European ISTR Regional Network
First European ISTR-EMES Conference
Under the headline ‘Concepts of the Third-Sector: The European Debate. Civil Society, Voluntary Organizations, Social and Solidarity-based Economy’ the first European EMES-ISTR conference took place in Paris from April 27 to 29, 2005. The site was the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM). The conference attracted over 250 researchers and practitioners from all parts of Europe and was a success, in terms of numbers of people attending, quality of debates and papers, and with respect to the overall climate.
The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers from all over Europe as well as elsewhere who work in this field and to offer space for open debate between different research streams, different disciplines and different national contexts. It succeeded in providing a forum for scholars and practitioners to exchange ideas about the present and future of civic Europe engagement and citizenship, voluntarism, association and mutuality, the social and solidarity-based economy and to discuss the complexity of operating in a territory between public and private.
The conference began with debates on some of the key issues facing the Third Sector in Europe today. These sessions included the topics:
- Voluntary Sector or Social Economy: Competing or Complementary Concepts?
- The Third Sector: Active Partner or Servant of the State and Market?
- Do Central and Eastern Europe Offer Different Prospects for the Third Sector?
In addition to these sessions there were seven thematic streams and in four session, participants from all over Europe presented their findings. The Streams included:
- Different Welfare Regimes and Traditions of the Third Sector in Europe
- Third Sector Organizations in Partnership and New Forms of Governance
- Building Civil Society and Social Capital
- Social Enterprises, the Social and Solidarity Based Economy
- Management, Organisational and Entrepreneurial Perspectives
- LStakeholders in the third Sector: Volunteering, Governing and Giving
- Building Europe and the Third Sector
On Friday, several European research networks introduced themselves and their work in seven parallel panel sessions. All of the papers are available at www.crida-fr.org.