At the third and final workshop hosted by commissioner.brussels, the International Brusselers participating in the Brussels Voice 23 panel got ready for their day at Parliament. To prepare for the deliberation with regional MPs, they selected the strategic aims for mobility where they most want to draft recommendations. This meant some hard decisions, as not all the ideas and hopes developed so far could be selected.
After two weeks of creation and dreaming, our panel had developed around 100 possible objectives for mobility policy in Brussels – grouped around 26 strategic priorities in 5 topics. We will have just one day to develop solutions with MPs at the Brussels Parliament, so it was necessary to make some choices.
Participants worked in groups to select the strategic priorities which are most important to International Brusselers, but also in line with regional competencies and existing frameworks. Throughout the Brussels Voice 23 journey, we have encouraged our participants to be ambitious and creative – but also realistic. Focusing on issues where the Region can really act makes it more likely that policymakers can take their recommendations into account.
In Belgium’s complex constitutional set-up, it is not always easy to see clearly where policy decisions are made. Thankfully we had Bruno van Loveren of Brussels Mobility with us. He gave us a general picture in an interview, then stayed to answer questions from the group.
By the end of the session we had selected the 15 strategic priorities we will work on with MPs on 14 October. Every group had also selected the spokespeople who will present their ideas in the hemicycle to start our deliberations at the Brussels Parliament!
