History of the inter-network

On the basis of its social cohesion strategy, defined as thecapacity of society to ensure well being of all using co-responsibilityof public and privat actors, including citizens, the Council of Europe engaged since 2003 a process of political dialogue aiming to facilitate the expression of new forms of fight against poverty and social exclusion based on citizens initiatives and the dialogue with authorities.

Until then this dialogue was led between representative institutions within the Council of Europe (Parliament,Local and Regional Authorities Congresses, Ministers Comity, CDCS, etc)and the European networks of responsible economy initiatives, inparticular in the fields of ethical finance and responsible consumption including fair trade.

It led in the end of 2004 to the installation of the European dialogue platform on ethical and solidarity-based initiatives for combating poverty and social exclusion. It also led the networks to agree on the idea of IRIS, the european inter-network of ethical and responsible initiatives -formally founded in january 2007 - with the objective of (I)facilitating exchange and dialogue between various approaches of fight against poverty and social exclusion, (II) communicating with public authorities and (III) developing other complementarities in order to promote concepts and methodes carried out by its members.

Within this framework, a partnership was established with the European Commission (DG Emploiment and social affairs) to identify, implementand promote complementarities between various approaches of fight against poverty and social exclusion, in particular the conventional approaches of assistance (public policies or humanitarian aid NGOs) wecan find in the NAP / inclusion supported by the European Commission,and citizens' ethical and responsible initiatives (ethical finance and responsible consumption) that the Council of Europe supports in its platform.

This is why the inter-network's objective in 2007,cofinanced by the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the Autonomous Province of Trento, was to facilitate and capitalize the complementarities and the creation of synergies between the citizens'ethical and responsible initiatives and more specific approaches to fight poverty and social exclusion in order to integrate them in the follow-up processes of the NAP / inclusion and the MOC in general.