On Friday May 11th 2012, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia Nikola Poposki started his visit in Belgium by delivering an address at a debate at the Press Club Brussels Europe on the topic of EU enlargement from Macedonia's perspective

    

120 mostly young people participated in the debate on former Yugoslavia organised by Café Babel at the Press Club Brussels Europe on April 24th.

The  debate was led by Mana Livardjani from Café Babel  and animated by Ksenija Milenkovic, Deputy Head of the Mission of the Republic of Serbia to the European Union, who underlined that the changes that have taken place in her country have permitted the emergence of a lawful state, an organised civil society, and an active political scene; basically a democracy. Recently advanced by fits and starts, differences and divergences, it is a hard-won reality. Another member of the panel was Ines Sabalic, a Croatian journalist working in Brussels. She spoke of the 22^nd January referendum in Croatia on EU membership. With 66% voting “Yes,” Croatians chose membership, she said, but taking place at the height of rising populism in Europe, many expressed skepticism towards Europe, with Marine LePen calling for the Croatian people to oppose the “Hydra of Brussels.”

In the the question and answer session the public, amongst whom were many Eastern European expats, qualified the evening with many questions among which the fear of the effect of the Balkans changing from a supranational state into a Brussels “Eugoslavia”. But the difference, was the answer, is that while the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was imposed on its people, the European Union was decided together by its member states.

Forty ambassadors and as many embassy and delegation press attaches, from Angola to Zimbabwe, animated last night’s first Diplomatic Spring Reception organised by the Press Club Brussels Europe.

The occasion of the event was the launch of the Embassy Press Officers Club at the PCBE in Rue Froissart 95. The diplomatic corps will from now on participate to events organised by the PCBE and will be organising their own events for the  international and Belgian press in Brussels.

The  secretary general of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Pierre Vimont, who had been invited to speak as guest of honour to the Embassy Spring Reception, was unable to attend due to an urgent meeting in Paris with Lady Ashton to put an end to violent confrontation in Syria.

A brief address by Viktor Sidabras, the press officer of the US Mission to the US, who welcomed the guests, opened the eventat the PCBE and everybody was clearly delighted to meet colleagues of the diplomatic corps from all five continents, to exchange ideas and projects with them and to meet some of the journalists members of the club who also attended.

The special space reserved to the embassy press officers club in the PCBE website will detail the special events they will be organising.

On March 7^th,  a delegation of representatives from the Ukrainian press  , accompanied by the member of the Ukrainian Parliament R.H. Stepan Kurpil,  head of the sub-committee for European Integration, visited the Brussels Europe Press Club to discuss possible future collaboration.

The group was accompanied by Iryna Skliar, press and information attaché at the Mission of the Ukraine to the European Union.

M. Oleg Igorevich Nalyvayko, director general of the “Ukrainian Independent Information and News Agency - Unian”, spoke of the interest the Ukrainian press has for collaboration with the Press Club in order to have a forum in the capital of Europe for exchanging opinions and ideas. The Brussels-based correspondent from the Unian News Agenci, Sergiy Voropayev, who for the last few years has reported European Union news for the Ukrainian public, and his colleague Andrii Lavreniuk, correspondent in Brussels of the “National News Agency of Ukraine Ukrinform”,  confirmed their willingness to continue being a point of contact between media in Ukraine and in Europe.