ECRC Newsletter 10.0, Sept. 17, 2007 A quick reaction to the Conference that ended two days ago. The documentation including protocols, declarations, photos etc will soon follow. BRUSSELS CONFERENCE 2007 Most of us came home on Sunday filled up with information and new courage to act from a conference where 178 people from 32 nations discussed in four plenary sessions and nine workshops how to ame-liorate the situation in credit and debt not only in Europe but in the world. The present mortgage crisis coming from irresponsible lending motivated many of the participants to collaborate closer especially across the ocean. The statements in the final discussion as well as the consecutive meeting of the steering committee showed the broad consensus that the conference had been a success or as it is expressed in an e-mail which just reached us: « Bravo pour cette réunion de Bruxelles. J'ai vraiment le sentiment que la qualité des travaux et des productions s'améliore d'année en année. » The enormous amount of new contacts and the increased networking will be documented when we pub-lish the protocols and especially the results of our ongoing survey during the conference where people voted on about 25 questions concerning financial services, regulation, future prospects, the conference itself an ECRC. 97% voted that these conferences should go. All three sponsors told the audience that they are in favour of the continuation of this mutual dialogue. This time members of the EU-Commission, the EU Council and the EU Parliament as well as the Economic and Social Committee and the Council of Europe encouraged us to continue. Many new countries and organisations told us that they adhere to the principles and want to participate in the future process like Japan with is rather important delegation, who reported on an oncoming conference on responsible credit in Japan with expected 1200 delegates, Brazil, who are about to develop a financial services law where the ECRC principles are taken as a yardstick, Romania, South Africa, Poland, Czech Republic and many others. Our principles are now on the web in Spanish and Portuguese too. The discussion for its further development will be documented and lead to a renewed work on them. We were proud to hear that for example GE Money told the audi-ence that they will thoroughly take into account the ECRC principles while developing their own set of principles. The representative of the Council of Europe with its 47 member states took with him the idea of evaluating their own declaration in a conference two years from now where ECRC offered to assist. Many books and leaflets were exchanged. Our Thursday evening party showed that there is no mutual understanding without persons that are able to eat and enjoy things together like the music, the dancing and the self organised quiz with its funny questions. NEXT STEPS The conference had a lot of instant result which we document here in a telegram me style manner. The next international ECRC conference will with high probability be held in Amsterdam 2008 and connected to the Dutch national event. As decided in the plenary as well as in the steering committee we will seek the support from the EU Consumer Networking Programme. iff is mandated to do the for-mal application. With this conference ECRC event will annually alternate between the central event in Brussels and a national event that host the international conference. Applications for 2010 are expected from all ECRC members. The international ECRC conference 2009 will again be held at Albert Hall in Brussels on September 25/26, 2009. It will follow the structure of this year and establish the idea of a stakeholder conference further. Logo: The steering committee decided that all members should be asked to use the Logo of ECRC for their press released and statements with regard to responsible credit indicating that these statements are done “in connection with ECRC”. and publish a copy on our joint websites so that ECRC would be-come more known, ECRC members know more about each other and the political views which can still be divergent appear in public. The tree growing out of a sack of money could become a symbol espe-cially in a time where irresponsible lending has led to biggest crisis in the money markets since long. National Conferences in Germany (Hamburg), UK (Cardiff) are already fixed, others in the Nether-lands, France and Italy are planned. Besides those countries where established networks exist addi-tional conferences can be expected in Poland and on the Iberian peninsula. We want to extent our ties with Brazil, Japan and South Africa. Increasingly ECRC members will be able to attend conferences of other nations making them more international. Thus the globalization process in the financial services industry will be accompanied by a globalization of NGOs. Send us information on intended national conferences and meetings on responsible credit. The members of the steering committee are eager to contact all national conferences to establish links in order to enlarge the number of conferences which participate in the exchange of information, speakers and findings within ECRC and globally. Input to our Joint Websites: The Italian website has been turned into a Latin website where now also Spanish and Brazilian and Portuguese and possibly Romanian texts will appear. More information should be entered from all over the world. For this until October 15, 2007 our members will all get a password that expires at this date. Those who have made use of it and entered information on their home country in responsible financial services will automatically be send an unlimited password. We hope that by the end of the year the input which now is done from the UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium will spread all over the world. Translation: Besides our own translations done by Sebastien Clerc-Renaud (fr,it), Ricardo Ferraresso and Francesca Moscon (it) and myself (de) additional voluntary translation has been made for us by dedicated scientists like Elena Perez Carillo (Spain) (es), Sophie Vigneron (UK) (fr), Benoit Granger (France) (fr), Manuel Thedim and Claudio Lima Marquez (Brazil) (pt). We appreciate any other help where people just copy a text from the internet and translate it into the language of their country. It would also be a good exercise for students in this area. THANKS TO EVERYBODY The members of the steering committee and iff would like to thank all participants for their enormous dedication to the issues, preparation and the time as well as the money they sacrificed for this confer-ence. We like to thank our sponsors, Citi, Deutsche Bank and GE Money who not only gave us the fi-nancial basis but participated actively in many workshops and plenary sessions with their views and input. We hope we will meet you all again in the next conferences and we hope that you take up the initiative to organise national events. We would be glad to be able to support you with advice and con-nections. UR –September 2007 ID: 40244 Author(s): UR Publication date: 17/09/07     ECRC Newsletter 10.0, Sept. 17, 2007 A quick reaction to the Conference that ended two days ago. The documentation including protocols, declarations, photos etc will soon follow. (128163 Bytes)

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