VANESSA MATZ: 'EXPLAINING EUROPE'S RELEVANCE IN EVERYDAY LIFE'.

"To make voters in my region aware that Europe is not a distant and abstract ivory castle but a reality that affects us all in our everyday lives". That is what is driving Vanessa Matz to stand in the European elections this year.

A law graduate, Vanessa Matz is alderman for the environment, urban planning and municipal information in Aywaille, a town of 11,000 inhabitants in the eastern Belgian province of Liege. A married mother of three children, she is standing on the list of the Centre Democrate Humaniste (CDH) party, the opposition former Christian Socialists. She is fourth on the list of nine candidates for the CDH, which held just one seat in the outgoing European Parliament, that of Michel Hansenne, former Director of the International Labour Bureau.

Though standing for the first time in a European election, this is not Vanessa Matzs first poll in spite of her mere 30 years of age: a national parliamentary candidate in 1995 and 2003, she also stood in municipal elections in 1996 and 2001 and the regional election in 1999. She has also been parliamentary assistant for three years to the partys current President, Joelle Millequet.

She is a champion of local involvement (she is a member of several non-profit organisations in the region), and she has taken up the challenge of explaining what Europe can offer its citizens: "this Europe that now intervenes in almost 70% of our national legislation". Though she admits that Europe sometimes disappoints, particularly with regard to foreign affairs (she cites the divisions over the war in Iraq, for instance) and in dealing with scandals, she believes her fellow citizens deserve to be correctly informed of what is at stake in European politics and economics, and to be given the chance to actively debate and influence European decisions that affect their daily lives.

For Vanessa, the ideal is "neither a Europe of markets nor an unbridled liberal Europe driven only by the forces of capital", but a Europe "with genuine social, environmental, fiscal and security policies". She believes qualified majority should become the rule to push forward social governance, particularly regarding social security, gender equality and the fight against social exclusion.

Campaigning round the clock, Vanessa is targeting the region's markets in Verviers, Fleron, Liege, Aubel, Spa, and Ouffet, and she is visiting meeting halls and - her preferred hunting ground - schools and youth...