Partnerships Updates June 2020

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, we have worked to re-evaluate what can be done to continue peer-to-peer partnership activities given the global lockdown, and to implement revised activities wherever possible, since the in-person exchanges for our first five INTER PARES Partnerships had to be postponed or cancelled.

We are pleased to share with you a number of revised partnership initiatives we are implementing at the moment:

• Bhutan: we are envisaging cooperation with the Bhutan parliament gender caucus, local NGO BNEW and INTER PARES national consultants to design and implement a gender-impact legislative analysis tools and processes
• Panama: we are planning with the IRI, National Assembly and the IDEA country office the potential for a webinar exchange on HR management with the Spanish Congress and the Slovak National Council
• Malaysia: following up on an initial exchange of the Select Budget Committee with the German Bundestag in Berlin, in February, on financial oversight, we are planning a follow-up in this area, as well as a number of initial online exchanges on open parliament and citizen engagement
• Maldives: we are planning together with the  Inter-Parliamentary Union and Westminster Foundation the possibility to offer an online training on legislative drafting to Maldives People’s Majlis

Our aim is to roll out five to six partnerships every six months and to this effect, we started discussions with a new set of countries at the start of 2020. The pandemic delayed our process of setting up the partnerships, but nevertheless we continued setting up partnership objectives and priorities together with two partner parliaments out of six in the new round: Trinidad and Tobago, Malawi and Mauritania. Keeping in mind the uncertainty we still find ourselves in, we will circulate in the next month a streamlined, shortened version of the partnership priorities identified, to all EU Member State Parliaments.

We will announce the full list of new partnerships as soon as we identify together with the partner parliaments the needs and objectives of the partnerships.