The vice-President of the European Commission, Margot Wallström, will give a “town hall” style talk about the European Union at Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT ) on Thursday September 10.
The event which is part of the TalktoEU campaign is open to members of the public and is the only such engagement of the Commissioner in Ireland. It will take place in the Earl of Rosse lecture theatre at 8pm.
Commissioner Wallström is responsible for the Commission’s Institutional Relations and Communication portfolio, which aims to improve the way Europe is communicated to its citizens. From 1999 to 2004, she served as Environment Commissioner in the Prodi Commission.
Prior to her EU political career, she was active in Swedish politics from 1979 and has held a number of ministerial portfolios in Consumer, Women, and Youth matters; Culture; and Social Affairs.
In 1998 Ms Wallström retired from Swedish politics to become Executive Vice-President of Worldview Global Media – an NGO based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Commissioner Wallström has received honorary doctorates from Chalmers University, Sweden; Mälardalen University, Sweden; and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Other distinctions include being voted Commissioner of the Year by the European Voice newspaper in 2002. In 2004, together with Göran Färm, member of the European Parliament, she co-authored the book The People’s Europe or Why is it so hard to love the EU? The Commissioner also maintains an online blog in which she comments on recent political developments.
TalktoEU is a programme by the European Commission representation in Dublin, which aims to engage Irish citizens, and let them know what the EU does and can do for them. The campaign also aims to get the opinions and views of the Irish population and to inform people about how the EU works. To achieve these goals, the TalktoEU campaign is centred around a national series of listening events and public discussions, where people are invited to attend and ask questions about the EU, and find out what it has done for the area in which they live. Further information is available online at www.talktoeu.ie
