought up the topic of volunteering by preparing the Conclusions, can lead to the result in which Poland will be seen as a country that is intent on EU’s future and development and not only its own business. Poland can also directly benefit from it. Voluntary service plays a great role in co-creating a lot of EU’s policies and is conducive to solving challenges that Poland and EU currently have to deal with (as our experts explained in the article „How to help altruistic aid?").

We are happy that the Conclusions contain a lot of expressions that we pointed out as important in the context of european dimension of voluntary service both in the expertise and during the work of the group preparing the preliminary version of the document. IPA’s expert was regularly attending this group’s meetings. Successive versions of the Conclusions were also consulted with the IPA. In June, we were discussing the text among experts in Brussels, during a meeting of non-governmental organizations active in the civil society sphere in the European Commission. We also talked about IPA’s recommendations on the conference in Warsaw on the topic of Polish Presidency and during a conference in Bydgoszcz regarding voluntary service.

How did the Conclusions come into being? Read the IPA’s comments.

The comments describe what the Conclusions consist of and what the current situation concerning voluntary service in the EU looks like.

More information regarding IPA’s research on voluntary service.

Publications on voluntary service: