Many of you have asked me informations about the activities’ commission and the list of activities presented in Strasbourg last year.
The bad news first : even in trying hard, that commission could not be formed due to a lack of disponibility of members. But also because everybody is waiting now for the concrete WF- proposals of restructuration which will be presented in Paris so that non-coordinated activities would have wasted energy and money.
But I am glad to send you hereby a reviewed “dream-list”. Rob Jonquière offered to calculate the approximative costs of some of these activities in order to give us an idea about the financial and administrational needs. Up to you, up to the new representatives of the new common structures to choose the most appropriate ones.

Since 2006 I have been proposing a not exhaustive list of possible low-cost and few personal-intensive activites. This list has been introduced at the
RtD-Europe meeting in Strasbourg in October 2007,
reviewed and completed in August/September 2008 :

• to create a EF “activities’ commission” as well as a “constitution commission” with special regional tasks (see now re-structuration project of WF)

• to create a constitution with at least a president, a vice-president and a professional treasurer, as required in any society, with double signature in financial transactions

• to put together 5-7 representatives of different European countries (one of each) in the European board, cf the constitution act, 1993 with 13 participants from 7 countries (NL, Fr, CH, GB, Be, De, Scotl.)

• to professionalize the board by introducing responsibilities per ressort (ex.: EXIT Dt.Schweiz) and to professionalize as well the administration ( a specific EF-office with specific EF-bank-accounts, separately for normal and special contributions )

• to elaborate criteria of duties and responsible behaviour concerning any kind of advice and aid in euthanasia and assisted suicide

Thanks to the generous gift of the German society, DGHS, of € 3000,– aimed at electronic communication tasks, and hopefully further donations by other European societies, we have been able to create our RtD-E-newsletter and to open our own EF- website where every member society can communicate with the others and have a permanent dialogue.
As soon as we have a skilled webmaster, we can

• reach a broader public inside and outside the RtDS-Europe
• send our newsletters also outside of our circle (collect addresses for listing) still done by NVVE
• show that the RtDS-Europe represents a “community of same interests”
• conduct survey polls on concrete issues
• communicate the most urgent demands/the basic requests of our movement
• present publicly EF’s resolutions, statements and declarations
• produce lists of every European member society’s specific needs/requests to be addressed to the governments/ministers of the country concerned
• develop a list of terms and use the same language inside the EF-societies when addressing the authorities
• organize internet-petitions on a national and European level
• flood national governments with our member’s e-mails (text-models beeing distributed) for a special purpose
• entertain lobbying activities in the European Commissions / EP / EMRK-ECHR
• get established and recognized as a NPO / NGO
• produce an annual report about the results of the discussions with the national governments – and/or the lack of them
• invite rapidly to press conferences (f.ex. in Strasbourg and/or Bruxelles) to introduce and to comment these reports publicly
• make us visible at every level, motivate our members to participate actively, to feel concerned
• be more attractive for the younger generation in giving a more dynamic image of ourselves
• make our movement so attractive that it is “trendy” to join us
• organise fund-raising for special activities

All these activities naturally in collaboration with the local/national societies concerned.

With these changes and new structures, we will be able to work “from above to below” as well as “from below to above”, that means :

• initiate actions of letter- and mail-writing to the Ministers of Justice of each country concerned asking them to admit the living wills without any restriction and without delay now

• introduce in a public act boxes with letters of all our European member societies, asking the European Parliament’s Social Health and Family Affairs Commitee for the right to die in dignity and the freedom of choices in end-of-life-decisions, in the presence of invited mass media representatives

• insist on the training of all medical doctors and students in medecine, psychology and sociology concerning all kinds of end of-life-decisions, including euthanasia and assisted suicide

• try to influence the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Human Right’s Court by law cases and lobbying,

• simultaneously practice the “learning by doing” on a national level, creating facts and experiences and a wide-spread acceptation of self-determination in end of life decisions, included the practice of assisted dying

• organize conferences, debates and panel-discussions with friends and opposants, film-shows with discussions, exchange groups of local experiences, anniversary celebrations of events, protest marches in front of government buildings and/or European institutions …

• spread around, inside and outside of our societies, constant information by all means and on all levels about these events, in order to give the opportunity to any member and sympathizer to assist and to support them

• show to younger people that it is “in” to struggle for the Human Rights in End of life decisions

• offer special financial arrangements to sponsors, special membership prices and good visibility during our events (in separating between normal voting members and – non voting – sponsors)

• print stickers and posters in all European languages with the addresses of all our member-societies, the European logo and the sponsor’s names, to be shown in presentations, press conferences and other public events with one central slogan, f.ex. “Freedom of choice in end-of-life decisions”, or “Yes please – no thank you”, a.s.f.

• join bank account information to the printed and the e-mail-form of our newsletters and other communications

Experience shows that we must make more publicity in order to reach our aims, but avoid any senseless provocation which close doors instead of opening them. What we need, finally, are appropriate laws in every country corresponding to it’s population’s demand, and thus stop the inhuman exodus of terminally ill people to Switzerland, the only European country which – still – accepts helping everybody.

These proposals are meant to help reaching the goal. They are the result of many long discussions and exchange of ideas with members of different European societies. I am specially grateful to Jacqueline Jencquel/ADMD France, Jérôme Sobel/EXIT ADMD Suisse romande, Hans Wehrli/EXIT Deutsche Schweiz and to Kurt Schobert/DGHS whose precious advice and moral support during my membership in the board and presidence of the RtD-E have been extremely helpful to me.
I would be very happy to see one or the other of these ideas be realized in the new structure.

Elke Baezner Geneva, 06/09/2008