A first session addressing the political recommendations which have been or are being formulated in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on responsible consumption, fair trade and ethical and solidarity finance, as well as the recommendations and policies conducted at the national level to support ethical and solidarity-based initiatives, in order to debate the new prospects provided by these recommendations and the opportunities for exploiting them, at the national, regional and local levels.

The following two sessions dealt with concepts geared to pinpointing possibilities for complementarity between the different approaches to combating poverty and exclusion which have already been the subject of discussions and proposals, the ultimate aim being to run several pilot experiments:
• First of all, at local and regional level, drawing on the idea of responsible towns and territories for social inclusion;
• Secondly, projects geared to concluding a multipartite social contract for social inclusions, with an eye to providing concerted support to individuals and groups in difficulty, in a manner which is more effective and dignified than that on offer from conventional assistance agencies and services.

The last session discussed the role of the media in disseminating these new approaches and alerting the general public to the issues.