Francesco Marchi

(With thanks to Caffe' Europa for the translation)

My job was to act as the moderator. Tomorrow’s Europe gathered together four hundred people in the halls of the European Parliament in Brussels; they spoke more than twenty different languages and my task was to guide one group throughout the entire process; I was to ensure that ordinary European citizens would exchange opinions on difficult subjects such as the Union’s foreign policy and the global labour market, and to make sure they would agree on one or two questions to be posed within a plenary assembly to a group of experts in this field. In other words, I found myself moderating a working group formed by about twenty people coming from Italy, France, Belgium and Luxemburg. The participants’ professional experiences and political outlooks were so different that I expected the worst in terms of a productive debate. But then, having learnt to use the simultaneous translation, the participants instantly started to dialogue in a disciplined and constructive manner, emphasising the fact that languages are not such an insurmountable problem when one wishes to communicate. Explaining the rules under which the debate would take place and clarifying my role as a moderator turned out to play an important role in ensuring the success of the debate. This kind of experience in fact is based in the mediator’s independent attitude with his task to facilitate the debate without expressing his own opinion or in any manner orientating the discussion. My job in fact was to broaden the debate to all participants and to avoid the discussion being monopolised by any particularly active speaker.