The Political Advisory Committee (PAC) is a small group of leading politicians that acts as the steering group of the CIVITAS initiative and network of cities. Its members participate in a personal capacity.
PAC members are mainly responsible for:

  1. Delivering policy recommendations to the European Commission (EC)’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE);
  2. Facilitating cooperation between the EC and the CIVITAS city network, and CIVINET national and regional networks;
  3. Choosing the host city and providing input for the annual CIVITAS Forum Conference;
  4. Taking part in key CIVITAS activities, including study tours, peer reviews, and thematic working groups;
  5. Ensuring and strengthening the involvement of politicians from CIVITAS cities in the initiative’s activities.

PAC members meet three times a year, including at the yearly CIVITAS Forum Conference. The current PAC was selected in July 2015 and will serve until the election of the new one.

Call open for members to join new PAC

Elected politicians from any CIVITAS Forum Network city are invited to apply to become members of the new PAC.  Interested candidates should send an expression of interest (letter of intent) to pac@civitas.eu.

In this they should indicate their name, city, what qualifies them for the role, experience, reasons for applying, and their vision for their two years as a PAC member. This should be a maximum of 500 words.

The European Commission will appoint 16 PAC members (with the PAC Secretariat’s support) based on general criteria of representativeness, including type of city and geographical position, CIVITAS experience, and gender.

Candidates’ individual records of promoting policies in line with CIVITAS’s goals also plays a key role in selection.

Candidates apply in their personal capacity (i.e. not as formally nominated representatives of their local administrations). Politicians of non-CIVITAS cities may also apply, but should seriously consider that their city apply to join the network. The PAC has no formal “power of representation”.

The application deadline is 25 May 2018. The selection process will take place in June, with all applicants receiving a response on 30 June 2018. The first meeting will be at the CIVITAS Forum in Umeå, Sweden, between 19-21 September 2018.

To see the Terms of Reference for the PAC, click here.

For more information, click here.

Source: CIVITAS