EU-China High-Level People-to-People Dialogue (HPPD)
The EU and China have been closely cooperating in the last few years on education & training, culture, multilingualism and, from 2011, youth policy. At the fourteenth EU-China Summit held in Beijing on 14 February 2012, leaders of the two sides agreed to establish the EU-China High Level People-to-People Dialogue (HPPD).
The EU-China HPPD, the third pillar of EU-China relations, will complement the two existing pillars – the High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue and the High Level Strategic Dialogue. The HPPD will be the overarching mechanism, which will accommodate all EU-China joint initiatives in the field of people to people exchange.
On 18 April 2012 the EU and China held in Brussels the first round of the HPPD. On that occasion Commissioner Vassiliou and State Councillor Liu Yandong signed an HPPD Joint Declaration and endorsed a document with follow-up actions.
A number of follow-up actions have already been identified. China and the EU will expand the opportunities for mobility in education, and increase the number of exchanges between students and scholars, particularly in higher education. The two sides will work together to improve the mutual recognition of academic qualifications. To promote language-learning, China and the EU will jointly organise a major conference on multilingualism at the end of the year.
The two parties will support numerous activities under the 2012 EU-China Year of Intercultural Dialogue, a new milestone in EU-China cooperation. Its closing ceremony, which will take place in China towards the end of the year, will include a declaration on future cultural co-operation. Both sides will work together to enhance the circulation of their audiovisual works and artists.
For the youth, the two parties will increase support for exchanges and networking between their respective youth organisations, and strengthen web-based cooperation between the Chinese and EU portals specialised in youth issues.
