On 2 December, the European Movement held the final meeting of the “Unity through Mobility” project in Brussels.
The project set up a mentoring system between 12 EM National Councils and began in January 2010. It is funded by the “Europe for Citizens’ Programme” of the European Commission. All agree that this project has been very useful in developing the EMI network and has brought about some fresh ideas as well as some unexpected, but very positive, outcomes.
The 6 “mentor-mentoree” partnerships established for the project were the following: Belgium-Hungary; Denmark-Albania; Finland-Estonia; France-Slovenia, Germany-Italy, Ireland-Greece.
Throughout the year, the EMI and the participating countries actively worked together. The EMI organized a training session in April on communication techniques, web site strategies and the use of social media, and on ways to look for EU funding. Political meetings were also organized in Brussels. The Mentors shared their know-how with their partners and helped them to organize local events in their countries:

• EM Denmark and EM Albania organized an event on 14 November on the topic of human trafficking and on visa liberalization.

• EM Slovenia and EM France organized a conference and street event in Nova Goriza on 25 November: “Go Europe! How local authorities can help to educate youths as European citizens.”

• EM Greece and EM Ireland organized a conference in Athens on “The Social Consequences of the Financial Crisis”

• A conference was organized in Rome by EM Italy and EM Germany on how to Communicate the EU to organized Civil Society  – the German and Italian experience

• EM Belgium, together with EM Hungary and the Hungarian NGO “Europe House” organized a conference on the role of civil society in the EU Presidencies and the particular case of the Spanish-Belgian-Hungarian trio. This resulted in a “Trio Presidency Statement”.

• EM Estonia and EM Finland’s events are planned for December: a seminar will take place in Tallinn on current EU development aid questions (15/12) and EM Estonia’s board members and activists will visit EM Finland (21/12), and also attend an official briefing of the EU Council taking place in the Finnish Parliament in the presence of the Prime Minister.

Thanks to these events and to the other activities of the project, the Mentorees were able to build new membership strategies, make new political contacts and gain visibility.
At the final meeting on 2 December, the participants presented the events and explained how they had collaborated throughout the project. Workshops were also organized to discuss the particular experience of each group in the project and to draw conclusions. The resulting “tool kit” was presented the next day at the EMI Members’ Council and will serve as advice to EM National Councils who wish to work together in the future as the EMI encourages its members to develop horizontal cooperation schemes.
The EMI wishes to thank the participants in the project who gave their time to contribute to the development of the network and hopes to pursue this type of collaboration in the future.