中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

The prime movers

A prime mover is the pivot of a workshop for its organisation and operation. It can be a person, a group of persons, an organisation or an institution.

Prime movers are those who take the initiative of a workshop and:

• show a keen interest in facilitating collective thinking on one of the Forum themes;
• subscribe to the Forum objectives and its spirit;
• see it as an opportunity for intra-European dialog, making relations with China stronger, and capitalising or deepening previous thoughts.

Their essential role consists in seeking the material, human and financial resources to hold their workshop.

The Four pillars

For the dialogue to become sustainable over time, it is necessary for the workshops to gain foothold in society and so far as possible to be built on strong partnerships amongst four categories of players called the four pillars :

The workshops are :

1. The first pillar : geographic, settles a workshop in the concrete reality of a society. This concerns the local authorities (regions, cities, regional organisations - regional pillar);
2. The second pillar, intellectual, calls for the best of the reflection on the workshop’s theme. This may be a university or a network of universities, a research center or network, a think tank.;
3. The third pillar, social networks, mobilizes stakeholders of the civil society who are interested in the workshop’s theme and by the dialogue between the Chinese and European societies. These networks either already exist or can be created gradually within the framework of the Forum;
4. The fourth pillar, mediator, has a dual function and therefore a dual nature. The first function is to enable or facilitate the dialogue within societies and between societies overcoming the barrier of language (which also exists between European countries) and the misunderstandings of intercultural dialogue. This will usually be academic institutions of foreign languages or comparative studies. The second function is to share with the rest of society the reflections and discussions carried in workshops. This will usually be magazines, newspapers, television networks, websites and blogs..

Every workshop set up is fundamentally autonomous and benefits in all its actions from the Forum label and logo, expressly provided that it complies with the Constituent Charter and commits to identifying the above four partners in both Europe and China.

The participants

Chinese and European, they represent the diversity of their society. To know more on how to participate to the Third Biennial meeting of the Forum.