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The European People's Party local dialogues are a central part of the grassroots engagement for the 2019 European elections, an initiative to be launched in Sofia, Bulgaria on 9 March 2018.
As EU leaders gather today (17 March) for yet another summit, trying to fix the migrant crisis, successive elections in member countries have dwarfed the largest political force in the EU following the 2014 European elections.
The European Peoples’ Party, who is the largest in the European Parliament with 251 MEPs out of the total of 751, is now the third force, by the number of its heads of state and government sitting at the summits. The most influential leader of the EPP is without any doubt the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Socialists and Democrats, who have 190 MEPs, are now the number one force at summits.
But perhaps more surprisingly, the liberals, who have only 70 MEPs in the European Parliament and are the fourth largest political group there, are now the second largest force at EU summits.
Foster care is an alternative response to juvenile offending, but only rarely used as part of juvenile justice systems in the EU.
Although Germany and Sweden are not front-line countries exposed to immigration, they were among those receiving the largest number of asylum seekers in 2014.
After the Lampedusa tragedy, several EU leaders called for development aid to be targeted toward countries, mostly in Africa, which are a major source of illegal immigration.
