“Season of Legality” is now over. When FLARE decided to take up the challenge to go for something unique, something unprecedented such as a European social campaign, our network knew well that it would have been all but a easy task. “Season of Legality” represented the very first concrete action taken by our network and today we can undoubtedly say it was a success, both politically and from an internal point of view.

From the political side, not a few and not little results have been achieved. When we first were hosted at the European Parliament in Strasbourg back in June 2008, Mr Jacques Barrot – back then Responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security – gave a speech in which he stressed the importance to begin a fight against organized crime in Europe in which to heavily involve civil societies. [...]

by Michele Curto, President of FLARE

From there, we wrote a declaration (Declaration 108/08) that presented three main requests: 1) to declare March 21 “European Day in Memory of Victims of Organized Crime”; 2) to push European and national institutions to work jointly with civil societies in the fight against organized crime; 3) to request the Commission and the Council of Europe to legislate in the matter of reuse for social purposes of property and goods confiscated to international criminal organizations. We handed the Declaration to the European Parliament to vote.

Unfortunately we managed to collect only about 250 signatures (whereas a declaration needs approximately 400 to be approved). However, from our efforts in the European Parliament and in the Council of Europe a few remarkable results were achieved.

Firstly, Mr Gèrard Deprez, Chairman of the LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs), included into his “Motion for a resolution” on the progress made in the area of Freedom, Security and Justice, an urgent recommendation for «the adoption of a legislative instrument on the confiscation of financial assets and property of international criminal organisations and on their re-use for social purposes». This text was adopted by the EP on April 22, 2009.

Also, the Proposal for a EP Recommendation to the Council “On the development of an EU criminal justice area” by Mrs Maria Grazia Pagano asked to «adopt without delay measures to act as prime mover and supporter of civil society and institutions in their efforts to combat mafias and take action with a view to the adoption of a legislative instrument on confiscation of the financial assets and property of international criminal organisations and on their re-use for social purposes».

This proposal has been approved by the EP with 429 favourable votes out of 485 voters on May 7th, 2009. These signals are not little at all. We have managed to “shake” European institutions from inside and to draw their attention to what we find a priority for all European citizens.

As for the sake of the network, “Season of Legality” gave all members the opportunity to get a hold of the network itself, to understand better the network’s inner dynamics and to feel themselves belonging to a family. We joined all events of the campaign – excepted a few – and what I have seen was motivated members who gave their best to do their part in the campaign. From the smaller ones to the bigger and stronger NGOs they all did their part.

I would like to mention a few examples, such as our Bulgarian members who had us meet Ognyan Stefanov; the conference in Nis, Serbia, focused on the matter of social reuse; the visit of Luigi Ciotti at the Novaya Gazeta in Moscow; the funeral of Ester Ada we attended on the island of Lampedusa, supposingly “guilty” of being an illegal migrant from Nigeria to Italy; our members from Lebanon, activists in a country of “splendid” contradictions who had us meet Jezal Khoury, and many others.

You all would realise that, in order to achieve our objectives, our network also need to find innovative ways to communicate our activities. One of these is Confiscopolis. We have come up with a board game in which players have to confiscate buildings and properties instead of buying houses and factories – the latter being a very popular worldwide board game.

We brought Confiscopolis with us to many events of “Season of Legality” campaign, a very catchy spot (commercial) is available on our website and the online version of the game is soon to be launched. I would therefore ask you to “stay tuned” on this.

I would like to end by mentioning the work FLARE has been doing with what we call “victims of organized crime”. It’s been months now that we try to give voice to those people whose shouts have never been heard. We want to return dignity to them, or at least a bit of it. In this months we have had the fortune to meet Ilya Politkovski, IsokeAikpitanyi, Bruce Cerew, Sengül Balikçi, Michael Beketov, Ognyan Stefanov and Jezal Khoury.

There is a specific department in FLARE that is committed to have these friends’ status recognised internationally. It’s been a honour and a great effort to take part in the campaign “Season of Legality”. We have built the foundations, now we need to start with the first floor.

Michele Curto
President of FLARE