Room to Bloom sostiene 100 giovani artiste femministe. È un programma di formazione e di apprendimento tra pari. Finanzia 15 produzioni artistiche che andranno in scena in Biennali internazionali (Palermo, Kiev, Varsavia). Le artiste sostenute si impegneranno nella costruzione di narrazioni artistiche femministe e postcoloniali dell’Europa.
L’obiettivo è quello di creare una rete di artiste che creino narrazioni artistiche femministe e postcoloniali transnazionali dell’Europa. Il progetto si propone di riportare la periferia al centro della Narrativa Culturale Europea.
Associando persone che – troppo spesso – occupano un posto periferico nel mondo dell’arte e luoghi considerati geograficamente periferici (Sicilia, Ucraina, Polonia, Grecia), il progetto mira a costruire un discorso sulla Cultura Europea che si costruisce pienamente sull’esperienza e la conoscenza della periferia e a riportarla al centro.
Il partenariato del progetto coinvolge istituzioni artistiche e partner provenienti da Francia (Alternatives Européennes), Svezia (Musei delle Culture del Mondo, Göteborg), Italia (Alternative Europee IT) e Germania/Grecia (AthenSyn). Include partner informali dall’Ucraina, dalla Polonia e da altri paesi.
OBIETTIVI
- Formare, assistere e sostenere 100 giovani promettenti artisti e creare opportunità professionali.
- Creare una rete di artiste femministe e di artisti immigrati, composta da artisti e professionisti dell’arte più affermati e più giovani.
- Formulare proposte per la gestione di pratiche artistiche femministe post-coloniali
- Creare narrazioni femministe e post-coloniali per un’Europa Transnazionale, che si esprime attraverso le produzioni finali di 15 giovani artisti per giovani Biennali innovative.
In particolare il progetto Room to Bloom:
- Organizza un forum regionale per artisti (ArtGora 2021) a Kiev, che si propone di gettare le basi per un’ulteriore riflessione e collaborazione di circa 40 artisti. Il forum produrrà un manifesto, che fornirà la linea rossa per lo sviluppo di un Anti-Manuale per la pratica artistica femminista postcoloniale.
- Organizza due corsi di formazione sull’Eco-Femminismo (Grecia) e sul Femminismo Postcoloniale (Grande Parigi), con l’obiettivo di sviluppare le capacità dei giovani artisti. Lo sviluppo di un manuale di formazione condivisibile accompagnerà il processo. (30 artisti ciascuno)
- Crea una rete transnazionale europea di artiste affermate femministe e post-coloniali, che possa fungere da gruppo di supporto e da risorsa per i membri diretti della rete, e non solo per un pubblico più ampio di istituzioni artistiche e manager culturali.
- Sostiene gli artisti emergenti nella produzione di opere d’arte da esibire e mostrare in eventi visibili a livello internazionale.
- Facilita l’accesso alle donne e agli artisti postcoloniali, la cui pratica sarà debitamente documentata durante il processo al fine di fornire un indice, un database di progetti artistici e pratiche artistiche rilevanti.
- Contribuisce a sviluppare la consapevolezza delle sfide delle pratiche artistiche femministe postcoloniali tra manager e operatori culturali, istituzioni e finanziatori.
- Contribuisce a migliorare e sviluppare la pratica della gestione postcoloniale femminista delle istituzioni dei partner stessi.
- Rafforza la fiorente collaborazione tra le Biennali geograficamente periferiche.
SCARICA LA PRESENTAZIONE
Countries Involved
Francia, Svezia, Italia, Germania, Grecia, Ucraina, Polonia e oltre.
Duration of Project
2020 - 2022
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/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFAQs on basic income
Mar 9, 2012 / Citizens rights
Read moreFAQ sur le revenu de base
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAAA: “Act-up Agora Agency”
Mar 13, 2012
Read moreOpen Access Now
Read moreSHAREs – Informing Transnational Action
Read morePas de place pour la discrimination dans notre démocratie européenne: Condamnez le site Internet de Geert Wilders!
Mar 15, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDiscrimination has no place in our European democracy: condemn the website of Geert Wilders
/ Network News
Read morePeople Power Participation: evaluation
Mar 27, 2012 / Network News
Read moreCerchiamo un Head of campaigning
Apr 4, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWe are hiring a Head of campaigning
/ Network News
Read moreDétenus en perdition
Apr 8, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLaunching a European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism
Apr 12, 2012 / Network News
Read moreCentri di detenzione per migranti: trattamenti inumani e degradanti
Apr 18, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival: London’s calling for volunteers!
Apr 19, 2012 / Network News
Read moreAppel à bénévoles pour le Festival Transeuropa!
Apr 20, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDécouvrez le programme du Festival à Paris!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIl Transeuropa Festival è in arrivo a Bologna. Ecco come partecipare!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIl Transeuropa Festival è in arrivo a Bologna. Ecco come partecipare!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAl via la Campagna “LasciateCIEntrare”
Apr 24, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreProchaines étapes après le forum de Rome
Apr 25, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNext steps after the Rome forum
/ Network News
Read moreBetween Translation and Action – New forms of political mobilisation
May 9, 2012 / Transnational Activism
Read moreEntre traduction et action – les nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTra Traduzione e Azione – Nuove forme di mobilitazione politica
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAs we move: migration, borders and social change
/ Citizens rights
Read moreEn mouvement : migration, frontières et changement social
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMentre ci muoviamo: migrazione, mobilitazione e cambiamento sociale
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreQuizz à la fête de l’Europe: toutes les réponses ici!
May 10, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLaunch of the first European Citizens Initiative on Media Pluralism
May 20, 2012 / Network News
Read moreIn piazza con La meglio gioventù
May 21, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLa Marche Transnationale
May 23, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe Transnational Walk
/ Network News
Read moreJoin Transeuropa Festival! Become a Volunteer!
/ Network News
Read moreFestival Transeuropa, le compte à rebours commence
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival, the countdown starts
/ Network News
Read moreUne avancée significative vers la démocratie du 21e siècle en Europe : soutenez les listes transnationales !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreA significant step towards 21st century democracy in Europe: support transnational lists!
/ Network News
Read moreOpen Access Now! Campagne pour laccès de la société civile et des journalistes aux centres de détention de migrants en Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreOpen Access Now! Campaign for access of civil society and journalists to detention centres in Europe
/ Network News
Read moreConvocazione: verso la campagna europea per il reddito
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow big data can help us better understand the civic economy
Jun 16, 2012 / Network News
Read moreHow Big Brother can teach us how (not) to live together
/ Network News
Read moreDole Animators
/ Network News
Read moreSeminario tematico “Immigrazione, Asilo, Cittadinanza” a conclusione del progetto “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa”
/ Network News
Read moreMigrant Rights across Europe
/ Network News
Read moreESCAPES Conference “Transits, barriers, freedoms: seeking refuge in the Mediterranean and in Europe”
/ Network News
Read moreThe limits of EU policies on migration and the defence of migrants’ rights in Greece
/ Network News
Read moreInternational Conference “Rethinking EU Immigration: legal developments, management and practices”
/ Network News
Read moreEuropean Citizens’ Initiative public hearing
/ Network News
Read moreFollow us Live this morning from Brussels!
/ Network News
Read moreSeguiteci in diretta stamattina da Bruxelles!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA gets the Paolo Giuntella Freedom of Information Award 2012
/ Network News
Read moreThe Riace Model or Migration as a Value for a Truly Global Citizenship
/ Network News
Read moreLe modèle de Riace, ou la migration comme valeur d’une citoyenneté véritablement globale.
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMigrant Camps in Europe: Open the doors! We have the right to know!
Jun 18, 2012 / Network News
Read moreThe publication RE: Think European Democracy – Democratic Engagement and Advocacy Capacities at European Level is now online
Jun 19, 2012 / Network News
Read moreAnother road for Europe? Maybe
Jun 30, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFAQ sur le revenu de base
Jul 4, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom the democratic deficit to a democratic default?
Jul 8, 2012 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreDu déficit démocratique vers un défaut démocratique?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCome si scrive crisi
Jul 13, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreComment épelle-t-on le mot crise ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow do you spell crisis?
/ Network News
Read moreLGBT rights: should legislation or people’s attitudes change first?
Jul 24, 2012 / Network News
Read moreDroits des personnes LGBT : Le changement doit-il venir dabord de la législation ou des mentalités?
/ Non categorizzato
Read morePersonne ne s’attend à…
Jul 31, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNobody Expects…
/ Network News
Read moreNobody Expects… Imagining Transnational Mobilization
Aug 3, 2012 / Network News
Read moreNobody Expects… Imaginer la mobilisation transnationale
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreNo control, no borders (deuxième partie)
Aug 6, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNo control, no borders (première partie)
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCamps détrangers en Europe : un accès largement entravé
Aug 8, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope : Quelles alternatives aux mesures daustérité ?
Aug 13, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTra Traduzione e Azione Nuove forme di mobilitazione politica
Aug 24, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEntre traduction et action les nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreBetween Translation and Action – New forms of political mobilisation
/ Network News
Read moreTranseuropa Festival : A transnational mobilisation
Sep 9, 2012 / Network News
Read moreFinal consultation on new EA constitution
Sep 11, 2012 / Network News
Read moreUltima consultazione su nuova Costituzione di EA
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreGlobal Health, Global Security
Sep 12, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDal 15 al 21 ottobre… una settimana per il reddito garantito
Oct 18, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCall for applications: Communication Expert
Oct 25, 2012 / Network News
Read moreReddito Minimo Garantito
Oct 26, 2012
Read moreInstitutional Racism and Ethnic profiling in Italy
Nov 7, 2012 / Network News
Read moreForum Citoyen: Quel futur pour leau et les biens communs en Europe ?
Nov 13, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreMedia Pluralism in Bulgaria
Nov 15, 2012 / Network News
Read morePluralisme des médias en Bulgarie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIl Reddito minimo garantito: una questione di uguaglianza
Nov 19, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSvolta della campagna LasciateCIEntrare Open Access Now: Mai più CIE
Nov 20, 2012 / Non categorizzato
Read moreA Citizens pact for European Democracy is launched
Dec 20, 2012 / Network News
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2012
Dec 26, 2012
Read moreCall for Expression of Interest: Integrated Communication Agency
Jan 9, 2013 / Network News
Read moreVOCI, IMMAGINI E TESTIMONIANZE DAI CENTRI DI IDENTIFICAZIONE ED ESPULSIONE
Feb 4, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreConferenza stampa: 50.000 firme per il Reddito Minimo Garantito
Feb 8, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDebating the commons in post-socialist Bulgaria
Feb 12, 2013 / Network News
Read moreDon’t Forget Space. Chinese contemporary art at Transeuropa Festival 2012
/ Network News
Read moreN’oubliez pas l’espace. L’art contemporain chinois au festival Transeuropa 2012
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens²: Voices for a Diverse Europe: Discover New Transeuropa Video
/ Network News
Read moreDécouvrez la nouvelle vidéo de Transeuropa!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAppel à candidatures ! Rejoignez notre projet Chine-UE
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCall for application! Join our China-EU project
/ Network News
Read moreA democratic rupture for Europe – Call for a democratic assembly in Florence
/ Network News
Read moreUna rottura democratica per l’Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreUne rupture démocratique pour lEurope Appel à une assemblée démocratique à Florence
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreConsultation on new EA Constitution
/ Network News
Read moreConsultazione sulla nuova Costituzione di European Alternatives
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreConsultation sur la nouvelle constitution d’Alternatives Européennes
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFirst results – Transeuropa Festival 2012: Opening a common space for European alternatives
/ Network News
Read moreTranseuropa 2012, i primi risultati: uno spazio comune per alternative europee
/ Non categorizzato
Read morePremiers résultats Festival Transeuropa 2012: Ouvrir un espace commun pour des alternatives européennes
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAnother road for Europe
/ Network News
Read moreUn’altra strada per l’Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAl via la prima campagna europea per la libertà d’informazione
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLancement de la première Initiative Citoyenne Européenne sur le pluralisme des média
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Alternatives is recruiting Head of Administration and Finance
/ Network News
Read moreFrom the democratic deficit to a democratic default?
/ Network News
Read moreDu déficit démocratique vers un défaut démocratique?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAs we move: migration, borders and social change
/ Network News
Read moreVotez pour le logo du Pacte Citoyen!
Feb 18, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreVote for the Citizens Pact logo!
/ Network News
Read moreVota il tuo logo preferito per il Patto dei Cittadini
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreNobody wants to watch. Struggles for the cultural sector in Poland
Feb 19, 2013 / Network News
Read more« Personne ne veut voir ». Luttes pour le soutien au secteur culturel polonais
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreConcours de logo: conception du logo pour le Pacte citoyen pour la démocratie européenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLogo Contest: Design the logo for the Citizens Pact for European Democracy
/ Network News
Read moreConcorso: Crea il logo per il Citizens Pact per la Democrazia Europea
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLancio dell’Iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dei media
/ Non categorizzato
Read morePrevedibile la rivolta a Ponte Galeria
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreRethinking citizenship beyond the nation state. Interview to Engin Isin
Feb 26, 2013 / Network News
Read moreJoin us now! Become a member of European Alternatives
Read moreBOUILLABAISSE TO BULLI – HOW TO CREATE MEMES FOR ACTIVITIES
/ Network News
Read moreA TALE OF TWELVE CITIES
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET INVOLVED?
/ Network News
Read moreBORDERS TO CROSS: Open call!
/ Network News
Read moreTransnational Dialogues across China and Europe: A Bilingual Journal
/ Network News
Read moreDialogues transnationaux de la Chine à l’Europe : journal bilingue
/ Non categorizzato
Read more« Stop à la précarité : agissez démocratiquement ! » : analyses et réflexions sur une semaine riche en échanges d’idées autour des thèmes de la précarité et la démocratie, à la fois dans et à l’extérieur de l’Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read more“Stop alla precarietà giovanile: agiamo democraticamente!”: Bilanci e riflessioni su una settimana ricca di scambi di idee attorno ai temi della precarietà e della democrazia fuori e dentro l’Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read more“Stop Precarity: Act Democratically!”: Analyses and Reflections on a Week Filled with Exchanges of Ideas Surrounding the Themes of Job Instability and Democracy Both Inside and Outside of Europe
/ Citizens rights / Transnational Activism
Read moreVerso una Carta dei Beni Comuni Europea
Feb 27, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreVers une Charte européennes des biens communs
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTowards a European Charter of the Commons
/ Network News
Read moreThe Citizens Pact has a logo
/ Network News
Read moreLe Pacte Citoyen a trouvé son logo !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLe Festival Transeuropa fait son grand retour en octobre 2013
Feb 28, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival is coming back in October 2013
/ Network News
Read moreMigrant Camps in Europe: Open the doors! We have the right to know!
Mar 3, 2013 / Network News
Read moreLe puzzle italien : austérité, corruption, et citoyen lambda
Mar 4, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe Italian puzzle – austerity, corruption, and the man next door
/ Network News
Read moreDoina Elena Craciun
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreDounia Mahfoufi
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreElections transnationales! Vote des membres dAlternatives Européennes pour leurs représentants
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTransnational elections! European Alternatives members vote for their representatives
/ Network News
Read moreElezioni transnazionali! I membri di Alternative Europee chiamati a votare i loro rappresentanti
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMarilli Mastrantoni
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLouise Métrich
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreProgrès en cours sur lharmonisation des droits LGBT en Europe
Mar 7, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreProgress towards harmonising LGBT Rights in Europe
/ Network News
Read moreAlternatives Européennes partenaire de la Queer Week à Paris
Mar 12, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCrimes contre lenvironnement
Mar 14, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEnvironmental crimes
/ Network News
Read moreQuest-ce quun crime contre lenvironnement ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat are environmental crimes?
/ Network News
Read moreLes membres d’Alternatives Européennes ont élu leurs représentants
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMembers of European Alternatives elected their representatives
/ Network News
Read moreI membri di Alternative Europee hanno eletto le loro rappresentanti
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEU Conference on Migrants’ Rights and Free Movement of Citizens
Mar 19, 2013 / Citizens rights
Read moreEuropean Alternatives recruits for Transeuropa Festival!
Mar 26, 2013 / Network News
Read moreAlternatives Européennes recrute pour le Festival Transeuropa !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCreating imaginary characters
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreCreate a fictional feed
/ Network News
Read moreEurope after Europe: the other Europe in waiting
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreL’Europe après l’Europe : l’autre Europe en attente
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMeet and two veg
/ Network News
Read moreSTITCH AND BITCH – MAKING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN IDEAS
/ Network News
Read moreBeyond the Battle of Alexandria
Apr 3, 2013 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreAprès la bataille d’Alexandrie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreOneEurope and European Alternatives are now partners!
Apr 5, 2013 / Network News
Read morePaths beyond precarity
Apr 8, 2013 / Network News
Read moreLa corruption et les forces de police
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCorruption and the police forces
/ Network News
Read moreMafia et finance : introduction
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMafia and finance: an introduction
/ Network News
Read moreStop à la précarité des jeunes : agissez démocratiquement !
Apr 9, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreStop Precarity: Act Democratically!
/ Network News
Read moreStop al precariato dei giovani, si all’azione democratica!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLes Roms à Rome : notre vote nest pas à vendre
Apr 11, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreRoma in Rome : Our Vote is not For Sale
/ Network News
Read moreI rom romani non vendono: votano
/ Non categorizzato
Read more3 Domande a Sandro mezzadra
Apr 15, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read more3 questions à Sandro Mezzadra
/ Non categorizzato
Read more3 Questions to Sandro Mezzadra
/ Network News
Read moreHongrie : Le gouvernement doit mettre fin aux réformes totalitaires de la constitution
Apr 17, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreHungary: Government Should Stop Its Totalitarian Changes to the Constitution
/ Network News
Read moreShares: Discussione col collettivo LIGNA
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreInterview avec Tania Bruguera
Apr 19, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreInterview with Tania Bruguera
/ Network News
Read moreTransférabilité du mariage et de lunion civile en Europe.
Apr 23, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSame sex and cohabitation rights
/ Network News
Read moreIt gets better – Stories from Europe
Apr 26, 2013
Read moreEleonora Nestola
Apr 29, 2013 / Network News
Read more« Quallons-nous devenir sans les Barbares ? » La politique jeunesse dEuro-Med
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat shall become of us without any barbarians?’ Youth Policy in the Euro-Med
/ Network News
Read more“Cosa sarà di noi senza i barbari?” Politiche giovanili nell’Euromed
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreÉtat des lieux des mouvements de protestation, Egypte, Europe
May 6, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLes nombreuses vagues de révolution dans la région méditerranéenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe many seasons of revolution across the Mediterranean
/ Network News
Read moreThe map of illegal detention of migrants in Europe
/ Network News
Read moreLa carte de la détention illégale de migrants en Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFestival Transeuropa, les membres d’Alternatives Européennes prennent la parole
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival, EA’s members take the floor
/ Network News
Read moreMigration et politique dasile dans lUE
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMigration and asylum policies in the EU
/ Network News
Read moreMULTICULTURALISME vs. ASSIMILATION
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMULTICULTURALISM vs. ASSIMILATION
/ Network News
Read moreLa difficulté de raconter des histoires vraies au-delà des nations
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe difficulty of telling true stories across nations
/ Network News
Read moreIrlande : des bonus pour les banquiers auraient été « choquants » en période daustérité
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIreland: Bonuses for bankers would have been ‘galling’ at a time of austerity
/ Network News
Read moreConferenza Stampa LasciateCIEntrare
May 7, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTrois questions à Guy Standing
May 13, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThree Questions to Guy Standing
/ Network News
Read moreEuropean Alternatives supports Embros theatre and opposes its closure by the Greek government
May 14, 2013 / Network News
Read moreEuropean Alternatives sostiene il Teatro Embros e condanna il tentativo di chiusura del Governo greco
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAlternatives Européennes soutient le théâtre Embros et soppose à sa fermeture par le gouvernement grec
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLe Modèle de lUnion Européenne 2013
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreModel European Union 2013
/ Network News
Read moreSuccès lors de la première semaine de lInitiative des Citoyens pour le Pluralisme des Mass-média
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSuccessful first week of Citizens Initiative for Media Pluralism
/ Network News
Read moreOnly proper integration will solve the Easts democracy problems
/ Network News
Read moreSeule une véritable intégration pourra résoudre les problèmes démocratiques de lEst
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTowards a Transnational Democracy for Europe: Launch of a Citizen Pact
/ Network News
Read moreLa loro austerità, la nostra democrazia
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreVers une démocratie transnationale pour lEurope : lancement du Pacte citoyen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreGarantito l’accesso ai CIE in Italia
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLaccès aux centres de détention autorisé en Italie !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAccess to detention centres granted in Italy!
/ Network News
Read moreAnother road for Europe
/ Network News
Read moreUn autre chemin pour lEurope
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAE rejoint la Conférence Nationale des Etats-Unis sur la Réforme des Mass-médias
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA joins US National Conference on Media Reform
/ Network News
Read moreLancement du Pacte citoyen pour la démocratie européenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreA Citizens pact for European Democracy is launched
/ Network News
Read moreUnited States of Europe?
May 15, 2013 / Network News
Read moreDes États-Unis dEurope ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAlternatives Européennes recrute un responsable comptable et administratif
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA is recruiting an accounting and administration manager
/ Network News
Read moreEA looking for accounting and administration officer
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAlternatives Europeennes rejoint la plateforme de l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux
May 20, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEA joins the Fundamental Rights Agency’s Platform
/ Network News
Read morePour le mariage pour tous et partout en Europe!
May 21, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreOuverture de lexposition SHAREs à Istanbul
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSHAREs Exhibition Opens in Istanbul
/ Network News
Read moreWorking the community spirit
May 25, 2013 / Network News
Read moreBack to basics
/ Network News
Read moreGIVING A VOICE TO THE VOICELESS
/ Network News
Read moreDON’T LET EXAM RESULTS DECIDE OUR FATES
/ Network News
Read moreWe need a good deal for Europeans, not a good deal for nation states
May 28, 2013 / Network News
Read moreEuropean Alternatives supports the first citizens initiative: Fraternité 2020
/ Network News
Read moreAlternatives Européennes soutient la première initiative des citoyens: Fraternité 2020
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEND THE CRIMINALISATION OF PROTEST!
May 29, 2013 / Network News
Read moreMettez un terme à la criminalisation de la protestation !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreDroits du travail et conditions de travail décentes en Europe : la marche à suivre
May 30, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLabour rights and decent working conditions in Europe: the way forward.
/ Network News
Read moreGet involved in our new project on precarity!
Jun 3, 2013 / Network News
Read moreParticipez à notre nouveau projet sur la précarité !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreInitiative européenne pour le pluralisme des médias
Jun 4, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean initiative for media pluralism
/ Network News
Read moreConstruire lEurope des citoyens : une nécessité pour lavenir de lUnion européenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreBuilding a Europe of citizens: a necessity for the future of the European Union
/ Network News
Read more25 septembre, Londres : Débat « LEurope est-elle néolibérale ? »
/ Non categorizzato
Read more25th September, London: Debate, ‘Is Europe Neoliberal?’
/ Network News
Read moreCivil Liberties and Stockholm Programme
/ Network News
Read moreEA article in EU Observer
/ Network News
Read moreUn article dAE dans le EU Observer
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLactiviste lgbt en Europe Orientale Robert Biedron a été libéré !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreReleased: Robert Biedron, Eastern Europe’s leading lgbt activist!
/ Network News
Read moreSofia, le 7 décembre : La montée de lextrémisme de droite dans toute lEurope
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSofia, 7th December: The rise of right wing extremism throughout Europe
/ Network News
Read moreGroupe de réflexion de la Jeunesse TRANSEUROPA pour la démocratie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Youth Think-tank for Democracy
/ Network News
Read moreTranseuropa Network
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLondres, le 9 décembre Colloque : Linitiative citoyenne européenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLondon – 9 December – European Citizens’ Initiative seminar
/ Network News
Read moreSerbian voters chose rightist Nikolic
/ Network News
Read moreLes électeurs serbes choisissent lhomme de droite Nikolic
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSuède-Turquie : un nouveau chapitre du génocide arménien
Jun 6, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSweden-Turkey: a new chapter of the Armenian genocide
/ Network News
Read moreSvezia-Turchia: un nuovo capitolo sul genocidio armeno
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreBienvenue dans lexplorateur dactivités locales
Jun 9, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWelcome to the Local Activities Explorer
/ Network News
Read moreLa Commissione severa e giusta rispetto all’adesione croata?
Jun 14, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSévère mais juste ? Lapproche de la Commission face à ladhésion de la Croatie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFirm but Fair? The Commissions approach to Croatian Accession
/ Network News
Read moreLa hausse des prix de lalimentation va-t-elle conduire à une réforme significative de la PAC cette année ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWill the rising cost of food lead to meaningful reform of CAP this year?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLa FEJ prévient la Hongrie des menaces à lencontre des médias tandis que le Parlement vote une nouvelle loi
Jun 17, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEFJ Warns Hungary Over Threats to Media as Parliament Votes on New Law
/ Network News
Read moreAlternatives Européennes soutient Macao, le nouveau centre des Arts occupé à Milan
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Alternatives supports Macao, new occupied arts center in Milan
/ Network News
Read moreDecommodifying labour
Jun 18, 2013 / Network News
Read moreRé-humaniser le travail
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom Tahrir Square to Puerta del Sol: what unites Arab and European social movements
/ Network News
Read moreDe la place Tahrir à la Puerta del Sol : ce qui unit les mouvements sociaux arabes et européens
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe left and Europe: video-comment
Jun 19, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLa gauche et lEurope : Commentaire vidéo
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreVers un revenu minimum ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTIME FOR A BASIC INCOME?
/ Citizens rights
Read moreTransnational Democracy Instead of Phony National Democracy
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreBORROWING FROM THOSE WHO CARE
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreLE CV DU CITOYEN INVISIBLE
Jun 20, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTHE CV FOR THE INVISIBLE CITIZEN
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHello Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreBORDERS TO CROSS: Open call!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHOW TO POCKET A LIVING
/ Citizens rights
Read moreMaking money make sense
Jun 25, 2013 / Network News
Read moreWhat are young people’s living standards in Europe?
/ Network News
Read moreOpen your mind to challenge yourself
/ Network News
Read moreGentrify this – the impact of precarity on local communities
/ Network News
Read moreThe 20 jobs of the future
/ Network News
Read moreMaking markets
/ Network News
Read moreRE: THINK EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY!
Jun 27, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTHE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE
/ Citizens rights
Read moreTHE TOXIC TRINITY OF PRECARITY
Jun 28, 2013 / Citizens rights
Read moreLa trinité toxique de la précarité
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFernando Pessoa Evening
/ Art and culture
Read moreSoirée Fernando Pessoa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFROM MISSING THE BUS TO JOINING AN OCCUPATION
/ Transnational Activism
Read morePamphlet: Detenzione amministrativa dei migranti e violazione dei diritti umani
Jul 2, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEyewitness report: Neo-Nazi March in Lithuania on Independence Day
Jul 3, 2013 / Transnational Activism
Read moreTémoignage : une manifestation néo-nazie en Lituanie lors de la fête de l’Indépendance
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLEurope après lEurope : lautre Europe en attente
Jul 5, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope after Europe: the other Europe in waiting
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreL’Europe après l’Europe : l’autre Europe en attente
/ Non categorizzato
Read morePolitics upside down: To be or not to be in the EU: Is that the question?
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreLa politique sens-dessus-dessous : être ou ne pas être dans l’UE : est-ce la question ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWRITE A POEM ON PRECARITY
Jul 7, 2013 / Art and culture / Citizens rights
Read moreLIVE AND LEARN
Jul 15, 2013 / Transnational Activism
Read moreA Turkish Spring?
Jul 18, 2013 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreUn Printemps turc ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreDESIGNING FOR LIFE
/ Citizens rights / Transnational Activism
Read moreLe design, c’est la vie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA at 55th Venice Biennale
/ Network News
Read moreLes citoyens européens face à la machine dintégration financière : propositions pour le Manifeste citoyen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean citizens vis-a-vis financial integration machine: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHOW MIGRANT NIGHT WORKERS ARE RUNNING THE 24 HOUR ECONOMY
/ Citizens rights
Read moreLa nuit, les travailleurs immigrés font tourner l’économie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCitoyens invisibles d’une ville aux journées de 24 heures
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreINVISIBLE CITIZENS IN A 24 HOUR CITY
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSolidarité avec les révoltes en Turquie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSolidarity with the uprisings in Turkey
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreTHE SOCIAL LIFE OF A NETWORK
/ Citizens rights
Read moreLA VIE DU RESEAU SOCIAL D’ ALTERNATIVES EUROPEENNES
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWhen work doesn’t pay
/ Citizens rights
Read moreCommencez avec lâme, pas avec le sac à main
Jul 19, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSTART WITH THE SOUL NOT WITH THE HANDBAG
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreCommencez avec l’âme, pas avec le sac à main
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCall for participation: Joan of Art
Aug 5, 2013 / Network News
Read moreCitizen Pact: Interim findings on the future of work
/ Citizens rights
Read moreConsultation citoyenne sur le pluralisme des médias : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens consultation on media pluralism: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Network News
Read moreGIVING A HELPING HAND
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreHOST A WORKSHOP
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHOW TO CREATE A SOCIAL MARKET
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreHOW TO SPARK A LIVING
/ Citizens rights
Read moreCamps d’étrangers en Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCentri di detenzione per stranieri in Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMigrant Detention Centres in Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSPIN THE GLOBE
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreTHE PERFECT COUPLE
/ Citizens rights
Read moreTRANSITIONING FROM WELFARE TO WORK
/ Citizens rights
Read moreHOW TO MAKE WORK PAY
/ Citizens rights
Read moreMAKING MODELS TO MARKETS
/ Citizens rights
Read moreVidéos du forum de Venise – partie 3/3
Aug 6, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreVideo del forum di Venezia – 3/3
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreVidéos du forum de Venise – partie 2/3
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreVideo del forum di venezia – parte 2/3
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCO PRODUCING A DIFFERENT ECONOMY
/ Citizens rights
Read moreIF YOU COULD CREATE A FESTIVAL, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE
Aug 7, 2013 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreSTRIKING UP RELATIONS
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreEUROPE, la liberté est aussi la participation
Aug 8, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropa, la libertà è anche partecipazione
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFROM CREATIVE CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL MARKETS
Aug 10, 2013 / Citizens rights
Read moreFROM UNDERCOVER ECONOMIES TO BEACH EXCHANGES
Aug 11, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDroits des personnes LGBT en Europe : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
Aug 12, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens consultation on LGBT rights in Europe: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Network News
Read moreConsultation citoyenne sur le travail, la protection sociale et la précarité en Europe : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens’ consultation on work, welfare and precarity in Europe: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Network News
Read moreBLURRING THE PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL TO CREATE SOCIAL PURPOSE
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreGETTING UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreNETWORKED ENTREPRENEURSHIP
/ Citizens rights
Read moreTURNING A HOBBY INTO A JOB OUT OF NECESSITY
/ Citizens rights
Read moreCRÉER UNE CARRIÈRE À LA CARTE
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCREATING AN LA CARTE CAREER
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIN BETWEEN SPACES
/ Citizens rights
Read moreCitizens’ consultation on Roma coverage in mainstream media: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
Aug 16, 2013 / Citizens rights
Read moreCitizens consultation on the commons in Europe: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Citizens rights
Read moreFIRST FOOTSTEPS IN EUROPE
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreTHE GENERATION WITH AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE
Aug 20, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTowards a Citizens Pact: Civil rights in Europe – proposals for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCall for volunteers for the Transeuropa Festival
Aug 22, 2013 / Network News
Read moreAppel à bénévoles pour le Festival Transeuropa !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreDemocracy is a verb not a noun
Aug 25, 2013 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreLa démocratie est un verbe, pas un nom
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom a storytelling bus to a research caravan
/ Network News
Read moreFestival preparatory meeting held in Sofia
Sep 5, 2013 / Network News
Read moreAlternatives Européennes recrute pour le Festival Transeuropa !
Sep 9, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Alternatives recruits for Transeuropa Festival!
/ Network News
Read moreEuropean Alernatives assume in vista del Transeuropa Festival!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSito Web: Work in progress!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA website: work in progress!
/ Network News
Read moreDo you want to work with us?
Sep 10, 2013 / Network News
Read moreVuoi lavorare con noi?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Alternatives at the first Falun Democracy Week
Sep 15, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTheir austerity, our democracy
Sep 18, 2013 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreThe Citizens Manifesto, A Citizen Answer To The EU Crisis
Sep 25, 2013 / Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreManifeste Citoyen : La Réponse Citoyenne À La Crise De L’UE
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWant to get a free personalised infographic?
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreEnvie d’un document infographique personnalisé et gratuit ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2013 Teaser
Sep 26, 2013
Read moreShale gas, global capital, global resistance
Oct 4, 2013 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreLEurope au-delà de lEurope : trois jours didées, de réflexions et de stratégies futures.
Oct 8, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope beyond Europe: three days of ideas, reflections and future strategies
/ Network News
Read moreL’Europe au-delà de l’Europe : trois jours d’idées, de réflexions et de stratégies futures.
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreL’Europa oltre l’Europa: tre giorni di idee, riflessioni e strategie future
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAl via il Transeuropa Festival!
Oct 9, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreYouth Congress 2013: Partecipa al congresso dei giovani europei
Oct 10, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFor a union of ever more citizens rights
Oct 11, 2013 / Transnational Activism
Read morePour une UE des droits citoyens
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTelling stories to make a living
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreRaconter des histoires pour gagner sa vie
/ Non categorizzato
Read more« Last night a DJ made my life »
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLast night a DJ made my life
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow to turn your hobby into a job
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreCOMMENT FAIRE DE SON LOISIR UN METIER
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWe all want to be young
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreNous voulons tous être jeunes
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSeguiteci in diretta stamattina da Bruxelles!
Oct 22, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFollow us Live this morning from Brussels!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFestival Transeuropa : vivez l’Europe !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival: live Europe!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLe Réseau Transeuropa se retrouve à Londres!
Oct 23, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Network goes to London!
/ Network News
Read moreA day in the life of
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreUNE JOURNEE DANS LA VIE DE…
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLaction transnationale SHAREs en ouverture du Festival Transeuropa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreL’action transnationale SHAREs en ouverture du Festival Transeuropa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSHAREs transnational action to open Transeuropa Festival
/ Art and culture
Read moreFrom parenthackers to post-hackers
Oct 25, 2013 / Transnational Activism
Read moreEA’s annual general meeting live today from Berlin!
Oct 28, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read more100 Special Screenings of Closed Sea for the World Refugee Day 2012
Oct 29, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read more100 Projections simultanées de Closed Sea pour la Journée mondiale des réfugiés 2012
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLampedusa: Incontro al Parlamento europeo per una nuova politica migratoria
Nov 10, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreA new migration policy for Europe
/ Network News
Read moreEA at NECE Conference 2013
Nov 13, 2013 / Network News
Read moreVaincre le déficit démocratique
Nov 18, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreBusting the Democratic Deficit
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreIl Processo di Venezia
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe Venice Process
/ Network News
Read moreHow to make a living
Nov 24, 2013 / Transnational Activism
Read moreMeet the young hackers finding new ways to live
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreFestival de Films Frontières du visible à l’invisible
Nov 25, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreA day in the life of
/ Network News
Read moreUNE JOURNEE DANS LA VIE DE…
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreActors and actresses wanted!
/ Network News
Read moreLes jeunes Egyptiens nous rappellent ce que la démocratie veut dire
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreYoung Egyptians are reminding us what democracy means
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreObservez votre quartier
Nov 26, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreObserve your neighbourhood
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreThe Citizens Manifesto: our demands for Europe
Nov 28, 2013 / Network News
Read moreAlternative reali: Per un nuovo patto sociale europeo
Nov 29, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAlternatives réelles: pour un nouveau pacte social européen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreReal Alternatives: For a new European social pact
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens consultation to shape an EU of democracy, fundamental rights and participation: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreConsultation citoyenne pour la démocratie, les droits fondamentaux et la participation : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreRelaunched! European Initiative for Media Pluralism
/ Network News
Read moreRilanciata: Iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dell’informazione!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2013. An interview with Ségolène Pruvot
/ Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreKNOW YOU’RE SKILLED
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreInternational Forum «Migrant Detention in Europe and Beyond: What perspectives?»
Dec 4, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAre young Turks occupying Gezi park model European citizens?
Dec 10, 2013 / Transnational Activism
Read moreLes jeunes Turcs qui occupent le parc Gezi sont-ils des citoyens européens modèles ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLe site participatif «Close the Camps» est finalement en ligne
Dec 23, 2013 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe collaborative website «Close the Camps» is finally online
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCall for videomakers
Dec 27, 2013 / Network News
Read moreAspirations for 2014
Jan 1, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNOUS SOMMES LE BIEN COMMUN
Jan 2, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWe are the common good
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA attacked by Daily Mail
/ Network News
Read moreNew service: EU migration policies
Jan 6, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNuovo servizio per aggiornamenti su politiche migratorie
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLe Invasioni Barbariche
Jan 15, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAnother Flood in the UK
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA attacked by Mail on Sunday
Jan 16, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe Guardian – “As the European elections approach, it’s time to stop the politics of cowardice”
Jan 21, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWhen Right-Wing Extremism Becomes Impune
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean essay competition among high school students: Europe, my future!
Jan 24, 2014 / Network News
Read moreConcours européen de dissertation pour les lycéens : Europe, my future
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTime to equalise wages across Europe?
/ Network News
Read moreChanging the educational system to social exchange
Jan 25, 2014 / Network News
Read moreFaire de l’éducation un échange social
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSchooling the system
/ Network News
Read moreRéduire la société civile au silence en incriminant la liberté de discussion
Jan 29, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreGagging civil society: criminalising peaceful debate
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreBAVAGLIO ALLA SOCIETÀ CIVILE: LA CRIMINALIZZAZIONE DI UN DIBATTITO PACIFICO
Feb 1, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe Charter of Lampedusa and the quest for alternative citizenship and migration policies
Feb 3, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAAA : Agence A vous d’Agir
Feb 4, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAAA: Act-up Agora Agency
/ Network News
Read moreParticipate to the Act-up Agora Agency!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow does the workforce across Europe evolve?
Feb 24, 2014 / Network News
Read moreComment la main d’œuvre à travers l’Europe évolue-t-elle?
/ Non categorizzato
Read morePutting the Entrepreneur into NEETS
/ Network News
Read moreEntreprendre : la solution pour l’emploi des jeunes ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat do new Europeans really want?
Feb 25, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreQue veulent vraiment les nouveaux européens ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreBuilding the freelancers’ movement across Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow would you spend your time?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCampus di European Alternatives
Mar 13, 2014
Read moreCitizens Pact & Transeuropa Caravans 2014
Read moreMedia Pluralism Campaign
Read moreTransnational Dialogues
Read moreUkraine: A struggle for the rights of all Europeans
Mar 24, 2014 / Network News
Read moreUkraine : Une lutte pour les droits de tous les Européens
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTo camp or not to camp
/ Network News
Read moreCamper ou ne pas camper
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom 99 balloons to colour coding the square
/ Network News
Read moreTaking ownership of leadership
/ Network News
Read morePrendre les choses en main : un pari pour la jeunesse
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAge gap, wage gap
/ Network News
Read moreÉcart d’âge, écart de salaire
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat the Jarrow march can teach us about social innovation
/ Network News
Read moreLearning from the travelling man
Mar 25, 2014 / Network News
Read moreHow to fix Europe
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreDeveloping nomadic wellbeing
/ Network News
Read moreRethink, repurpose or reinvent?
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreDeveloping a theory of change
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreCrossing borders, creating futures
Mar 30, 2014 / Network News
Read moreAgence A vous d’Agir / Bouge ton Europe: LE DEBAT
Apr 10, 2014 / Network News
Read moreWho watches the watchdogs?
Apr 11, 2014 / Network News
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans: The Other Europe is On the Road
Apr 14, 2014 / Network News
Read moreQue feriez-vous avec l’espace?
Apr 24, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWelcome to the Transeuropa Village
/ Network News
Read moreBienvenue au Transeuropa Village
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLa société n’est pas un ensemble homogène…
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow do we get back to the future?
/ Network News
Read moreDoit-on entreprendre un retour vers le futur ?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom entrepreneur to mentor
/ Network News
Read moreDu statut d’entrepreneur à celui de mentor
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreNeknominate your minimum wage
/ Network News
Read moreNeknominez votre salaire minimum
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThis time we’re coming to you!
/ Network News
Read moreAll doled up
Apr 25, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreFood for thought
/ Network News
Read moreScenarios for a collaborative economy
/ Network News
Read morePlusieurs scénarios possibles pour atteindre une économie collaborative
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHow do we organise digital labour?
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreFrom systemic issues to systemic innovation
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreImagine! Demand! Enact! A Publication for an Alternative Europe
Apr 28, 2014 / Network News
Read moreMartin Schulz receives our Citizens Manifesto
May 2, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreMartin Schulz riceve il nostro Citizens Manifesto
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreL’europa deviante: rischi e pericoli dell’ignorarlo
May 5, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans: La carovana del sud
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAccordo USA-UE: privacy e libertà digitali a rischio?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope is diverging: ignore it at your peril
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreLet’s party: Getta via l’austerity!
May 6, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEA at Berlin History Campus
May 7, 2014 / Network News
Read moreLaunch Manifesto Shaping Europe through Culture
May 19, 2014 / Network News
Read moreEntretien avec Igor Štiks
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreInterview with Igor Štiks
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreLe elezioni e tutto ciò che segue
May 21, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe elections and everything after
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreLes élections et tout ce qui suit
May 23, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAlternatives Européennes au “History Campus” de Berlin
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCome to your senses
May 24, 2014 / Network News
Read moreRevenez à la raison
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreMapping how solidarity travels
May 25, 2014 / Transnational Activism
Read moreMaking is connecting
/ Transnational Activism
Read morePutting a face on Europe’s social economy
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreTransnational Dialogues launches in China!
May 26, 2014 / Network News
Read moreSurprise for Martin Schulz – Transeuropa Caravans
Read moreTransnational Dialogues lancia in Cina
May 27, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNo More of the Same
May 28, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreGlobal players : programme “résidence d’art AE” à Chongqing
May 30, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreGlobal Players: EA art residency in Chongqing
/ Network News
Read moreLe message est clair : la politique européenne doit changer
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreGlobal Players: Residenza Artistica di EA a Chongqing
Jun 2, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNon piu come prima
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTransnational Dialogues: Programma di Chengdu e Chongqing
Jun 3, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLes droits des migrants en Europe
Jun 7, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreI sopravvisuti del mar mediterraneo a Bruxelles
Jun 9, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCittadinanza europea e politiche migratorie nel nuovo parlamento: uno sguardo dall’Est
Jun 10, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLancements de Dialogues Transnationaux en Chine !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSeminario tematico “Immigrazione, Asilo, Cittadinanza” a conclusione del progetto “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa”
Jun 16, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSéminaire thématique “Immigration, asile, citoyenneté” au terme du projet “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa”
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreConférence ESCAPES “Transits, barrières, libertés: chercher refuge en Méditerranée et en Europe”
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLes limites des politiques migratoires de l’Union européenne et la défense des droits des migrants en Grèce
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreConférence international sur l’immigration au sein de l’Union européenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom Spiders to Starfish: Hacking the Transnational
Jun 17, 2014 / Transnational Activism
Read moreDe quelle façon la politique fait participer les électeurs pour les élections européennes ?
Jun 24, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTelling stories about work and life
/ Network News
Read moreEuropean Alternatives e la campagna Open Access Now a “No Border Fest”
Jun 27, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAn Open Letter to Members of European Parliament
Jul 1, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreEA à la journée euro-méditerranéenne sur les retours volontaires
Jul 4, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranslate for us!
Jul 8, 2014 / Network News
Read moreOpenings at EA
/ Network News
Read moreOuvertures de postes à AE
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreA call for the renewal of European democracy
Jul 9, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreInternship in Project Management
/ Network News
Read moreCall for Graphic Designer
/ Network News
Read moreCerchiamo un grafico
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreDiventa Traduttore per EA
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreInternship for Administrative Assistant
Jul 10, 2014 / Network News
Read moreOfferta di stage retribuito in Amministrazione progetti
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEA joins #FreeMediaRace
Jul 16, 2014 / Network News
Read moreUna richiesta da rinnovamento della democrazia europea
Jul 22, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEA Partecipa a Immagini e Parole Migranti
Jul 23, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTerragiusta. Campaign against the exploitation of migrant workers in agriculture
Jul 29, 2014 / Transnational Activism
Read moreOpen Letter to the people of Belgrade
Aug 1, 2014 / Network News
Read moreSabir Maydan- The first Forum of Mediterranean Citizenship
Aug 4, 2014 / Network News
Read moreSabir Maydan: le premier forum de la citoyenneté méditerranéenne
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSabir Maydan: il primo forum della cittadinanza mediterranea
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTerragiusta. Campagna contro lo sfruttamento dei lavoratori migranti nell’agricoltura
Aug 5, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDes araignées aux étoiles de mer : piratage transnational
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreUngheria, stop alla democrazia. L’Europa agisca adesso
Aug 6, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreHungarian despotism: Europe must act
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreAE rejoint la #FreeMediaRace
Aug 7, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTerragiusta : une campagne contre l’exploitation des travailleurs immigrés dans l’agriculture
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreComment les “big data” peuvent-elles nous aider à mieux comprendre l’économie civique
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreUn appel pour le renouveau de la démocratie européenne
Aug 8, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDespotisme hongrois : l’Europe doit agir
Aug 9, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEIMP: Thank-you to all supporters
Aug 18, 2014 / Network News
Read more#FixEurope Autumn Campus
Aug 28, 2014 / Network News
Read moreAffittiamo stanza in nostro ufficio di Roma
Sep 2, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Media Initiative closes with 200,000 Signatures for press freedom
/ Network News
Read moreL’INIZIATIVA EUROPEA PER IL PLURALISMO DEI MEDIA CHIUDE CON 200.000 FIRME PER LA LIBERTA’ DI STAMPA
Sep 5, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFixEurope Speakers
Sep 10, 2014 / Network News
Read moreEuropean Education, Culture, Youth and Citizenship should not be put in Orban’s hands
Sep 18, 2014 / Network News
Read moreEurope+ Statement on Hungarian Commissioner nomination
Sep 21, 2014 / Network News
Read moreOpen letter to Jean-Claude Juncker
Sep 22, 2014 / Network News
Read moreLettre ouverte à Jean-Claude Juncker
Sep 23, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEducazione, cultura, politiche giovanili e di cittadinanza non dovrebbero essere messi nelle mani di Orban
Sep 24, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDichiarazione sulla nomina del Commissario Ungherese: Europe+
Sep 29, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLettera aperta a Jean-Claude juncker
Oct 1, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCampus Speakers & Trainers
Oct 2, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read more3 questions to… Andy Williamson
Oct 6, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreVictory! European Parliament blocks Tibor Navracsics
/ Network News
Read moreVittoria! Il Parlamento europeo blocca Tibor Navracsics
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWho are we, the citizens?
Oct 8, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreDare un volto ad una economia sociale europea
Oct 9, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreL’éducation, la culture et la citoyenneté doivent être hors de la portée d’Orban
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreL’Italie et les Nouveaux Italiens: Interview avec l’écrivain émigré Kossi Komla-Ebri
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe hidden face of immigration detention camps
Oct 14, 2014 / Network News
Read moreLa face cachée des camps d’étranger-e-s
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreLa faccia nascosta dei campi per stranieri-e
/ Non categorizzato
Read more‘Mos Maiorum’: an unacceptable blitzkrieg on migrants
Oct 15, 2014 / Network News
Read moreBlockupy as an unexpected space for transnational European organising
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreThe ‘New Turkey’
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreAt the Margins: Europe and Migration
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreOct 17, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLettera aperta al popolo di belgrado
Oct 20, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreParticipants arrive to #FixEurope Campus
Oct 22, 2014 / Network News
Read moreFixing Europe: A Starting Point
Oct 23, 2014 / Network News
Read more#Critical Minds at work
/ Network News
Read moreEurope + Position sur la nomination du Commissaire hongrois
Oct 25, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read more3 Domande a … Andy Williamson
/ Non categorizzato
Read more3 Questions to Miguelángel Verde
Oct 28, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreMos Maiorum: un’inaccettabile blitzkrieg agli immigrati
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreChi siamo noi, i cittadini?
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIl Video del #FixEurope Campus
Oct 30, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWill we now #FixEurope?
/ Network News
Read more3 questions to Rafaella Bolini
/ Non categorizzato
Read more#FixEurope Campus Video
/ Network News
Read moreTrois questions a … Andy Williamson
Nov 1, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreIntervista a Igor Štiks
Nov 3, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read more#FixEurope Conference
Nov 4, 2014 / Network News
Read moreOrbán’s trick
Nov 7, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read more#FixEurope: Adesso sistemeremo l’Europa?
Nov 10, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLo scherzetto di Orban
/ Non categorizzato
Read morePublic and Collective Making
Nov 12, 2014 / Transnational Activism
Read moreIl fare pubblico e collettivo
Nov 13, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCitoyens, qui sommes-nous?
/ Non categorizzato
Read more3 domande a … Raffaella Bolini
Nov 18, 2014 / Non categorizzato
Read moreLA ‘NUOVA TURCHIA’
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTransnational Dialogues Journal 2014
Nov 19, 2014 / Network News
Read moreWe Need Hybrid Spaces to Build Alternatives
Nov 20, 2014 / Transnational Activism
Read moreOur support for a strong Intergroup on Anti-racism in the European Parliament
Nov 24, 2014 / Network News
Read moreHungary: a shrinking civic space – a dilemma for Europe?
/ Network News
Read moreThe Balkan Forum: Situations, Struggles, Strategies
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreIl nostro supporto per un forte Intergruppo sull’Anti-razzismo e la Diversità al Parlamento Europeo
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreNotre soutien à un Intergroupe Antiracisme et Diversité » fort au sein du Parlement européen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreA parable of Maps and Europe’s future
Nov 26, 2014 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreWhen in Rome – Transnational Dialogues 2014
Dec 1, 2014 / Network News
Read more#starbucketchallenge
Dec 26, 2014
Read moreFree Tania Bruguera
Dec 31, 2014 / Network News
Read moreUlrich Beck: The necessity of a cosmopolitan outlook
Jan 8, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreSiamo con Charlie per la liberta’ di informazione e di convivenza pacifica
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Alternatives a Human Factor
Jan 28, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCiti-rights Europe is up and running!
Jan 31, 2015 / Network News
Read morePRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH CIVIL SOCIETY EUROPE – THE EUROPEAN COORDINATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS
/ Network News
Read moreSolidarity – even at times of crisis? Favourable conditions and practical models for Europe
Feb 5, 2015 / Citizens rights
Read moreLet’s talk about utopia
Feb 11, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCambia la Grecia Cambia l’Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreNot in our name: The Mediterranean kills over EU disagreement
/ Network News
Read moreMapping below the radar activists
Feb 18, 2015 / Network News
Read moreTania Bruguera speaks out
/ Network News
Read moreGreece: It’s the politics, stupid
Feb 19, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreBlockupy transnational actions confirmed
/ Network News
Read moreAppello di Blockupy: È giunto il momento di agire
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreA tennis court oath for Europe
Mar 4, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreUn serment du Jeu de Paume pour l’Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreUn giuramento della Pallacorda per l’Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Alternatives: rooted cosmopolitanism and the distance of Europe
Mar 11, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCitizens Rights
Mar 13, 2015
Read moreTalk Real
Read moreEuropean Citizen’s Initiative on media freedom at EU Parliament
Mar 16, 2015 / Network News
Read moreHeretical Europe: Jan Patočka as symbol of dissident contingency
Mar 25, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreEurope hérétique : Jan Patočka, symbole de la contingence dissidente
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropa eretica: Jan Patočka come simbolo di contingenza dissidente
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSupport our Application
/ Network News
Read moreWhat We Share: A Commons- Intergroup takes off in the EU Parliament
Mar 31, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCall for Application
Apr 1, 2015 / Network News
Read moreChanging Europe from within?
Apr 3, 2015 / Network News
Read moreCambiare l’Europa: incontro internazionale a Roma
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreReport: changing Europe from within, Rome 10/11 april
Apr 15, 2015 / Network News
Read moreThe Great European Disaster Movie: A Conversation
Apr 16, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreFinland’s Election
Apr 20, 2015 / Network News
Read moreWe Need a Humanitarian Corridor
Apr 22, 2015 / Network News
Read moreL’Europa apra un canale umanitario
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCommunication internship in Rome
Apr 27, 2015 / Network News
Read moreOfferta di stage in comunicazione
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreDeaths in the Mediterranean: the European Council’s dishonour
/ Network News
Read moreMigrants en Méditerranée, appel conjoint d’organisations à travers l’UE au Conseil européen
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreSpanish gag law is against European values and basic democratic rights
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreEuropean Alternatives elected to steering committee of Civil Society Europe
Apr 28, 2015 / Network News
Read moreLondon event: Solidarity starts with us
Apr 29, 2015 / Network News
Read moreFinding Europe (and us) at re:publica 2015
May 4, 2015 / Network News
Read moreEurope: A New Version is Available
May 6, 2015 / Network News
Read moreLe ragioni politiche di uno sgombero
May 11, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropa: un nuovo modello è disponibile
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope : Une nouvelle version est disponible
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCall for applications: School trainings – Italy, the U.K.
May 15, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreAgainst the great unraveling: Britain’s progressives must stand up for Europe and human rights
May 19, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCall for Interest: Bring the Opening of TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 to your city!
May 21, 2015 / Network News
Read more20. June – Join the World Refugee Day
May 26, 2015 / Network News
Read more20 giugno: partecipa alla Giornata mondiale del rifugiato!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreOne year after the European Parliamentary Election
May 28, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCall for Participation – TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015
May 29, 2015 / Network News
Read moreThe world upside down: insurgents are serious, national leaders muddle through
Jun 1, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreSe gli unici partiti che fanno sul serio sono quelli radicali
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThree messages for ‘youth’ activists, inside and outside the institutions
Jun 3, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreAPPELLO ALLA PARTECIPAZIONE – TRANSEUROPA FESTIVAL 2015
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreItaly sows seeds of hatred against Roma and migrants to win votes and consensus
Jun 8, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreGezi Park was not for nothing
/ Network News
Read moreEuropeans have already influenced TTIP negotiations. We must do more.
Jun 9, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreI cittadini europei hanno già influenzato il TTIP. Adesso dobbiamo fare di più.
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTania Bruguera manhandled over a minute of speech
/ Network News
Read moreTwo years after Snowden, the right to privacy remains elusive
Jun 10, 2015 / Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreOnda Pride 2015: “It’s #Human Pride”
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreIntroducing the Democracy Rising World Conference
Jun 11, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreDue anni dopo Snowden, il diritto alla privacy rimane un’esclusiva
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTania Bruguera malmenata per un minuto di libera espressione
Jun 15, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreA proposito della Democracy Rising Conference di Atene
/ Non categorizzato
Read more#20G: fermiamo la strage, cambiamo l’Europa!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreHack (y)our Borders Workshop in London
Jun 16, 2015 / Network News
Read moreBlaming refugees easier than taking responsibility for devastation of austerity
Jun 18, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreTRANSEUROPA Festival, reshaped
Jun 20, 2015 / Network News
Read moreCreateReact Training program: Kick-off in Berlin
Jun 23, 2015 / Network News
Read moreTANIA BRUGUERA MALMENÉE APRÉS UNE MINUTE DE DISCOURS
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreBridges, not weapons!
Jun 24, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreDes ponts, pas des armes !
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe Rape of Europe
Jun 30, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreIl ratto d’Europa
Jul 1, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreDon’t sell the sea, defend the sea!
Jul 5, 2015 / Network News
Read moreIl mare non si vende, il mare si difende!
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreGreek referendum: a transnational experience
Jul 7, 2015 / Network News
Read moreLa democrazia non è Facebook – comunicazione e politica
Jul 8, 2015
Read moreEurexit!
Jul 10, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreTalk Real: comunicazione e politica
Jul 13, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Commission announces launch of two media pluralism initiatives
Jul 20, 2015 / Network News
Read more#TalkReal in Athens – Democracy Rising
Jul 21, 2015 / Network News
Read moreDemocracy Rising – Syriza and Europe
Read moreEnabling the Finnish far-right, at the expense of the Greeks
Jul 22, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreE’ possibile cambiare l’Europa? | Toni Negri, Ugo Mattei, Sandro Mezzadra
Jul 25, 2015
Read more#TalkReal, Atene: per la sinistra è davvero il momento di abbandonare l’UE?
Jul 28, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read more#TalkReal: Cattivi maestri – Si può cambiare l’Europa?
Jul 29, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreGermany’s Eurosceptic party has a new face
Jul 31, 2015 / Network News
Read moreBlockupy: A European OXI
Aug 3, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreConnect Knowledge – Change Europe @Riot_Village
Aug 4, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreEducazione contro austerità: Dal meeting europeo Episteme
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreAre European Alternatives still possible?
Aug 7, 2015
Read more#TalkReal 4: sono ancora possibili alternative europee?
Aug 20, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreGreen Screen Diaries
Aug 28, 2015 / Network News
Read moreThree questions for Peter Sunde
Sep 2, 2015 / Network News
Read more#RefugeesWelcome: if another Europe exists
Sep 5, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read more#RefugeesWelcome: se esiste un’altra Europa
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThree questions for Nabeelah Shabbir of the Guardian
Sep 7, 2015 / Network News
Read moreThree questions for Manos Moschopoulos
Sep 9, 2015 / Network News
Read moreDenmark: report from a closed Schengen border
Sep 10, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreTRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 calls on political movements to go beyond fragments
/ Network News
Read moreEuropean Aperitives #1 – Elezioni in Grecia
Sep 14, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreThree questions for Andrej Bereta
Sep 15, 2015 / Network News
Read moreGreek voters keep alternatives open in Europe
Sep 21, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read more“European Aperitives” atto primo
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFirst European events of Tania Bruguera’s Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism kick off TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015
Sep 24, 2015 / Network News
Read moreFrom Nickelsdorf to Röszke and Horgos – #notwelcomeland
/ Transnational Activism
Read moreTranseuropa Festival program and reader available
Sep 29, 2015 / Network News
Read moreStop-TTIP day of action
Oct 9, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreTalkReal is coming back!
Oct 14, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read morePhilippe Van Parijs on Basic Income
Oct 15, 2015
Read moreReddito e diseguaglianze con Maurizio Landini e M5S
Oct 18, 2015
Read moreWomen’s Initiative for Peace – Turkey: campaign to stop deal between Germany and Turkey
Oct 19, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreOnline il nuovo #TalkReal su reddito e disuguaglianze
Oct 20, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read morePlaying towards a sustainable future
Oct 22, 2015 / Network News
Read moreThe Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism
Oct 26, 2015
Read moreVento di Spagna: popolo e potere
Oct 29, 2015
Read moreTime for a new economics
Oct 30, 2015 / Network News
Read moreVento di Spagna: popolo e potere
Nov 2, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreA Democratic Rupture
Nov 5, 2015 / Network News
Read moreUna rottura democratica
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat can we do to fight for the protection and extension of citizen rights?
Nov 6, 2015 / Citizens rights
Read more#TEF15: TRANSEUROPA Festival Evaluation
Nov 12, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTowards a Plan ‘D’ for Democracy in Europe
Nov 13, 2015
Read moreTalkReal: Towards a Plan ‘D’ for Democracy in Europe
Nov 16, 2015 / Network News
Read moreTALKREAL: TOWARDS A PLAN ‘D’ FOR DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE
Nov 17, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreParis bomb attacks: music, happiness and rock’n’roll should be part of the answer, not war on terrorism
Nov 18, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreNew campaign launches, calling on ECB’s quantitative easing programme to “serve the people”
Nov 24, 2015 / Network News
Read moreThis is Sweden, but not as we know it.
Nov 26, 2015 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreSix years of a legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights in the EU: fear, amnesia, revival?
Dec 1, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreWoMidan Declaration
Dec 2, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreHow to combat radicalisation and terrorism
Dec 9, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreEnsuring a fair digital single market
/ Transnational Democracy
Read more#StateofSolidarity: the call of activists around Europe
Dec 11, 2015 / Transnational Activism
Read moreNuova politica spagnola: cambiamento in comune.
Dec 15, 2015
Read moreNaomi Klein on COP21: “Our leaders have failed us; the leadership has to come from below”
Dec 16, 2015 / Non categorizzato
Read moreNaomi Klein at the COP21 Global Climate Summit
Dec 26, 2015
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2015
Read moreInterview with Katja Kippimg (Die Linke)
Feb 19, 2016
Read moreTeresa Forcades in conversation with Sandro Mezzadra
Feb 26, 2016
Read moreJerome Roos (ROAR Magazine) in conversation with Katerina Anastasiou (Transform!)
Read moreJulien Bayou (Europe Ecologie – Les Verts)
Read moreCaroline Lucas: Another Europe beyond Brexit
Read more¿PlanB para Europa? Miguel Urbán y Lorenzo Marsili
Read moreCivil Society Forum of the Western Balkans
Mar 13, 2016
Read moreTalk Real London « Exit Europe?
Mar 18, 2016
Read moreDiEM25 a Roma con Yanis Varoufakis
Mar 25, 2016
Read moreDemocracy in Europe: DiEM25 in Rome with Yanis Varoufakis
Read moreLa sinistra e l’Europa
Mar 26, 2016
Read moreSandro Mezzadra about DiEM25
Read moreMARGINALIA
Apr 13, 2016
Read moreLuca Casarini in the launching event of DiEM25
Apr 26, 2016
Read moreSocial Movements in the Balkans: From Protests to Plenums
Jul 25, 2016
Read moreAnnual General Meeting of European Alternatives!
Aug 26, 2016
Read moreEnvironmental racism in Eastern Europe
Oct 4, 2016
Read moreLIVE Streaming: First European Commons Assembly
Nov 16, 2016 / Transnational Activism
Read more#AlternativesNow: Change Europe with us
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreCivil Society Forum Skopje: 24 – 26 November
Nov 21, 2016 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreNew World Embassy: Rojava
Nov 26, 2016 / Art and culture
Read moreNo to the Europe of Walls: Building Together the European Democracy
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreBack to the Colourful Revolution
Dec 5, 2016
Read moreEuropean Activism: What grassroots alternatives are growing across Europe?
Dec 12, 2016
Read moreThe Best of European Alternatives in 2016
Dec 26, 2016 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTen Years of European Alternatives
Jan 12, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read morePositions on Corruption
Jan 25, 2017
Read moreRe-Build Refuge Europe, a new project to counteract the discourses of crisis
Jan 26, 2017 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreThe commons as a renewed political force for Europe
Feb 1, 2017 / Transnational Activism
Read moreRefusing to choose between the establishment and nationalism
Feb 2, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreYouth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe
Feb 17, 2017 / Citizens rights
Read moreFor an international peace movement for Syria
Feb 26, 2017 / Citizens rights / Transnational Democracy
Read moreOn the Road to Rome
Mar 1, 2017 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreRe-Build Refuge Europe
Mar 13, 2017
Read moreOne step further to an inclusive Europe
Mar 15, 2017 / Transnational Activism
Read moreDutch elections: Hope for Europe?
Mar 16, 2017 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreRight to the City
Mar 25, 2017
Read moreJuan Carlos Monedero (interview with the co-founder of Podemos)
Apr 26, 2017
Read moreThe Voice of the Majority: an example for political change in Germany
May 8, 2017 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreNationalism and Populism beyond the European Union
May 10, 2017
Read moreNew Book out – Shifting Baselines of Europe
May 18, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFearless Cities, a first appointment before TRANSEUROPA
May 25, 2017 / Citizens rights
Read moreMaria Hlavajova: Art and social change in Eastern Europe
May 26, 2017
Read moreDifferent European ways of volunteering for and with refugees
Jun 7, 2017 / Citizens rights
Read moreApply for our Act4FreeMovement Training Series
Jun 12, 2017 / Transnational Activism
Read moreTania Bruguera: Feminist art is for me a conversation about power
Jun 26, 2017
Read moreMarcelo Expósito – Barcelona en Comú
Read moreCities for Change as Global Alternatives
Jul 5, 2017 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreTranseuropa Open: organise events for the opening of our biannual festival
Jul 7, 2017 / Art and culture / Transnational Activism
Read moreTranseuropa 2017 – Convergent Spaces
Jul 17, 2017 / Art and culture
Read morePower Coalitions (Talk Real in Rijeka)
Jul 26, 2017
Read more13th September: Day of Action for EU citizens in the UK & British Citizens in EU
Aug 25, 2017 / Citizens rights
Read moreOpen Call for Artists: Voice of______ at Transeuropa
Sep 14, 2017 / Art and culture
Read moreActing for Freedom of Movement in Poland
Sep 25, 2017 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreTRANSEUROPA 2017 in Madrid from 25th-29th October
Oct 25, 2017 / Art and culture
Read moreWhat Europe Does Ukraine need? A Statement on the European International
Oct 28, 2017 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreConvergent Spaces: the Journal of TRANSEUROPA Festival
Nov 6, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCall for candidates to the board of European Alternatives
Nov 7, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFeminism in Belarus: What is Make Out?
Nov 26, 2017
Read moreMarina Garcés y Santiago Alba Rico: ¿el retorno de los nacionalismos?
Read moreThe parable of the nation state
Read moreFrom the city to Europe, bypassing the State
Read moreThe path forwards with Miguel Urban and Lorenzo Marsili
Read morePresentation with Oliver Ressler: What’s after the nation state?
Read moreMeet the candidates for the election of two EA board members
Dec 5, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreBest of European Alternatives in 2017
Dec 10, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSuzana Carp and Alberto Alemanno, new members of the Board
Dec 17, 2017 / Non categorizzato
Read moreErkan Özgen: Kurdish artist
Dec 26, 2017
Read moreBlack Lives Matter Denmark: interview with Bwalya Sørensen
Read moreMarina Garcés: Vivimos una crisis de soberanía más que un combate entre identidades
Read moreRise of far right: The EU needs to do much more to fight against it
Read moreMigration crisis: The EU is part of this problem
Read moreSOS Racismo Madrid – (entrevista a Moha Gerehou)
Read moreGesine Schwan | Refugees relocation: Cities should be independent from central governments
Read moreEuropean politics: how can we make an impact from grassroots’ movements?
Read more¿Feminizar la política o despatriarcalizar nuestra sociedad?
Read moreBrexit: People who identify as black in the UK voted for remain
Read moreStrategies for the Right to the City and Culture
Jan 17, 2018
Read moreTalk Real Sarajevo: Strategies for the Right to the City and Culture
Jan 25, 2018 / Transnational Activism
Read moreJoan Subirats: Cities are spaces where things can change for better
Jan 26, 2018
Read moreReal representation as Europeans
Feb 5, 2018 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreWhat’s coming up in 2018 in EA?
Feb 10, 2018 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreGesine Schwan in Solidarity with Mimmo Lucano
Feb 26, 2018
Read moreOpen call to participate in our solidarity contest for students!
Mar 5, 2018 / Transnational Activism
Read moreAct4Free Movement
Mar 13, 2018
Read moreCARE
Read moreLabour Games
Read morePolitical Critique
Read moreOur Transnational School of politics made it to the shortlist of Advocate Europe
Mar 22, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreA new report, backed by key Corbyn supporters proposes “remain and reform”
Mar 25, 2018 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreMeet the winners of our solidarity contest!
Apr 16, 2018 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreAct4FreeMovement: Participatory democracy already exists beyond the nation-state
Apr 24, 2018 / Citizens rights
Read more‘DEMOS’, a documentary to meet the makers of tomorrow’s society
May 18, 2018 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreVardiya #2 Future of Childhood: a workshop in the Venice Biennale
Jun 5, 2018 / Art and culture
Read moreWe invite five EA members to help us shaping this year’s Open Assembly in Berlin!
Jun 7, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreHow is the EU responding to the shrinking civic space?
Jun 16, 2018 / Transnational Activism
Read moreArt and Culture at the forefront of World Refugee Day
Jun 25, 2018 / Art and culture
Read moreResistance, movement and invention: ready for the Campus of EA
Jul 3, 2018 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreReconciliation in the Balkans: A Call to Support the Prespes Agreement
Jul 18, 2018 / Transnational Democracy
Read more‘What comes after the nation state?’ A congress to imagine a future beyond the nation state
Aug 8, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCan co-creation help reach (more) social justice in the city? A research workshop preliminary to the Saint Denis Case Study
Sep 3, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEuropean Citizenship?
Sep 26, 2018
Read moreMeet the EU citizens fighting for free movement
Oct 1, 2018 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreJoin our Online Course on Countering Hate Speech in Europe
Oct 11, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat happened after the referendum in Macedonia?
Oct 17, 2018
Read morePalermo shouts! Collective public action for the life and freedom of migrants in Libya
Nov 12, 2018 / Art and culture
Read moreCitizens Choose an EU Citizens Assembly to Renew EU Democracy
Nov 19, 2018 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCase Study: Saint Denis – Towards a just creative city?
Dec 6, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreBiannual report 2017-2018: Connecting struggles across borders
Dec 10, 2018 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTalk Real in Lisbon: Voices for the right to the city
Dec 19, 2018
Read more(Im)possible complicities: Co-production, co-creation, co-optation
Jan 8, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAntónio Brito Guterres | The Invisible City of Lisbon
Jan 9, 2019
Read moreWhat are our plans for 2019?
Jan 10, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans: the roads to European democracy
Feb 12, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTransSOL
Mar 13, 2019
Read moreUrban Alternatives
Read moreArtGora Forum
Mar 20, 2019
Read moreDECiDe
Mar 23, 2019
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans 2019: The road to the European elections
Mar 28, 2019 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreCall for applications for the School of Transnational Activism open!
Apr 1, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreMay is getting closer, what’s out there to do?
Apr 6, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreUrban Alternatives: mapping cities of resistance, innovation and alternatives
Apr 25, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCharta 2020: A Charter of European Public Goods
May 9, 2019 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreA new European Politics must start today
May 20, 2019 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreWe are recruiting an intern in Berlin
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThe dawn of a Europe of many visions: an accessible guide to the European party manifestos
May 23, 2019 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreWelcome to the Online Course on Countering Hate Speech in Europe!
Jun 26, 2019
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans: Where have we been so far?
Jul 17, 2019 / Transnational Activism
Read moreHow has protest changed in the face of climate change?
Sep 10, 2019 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreThe Right to Truth
Sep 28, 2019 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival: 6th – 10th November in Palermo
Sep 30, 2019 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreApply to the School of Palermo on transnational democracy at the Transeuropa Festival
Oct 7, 2019 / Transnational Activism
Read moreArt and politics beyond the Wall: 5 days of Transeuropa in Palermo
Nov 26, 2019 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreBeyond the jungle, another Europe of solidarity and justice exists
Dec 5, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreConference: Youth Doing Politics
Jan 23, 2020 at 20:30
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2019
Dec 21, 2019
Read moreWe have achieved a lot in 2019: let’s do more next year!
Dec 23, 2019 / Non categorizzato
Read moreProjects
Dec 26, 2019
Read morePublications
Read moreNews
Dec 30, 2019
Read moreVideos
Read moreThe most ‘European’ Europeans? The politically invisible 17 million EU citizens
Jan 12, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read more‘Political Youth’: A web-documentary to reinvent democracy in Europe
Jan 20, 2020 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreBoard
Jan 31, 2020
Read moreFor a Conference on a Future on Europe open to civil society
/ Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreLa nostra storia
Feb 4, 2020
Read moreSubscribe to our newsletter
Feb 5, 2020
Read moreEU observer: Eurobonds and democracy must go together
Feb 6, 2020
Read moreThe Myth of Europa – January 2009
Feb 17, 2020
Read moreThe Myth of Europa – March 2009
Read moreThe Myth of Europa – May 2009
Read moreThe Myth of Europa – October 2009
Read moreThe State of the Media in Italy: A European Problem
Read moreManifesto of the Appalled Economists
Read moreEuropean Elections Guide 2009
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2011
Read moreTransnational Dialogues Journal 2011-2012
Read moreTowards a transnational democracy for Europe
Read moreTranseuropa Journal 2012
Read moreTranseuropa Festival Journal 2013
Read moreCitizens Manifesto for the 2014 European elections
Read moreTransnational Dialogues 2014
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans 2014
Read moreThe Charter of Lampedusa
Read moreA State of Democracy: Towards Citizen Rights Protection
Read moreShifting Baselines of Europe
Read moreTransnational Dialogues Journal 2016
Read moreCivil Society of the Western Balkans Summit Series
Read moreTen Years of European Alternatives
Read moreTranseuropa Journal 2017
Read moreThe Myth of Europa
Read moreThe Right to Truth
Read moreThe down of a Europe of many visions
Read moreThe Guardian: “As the European elections approach, it’s time to stop the politics of cowardice”
Read moreeldiario.es: “El único plan B para cambiar Europa es reconstruir el poder”
Read moreLeftEast: Talk Real London
Read moreLa7: Sul’accordo di Bruxelles sui migranti
Read moreBNR Radio: “Barriers to refugees only exacerbates the problem”
Read moreIl Fatto Quotidiano: “La Gabbia, il Paragone non regge se a parlare di diritti delle donne sono gli uomini”
Read moreRadio3 Rai: “Al muro del Brennero”
Read moreIndependent: After Brexit, nobody is speaking up for Europeans – and it’s a problem for the whole of Europe
Read moreRepubblica: “A un anno dall’Oxi, non rifugiamoci nei nazionalismi. Un’Europa democratica è possibile”
Read moreCorriere della Sera: “De Magistris-Colau, prove di Podemos in Italia”
Read moreMicroMega: “La Polonia fra social-nazionalismo e nuova sinistra”
Read moreCorriere della Sera: De Magistris e Colau a Marghera raccontano le loro «Città ribelli»
Read moreLeft: Il futuro in comune: A Messina un focus sul municipalismo
Read moreCafeBabel: “La UE y los Balcanes: ni contigo ni sin ti”
Read moreNeusDeutchlans: “Reflections after regional elections in Germany”
Read moreHuffington Post: “Per chi suona la campana del Meclemburgo”
Read moreIl Fatto Quotidiano: “Ue: ‘Talk real’, il programma sul web per avvicinare i cittadini ai suoi politici”
Read moreLeftEast: Combating environmental racism in Eastern Europe
Read moreopenDemocracy: “Implementing the commons in Europe”
Read moreEl País: “Una tercera vía entre el ‘establishment’ y los nacionalismos”
Read moreSme.sk: “Our political system has not always been exclusively a matter for the political parties.”
Read moreDeutschlandfunk: “Young Europeans call for direct election of the EU Parliament President”
Read morePolitical Youth Documentary 2020
Read moreTRANSEUROPA 2019: ÜberMauer – Oltremuro – Beyond the Wall
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2017
Read moreTRANSEUROPA 2017: ¿Qué hay después del estado nación? (Spanish video)
Read moreEUROPEAN COMMONS FORUM #TF17 (part 4) with ECA. The Commons offering a renewed vision for Europe?
Read moreTRAILER TRANSEUROPA 2017 and ECA ~ Convergent Spaces ~
Read moreYanis Varoufakis (DiEM25) and Luigi de Magistris (mayor of Naples) meet in Rome
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2015
Read moreThe Campus of European Alternatives – 1st Edition #FixEurope
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans: connecting local alternative voices
Read moreThe Citizens Manifesto: our demands for Europe
Read moreCommon Struggles: A journey with European movements for the commons
Read moreVoices for a diverse Europe
Read moreWavelength documentary
Read moreCitizens of Nowhere: How Europe can be saved from itself
Read moreWir Heimatlosen Weltburger
Read moreopenDemocracy: Back to the Colourful Revolution
Feb 18, 2020
Read moreAljazeera: “Now Italy needs a new deal – and new politics”
Read moreDeutschlandfunk: “The crisis in Europe”
Read moreBBC News World: Interview with Lorenzo Marsili
Read moreAljazeera: “It’s high time for a new, multipolar world order”
Read moreAljazeera: “Italian elections and the crisis of European democracy”
Read moreThe Guardian: “Two anti-elite parties have divided Italy between them. What now?”
Read moreThe Guardian: “Italy’s belligerent new coalition is bad news for the EU”
Read moreWashington Post: “Italy’s thwarted populists may have their revenge on Europe”
Read moreFrance 24: “A recurrent theme in the Italian election campaign was the EU abandoned us”
Read moreAljazeera: “Italy’s crisis is about to get much worse”
Read moreThe Nation: “If We Don’t Understand Class Struggle, We Don’t Understand Anything”
Read moreAljazeera: “The far-right has a utopia. What’s ours?”
Read moreLa7: “Salvini-Di Maio, sfiorare o sforare il 3 per cento?”
Read moreAljazeera: “National-populism: a new global model is born”
Read moreJungle World: “The nation state must be overcome”
Read morePhoenix TV: “Will the EU stop Italy’s household escapades?”
Read morePublico.pt: “Houve um falhanço para explicar o que significa a Europa”
Read moreBBC: “The EU: Saviour or oppressor?”
Read moreThe Guardian: “We call on Labour to back remain”
Read moreRed Pepper: “What Europe Wants”
Read moreThe Carnegie Europe: Democratizing Europe’s economy
Read moreDeutschlandfunk Kultur: “Antifascism does not belong in the left corner”
Read moreLa7: “Paese spaccato in due, unica soluzione un’estensione lunga”
Read moreNeus Deutschland: “The Senate must become more radical”
Read moreDerStandard: “The loud adieu to the idea of the nation”
Read moreKUECHENSTUD.IO: re:publica 2019 | tl;dr | Stage 2 – Day 2
Read moreDeutschlandfunk Kultur: “Plea for a transnational party”
Read moreWhat would a feminist Europe look like?
Read moreHow has protest changed in the face of climate change?
Read moreEumans2020: how citizens can change Europe
Read moreThe Right to Truth: conversations sur l’art et féminisme
Read moreHuman Rights Workshop
Read moreOpen Meeting Point #1EuropaFürAlle Demonstration
Read moreA new cosmopolitanism for our era
Read moreBuilding Feminist Networks in Europe
Read moreGehtAuchAnders # 6 – Interview with European election candidates
Read moreMay Day – Solidarity with Migrant Workers
Read moreAgora Europe #17 Charta 2020 Official Presentation
Read moreLabourgames – work and play – GAME JAM & Final Presentation
Read morePanic! Don’t panic! // F(EU)ture Festival
Read moreSeminario formativo: Gaming e Gamification
Read moreReclaim Europe! – Urban perspectives, Transnational strategies
Read moreThe Routinisation of Administrative Detention of Migrants and Free Movement of Citizens
Read moreTax evasion and financial criminality in Europe: new forms of fraud, new social struggles
Read moreTransnational Dialogues @MAXXI
Read moreDemocracy in Europe
Read moreThe Future of Unions: the power of citizens and the UK – EU Referendum
Read moreRebel Cities: with Ada Colau, Luigi De Magistris, Lorenzo Marsili, Gianfranco Bettin
Read moreThe Future of Democracy in Europe | Film screening and discussion
Read moreYouth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe
Read moreConference “Volunteering for Social Change”
Read more10th Anniversary European Alternatives: Terzo tempo / Overtime
Read moreWhat comes after the nation state?
Read moreThe Citizens’ Rally
Read moreContemporary & Feminist Art as a response to social change
Read moreSeminário Internacional “Como apoiar pessoas refugiadas”
Read moreSolidarity Europe: where do we live?
Read moreSolidarity starts with us
Read moreStand Up for Another #EUMigration Policy
Read moreHack (y)our Border projects
Read moreIllusory Rights on EU migrants
Feb 19, 2020
Read moreNino Baidauri | Women of Georgia
Read moreGabriele Labanauskaite: Lithuanian Music and Theatre director
Read moreOksana Briukhovetska | The Right to Truth
Read moreVerena Spilker | Transnational Queer Underground
Read moreJoanna Bednarczyk | Demakijaż – Women’s Film Festival
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans 2019 Trailer
Read moreCampus of European Alternatives – Shifting Baselines
Read moreCitizens Pact for European Democracy
Read moreThe Citizens Manifesto: our demands for Europe
Read moreMedia freedom and pluralism in Europe
Read moreOpen Access to Detention Centres
Read moreArtists against crisis (Art Real I ATHENS)
Read moreArt against crisis and hate speech (Art Real II MADRID )
Read moreArtists against crisis and hate speech (Art Real III Gothenburg )
Read moreAir Time
Read moreTransnational Dialogues | Soterramento (Burial): A Performance by Jota Mombaça
Read moreInterview with Dai Hua 代化
Read moreInterview with Guo Rui 郭睿
Read moreInterview with Julijana Nicha
Read moreInterview with Jota Mombaça
Read moreInterview with Zhou Zishu 周子书
Read moreA conversation with Vinicius Braz Rocha – Netweaver
Read moreTransnational Dialogues Trailer
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans 2019: Best practices and recommendations
Feb 20, 2020
Read moreTranseuropa 2019: ÜBERMAUER / BEYOND THE WALL
Read moreRejuvenating Europe’s Democracy
Feb 21, 2020
Read moreLorenzo Marsili with Yanis Varoufakis, Marisa Matias, S. Sierakowski, V. Orazzini
Feb 25, 2020
Read moreTalk Real in Madrid | New Spanish politics: beyond the ballot box
Read moreSports (Political Youth 2020)
Feb 26, 2020
Read moreElections (Political Youth 2020)
Read moreMigration (Political Youth 2020)
Read moreRiders (Political Youth 2020)
Read moreClimate (Political Youth 2020)
Read moreMary Kaldor: Cosmopolitan democracy
Read moreAnn Pettifor (Green New Deal for Europe)
Read moreLaunch of the first European citizens initiative on media pluralism
Read moreFirst Meeting of the Council on Participatory Democracy
Mar 19, 2020 at 14:00h
Read moreChallenging Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Conference
Read moreCall for Contributions for the final conference of Co-Creation
/ Art and culture
Read more17 milioni: gli europei più “europei”?
Mar 2, 2020 / Citizens rights
Read moreIl Consiglio Civico sulla Democrazia Europea ti cerca!
Mar 3, 2020 / Network News
Read moreContatti e indirizzi
Mar 10, 2020
Read moreInformativa sulla privacy
Read moreTermini e condizioni
Read moreOfferte di lavoro e stage
Read moreUnisciti a European Alternatives
Read moreMissione e valori
Read moreStrategia
Mar 11, 2020
Read moreStruttura e Finanze
Read moreDonare
Mar 12, 2020
Read moreAssemblea aperta
Read morePartner
Read moreSteering committee
Read moreCo-Creation
Mar 13, 2020
Read moreCountering Hate Speech and Far Right Radicalism in CEE – Training Series
Read moreEuryka
Read moreScuola di Attivismo Politico
Read moreTranseuropa Caravans
Read moreTranseuropa Festival
Read moreURBACT
Read moreMedia Enquiries
Read moreRicerca su EA
Read moreEventi
Read moreImpatto
Read moreAlJazeera: The coronavirus pandemic can empower us to demand change
Mar 18, 2020
Read moreHome
Read moreÈ tempo per la solidarietà transnazionale
Mar 19, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read moreATHENSYN
Read moreEuropean Citizens Action Service (ECAS)
Read moreAgora Europe
Mar 20, 2020
Read moreAlexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft (HIIG)
Read moreAnother Europe is Possible
Read moreARCI
Read moreBiennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo (BAM)
Read moreCafé Babel
Read moreCentre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD)
Read moreCitizens for Europe
Read moreCivil Society Europe (CSE)
Read moreCommons Network
Read moreDemocratic Left in Southeast Europe (SEE)
Read moreDiEM25
Read moreECIT Foundation
Read moreEU Rights Clinic
Read moreEuropean Civic Forum
Read moreEuropean Democracy Lab
Read moreEuropean May
Read moreFriedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Dialogue Southeast Europe
Read moreGreen New Deal for Europe
Read moreinternational literature festival berlin
Read moreInternazionale
Read moreKettos Merce
Read moreKrytyka Polityczna
Read moreLondon School of Economics
Read moreMigrants’ Rights Network (MRN)
Read moreZemos 98
Read moreWemove.eu
Read moreVisual Research Culture Centre (VCRC)
Read moreThe Good Lobby
Read morePerpetuum Mobile
Read moreMinistry of Space (Ministarstvo Prostora)
Read moreopenDemocracy
Read moreMuseum of World Culture
Read moreL’UE può farlo! Firma la nostra petizione al Parlamento europeo sul Covid19
Mar 25, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreResist 2020
Apr 4, 2020 at 14:00h CET
Read moreLettera aperta ad Angela Merkel
Apr 7, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreEnvironmental rights are health rights
Apr 8, 2020 / Citizens rights
Read moreLa crisi Covid-19. Un punto di svolta per il progetto europeo
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreWorkers Without Borders
Apr 9, 2020 / Citizens rights / Transnational Activism
Read moreIl Riformista: “I parlamentari di centrosinistra contro decreto porti chiusi: “Va ritirato””
Apr 11, 2020
Read moreNeoliberalism, Democracy and Covid-19 in the Global South
Apr 18, 2020 at 14:00h CET
Read morePolish Parliament Must Reject Regressive Proposals on Sexual and Reproductive Rights
Apr 15, 2020 / Citizens rights
Read more‘Neoliberalism, Democracy and Covid-19 in the Global South’: New exclusive content for EA members
Apr 16, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read moreOpen Letter to EU Health Ministers
/ Citizens rights
Read moreWorkers Without Borders
Apr 21, 2020
Read moreMoving forward – With or Without Germany
Apr 22, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCitizens Take Over Europe – online festival
May 9, 2020 at 11:00 - 19:00
Read moreCitizens Take Over Europe: Calling for a Conference on the Future of Europe
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreThis May Day call for rights for workers without borders
Apr 30, 2020 / Citizens rights
Read moreVox Europ: ‘We want a Europe that cares and is taken care of’
May 8, 2020
Read moreLinkiesta: Il 9 maggio cittadini e associazioni si organizzano la loro conferenza sul futuro dell’Unione
Read moreRai Radio: 70 anni da europei
Read moreThe Guardian: Elites have failed us. It is time to create a European republic
May 14, 2020
Read moreCovid-19, democratic ownership and the future of the economy
Read moreSchool of Resistance: This Madness has to stop
Read moreThe New York Times: “A Director Asks, Would Jesus Stand With Today’s Migrants?”
May 15, 2020
Read moreeldiario.es: “Las élites nos han fallado: es la hora de construir una república europea”
May 18, 2020
Read more“Il fondo comune europeo: così si salva l’unione”
Read moreRizoma: un nuovo istituto a Palermo
May 26, 2020 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreA Global Health and Green New Deal
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreNo return to ‘normal’: how do we build a new economy?
May 30, 2020 at 14:00h CET
Read moreSchool of resistance: Make the world habitable again
Read moreOn World Refugee Day, we call for a fundamental change in European migration policy
Jun 20, 2020 / Transnational Activism
Read moreOpen Letter to Angela Merkel: For a citizens-centered Conference on the Future of Europe
Jul 1, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreFrance24: Europe after Covid 19: How €750 billion could reboot the EU
Read moreVox Europ: The case for a citizens-centered Conference on the Future of Europe
Read moreEU Observer: Future of Europe Conference: Council urged to move now
Jul 9, 2020
Read moreAvtonomi Akadimia
Read moreWhich way forward in Europe? EU Funding for a solidary migration policy
Sep 30, 2020 at 17:00h
Read moreSolidarity Cities of Europe
Read moreDonate in support of a new generation of activists
Jul 22, 2020
Read moreFrom Sea to City
Read moreJonas Staal – New Unions
Jul 24, 2020
Read moreEva-Maria Bertschy – The New Gospel
Read moreTranseuropa 2019 – opening
Read moreOltre il Muro – Transeuropa 2019
Read moreLorenzo Marsili presents Transeuropa 2019
Read moreTranseuropa 2019 – summary day 1
Read moreTranseuropa 2019 – summary day 2
Read moreManufactourist – Transeuropa 2019 performance
Read moreRizoma: meet the artists of our first project, Pandemos
Jul 27, 2020 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens Take Over Europe demands transparency and citizen participation in the planning of the Conference on the Future of Europe
Sep 16, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCitizens Take Over Europe
Sep 17, 2020
Read moreOur new memorandum calls to the European Labour Authority to do more to protect the rights of mobile workers
Sep 18, 2020 / Citizens rights
Read moreLegal memorandum to the European Labor Authority
Oct 1, 2020
Read moreProtecting citizenship rights of young mobile European workers
Read moreOur Petition to the European Parliament
Oct 8, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreArtsformation
Read moreArtsformation: A new research project working in the intersection between art and technology
/ Art and culture
Read moreCreating concrete Corridors of Solidarity
Oct 29, 2020 at 17:00h
Read moreSchool of Resistance: The Paranoia of the Western Mind
Oct 17, 2020 at 18:00h
Read moreA global jurisdiction for a global economy
Read moreOpening Studio Rizoma and launch PANDEMOS
Oct 27, 2020 at 18h CET
Read moreStudio Rizoma presents PANDEMOS
/ Art and culture
Read moreStudio Rizoma
Read moreReason against Fanatism
Oct 27, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreArtribune: A Palermo nasce Rizoma, istituto di sperimentazione culturale promosso da European Alternatives
Oct 29, 2020
Read moreRepubblica: Palermo, temi e oggetti del lockdown raccontati da tredici artisti
Read moreRepubblica: Una mostra on line con le opere della quarantena
Read moreJoin the board of European Alternatives!
Oct 30, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read moreYiE-OT Shrinking Spaces for Youth Work!? – Challenges for Post-Democratic Societies
Nov 12, 2020 at 9:00h
Read moreCommunity Conversations
Read moreVoxEurop: “‘The virus started changing the way in which we use technology, but also the way we access, create and produce art’
Nov 10, 2020
Read moreOpportunity for Researchers to work with European Alternatives!
Nov 17, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read moreMeet the candidates of the 2020 EA Board Election
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWe are looking for a researcher to work with us on solidarity in Berlin
Nov 18, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read moreRegroup, Rethink, React: Practical solutions to promote and implement human rights based migration policies.
Dec 9, 2020 at 17:00h
Read more5th Annual Conference on European Citizenship
Dec 2, 2020 at 10am
Read moreThe EU should seize the Biden/Harris moment
Nov 27, 2020 / Transnational Democracy
Read morePlanetary Politics
Nov 30, 2020
Read moreProtecting and Informing Young European Workers – Issue 1
Dec 1, 2020
Read moreMeet the two new board members of EA
Dec 2, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read more6 recommendations to protect and inform young European workers
/ Citizens rights / Transnational Activism
Read moreLaunching a Citizen-Led Conference on the Future of Europe
Dec 15, 2020 at 17:30
Read moreDaring New Spaces – Summit on the European Public Sphere
Dec 10, 2020 at 15:00h
Read more2020: A year of resilience, reinvention and co-creation
Dec 16, 2020 / Non categorizzato
Read moreCitizens Take Over Europe – online sessions 2021
Jan 14, 2021
Read moreLaunching a Citizen-Led Conference on the Future of Europe
Jan 6, 2021 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreWe are looking for a program coordinator to work with us on transnational democracy
Jan 8, 2021 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreSkillsharing Workshop by Sanaz Azimipour – »Voters Without Borders«
Jan 19, 2021
Read more»Full Political Rights Should Not Be Tied To National Citizenship«
Read moreYour Voice on the Future of Europe
Jan 22, 2021 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreFor a future beyond the nation state: our plans for 2021
Jan 28, 2021 / Non categorizzato
Read moreAuthoritarian Bending of Euro-Technocracy Illiberalism’s Devil in The Details in Southeast Europe: The Case of North Macedonia
Read moreSchool of Resistance: a film and discussion series
Feb 24, 2021
Read moreTrust Without Borders
Feb 3, 2021
Read moreScience Fiction Workshops: Registrations open for the first Hackathon!
Feb 8, 2021 / Art and culture
Read moreArt, international cooperation and Brexit
Feb 18, 2021 at 19:00h
Read moreA manifesto for the new decade – Reviving the Barcelona Acquis
/ Non categorizzato / Network News
Read moreItalians want Mario Draghi to deliver ‘normality’ – and therein lies the danger
Read moreAssemblies of Solidarity
Read moreCivic Council on European Democracy – Talks Across Europe
Feb 23, 2021 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCouncil Forum on European Democracy
Read moreTogether against patriarchy, neoliberalism and racism
Mar 8, 2021 / Non categorizzato
Read moreManifesto for a European Citizens’ Assembly
Mar 9, 2021 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreHuman Rights Must Come Before Profit
Mar 24, 2021 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreRoom to Bloom: Open call for artists working on postcolonial feminism
Mar 25, 2021 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreFrom the Sea to the City: Ideas, good practices and next steps for a welcoming Europe
Mar 30, 2021
Read moreNew publication out: Ideas & Best practices for a welcoming Europe
Apr 1, 2021 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreSkillsharing Workshop by Lara Parizotto – »Voters Without Borders«
Apr 19, 2021
Read moreThe Rise of Insurgent Europeanism
Read moreNew publication out: The Rise of Insurgent Europeanism
Apr 27, 2021 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreNow is time to move on from precarious Europe: the Social Pillar must ensure fair, decent and safe worker mobility in the EU
May 1, 2021 / Citizens rights / Transnational Activism
Read moreFrom the Sea to the City: A conference of cities for a welcoming Europe
Jun 25, 2021 at 10am
Read moreWe are looking for an intern to join our team!
May 31, 2021 / Non categorizzato / Network News
Read moreRoom to Bloom – performance 1 Athens
Jun 19, 2021
Read moreBest Practices & Policy Demands of Migrant Workers – Issue 2
Jul 19, 2021
Read moreBest practices and policy demands of migrant workers during the pandemic
Jul 20, 2021 / Citizens rights / Transnational Activism
Read moreSCHOOL OF POLITICAL HOPE
Read moreTUNISIA: THE JASMINE BLOOM MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO WILT
Aug 13, 2021 / Citizens rights / Transnational Democracy
Read moreJob opportunity: Project coordinator to work with us on European solidarity in Berlin
Sep 7, 2021 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSchool of Resistance – For a Politics of Justice!
Sep 24, 2021
Read moreWorkers Without Borders in Conversation with EU Policy Makers
Read moreBetween Land and Sea
Read moreBetween Land and Sea: 19-23 October in Palermo
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreWe are looking for a Communications intern to join our team!
Sep 27, 2021 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWhat’s in an experiment? Opportunities and risks for the Conference on the Future of Europe
Sep 29, 2021
Read morePalermo Climate Declaration: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe
Oct 27, 2021 / Transnational Activism
Read moreBetween Land And Sea
Nov 2, 2021
Read moreVideo Foreword – The Online Handbook for Transnational Activists
Read moreThe Handbook for Transnational Activists – Book Presentation
Read moreWorkers Without Borders in Conversation with EU Policy Makers
Read moreArtsformation – Between Land and Sea
Read moreWhat is the Conference on the Future of Europe?
Read moreCare Workers in the Health Sector
Read moreDelivery Workers in the Platform Economy
Read moreRoom to Bloom at the Kyiv Biennale
/ Art and culture
Read moreRoom to Bloom: Ecofeminist Narratives for Europe and Beyond
Read moreRoom to Bloom – Living Pavilion Palermo
Read moreGeneration D Liberation
Read moreRoom to Bloom in Palermo: The Living Pavilion
Nov 11, 2021 / Art and culture
Read moreHow to build new unions of solidarity among migrant workers around Europe?
Nov 15, 2021 / Art and culture / Transnational Activism
Read moreRoom to Bloom – Palermo Living Pavilion
Nov 19, 2021
Read moreWeek 1 – What is Hate Speech?
Nov 29, 2021
Read moreWeek 1 – Causes and Consequences of Hate Speech
Read moreWeek 1 – Forms of Hate Speech
Read moreWeek 2 – What are Human Rights?
Read moreWeek 2 – The history and evolution of Human Rights
Read moreWeek 2 – The Human Rights Protection System
Read moreWeek 3 – What hate speech is, is controversial
Read moreWeek 4 – Preparing for taking Action against Hate Speech
Read moreWeek 4 – A Human Rights Approach to Action
Read moreWeek 4 – Interview with Emilia Roig (Center for Intersectional Justice)
Read moreFor a Permanent EU Citizens’ Assembly: Why, When, How?
Read moreFor a Permanent EU Citizens’ Assembly: Why, When, How?
Dec 1, 2021 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreThe Online Handbook for Transnational Activists
Dec 7, 2021
Read moreCitizens Take Over Europe goes to Florence to take part in the European Citizens’ Panels of the CoFoE
Dec 8, 2021 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreArtsformation – Between Land and Sea International Workshop 1
Dec 10, 2021
Read moreA Space to Hold – Between Land and Sea
Read moreEmerald City by Stefania Artusi – Between Land and Sea
Read moreBetween Land and Sea (Palermo 2021)
Read moreWelcome 2022! Ready for a new year of solidarity beyond borders
Jan 10, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read morePalermo Climate Declaration: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe
Read moreNo More War in Europe – An Appeal for Civic Action in Europe and Beyond
Jan 17, 2022 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreAssemblies of Solidarity by Laura Parker – Palermo
Jan 26, 2022
Read moreNo To War in Europe
Feb 15, 2022 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreNo to War in Europe!
Read moreWe are all Ukrainians now
Feb 28, 2022 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreWar in Ukraine: What we are doing, what our friends are doing, how you can help
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreFeminist Peace Practices
Mar 2, 2022
Read moreCall to Action! #DoNotLeaveUsAlone
Mar 14, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope Calling Special Power to the People! How can Europe work for everyone?
Mar 21, 2022
Read moreNo More War Citizens Assembly
Apr 13, 2022 at 17h
Read moreTranseuropa Festival 2022 – Decolonize! Decarbonise! Democratize!
Read moreNo More War Citizens Assembly
/ Transnational Democracy
Read moreNew edition of Transeuropa Festival: 20-25 April in Porto
Apr 12, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTranseuropa Festival Journal 2022
Read morePorto Declaration for Transnational Peace
Apr 22, 2022 / Transnational Democracy
Read moreNo More War Citizens Assembly II – 27 April, 5pm Paris
Apr 26, 2022 / Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreCall for Contributions: “Co-Creation: Challenging Boundaries Conference”
Apr 28, 2022 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Democracy
Read moreFreedom for Osman Kavala
/ Citizens rights / Transnational Democracy
Read moreLunch debate – Convention for a people-powered Europe: The future of democratic participation
May 7, 2022 at 13pm
Read moreThe Citizens Take Over Europe Coalition joins the Strasbourg Summit!
/ Citizens rights / Transnational Democracy
Read moreBringing local voices to Strasbourg – The CoFoE in Porto and the experience of the Portuguese National Assembly
May 11, 2022 / Citizens rights / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreWorkers Without Borders?
May 19, 2022
Read moreWorkers Without Borders? The Rights of workers from the Balkans in the EU
May 24, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreRoom to Bloom in the Warszawa Biennale: Imagining New Fictions
Jun 9, 2022 / Art and culture
Read moreCall for applications – Room to Bloom Festival
Jul 18, 2022 / Art and culture
Read moreAssemblies of Solidarity for Climate Action Now! (2022)
Jul 28, 2022
Read moreYouth Movement & Campaign Accelerator
Aug 5, 2022
Read moreCall for Nominations open for the Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator *Deadline extended*
Aug 19, 2022 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreOpportunity to work with European Alternatives as Communications officer
Aug 31, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreTrust Without Borders arrive to Rome: How to Organise Trust & Solidarity in Activist Struggles Without Borders
Sep 3, 2022 / Transnational Activism
Read moreMovement Learning Catalyst
Sep 8, 2022
Read moreCall for applications – Room to Bloom Mentorship programme
Sep 20, 2022 / Art and culture / Non categorizzato
Read moreRoom to Bloom Artist Talk with Lena Chen + Evoking Realities
Read moreWorkshop with Lena Chen: Writing an Anti-Manual for Feminist and Decolonial Art
Read moreResistance and reinvention: What’s next after the Italian elections
Sep 29, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreWe are looking for an intern to be part of our Room to Bloom project
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreTime for progressive forces to search for a new identity
Oct 3, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFiERCE
Oct 6, 2022
Read moreThere is now a way for the UK to rebuild its bridges with the EU – Labour should take the lead
Read moreItaly’s Giorgia Meloni is no Mussolini – but she may be a Trump
Read moreRoom to Bloom Festival
Nov 1, 2022
Read moreInternational Workshop in Paris | Odyssey in Utero
Read moreSyndicat! – Transnational Workers’ Organizing Summit
Nov 16, 2022
Read moreTransnational Assembly of Workers’ Solidarity – Towards Ecological Syndicalism!
Read moreSyndicat! – Transnational Workers’ Organizing Summit
/ Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreOpen call for videographers: Video production needed for a workshop in Paris
Nov 15, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreRethinking Alter-Globalisation: The Advent of Planetary Politics?
Nov 11, 2022 at 17.30 - 19.00
Read moreLaunching the Movement Learning Catalyst: A Year+ Programme
Nov 28, 2022 / Non categorizzato / Transnational Activism
Read moreTransnational Citizens’ Assembly on End-of-Life Decisions
Dec 6, 2022 at 14:30 - 17:30
Read moreTwenty years after Florence’s European Social Forum
Dec 7, 2022 / Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreIt’s the End of the Year!
Dec 15, 2022 / Non categorizzato
Read moreSakharov Prize awarded to “the Brave People of Ukraine”
Jan 11, 2023 / Citizens rights / Transnational Activism / Transnational Democracy
Read moreDemocracy, Ecology and Freedom in Europe
Feb 4, 2023
Read moreWe, the Non-Europeans
Read moreKeynote Speech by Daniel Gutierrez – »Voters Without Borders«
Jan 19, 2023
Read moreJob Opportunity: Assitant.e de recherche
Jan 23, 2023 / Non categorizzato
Read moreFreelance Opportunity: Organisation d’événement Culturel
/ Non categorizzato
Read moreEurope Calling Webinar with Robert Habeck, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Economy & Climate Protection
Read moreBiggest webinar in the history of EuropeCalling
/ Non categorizzato
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Feb 3, 2023 at 17:00-20:00
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Movement Learning Catalyst: building a learning community across struggles and places.
The Movement Learning Catalyst has great news for you. We are about to share a new Learner’s Guide and launch a new action-learning platform that aims to nurture the interconnected movements, realities and responsive strategies needed to challenge systems of oppression we face. Today, we’re facing complex intersecting crises that call for social movements able to build power to achieve systemic change. We’ve known this for centuries but today it seems harder than ever to find ways of working together across differences. Recognising that fragmentation and polarisation are among the main challenges that social movements are facing right now, we ask: How can we build the alliances and strategies we need to make a better world possible? The Movement Learning Catalyst offers a guide to learning for systemic change. It aims to support experienced activists and organisers by strengthening their ability to collaborate, strategize and learn from each other’s struggles. It offers new ways of thinking, tools, and practices to enhance strategising and movement building. THE LEARNER’S GUIDE The learning guide has five parts: THE ACTION-LEARNING PLATFORM Our action-learning platform includes all of these elements, in addition to high quality training resources, research and additional materials. We would like this space to provide structured action-reflection learning within movement building practices, by providing a well-crafted framework for ongoing action learning, mentorship, and peer-to- peer inquiry. Soon you will be able to find us here www.movementlearning.org, where you can also download the learning guide! WHO IS BEHIND THIS We have come together to work over the course of three years. Behind the project is a an international collaboration across pan-European activist training and popular education networks including Ulex Project, European Community Organising Network (ECON), activist researchers at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and us from European Alternatives. Each of the partners draws on a history of bringing movements together to learn from each other’s struggle and to organize across social movements, geographies and social realities. We are more than excited to very soon share the Learning guide and the action-learning platform with you!
The Changing Colours of the Sun: post-revolution Ukraine
May 2007 – European Alternatives Issue 1 Vera Rich – Vera Rich was recently given the Order of St Olga – the highest award that can be given to a female by the State of Ukraine – for her championship of Ukrainian culture. In 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Ukraine became the largest state in Europe. During the past sixteen years, it has captured world headlines on several occasions and at various levels – from the ephemeral world of pop-music to the pro-democracy “Orange Revolution”. Yet, for the most part, in the world at large, knowledge of Ukraine remains fragmentary – so that while millions of UK citizens know the name of the footballer Andriy Shevchenko, relatively few know of the poet Taras Shevchenko, who for Ukrainians combines the iconic roles of national poet, defender of the oppressed, and inspiration of the long struggle for statehood and independence. And while the Orange Revolution won world-wide admiration and support (no less than 30,000 “international observers” sacrificed their Christmas festivities to monitor the vital re-run of the disputed Presidential elections – the vast majority of them paying their own expenses!), the political confusion ensuing from President Yushchenko’s dissolution of the Ukrainian Parliament in April 2007 has disconcerted even many of Ukraine’s most loyal friends. For those with some interest in European geopolitics, Ukraine’s future is viewed as a choice between Russia and “Europe”. The linguistic situation is seen as a corollary of this: with Ukrainophones looking westward to eventual membership of the European Union and Russophones looking towards closer ties with Russia. This division, however, is simplistic. Many people in the east and south East of Ukraine, whom Soviet polity denied the chance of learning the Ukrainian language in their youth, and who do not possess the linguistic skills to master it as adults, deeply resent their lack of what should have been their mother tongue. One of the most moving of the songs sung on Kyiv’s Independence Square during the “Orange Revolution” –“The Colour of the Sun” – was a duel in which two singers, Ukrainophone and Russophone, expressed love for their country that transcended the linguistic “barrier.” And EU membership was on Ukraine’s agenda well before the president Victor Yushchenko came to power; already by the mid-1990s an accession date of 2020 was part of Ukraine’s political discourse. No serious politician would deny that Ukraine has to preserve a viable working relationship with her big neighbour. However, recent developments, ranging from reported Russian attempts to buy up Ukraine’s energy suppliers to such symbolic irritants as the news (which arrived during the writing of this article) that the Director of the Ukrainian Academy’s Institute of Literature has been denied a visa for a private visit to St Petersburg have made Ukrainian relations with Russia increasingly a matter of political pragmatism rather than based on fraternal warmth. Symbolic of Ukraine’s need to look simultaneously East and West is the Odessa-Brody pipeline. This was built with the intention of conveying oil from the Caspian and Central Asian fields, shipped by tanker across the Black Sea, to Brody on the Polish border, and thence to the Płock oil refinery and the Gdansk oil terminal. Oil from the non-Russian states of the former USSR would thus reach northern, central and western Europe, bypassing the potential stranglehold of Russia. However, although western politicians frequently praised the pipeline as a potential guarantor of energy security, the oil multinationals were shy of committing themselves, while the Poles delayed over their commitment to build the required links to Płock and Brody. In 2004, in the final months of the Kuchma presidency, the Ukrainian government, after months of indecision, agreed a temporary deal with Russia, by which Russian oil, piped westward across Belarus to Brody, would then be sent eastward again to Odessa, and thence by tanker to the Mediterranean (contravening, incidentally, the Turkish commitment to make the ecologically high-risk Dardanelles a tanker-free zone). Since this arrangement came into operation, Ukrainian international political discourse has shown a significant dichotomy: when addressing Russians it notes the benefit to Ukraine’s economy from the transit fees paid by Russia; when speaking to westerners it urges the eventual completion of the Płock and Gdansk links so that, as originally envisaged, Odessa can transmit oil into the heart of the European market. Apart from some die-hard Communists who would like to see the Soviet Union restored, Ukrainian public opinion is becoming increasingly Europe-oriented. The problem, increasingly a pragmatic rather than an ideological one, is how to reconcile this with living next door to what appears to be an increasingly assertive Russia. The current political turmoil in Ukraine has been seen by some commentators as a re-emergence of the Europe-versus-Russia controversy. Such a view is over-simplistic. Certainly, one root of the problem is the disputed 2004 Presidential elections, in which geopolitical factors did play some role, and in the aftermath of which, to resolve a deadlock, the incoming President Viktor Yushchenko agreed to the transfer of a package of powers and prerogatives hitherto belonging to the Presidency into the competence of Parliament. The problem is precisely what powers were transferred. In spring 2005, elections to the Ukrainian Supreme Rada (parliament) resulted in a government headed by Viktor Yanukovych (Yushchenko’s erstwhile rival for the Presidency) leaving the pro-Yushchenko parties in the Rada as a minority. This situation is not new – many US Presidents have had to work with a Congress dominated by the opposite party, but it requires considerable political finesse and – perhaps more important – a tradition of such “cohabitation”. For Ukraine, new to multi-party democracy, the difficulties were considerable; on one occasion, Prime Minister Yanukovych refused to ratify seven Presidential decrees unless Yushchenko agreed to dismiss seven provincial governors who were loyal to the President. After several months during which parliamentary business became increasingly unworkable, and with conflicts between the various opposition parties exacerbating the situation, the final straw came when the parties of the ruling coalition were perceived by…
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European Parliament votes on mutual recognition of existing same-sex unions
On Tuesday 23 November, the European Parliament in Strasbourg has approved a report on “Civil, commercial, family and private international law” which confirms the necessity for any civil contract (including all forms of marriages and civil unions) to be fully recognised in all EU countries. As ILGA-Europe report, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Slovakia Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland do not recognise same-sex marriages and unions celebrated in other EU countries. The European Parliament is sending a strong message to these national governments not to limit the rights of freedom of movement of EU citizens, as European Alternative has demanded in the last months. European Alternatives welcomes the European Parliament’s vote and wishes to gather like-minded Europeans to get organised for common action to make sure that member states implement what legislated by the Parliament.
Le Parlement européen vote pour une reconnaissance des unions homosexuelles existantes
Article de Alessandro Valera Traduit par Maïwenn Kernaleguen Mardi 23 novembre à Strasbourg, le Parlement européen a approuvé un rapport sur les composantes « en droit civil, droit commercial, droit de la famille et droit international privé » confirmant la nécessité pour tout contrat civil (y compris toutes les formes de mariages et d’unions civiles) d’être pleinement reconnu dans tous les pays de l’Union européenne. Comme l’a rapporté ILGA Europe, l’Italie, la Bulgarie, la Roumanie, la Grèce, la Slovaquie, l’Estonie, Chypre, la Lettonie, la Lituanie, Malte et la Pologne ne reconnaissent pas les mariages et les unions homosexuelles célébrées dans d’autres pays européens. Le Parlement européen envoie donc un fort message à ces gouvernements nationaux en les exhortant à ne pas limiter le droit à la libre circulation des citoyens de l’Union européenne, comme European Alternatives l’avait déjà demandé au cours des derniers mois. European Alternatives se réjouit du vote du Parlement européen et souhaite rassembler les Européens partageant ces opinions afin de mettre en place des actions communes pour s’assurer que les États membres appliquent bien la législation votée par le Parlement. Plus d’informations sont à venir sur ce sujet, restez à l’écoute !
European Parliament votes on mutual recognition of existing same-sex unions
On Tuesday 23 November, the European Parliament in Strasbourg has approved a report on “Civil, commercial, family and private international law” which confirms the necessity for any civil contract (including all forms of marriages and civil unions) to be fully recognised in all EU countries. As ILGA-Europe report, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Slovakia Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland do not recognise same-sex marriages and unions celebrated in other EU countries. The European Parliament is sending a strong message to these national governments not to limit the rights of freedom of movement of EU citizens, as European Alternative has demanded in the last months. European Alternatives welcomes the European Parliament's vote and wishes to gather like-minded Europeans to get organised for common action to make sure that member states implement what legislated by the Parliament. More information to come soon, stay tuned!
Development as Freedom? The Bhopal case
By: Valeria Venturini Nowadays seems to be fair enough that words such as freedom, democracy, development, have become bare containers full of rhetoric with no meaning. Too often we hear examples of good or bad governance based more on economical concepts instead of human rights. Amartya Sen, Nobel Price for Economy 1998, in his book Development as Freedom underlined: “Development means a process of expansion both in private and social sphere. Consequently, the fight of the development is to eliminate all the “unliberties”, such as fame, poverty, tyranny, intolerance, repression, illiteracy, lack of healthcare system and environment protection, freedom of speech and expressions, for both men and women, who have the opportunity to act and built the life they want” His words seems to be a vade-mecum of the perfect democracy , which unfortunately has been put on a second level, compared with economical principles. Reading about the economical growth of the Asian Tigers, we should ask ourselves if we really can talk about virtuous examples, or perhaps we should push our governments to guarantee at least about fundamental rights of their population, to really talk about concrete development. In the case of India, the differences between wages or rights are always strong, despite the high development of the last 20 years. Is that fair to define Tiger a country where the Caste System is still alive, even if with no legal value? Or a country where large parts of the population do not have the chance of the healthcare system? Around this topic, in June 2010, for a few days, some Medias reported a news around Bhopal, where in 1984 happened the largest industrial catastrophe of the history. The tragedy took place in the night between 2/3 December 1984: from the multinational Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), spread out around 40ton of MIC(Methyl isocyanate), causing a sort of toxic geyser on the area. This happened because the managers decided to cut the security system to save money. The explosion provoked 754victims, but Amnesty International calculated nowadays more than 25000 deaths; in addiction to this, the still-alive contamination and the deformations of the entire population, and particularly of Bhopal new generations. On June 7 2010, eight Indian managers of the UCIL have been condemned for the responsibility, together with the then-president Warren Anderson, 81, now in hiding. There are in the areas severe diseases, such as eyes, lung, liver, back, gastrointestinal and genital, and nervous and immune system. In addiction to this, there are plenty of cases of exhaustion and depression which can degenerate in coma or death. Moreover, the problem of the environment is still huge: BBC Radio in 2004 asserted that the area is still full of toxic materials: just swimming in one of the several lakes for more than 10 minutes could provoke faintness. USA defended the UCIL, saying that the factory did its very best to help the families of the victims: effectively, UCIL gave around 450 millions of Dollars to indemnify the victims, but actually none of them has been spent for the needs of the population, creating the worst case of corruption in the history of the country. Just 50 million Dollars have been spent to built an hospital around 22 km far from the most affected area, but just few families have the opportunity to spend 300 Rupee to get there with a rickshaw. Can we actually talk about freedom and development? Perhaps we should create new words, because clearly our words are neither sufficient, nor least of all faithful anymore.
Franziska Brantner: Europe’s new external action service
Franziska Brantner is an MEP in the Greens-EFA Grouping, and is a member of the Foreign affairs and relations with Isreal committees. She took part in the negotiations on the formation of the European External Action Service on behalf of the Greens-EFA. She is a fellow of the Henrich Boell Stiftung. On 8th July the European Parliament voted to approve a text on the formation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), a new civil service for the foreign affairs of the EU created by the Lisbon Treaty. A few days before the vote, European Alternatives talked with Franziska Brantner MEP, who participated in the negotiations on the text on behalf of the Green-EFA group in the European Parliament. We asked her what the priorities had been in the negotiations, and what progress had been made, as well as how to improve the democratic legitimacy of Europe’s external action, and the role of civil society. European Alternatives: The European Parliament has been in negotiations with the council, commission, and Catherine Ashton about the new European External Action Service. What would you say were the priorities of the European Parliament in these negotiations? Now that an agreement has been reached on the outlines of the new EEAS, do you think the parliament was successful? Franziska Brantner: It was important to include the EEAS in the ‘community method’. What was most important to the parliament was to make sure that the new EEAS would not be outside community budget control. There should be as much financial accountability for the new EEAS as there is for the European Commission. The first proposal that was on the table, drawn up by Catherine Ashton, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, was not very clear about the right to discharge, and how to hold accountable the people making the decisions about how the money is spent. The easiest way of ensuring the accountability would be to make it be part of the Commission, because then there would be the same means of control as for the Commission. Then we could keep the rules the same. We’ve got now a deal which enhances the draft in ensuring that the tax payers’ money is accountable. Our other priority in terms of the community method was to make sure that current financial instruments (development and stability instruments, for example) remained under the control of the Commission. This was particularly important for the development community which wanted the EU’s action to remain strongly development focussed and that this should not be subordinated to other foreign policy objectives. On that we succeeded to some degree and with regards to development instruments the last word stays with the Commission, even though the programming is done partly in conjunction with the external action service. We didn’t manage to obtain the same with stability funds and other classical foreign policy instruments. Another priority of the parliament was to insert some substantive issues into the negotiations, this was the main interest of my own group, the greens. Human rights, peace and crisis management … the Ashton first draft of a blueprint for EEAS didn’t mention ‘human rights’ at all. Now we have managed to get a human rights focal point in each delegation (in each embassy of the EU abroad) and a headquarters to ensure that human rights are a priority at the highest level of the EEAS. So on human rights we managed to achieve quite a lot. We also wanted the Commission and Council structures for peace and reconciliation to be integrated in the new service. There we did not succeed because the nation states are really ring-fencing their Council structures and insisting that they work under their own procedures. Some member states wanted to keep their own structures independent within the EEAS, and subordinate the Commission to them. This is the worst possible scenario – member states keeping their own structures and subordinating Commission resources and staff. We managed to keep them at level footing, even though they are separate. Regrettably, we didn’t manage to integrate them in a smart way. There we lost out against member state pressure. In the first draft there was an all powerful secretary general who had the financial rights, the programming, the representation rights … this person would have been more powerful than Ashton, everything would have gone through him. This was unacceptable to the parliament. If you had asked me which job I would have preferred, Ashton’s or the secretary general’s, I would always have chosen the secretary general : he had all the financial control, all the programming, also the representation and he was the bottle-neck through which everything had to go. There is now a financial director responsible for finances, and two deputies responsible for coordinating the team. So there as well the parliament was successful. Where we lost out is on the question of who comes to represent Ashton when she cannot come to parliament, which she won’t be able to do all the time. Unfortunately the deal is that it will be the Commissioner when it concerns Commission affairs, and the rotating presidency comes when it concerns Council affairs. This is really a shame because it brings back in the rotating presidency, back into foreign affairs, whereas in the Lisbon treaty we thought we had got rid of it. This was a way for national foreign ministers to keep their foot in the door of the EU’s external policy. All in all I would say that we won some important battles and we lost on some points, and we’ve managed to open plenty of useful doors. EA: I want to ask about the priority of development in the EU’s external action. Several months ago Judith Sargentini wrote an article for our website about article 208 of the Lisbon Treaty, which says that eradicating poverty should be the major goal of the EU’s development policy. Do you think this goal has been respected in the agreement over the EEAS? FB: As a…
Call for applications: Communications and Project Management intern
European Alternatives invites applications for a communications and project management intern. The post is based in our London offices. Tasks will include: Communications: – Managing relationships with translators – Proofreading and uploading articles and visual material to our website – Media outreach Fundraising: – Fundraising prospect researching – Assistance in the preparation of European grant applications Project Management: – Managing travel and accommodation bookings, communication with participants and other event management tasks – Basic accounting tasks About the candidate: Demonstrable interest in, and understanding of, European politics. Friendly and open outlook. English mother tongue or mother tongue-level (able to edit text in English), strong writing and editing skills. French or Italian an advantage. IT skills an advantage (especially Quark and Pages) Location & Conditions This post is available full time (9am-5pm) for 3-4 days per week for approximately 3 months (to be defined with the appropriate candidate). This post is unpaid with travel and lunch expenses covered, and it abides to European Alternatives' charter for fair internships. Click on the pdf sign to read the charter Internship Charter Our London offices are based at the Energy Centre, (just off Hoxton Square). In order to apply, please send a copy of your CV and a one page cover letter to Dominique at d.tuohy@euroalter.com by Wednesday, 3rd of November. Interviews will be held on Friday, November 5th.
23-24 Ottobre – Parigi: 2° meeting Transeuropa Network
We are excited to announce the second meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network – a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society. The first meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network took place on the weekend of 25th and 26th of september in London. The second meeting will take place on the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of October in Paris, at the meeting room of the Hotel Paris La Fayette. The subscription for this meeting are now closed, but if you would like to take part in the network, please send your CV and motivation letter to editors@euroalter.com Information on the Network available for download: (coming soon) AGENDA AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE NETWORK Directions and Maps – TRANSEUROPA Meeting 2 – Paris TN 2 agenda– AGENDA
23-24 Octobre Paris – 2ème rencontre du réseau TRANSEUROPA
Nous sommes heureux d'annoncer la seconde rencontre du réseau TRANSEUROPA – une réseau d'activistes venus de partout en Europe qui travaillent ensemble à l'émergence de politiques, cultures et société réellement transnationales. La premère réunion du réseau TRANSEUROPA s'est tenue à Londres les 25 et 26 Septembre à Londres. Le deuxième se tiendra à Paris dans la salle de réunion de l'hotel Paris La Fayette. Les inscriptions pour cette réunion are désormais fermées, mais si vous souhaitez prendre part au réseau par la suite, envoyez nous votre CV et une lettre de motivation à editors@euroalter.com Information on the Network available for download: (coming soon) AGENDA ET INFORMATIONS SUR LE RESEAU Directions and Maps – TRANSEUROPA Meeting 2 – Paris TN 2 agenda– AGENDA
23-24 October – Paris: 2nd meeting of Transeuropa Network
We are excited to announce the second meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network – a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society. The first meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network took place on the weekend of 25th and 26th of september in London. The second meeting will take place on the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of October in Paris, at the meeting room of the Hotel Paris La Fayette. The subscription for this meeting are now closed, but if you would like to take part in the network, please send your CV and motivation letter to editors@euroalter.com Information on the Network available for download: AGENDA AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE NETWORK Directions and Maps – TRANSEUROPA Meeting 2 – Paris TN 2 agenda– AGENDA
25 – 26 Septembre – Londres – Première rencontre du réseau TRANSEUROPA
Nous sommes très heureux d' annoncer la première rencontre du réseau TRANSEUROPA – un réseau d’activistes des quatre coins de l’Europe, qui travaillent ensemble à l’émergence de politiques, culture et société européennes véritablement transnationales. La première rencontre aura lieu à Londres les 25 et 26 Septembre. Les candidatures sont désormais fermées pour participer au réseau, mais pour les résidents à Londres qui voudraient assister à la rencontre, envoyez-nous un email à l'adresse suivante: network (arobase) euroalter (point) com. Plus d'informations sur le réseau sont disponibles à telecharger ici: Agenda et informations sur le réseau TN Actions et Thèmes TN 1 agenda INFO PRE-TRAVEL Thèmes à Discuter Social europe and economic governance discussion paper Environment discussion paper Media discussion paper
25-26 September – London – Transeuropa Network Founding Meeting
We are excited to announce the first meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network – a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society. The first meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network will take place on the weekend of 25th and 26th of september in London. Applications to participate are now closed, but those based in London who have an interest to attend may do so provided they can commit to both days of the programme. To register you should email network [at] euroalter [dot] com . Information on the Network available for download: AGENDA AND INFORMATION ABOUT THE NETWORK TN Actions and Themes TN 1 agenda INFO PRE-TRAVEL THEMATIC DISCUSSION PAPERS Social europe and economic governance discussion paper Environment discussion paper Media discussion paper Gender Equality in Europe Discussion Paper Transnational Democracy Discussion Paper
25-26 Settembre – Londra – Primo incontro TRANSEUROPA Network
Siamo lieti di annunciare il primo incontro della rete TRANSEUROPA, una rete di attivisti provenienti da tutta Europa che collaborano per l'emergere di una nuova politica, cultura e società veramente europea e transnazionale. Il primo incontro si terrà a Londra il 25 26 Settembre. Le registrazioni per partecipare alla rete sono ormai chiuse ma i residenti a Londra che volessero essere presenti al meeting inagurale possono ancora farlo scrivendo un email all'indirizzo seguente: network [chiocciola] euroalter [punto] com. Ulteriori informazioni sulla network sono disponibili da scaricare qui: AGENDA E INFORMAZIONI SULLA NETWORK TN Attività e tematiche TN 1 agenda INFO PRE-TRAVEL MATERIALE TEMATICO PER LA DISCUSSIONE Social europe and economic governance discussion paper Environment discussion paper Media discussion paper
Juin- Tour pour la liberté d’information
A Rome, Bologne et Sassari, European Alternatives présentera sa nouvelle campagne transnationale pour la liberté d'information en Europe. Tour events ROME: wednesday 16th of June 2010, at European Alternatives headquarters in Via Tiburtina 135 C – 7pm SASSARI: tuesday 22nd of June 2010 at the Faculty of Political Science-University of Sassari – 6pm BOLOGNA: thursday 24th of June 2010 at “Libreria Modo Infoshop” – 7pm European Alterities A series of meetings on media freedom and transnational political engagement Media freedom and access to information are the basic principles of democracy, as a responsible political community cannot exist without guaranteeing the quality, plurality, and representativeness of the media. We are convinced that a transnational framework to guarantee and protect pluralism of the media in Europe is long overdue. Announcing details of a 3-date Italian tour led by co-Diector Lorenzo Marsili, European Alternatives launches a new trans-European campaign to demand the establishment of a European normative framework to guarantee media pluralism and liberty of the press in Europe. For more information on the campaign , visit our Media Pluralism page ITALIAN European Alternatives è un’organizzazione volta a esplorare il potenziale di una politica e cultura transnazionale. Siamo convinti che sfide come la partecipazione democratica, l’eguaglianza sociale e l’innovazione culturale non possano più essere efficacemente comprese e affrontate a livello nazionale. Unendo impegno politico, innovazione artistica, e ricerca di nuove forme di partecipazione, European Alternatives è unica nel suo genere in quanto attore politico e culturale con attività, staff e base effettivamente trans-europei. Cercando di stimolare un'attiva partecipazione politica a livello europeo, l'organizzazione ha di recente lanciato una campagna transnazionale per la libertà dei media, rimarcando la necessità di garantire la libertà, il pluralismo, e l’indipendenza dell’informazione nell’Europa di oggi in quanto condizione imprescindibile di ogni sistema veramente democratico. Una forte mobilitazione di cittadini, giornalisti, e associazioni sta accompagnando in Italia l’iter della legge sulle intercettazioni, la cosiddetta legge bavaglio. European Alternatives è convinta che il problema possa e debba essere affrontato anche a livello europeo. European Alternatives ha organizzato un tour di 3 date in Italia in cui Lorenzo Marsili, direttore e co-fondatore dell’organizzazione, presenterà la campagna e i risultati di un incontro tenutosi l’8 giugno al Parlamento europeo che ha riunito europarlamentari, esperti, e associazioni di giornalisti con lo scopo di individuare un contesto normativo adatto a garantire il pluralismo dell’informazione in Europa. Verranno altresi' presentate interessanti proposte per l’utilizzo di un nuovo strumento di democrazia partecipativa in Europa – l’iniziativa cittadina, – per richiedere alla Commissione europea la messa in atto di tale contesto normativo Per offrire una struttura concreta per partecipare alla campagna sulla liberta' d'informazione, durante gli incontri saranno resi noti i progetti futuri di European Alternatives, fra cui l'edizione 2011 del Transeuropa Festival che a partire da quest'anno sarà co-organizzato dai nostri Transeuropa Networks, un nuovo strumento di partecipazione transnazionale che unisce un progetto editoriale, artistico e politico e che si concretizzerà infine con l'organizzazione del Festival 2011.
June – Media Freedom Tour
Tour events ROME: wednesday 16th of June 2010, at European Alternatives headquarters in Via Tiburtina 135 C – 7pm SASSARI: tuesday 22nd of June 2010 at the Faculty of Political Science-University of Sassari – 6pm BOLOGNA: thursday 24th of June 2010 at “Libreria Modo Infoshop” – 7pm European Alterities A series of meetings on media freedom and transnational political engagement Media freedom and access to information are the basic principles of democracy, as a responsible political community cannot exist without guaranteeing the quality, plurality, and representativeness of the media. We are convinced that a transnational framework to guarantee and protect pluralism of the media in Europe is long overdue. Announcing details of a 3-date Italian tour led by co-Diector Lorenzo Marsili, European Alternatives launches a new trans-European campaign to demand the establishment of a European normative framework to guarantee media pluralism and liberty of the press in Europe. For more information on the campaign , visit our Media Pluralism page ITALIAN European Alternatives è un’organizzazione volta a esplorare il potenziale di una politica e cultura transnazionale. Siamo convinti che sfide come la partecipazione democratica, l’eguaglianza sociale e l’innovazione culturale non possano più essere efficacemente comprese e affrontate a livello nazionale. Unendo impegno politico, innovazione artistica, e ricerca di nuove forme di partecipazione, European Alternatives è unica nel suo genere in quanto attore politico e culturale con attività, staff e base effettivamente trans-europei. Cercando di stimolare un'attiva partecipazione politica a livello europeo, l'organizzazione ha di recente lanciato una campagna transnazionale per la libertà dei media, rimarcando la necessità di garantire la libertà, il pluralismo, e l’indipendenza dell’informazione nell’Europa di oggi in quanto condizione imprescindibile di ogni sistema veramente democratico. Una forte mobilitazione di cittadini, giornalisti, e associazioni sta accompagnando in Italia l’iter della legge sulle intercettazioni, la cosiddetta legge bavaglio. European Alternatives è convinta che il problema possa e debba essere affrontato anche a livello europeo. European Alternatives ha organizzato un tour di 3 date in Italia in cui Lorenzo Marsili, direttore e co-fondatore dell’organizzazione, presenterà la campagna e i risultati di un incontro tenutosi l’8 giugno al Parlamento europeo che ha riunito europarlamentari, esperti, e associazioni di giornalisti con lo scopo di individuare un contesto normativo adatto a garantire il pluralismo dell’informazione in Europa. Verranno altresi' presentate interessanti proposte per l’utilizzo di un nuovo strumento di democrazia partecipativa in Europa – l’iniziativa cittadina, – per richiedere alla Commissione europea la messa in atto di tale contesto normativo. Per offrire una struttura concreta per partecipare alla campagna sulla liberta' d'informazione, durante gli incontri saranno resi noti i progetti futuri di European Alternatives, fra cui l'edizione 2011 del Transeuropa Festival che a partire da quest'anno sarà co-organizzato dai nostri Transeuropa Networks, un nuovo strumento di partecipazione transnazionale che unisce un progetto editoriale, artistico e politico e che si concretizzerà infine con l'organizzazione del Festival 2011.
Giugno – Tour per la liberta’ d’informazione
Date del Tour ROMA: mercoledì 16 giugno 2010, presso la sede di European Alternatives di Via Tiburtina 135 C – ore 19:00 SASSARI: martedì 22 giugno 2010, presso la Facoltà di Scienze Politiche dell'Università di Sassari – ore 18:00 BOLOGNA: giovedì 24 giungo 2010, presso la Libreria Modo Infoshop – ore 19:00 Alternative Europee Serie di incontri su libertà d'informazione e impegno politico transnazionale European Alternatives è un’organizzazione volta a esplorare il potenziale di una politica e cultura transnazionale. Siamo convinti che sfide come la partecipazione democratica, l’eguaglianza sociale e l’innovazione culturale non possano più essere efficacemente comprese e affrontate a livello nazionale. Unendo impegno politico, innovazione artistica, e ricerca di nuove forme di partecipazione, European Alternatives è unica nel suo genere in quanto attore politico e culturale con attività, staff e base effettivamente trans-europei. Cercando di stimolare un'attiva partecipazione politica a livello europeo, l'organizzazione ha di recente lanciato una campagna transnazionale per la libertà dei media, rimarcando la necessità di garantire la libertà, il pluralismo, e l’indipendenza dell’informazione nell’Europa di oggi in quanto condizione imprescindibile di ogni sistema veramente democratico. Una forte mobilitazione di cittadini, giornalisti, e associazioni sta accompagnando in Italia l’iter della legge sulle intercettazioni, la cosiddetta legge bavaglio. European Alternatives è convinta che il problema possa e debba essere affrontato anche a livello europeo. European Alternatives ha organizzato un tour di 3 date in Italia in cui Lorenzo Marsili, direttore e co-fondatore dell’organizzazione, presenterà la campagna e i risultati di un incontro tenutosi l’8 giugno al Parlamento europeo che ha riunito europarlamentari, esperti, e associazioni di giornalisti con lo scopo di individuare un contesto normativo adatto a garantire il pluralismo dell’informazione in Europa. Verranno altresi' presentate interessanti proposte per l’utilizzo di un nuovo strumento di democrazia partecipativa in Europa – l’iniziativa cittadina, – per richiedere alla Commissione europea la messa in atto di tale contesto normativo Per offrire una struttura concreta per partecipare alla campagna sulla liberta' d'informazione, durante gli incontri saranno resi noti i progetti futuri di European Alternatives, fra cui l'edizione 2011 del Transeuropa Festival che a partire da quest'anno sarà co-organizzato dai nostri Transeuropa Networks, un nuovo strumento di partecipazione transnazionale che unisce un progetto editoriale, artistico e politico e che si concretizzerà infine con l'organizzazione del Festival 2011. Per maggiori informazioni sulla campagna: https://euroalter.com/it/liberta-dei-media/
Lo sviluppo è libertà? Il caso Bhopal
(“Ruby who survived the disaster”. Photo di: Greenpeace. ) Guardandosi attorno ai nostri giorni, sembra che le parole come democrazia, sviluppo, modernità, siano diventate contenitori di una vuota retorica senza significato. Troppo spesso si portano esempi di buona o cattiva governance, in particolar modo basandosi su criteri economici camuffati per l’occasione da diritti umani. Come dice Amartya Sen, premio Nobel 1998 per l’economia, nel volume Lo sviluppo è libertà: “lo sviluppo deve essere inteso come un processo di espansione delle libertà reali di cui godono tutti gli esseri umani, nella sfera privata come in quella sociale e politica. Di conseguenza la sfida dello sviluppo consiste nell’eliminare i vari tipi di ‘illibertà’, tra cui la fame, la miseria, la tirannia, l’intolleranza e la repressione, l’analfabetismo, la mancanza di assistenza sanitaria e di tutela ambientale, la libertà di espressione, che limitano o negano all’individuo, uomo o donna, la capacità di agire e di costruire la vita che preferisce“. Le sue parole sembrano un perfetto prontuario della democrazia perfetta, che spesso viene citata ma che nel concreto viene messa in secondo piano da criteri opportunistici ed economici. Leggendo spesso della forza economica delle tigri asiatiche, c’è da chiedersi se si possa davvero parlare di queste come esempi virtuosi, o piuttosto si dovrebbero spronare ancor di più a garantire quantomeno i diritti fondamentali delle loro popolazioni. Nel caso dell’India, le divergenze di reddito, diritti, non sembrano essersi attenuate, nonostante il forte sviluppo degli ultimi vent’anni. Allora viene da chiedersi se sia lecito definire tigre un paese dove la distinzione in caste, pur non avendo valore giuridico, rimane profondamente radicata. E dove ancora intere fasce di popolazione non hanno accesso al sistema sanitario. A proposito di questo argomento, nel mese di Giugno 2010 è tornata alla luce, anche se soltanto per qualche giorno, l’argomento del Bhopal, stato indiano dove nel 1984 si è consumata la più grande catastrofe industriale della storia; argomento tra l’altro passato quasi del tutto inosservato dai Mass Media nostrani. L’incidente avvenne nella notte alla mezzanotte del 3 dicembre 1984: dalla multinazionale Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) una fuoriuscita di 40 tonnellate di isocianato di metile (MIC), si sprigionò a causa della pressione e del vento come un geyser sulla città. Questo perché, per tagliare i costi dell’eccessiva produzione del pesticida (Sevin), si cominciò risparmiando sulla sicurezza. Il rilascio provocò sul momento 754 vittime, ma Amnesty International ne stima ad oggi più di 25.000, senza contare la contaminazione rimasta attiva negli anni, e le malformazioni genetiche di cui ormai tutta la popolazione del piccolo distretto del Bhopal soffre. Il 7 Giugno 2010 otto dirigenti della Union Carbide , tutti indiani, sono stati condannati, a distanza di oltre 25 anni, per la responsabilità nella catastrofe del Bhopal, assieme a colui che allora era presidente della fabbrica: Warren Anderson, 81 anni, ad oggi latitante per evitare i 10 anni di carcere inflitti dalla corte indiana, per omicidio colposo, lesioni gravi, e per aver provocato danni permanenti facendo uso di tecnologie dannose. Tra le malattie più gravi di cui soffre oggi la popolazione, dopo occhi e polmoni, (con gravi malformazioni genetiche), ci sono fegato, reni, apparato digestivo e genitale, oltre al sistema nervoso e immunitario. Un alto numero di vittime dopo la tragedia cadde in uno stato di spossatezza senza precedenti, che talvolta culminava in convulsioni o paralisi, e talora potevano persino degenerare in coma o morte. Inoltre non si è mai parlato abbastanza della contaminazione ambientale: in un’inchiesta di BBC Radio del 14 novembre 2004, si è mostrato come l’area sia ancora contaminata da migliaia di tonnellate di sostanze chimiche tossiche, che penetrano nel terreno soprattutto i periodi di forte pioggia; l’acqua risulta essere cosi contaminata che chiunque si fermi più di 10 minuti nel terreno, rischia di perdere conoscenza. Gli Stati Uniti hanno difeso l’azienda, dicendo che aveva fatto tutto quanto fosse possibile per aiutare le famiglie delle vittime; effettivamente nel 1989 la Union Carbide pagò 470 milioni di dollari per risarcimenti iniziali, ma ben pochi sono stati spesi per la causa, creando il più grande caso di corruzione nella storia del paese. Solo circa 50 milioni sono stati spesi per costruire un ospedale a 22 km dal quartiere più colpito; ma poche persone hanno la possibilità di spendere le 300 rupie per farsi accompagnare in risciò fino all’ospedale. Si può parlare davvero di libertà, di democrazia, di sviluppo? Forse si dovrebbe creare vocaboli nuovi, perché è evidente che quelli usati fino ad ora non sono più sufficienti, né tantomeno credibili. Valeria Venturini
Le développement synonyme de liberté ? L’accident de Bhopal
(“Ruby a survecu au disastre”. Photo par Greenpeace International.) Par Valeria Venturini traduction de Maïwenn Kernaleguen Aujourd’hui, les mots liberté, démocratie et développement ne semblent plus que des coquilles vides de sens. Trop souvent, nous parlons de bonne ou de mauvaise gouvernance en nous basant sur des concepts économiques plutôt que sur les droits de l’Homme. Amartya Sen, qui a reçu le prix Nobel d’économie en 1998, écrit dans son livre Development as Freedom : “« Le développement est un processus d’expansion des libertés réelles dont jouissent les individus dans la sphère sociale et privée. Par conséquent, il exige la suppression des principaux facteurs qui s’opposent aux libertés, tels que la faim, la misère, la tyrannie, l’intolérance, la répression, l’illettrisme, le manque d’accès aux soins, la protection de l’environnement et la liberté d’expression, des facteurs qui limitent la capacité des hommes et des femmes à agir et à construire la vie qu’ils souhaitent avoir. » Ces paroles ressemblent à un vade-mecum de la démocratie parfaite qui se trouve hélas relégué au second plan, bien après les critères économiques. Quand on regarde la croissance économique des « dragons asiatiques », peut-on vraiment parler d’exemples vertueux ? Ne faudrait-il pas encourager nos gouvernements à garantir les droits fondamentaux de leur population avant de parler véritablement de développement ? Dans le cas de l’Inde, les écarts au niveau des salaires ou des droits sont toujours considérables, en dépit du fort développement de ces vingt dernières années.Peut-on qualifier de « dragon » un pays qui est encore structuré par un système de castes, bien que cela soit illégal ? Ou bien un pays dans lequel une grande partie de la population n’a pas accès aux soins ? À ce sujet, en juin 2010, plusieurs médias sont revenus sur ce qui a constitué la plus grande catastrophe industrielle de l’histoire, celle de Bhopal, qui a eu lieu en 1984. L’incident est survenu dans la nuit du 2 au 3 décembre 1984 : l’usine de pesticides Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) a explosé, dégageant près de 40 tonnes d’isocyanate de méthyle dans l’atmosphère de la ville, telle une sorte de geyser toxique. Cette tragédie s’est produite parce que les managers ont décidé de couper le système de sécurité afin de faire des économies. L’explosion a fait 754 victimes mais Amnesty International a dénombré à ce jour plus de 25 000 personnes décédées des suites de la catastrophe ; sans parler de la contamination qui se poursuit toujours et des déformations génétiques dont souffre la population de Bhopal, et plus particulièrement les nouvelles générations. Le 7 juin 2010, huit employés indiens de l’usine ainsi que l’américain Warren Anderson, 81 ans et président de l’UCIL à l’époque des faits, ont été jugés coupables de la catastrophe. Dans la région où s’est produite l’explosion, nombreux sont les cas de maladies affectant les yeux, les poumons, le foie, le dos, ainsi que les problèmes gastro-intestinaux et génitaux et les atteintes du système nerveux et immunitaire. On note également chez les individus de nombreux cas de fatigue intense ou de dépression qui peuvent aller jusqu’au coma, voire la mort. Par ailleurs, le problème environnemental est toujours immense : en 2004, la BBC a affirmé que le site en question pullule toujours de matériaux toxiques et que le simple fait de nager dans l’un de ses lacs pendant une dizaine de minutes peut provoquer des malaises. En expliquant que l’usine avait fait de son mieux pour aider les familles des victimes, les États-Unis ont défendu l’UCIL qui a effectivement donné près de 450 millions de dollars pour l’indemnisation des victimes ; mais en réalité, cette somme d’argent n’a pas été dépensée dans sa totalité pour les besoins de la population, créant ainsi le pire cas de corruption de l’histoire du pays. Seulement 50 millions de dollars ont été investis dans la construction d’un hôpital à environ 22 km de la zone la plus touchée, mais seules quelques familles ont eu les moyens de dépenser 300 roupies pour s’y rendre en pousse-pousse. Peut-on vraiment parler de liberté et de développement ? Peut-être devrions-nous inventer de nouveaux mots, car il est devenu évident que les nôtres ne sont plus suffisants, ni crédibles.
Development as Freedom? The Bhopal case
(“Ruby who survived the disaster”. Photo by Greenpeace International.) Nowadays seems to be fair enough that words such as freedom, democracy, development, have become bare containers full of rhetoric with no meaning. Too often we hear examples of good or bad governance based more on economical concepts instead of human rights. Amartya Sen, Nobel Price for Economy 1998, in his book Development as Freedom underlined: “Development means a process of expansion both in private and social sphere. Consequently, the fight of the development is to eliminate all the “unliberties”, such as fame, poverty, tyranny, intolerance, repression, illiteracy, lack of healthcare system and environment protection, freedom of speech and expressions, for both men and women, who have the opportunity to act and built the life they want” His words seems to be a vade-mecum of the perfect democracy , which unfortunately has been put on a second level, compared with economical principles. Reading about the economical growth of the Asian Tigers, we should ask ourselves if we really can talk about virtuous examples, or perhaps we should push our governments to guarantee at least about fundamental rights of their population, to really talk about concrete development. In the case of India, the differences between wages or rights are always strong, despite the high development of the last 20 years. Is that fair to define Tiger a country where the Caste System is still alive, even if with no legal value? Or a country where large parts of the population do not have the chance of the healthcare system? Around this topic, in June 2010, for a few days, some Medias reported a news around Bhopal, where in 1984 happened the largest industrial catastrophe of the history. The tragedy took place in the night between 2/3 December 1984: from the multinational Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), spread out around 40ton of MIC(Methyl isocyanate), causing a sort of toxic geyser on the area. This happened because the managers decided to cut the security system to save money. The explosion provoked 754victims, but Amnesty International calculated nowadays more than 25000 deaths; in addiction to this, the still-alive contamination and the deformations of the entire population, and particularly of Bhopal new generations. On June 7 2010, eight Indian managers of the UCIL have been condemned for the responsibility, together with the then-president Warren Anderson, 81, now in hiding. There are in the areas severe diseases, such as eyes, lung, liver, back, gastrointestinal and genital, and nervous and immune system. In addiction to this, there are plenty of cases of exhaustion and depression which can degenerate in coma or death. Moreover, the problem of the environment is still huge: BBC Radio in 2004 asserted that the area is still full of toxic materials: just swimming in one of the several lakes for more than 10 minutes could provoke faintness. USA defended the UCIL, saying that the factory did its very best to help the families of the victims: effectively, UCIL gave around 450 millions of Dollars to indemnify the victims, but actually none of them has been spent for the needs of the population, creating the worst case of corruption in the history of the country. Just 50 million Dollars have been spent to built an hospital around 22 km far from the most affected area, but just few families have the opportunity to spend 300 Rupee to get there with a rickshaw. Can we actually talk about freedom and development? Perhaps we should create new words, because clearly our words are neither sufficient, nor least of all faithful anymore. Valeria Venturini.
Franziska Brantner: un service européen pour l’action extérieure
(Photo: European Parliament/ Flickr) Franziska Brantner est députée européenne du groupe des Verts/ALE et membre de la commission des affaires étrangères et de la délégation des relations avec Israël. Elle a représenté le groupe des Verts/ALE durant les négociations pour le projet de loi sur le service européen pour l'action extérieure. Elle est également membre de la fondation Heinrich Böll. Traduction de Maïwenn Kernaleguen Le 8 juillet dernier, le Parlement européen a approuvé un texte portant sur la formation du service européen pour l'action extérieure (SEAE), un nouveau service civil pour les affaires étrangères de l’Union Européenne, prévu par le traité de Lisbonne. Quelques jours auparavant, European Alternatives a eu un entretien avec l’eurodéputée Franziska Brantner, qui a participé, pour le groupe des Verts/ALE, aux négociations sur ce texte qui se sont déroulées au Parlement européen. Nous lui avons demandé quelles avaient été les priorités durant ces négociations et quels progrès avaient été réalisés, mais aussi de quelle façon il était possible d’améliorer la légitimité démocratique du service européen pour l'action extérieure et le rôle joué par la société civile. European Alternatives : Le Parlement européen a mené des négociations avec le Conseil, la Commission et Catherine Ashton à propos du nouveau service européen pour l'action extérieure. Quelles ont été selon vous les priorités du Parlement européen dans ces négociations ? Maintenant qu’un accord a été trouvé sur les grandes lignes du nouveau SEAE, pensez-vous que le Parlement ait réussi à imposer ses priorités ? Franziska Brantner : Il était important d’impliquer le SEAE dans la « méthode communautaire ». Le plus important pour le Parlement était de s’assurer que le nouveau SEAE n’allait pas être hors du contrôle budgétaire communautaire. Le nouveau SEAE devrait avoir autant de responsabilité financière que la Commission Européenne. La première proposition examinée, présentée par Catherine Ashton, le Haut Représentant de l'Union pour les affaires étrangères et la politique de sécurité, n’était pas très claire sur le droit de décharge et sur la responsabilité budgétaire du service. La manière la plus simple de garantir la responsabilité budgétaire serait de l’intégrer à la Commission afin qu’elle dispose des mêmes moyens de contrôle que la Commission. Nous pourrions alors conserver les mêmes règles. L’accord auquel nous sommes parvenus améliore le projet de proposition en garantissant la responsabilité de l’argent des contribuables. Notre autre priorité en termes de méthode communautaire était de nous assurer que les instruments financiers actuels (les instruments de développement et de stabilité, par exemple) restaient sous le contrôle de la Commission. Cela revêtait une importance particulière pour la communauté de développement, qui voulait que l’action de l’Union Européenne reste fortement centrée sur le développement et qu’elle ne soit pas subordonnée aux autres objectifs de la politique étrangère. Sur ce point, nous avons gagné dans une certaine mesure. En ce qui concerne les instruments de développement, c’est la Commission qui a eu le dernier mot, bien que la programmation soit en partie faite en conjonction avec le service pour l’action extérieure. Nous n’avons pas réussi à obtenir la même chose avec le fonds de stabilité et les autres instruments classiques de la politique étrangère. Une autre priorité du Parlement était d’introduire des questions substantielles dans les négociations ; c’était l’intérêt principal de mon propre groupe, les Verts. Les droits de l’Homme, la paix et la gestion des crises… le premier projet de proposition d’Ashton pour un nouveau SEAE ne faisait pas mention des « droits de l’Homme ». Aujourd'hui, nous avons réussi à obtenir un référant chargé des questions sur les droits de l’Homme dans chaque délégation (dans chaque ambassade de l’UE à l’étranger) ainsi qu’un siège, afin de nous assurer que les droits de l’Homme restent une priorité de premier ordre pour le SEAE. Nous sommes donc parvenus à obtenir beaucoup de choses sur la question des droits de l’Homme. Nous souhaitions aussi que les structures pour la paix et la réconciliation de la Commission et du Conseil soient intégrées dans le nouveau service. Sur ce point, nous avons échoué car les États-nations imposent des restrictions aux structures de leur Conseil et insistent pour qu’elles fonctionnent selon leurs propres procédures. Certains États membres voulaient conserver leurs propres structures indépendantes au sein du SEAE et faire en sorte que la Commission leur soit subordonnée. Cela constitue le pire scénario possible – des États membres conservant leurs propres structures et subordonnant les ressources et le personnel de la Commission. Nous avons réussi à les maintenir sur un pied d’égalité, même si elles sont différentes. Malheureusement, nous ne sommes pas parvenus à les intégrer de façon intelligente. Nous avons ici cédé à la pression des États membres. La première proposition prévoyait un secrétaire général tout puissant à qui reviendraient les droits financiers, la programmation, les droits de représentation… il aurait été plus puissant qu’Ashton et c’est par lui que tout serait passé. Tout cela était inacceptable pour le Parlement. Si vous m’aviez demandé quelle place j’aurais préféré occuper, celle d’Ashton ou du secrétaire général, j’aurais toujours choisi celle du secrétaire général : il avait le contrôle financier, toute la programmation, ainsi que la représentation et il était celui par lequel tout devait passer. Il y a maintenant un directeur financier qui est responsable des finances et deux députés responsables de la coordination de l’équipe. C’est donc là encore une victoire du Parlement. Là où nous avons perdu, c’est sur la question de savoir qui représente Ashton quand elle ne peut pas être présente au Parlement, ce qui arrivera de temps en temps. Malheureusement, l’accord qui a été trouvé stipule que ce sera le Commissaire quand cela concerne les affaires de la Commission, et la présidence tournante quand cela concerne les affaires étrangères. C’est vraiment dommage car cela fait revenir la présidence tournante dans les affaires étrangères, alors que nous pensions nous en être débarrassés avec le traité de Lisbonne. Cela a été une façon pour les ministres des affaires étrangères nationaux de garder un pied dans la politique extérieure de l’Union Européenne. En résumé, je dirais que…
Franziska Brantner: Europe’s new external action service
(Photo: European Parliament/ Flickr) Franziska Brantner is an MEP in the Greens-EFA Grouping, and is a member of the Foreign affairs and relations with Isreal committees. She took part in the negotiations on the formation of the European External Action Service on behalf of the Greens-EFA. She is a fellow of the Henrich Boell Stiftung. On 8th July the European Parliament voted to approve a text on the formation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), a new civil service for the foreign affairs of the EU created by the Lisbon Treaty. A few days before the vote, European Alternatives talked with Franziska Brantner MEP, who participated in the negotiations on the text on behalf of the Green-EFA group in the European Parliament. We asked her what the priorities had been in the negotiations, and what progress had been made, as well as how to improve the democratic legitimacy of Europe’s external action, and the role of civil society. European Alternatives: The European Parliament has been in negotiations with the council, commission, and Catherine Ashton about the new European External Action Service. What would you say were the priorities of the European Parliament in these negotiations? Now that an agreement has been reached on the outlines of the new EEAS, do you think the parliament was successful? Franziska Brantner: It was important to include the EEAS in the ‘community method’. What was most important to the parliament was to make sure that the new EEAS would not be outside community budget control. There should be as much financial accountability for the new EEAS as there is for the European Commission. The first proposal that was on the table, drawn up by Catherine Ashton, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, was not very clear about the right to discharge, and how to hold accountable the people making the decisions about how the money is spent. The easiest way of ensuring the accountability would be to make it be part of the Commission, because then there would be the same means of control as for the Commission. Then we could keep the rules the same. We’ve got now a deal which enhances the draft in ensuring that the tax payers’ money is accountable. Our other priority in terms of the community method was to make sure that current financial instruments (development and stability instruments, for example) remained under the control of the Commission. This was particularly important for the development community which wanted the EU’s action to remain strongly development focussed and that this should not be subordinated to other foreign policy objectives. On that we succeeded to some degree and with regards to development instruments the last word stays with the Commission, even though the programming is done partly in conjunction with the external action service. We didn’t manage to obtain the same with stability funds and other classical foreign policy instruments. Another priority of the parliament was to insert some substantive issues into the negotiations, this was the main interest of my own group, the greens. Human rights, peace and crisis management … the Ashton first draft of a blueprint for EEAS didn’t mention ‘human rights’ at all. Now we have managed to get a human rights focal point in each delegation (in each embassy of the EU abroad) and a headquarters to ensure that human rights are a priority at the highest level of the EEAS. So on human rights we managed to achieve quite a lot. We also wanted the Commission and Council structures for peace and reconciliation to be integrated in the new service. There we did not succeed because the nation states are really ring-fencing their Council structures and insisting that they work under their own procedures. Some member states wanted to keep their own structures independent within the EEAS, and subordinate the Commission to them. This is the worst possible scenario – member states keeping their own structures and subordinating Commission resources and staff. We managed to keep them at level footing, even though they are separate. Regrettably, we didn’t manage to integrate them in a smart way. There we lost out against member state pressure. In the first draft there was an all powerful secretary general who had the financial rights, the programming, the representation rights … this person would have been more powerful than Ashton, everything would have gone through him. This was unacceptable to the parliament. If you had asked me which job I would have preferred, Ashton’s or the secretary general’s, I would always have chosen the secretary general : he had all the financial control, all the programming, also the representation and he was the bottle-neck through which everything had to go. There is now a financial director responsible for finances, and two deputies responsible for coordinating the team. So there as well the parliament was successful. Where we lost out is on the question of who comes to represent Ashton when she cannot come to parliament, which she won’t be able to do all the time. Unfortunately the deal is that it will be the Commissioner when it concerns Commission affairs, and the rotating presidency comes when it concerns Council affairs. This is really a shame because it brings back in the rotating presidency, back into foreign affairs, whereas in the Lisbon treaty we thought we had got rid of it. This was a way for national foreign ministers to keep their foot in the door of the EU’s external policy. All in all I would say that we won some important battles and we lost on some points, and we’ve managed to open plenty of useful doors. EA: I want to ask about the priority of development in the EU’s external action. Several months ago Judith Sargentini wrote an article for our website about article 208 of the Lisbon Treaty, which says that eradicating poverty should be the major goal of the EU’s development policy. Do you think this goal has been respected in the agreement…
European Citizens’ Initiative approved
On Wednesday 15th of December 2010, the European Parliament has approved the binding procedural rules for the European Citizens' Initiative. Thanks to this decision, the European citizens will have the possibility to directly taking part in the affairs of the European Union, closing the gap between the population and the institutions. The ECI will enable one million citizens from at least 9 different member states to call directly to the European Commission to bring forward an initiative of interest to them in an area of EU competence.
Are we entering a Europe-wide ‘winter of discontent’?
by Sam Logan and Dominique Tuohy Education reforms and youth protest in Europe During the past few weeks, a remarkable wave of youth protest in a number of European countries has gathered pace. Murmurs of a return to 1968, or that we are entering into a ‘winter of discontent’ abound. In the UK and Italy, young people have mobilized in large numbers against proposed overhauls of their respective higher education systems. When we consider how different higher education was for the generation which currently hold the reins of power to the system they are trying to impose on their children (or grandchildren), such a response is hardly surprising. In the U.K.,the generation who currently hold the reins of power not only gained degrees for free, but could claim unemployment benefit during summer, Christmas and Easter holidays, and could get their train ticket home at the end of term paid for by the state, right through the recession of the 1980s, when the British state experienced severe fiscal difficulties and much of the welfare state was slashed and burned. This is conveniently overlooked, and the reforms are presented as if they are driven by fiscal necessity, as if there couldn’t conceivably be an alternative way to fund the higher education system than to charge undergraduates £9000 per year. If the reforms are passed, fees at this level will make England’s public universities the world’s most expensive (education policy is devolved to Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish assemblies, and both the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament have voted against an increase in fees in their jurisdictions). The coalition government claim that the proposals are fair, as students can take out a loan to cover the fees with interest rates at below the market level (though still inflation plus 3%), and won’t have to pay any of it back until they earn more than £21,000 per year, and that the policy would protect the position of the poorest students. The fee review is the result of an independent review by Lord Browne, which outlined two options to plug the gap in funding of the higher education system – a graduate tax (whereby graduates would pay an additional tax that non-graduates on the same salary wouldn’t), and a fee increase. It is not entirely clear whether or not the policy will survive a vote in Parliament. A prominent LibDem councillor states that he feels that the party membership ‘overwhelmingly feels betrayed’, and a number of LibDem MPs are expected to vote against it. The vote is currently scheduled to take place on Thursday, 9th of December. A large number of protests against the reforms have taken place, which have been largely peaceful, with the occasional outbreak of violence, most notably when the Conservative Party headquarters were occupied and over £1million of damage was caused. Meanwhile, in Italy, a cash-strapped Italian government is seeking drastic reforms of the country’s higher education sector, and the proposals could see universities that are running a deficit being forced to close. The education minister Mariastella Gelmini argues that the reforms will help to counteract the proliferation of ‘useless’ degrees that has taken place in recent years, and will make higher education in Italy more meritocratic, transparent and internationally competitive. The result of the proposed reforms in both countries would arguably be a scaling back of numbers pursuing higher education in both countries, particularly in the arts and humanities. The UCU (Union of Colleges and Universities) have just published a survey which claims that over 40 Universities in England will be at risk of closing if they become dependent on students for funding. In France, a country with a much stronger heritage of public political protest than the U.K., protests against the pension reforms have attracted a strong level of interest amongst under-18s. Many commentators argue that many people who have participated in the protests have done so out of a general frustration at the government, rather than any concern about the pensions reform specifically. Consequences for the Bologna Process The reform proposals in the UK in particular, are likely to act as a setback to the achievement of the goals of the Bologna Process. Highly varying fee levels are likely to act as a barrier to the mobility of students across Europe. Furthermore, there is the additional consideration of fairness. How fair is it that the system in England is more or less self-funded, when degrees for all European citizens in other countries are paid for entirely by the taxpayer? While the U.K. Government present a degree as an ‘investment’, the value and security of which can be measured and predicted with accuracy, in reality, there’s nothing secure about an 18 year old investing that much money in anything. Viewing a degree as an ‘investment’ in financial terms is misleading, as many of the current ‘crunch generation’ of graduates will testify. Talk of a ‘lost generation’ has abounded since the onset of the financial crisis, with unemployment amongst young people (graduates or otherwise) at record highs across Europe. The reality of the current labour market is that an undergraduate degree at the very least is a pre-requisite for entry into a professional workplace, while unemployment levels testify to the fact that in many cases even this is not enough to secure a job. Third level education is thus an equal opportunities issue. The proposed education reforms will bring about a situation where the education one can attain is based on one’s ability to finance it. How many young people in future generations will therefore be ‘left behind’? If higher education is to become truly self-funded, and if governments are keen on pursuing a true ‘market’ for higher education, then the sector should act as a market, and provide better information on what its services would provide. If students are to be expected to pay so much for their education, more information should be provided on the prospect for returns on their ‘investment’. The debate on education reform is situated…
Are we entering a Europe-wide ‘winter of discontent’?
Photo: syhs/Flickr by Sam Logan and Dominique Tuohy Education reforms and youth protest in Europe During the past few weeks, a remarkable wave of youth protest in a number of European countries has gathered pace. Murmurs of a return to 1968, or that we are entering into a 'winter of discontent' abound. In the UK and Italy, young people have mobilized in large numbers against proposed overhauls of their respective higher education systems. When we consider how different higher education was for the generation which currently hold the reins of power to the system they are trying to impose on their children (or grandchildren), such a response is hardly surprising. In the U.K.,the generation who currently hold the reins of power not only gained degrees for free, but could claim unemployment benefit during summer, Christmas and Easter holidays, and could get their train ticket home at the end of term paid for by the state, right through the recession of the 1980s, when the British state experienced severe fiscal difficulties and much of the welfare state was slashed and burned. This is conveniently overlooked, and the reforms are presented as if they are driven by fiscal necessity, as if there couldn't conceivably be an alternative way to fund the higher education system than to charge undergraduates £9000 per year. If the reforms are passed, fees at this level will make England's public universities the world's most expensive (education policy is devolved to Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish assemblies, and both the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament have voted against an increase in fees in their jurisdictions). The coalition government claim that the proposals are fair, as students can take out a loan to cover the fees with interest rates at below the market level (though still inflation plus 3%), and won't have to pay any of it back until they earn more than £21,000 per year, and that the policy would protect the position of the poorest students. The fee review is the result of an independent review by Lord Browne, which outlined two options to plug the gap in funding of the higher education system – a graduate tax (whereby graduates would pay an additional tax that non-graduates on the same salary wouldn’t), and a fee increase. It is not entirely clear whether or not the policy will survive a vote in Parliament. A prominent LibDem councillor states that he feels that the party membership 'overwhelmingly feels betrayed', and a number of LibDem MPs are expected to vote against it. The vote is currently scheduled to take place on Thursday, 9th of December. A large number of protests against the reforms have taken place, which have been largely peaceful, with the occasional outbreak of violence, most notably when the Conservative Party headquarters were occupied and over £1million of damage was caused. Meanwhile, in Italy, a cash-strapped Italian government is seeking drastic reforms of the country's higher education sector, and the proposals could see universities that are running a deficit being forced to close. The education minister Mariastella Gelmini argues that the reforms will help to counteract the proliferation of 'useless' degrees that has taken place in recent years, and will make higher education in Italy more meritocratic, transparent and internationally competitive. The result of the proposed reforms in both countries would arguably be a scaling back of numbers pursuing higher education in both countries, particularly in the arts and humanities. The UCU (Union of Colleges and Universities) have just published a survey which claims that over 40 Universities in England will be at risk of closing if they become dependent on students for funding. In France, a country with a much stronger heritage of public political protest than the U.K., protests against the pension reforms have attracted a strong level of interest amongst under-18s. Many commentators argue that many people who have participated in the protests have done so out of a general frustration at the government, rather than any concern about the pensions reform specifically. Consequences for the Bologna Process The reform proposals in the UK in particular, are likely to act as a setback to the achievement of the goals of the Bologna Process. Highly varying fee levels are likely to act as a barrier to the mobility of students across Europe. Furthermore, there is the additional consideration of fairness. How fair is it that the system in England is more or less self-funded, when degrees for all European citizens in other countries are paid for entirely by the taxpayer? While the U.K. Government present a degree as an 'investment', the value and security of which can be measured and predicted with accuracy, in reality, there’s nothing secure about an 18 year old investing that much money in anything. Viewing a degree as an ‘investment’ in financial terms is misleading, as many of the current ‘crunch generation’ of graduates will testify. Talk of a 'lost generation' has abounded since the onset of the financial crisis, with unemployment amongst young people (graduates or otherwise) at record highs across Europe. The reality of the current labour market is that an undergraduate degree at the very least is a pre-requisite for entry into a professional workplace, while unemployment levels testify to the fact that in many cases even this is not enough to secure a job. Third level education is thus an equal opportunities issue. The proposed education reforms will bring about a situation where the education one can attain is based on one's ability to finance it. How many young people in future generations will therefore be 'left behind'? If higher education is to become truly self-funded, and if governments are keen on pursuing a true ‘market’ for higher education, then the sector should act as a market, and provide better information on what its services would provide. If students are to be expected to pay so much for their education, more information should be provided on the prospect for returns on their 'investment'. The debate on education reform…
Libertà dei media e iniziative legate al Programma di Stoccolma
Consultazione deliberativa transeuropea Nel corso del 2011 European Alternatives organizzerà un vasto progetto transeuropeo che porterà migliaia di cittadini in tutta Europa a discutere di azioni comuni per lottare per i propri diritti civili, come espressi nel Programma di Stoccolma dell’UE e nella Carta dei Diritti Fondamentali. Cittadini in Bulgaria, Francia, Italia, Romania, Spagna e Regno Unito discuteranno su proposte comuni riguardo a: Libertà dei Media Diritti dei rom Diritti LGBT Diritti sociali e dei lavoratori Diritti dei migranti Legalità e lotta contro il crimine organizzato Saranno organizzate in 18 città europeetavole rotonde participative in cui saranno dibattuti i problemi locali all’interno di un contesto europeo. Le discussioni saranno affrontate da gruppi di 6-7 persone fino al raggiungimento di proposte comuni per promuovere azioni concordate. Una selezione di partecipanti provenienti dagli incontri regionali avrà la possibilità di prendere parte ad un forum internazionale che raccoglierà attivisti e cittadini per discutere delle stesse tematiche in tutta Europa. Il primo di questo meeting si terrà a Roma il 5 febbraio e tratterà di libertà di stampa e pluralismo dei media. Introdurranno i lavori delle tavole rotonde : Eva Simon della Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, esperta di libertà di informazione che parlerà della situazione dell’ Ungheria, in cui una recente legge sui media dai tratti totalitari ha suscitato forti critiche da parte dell’Unione Europea e Granville Williams, giornalista e autore di libri e di rapporti sul monopolio dei medi a in Europa, membro del Consiglio Nazionale del gruppo di riforma dei media con sede nel Regno Unito, the Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF). Più dettagli sugli orari, il luogo e le modalità di organizzazione dei lavori saranno presto pubblicati sul sito, seguiteci su: www.euroalter.com. Per registrare la tua disponibilità a collaborare con noi a questo entusiasmante evento, scrivi a Alessandro Mollicone : a.mollicone@euroalter.com
Call for interns: Rome office
European Alternatives, civil society organisation based in London, Paris, Rome, Bologna, and Cluj-Napoca, devoted to promoting a transnational politics and culture, is seeking an intern to join its Rome team. The position would suite candidates eager to work in an international environment with an interest in international relations, the European Union, NGO work and journalism. Internships at European Alternatives follow our fair internship charter. They are not remunerated, but include expenses, lunch, and frequent European travel. Duties of the candidates will include: Editorial: Helping to edit our Transeuropa Magazine, commission and review articles Language: Translating articles and other documents from and into Italian and English (and others) Administration: Carry out some administrative tasks Project Management: Help organising events in Italy and abroad, writiting reports and follow-up on activities organised The following characteristics are necessary for this position: Fluent knowledge of Italian and English (both written and spoken) A degree in a social science, law, languages or another relevant discipline An interest in European affairs and adherence to European Alternatives’ mission Availability to travel and eagerness to engage with a diversity of people Solid knowledge of the Microsoft Office (or Open Office) package The following characteristics, though not essential, are desirable: Knowledge of other European languages Ability to use Photoshop or other photo editing software Experience in organising events, publishing articles or writing reports Creative and professional use of photo and video cameras. If interested, please send a motivational letter and your CV by January 24 to a.valera@euroalter.com
Drepturi civile si Programul Stockholm
Consult?ri deliberative transeuropene Pe întreg parcursul anului 2011, organiza?ia European Alternatives va implementa un proiect transeuropean de anvergur? care va reuni mii de cet??eni din toat? Europa. Ace?tia vor discuta despre ac?iuni comune de lupta pentru protejarea drepturilor civile exprimate in Programul Stockholm al Uniunii Europene si în Carta Drepturilor Fudamentale a acesteia. Participan?i din Bulgaria, Fran?a, Italia, Marea Britanie, România ?i Spania vor lansa perspective comune asupra urm?toarelor teme: Libertatea presei Drepturile romilor Egalitatea între sexe ?i drepturile homosexualilor Drepturile sociale ?i dreptul muncii Problema migra?iei ?i drepturile minorit??ilor Legalitatea ?i lupta împotriva crimei organizate În optsprezece ora?e europene se vor organiza întâlniri paticipative la mese rotunde unde se vor analiza diferite probleme locale într-un context european. Discu?iile se vor desf??ura în grupuri restrânse de câte 6-7 persoane alese prin rota?ie. Discu?iile se finalizeaz? în momemtul în care se fixeaz? o propunere concret? de ac?iune. O parte dintre participa?ii la aceste discu?ii regionale vor avea posibilitatea de a participa la un forum transna?ional ce va reuni activi?ti ?i cet??eni pentru a discuta aceste probleme ?i în alte p?r?i ale Europei. A treia întâlnire de acest gen organizat? de European Alternatives va avea loc la Ia?i în data de 19 februarie 2011 în Sala Cuza a Hotelului Unirea. Tema principal? de dezbatere va fi libertatea presei ?i pluralismul media. În curând v? vom oferi mai multe date despre metodologia de lucru ?i desf??urarea evenimentului pe pagina organiza?iei www.euroalter.com Dac? dori?i s? colabora?i cu noi sau dac? dori?i informa?ii suplimentare va rug?m contacta?i-ne la: cluj@euroalter.com
Civil Liberties and Stockholm Programme Initiative in Iasi
Transeuropean Deliberative Consultation Throughout 2011, European Alternatives will manage a large-scale transeuropean project that will bring together thousands of citizens across Europe to discuss common actions to fight for their civil rights, as expressed in the EU’s Stockholm Programme and Charter of Fundamental Rights. Citizens in Bulgaria, France, Italy, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom will discuss common approaches to · Media freedom · Roma and travellers rights · LGBT rights · Labour and social rights · Migration rights · Legality and the struggle against organised crime Participative round-tables will be set up in eighteen cities around Europe in which local problems will be discussed within a European context. Discussions will be set up in small groups of 6-7 people progressively joining up until a common proposition for action is agreed upon. A selection of participants from these regional forums will then have a chance to take part in a translational forum that will gather activists and citizens discussing the same themes across Europe. The third of these meetings will happen in Iasi on February 19th and will deal with freedom of information and media pluralism. More details on the date, location and specific methods of work are coming soon on our website, so stay tuned: www.euroalter.com. To register your interest in collaborating with us in this exciting event, please write to us: Cluj@euroalter.com
22-23 Gennaio 2011 – Londra – 4° appuntamento del Transeuropa Network
We are excited to announce the fourth meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network – a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society. The first meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network took place on the weekend of 25th and 26th of september in London, while the second meeting happened in Paris a month later, and the third in Rome on the weekend of the 27th and 28th of November. The next TRANSEUROPA Network meeting will take place in London at Toynbee Hall on January 22-23rd! The subscriptions for this meeting are now closed apart from a small number for people living in London which we can allocate on a first come first served basis. If you live in London and would like to take part in the January 22-23rd meeting, or if you are interested in joining the network, please send your CV and motivation letter to EA Project Manager Federico Guerrieri f.guerrieri@euroalter.com Agenda for the London meeting ready for download here soon. Stay Tuned!
22-23rd Jan 2011 – London – 4th TRANSEUROPA Network Meeting
We are excited to announce the fourth meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network – a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society. The first meeting of TRANSEUROPA Network took place on the weekend of 25th and 26th of september in London, while the second meeting happened in Paris a month later, and the third in Rome on the weekend of the 27th and 28th of November. The next TRANSEUROPA Network meeting will take place in London at Toynbee Hall on January 22-23rd! The subscriptions for this meeting are now closed apart from a small number for people living in London which we can allocate on a first come first served basis. If you live in London and would like to take part in the January 22-23rd meeting, or if you are interested in joining the network, please send your CV and motivation letter to EA Project Manager Federico Guerrieri f.guerrieri@euroalter.com Agenda for the London meeting ready for download here soon. Stay Tuned!
Festival Transeuropa – Alternatives Européennes recherche un stagiaire
Stagiaire – Festival TRANSEUROPA Alternatives Européennes est une organisation de la société civile, dont le but est d’explorer le potentiel de la culture et de la politique transnationale. Nous sommes convaincus que répondre aujourd’hui aux défis de participation démocratique, d’égalité sociale et d’innovation culturelle ne peut être réalisé qu’au delà de l’Etat nation. La réflexion et l’action d’Alternatives Européennes porte en premier lieu sur l’Union Européenne et les pays européens, mais l’horizon politique et culturel de notre organisation est global. Alternatives Européennes est basée à Londres, Rome, Bologne, Paris et Cluj, et son activité repose sur l’activisme des équipes locales. Le Festival TRANSEUROPA est un festival artistique, culturel et politique qui se déroule simultanément dans 12 villes en Europe du 6 au 15 mai 2011. Les activités comprennent des conférences, ateliers, concerts et événements artistiques, et des activités dans l'espace public urbain (expositions, promenades urbaines ect..) Nous recherchons un(e) stagiaire à Paris pour assister dans la préparation du Festival TRANSEUROPA pour la période février – juin 2011. Le festival se déroulera du 6 au 15 mai 2011. Pendant cette période, une grande disponibilité est requise, et les horaires de travail pourront excéder les horaires de bureau. Les missions du/de la stagiaire comprendront : Participation à la conception et mise en place d’événements, organisation pratique Assistance à la communication entre les équipes du Festival basées dans chacune des villes Rédaction d'articles courts pour le site internet en français Recherche de financements Mise en place et mise à jour de la base de données de contacts La mission peut comprendre des déplacements à l'étranger, pendant les weekends et la période du festival pour participer aux actions transnationales du projet. La maitrise de plusieurs langues européennes (anglais/français minimum) est requise. Les compétences requises sont également autonomie et esprit d'initiative. La volonté de s'engager dans un projet associatif européen (grassroots) est aussi nécessaire. Le lieu de travail est Paris. Rémunération au minimum légal. Le programme temporaire du festival est disponible ici Pour postuler, envoyer un CV et une lettre de motivation à Ségolène Pruvot par email à : s.pruvot@euroalter.com. Contact téléphonique: 07 77 38 60 05
Helen Flautre on the Tunisian crisis
Article by: Alexandra Solom Translated by: Deirdre Brophy Helène Flautre: MEP and member of the Greens – European Free Alliance, is a specialist on the issue of the defence of human rights. She gave her opinion on the Tunisian crisis to European Alternatives as President of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and also of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean, and as substitute member of the Committee on Foreign Affair AE: Does Europe have the credibility to help Tunisia create a democratic political sphere? Hélène Flautre: Europe must meet two conditions in order to act as an effective partner to Tunisia. Firstly, we must learn the lessons of the revolution, take a critical approach to a review of the Association Agreement with Tunisia, and adapt it to this new set of circumstances. Secondly, the EU must place limits, and draw up a framework for negotiations with oppressive regimes like that of Ben Ali. This goes for all countries still ruled by dictatorships. I believe that the EU can re-establish legitimacy to its role in Tunisia by placing Member States and EU representatives, who can act as credible and competent advisors to Tunisians in the learning process of implementing democracy. The EU must also suspend negotiations with Tunisia and re-direct all its resources to ensuring free and fair elections. If it wishes to act as a genuine partner to Tunisia, the EU must now play a role in the democratic process. This change in EU policy should be applied to all policies and negotiations with autocratic regimes. AE: Do you believe that Union for the Mediterranean still has an important role to play? Hélène Flautre: The Union for the Mediterranean (UFM), and all the organisations for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation must learn from recent events in Tunisia. The UFM has placed too much emphasis on cooperation on technico-operational programmes, with little attention given to civil liberties and democracy. The experience of the Tunisian revolution demonstrates that we cannot continue to cooperate in strategic sectors while avoiding the issues of the state of democracy and civil liberties, and how we can ensure effective improvements in these areas. AE: We have witnessed the important role of new media in spreading the word on the protest movement amongst the Tunisian people. Do you think the internet will play a key role in the creation of new forms of citizen participation and debate? Hélène Flautre: The internet and social networks have undoubtedly played a catalytic role in mobilising people and disseminating information. It is also worth pointing out that Ben Ali employed considerable energy and resources using cyber-police in an attempt to control internet and telephone communication between dissidents. Oddly enough, this strategy was ultimately used against him too. The definitive lesson we must learn from the Tunisian experience has to be that there is no point in trying to control and censure all means of expression of political opinion in civil society. However, what we have witnessed is not an “internet revolution”. The Tunisian revolution is far from virtual, and is based on effective campaigns and real problems such as endemic corruption and unemployment. The internet has been essential in bringing the campaign to the Tunisian people and disseminating it amongst them. We must give all dictatorships, as well as the Hungarian regime, the message that imposing censorship on communication channels can only result in conflict between the government and the people. AE: How can the European Union strengthen the strong ties that exist between civil society in Europe and Tunisia, beyond inter-governmental level? Hélène Flautre: Real cooperation and solidarity facilitated the advent of the Tunisian revolution. Tunisian activists were able to count on the support of their compatriots in Europe and in France through associations and professional organisations such as the Association of Tunisian Women, Tunisian unions, the League for Human Rights and the legal profession. This kind of cooperation constituted a means of continuing the resistance, in particular, by advocating change in financial policy. The EU clearly has a special interest in increasing this kind of international exchange and cooperation, in order to strengthen societies which have been weakened by autocratic political regimes. The EU has specific financial measures for taking action in this area, such as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, the objective of which is the promotion of democracy and human rights in non-EU countries. This is not the first time that the importance of exchange between civil societies has been recognised. The absence of a Euro-Mediterranean partnership to promote cooperation and exchange between civil societies on democracy and civil liberties was highlighted in an evaluation of the Barcelona Process in 2005, as an essential element that was lacking in the Process. A partnership for cooperation on this issue is essential. Political will and EU funding must focus on the promotion of democracy and civil liberties from now on.
Volunteer for European Alternatives in London
European Alternatives is looking for a volunteer to help organise events on the themes of social Europe, migration, Roma, and media pluralism. We meet on the first Wednesday of every month at 6pm. If you are interested in joining the group, email Tilman at t.hartley@euroalter.com
Helen Flautre on the Tunisian crisis
Article by: Alexandra Solom Translated by: Deirdre Brophy Helène Flautre: MEP and member of the Greens – European Free Alliance, is a specialist on the issue of the defence of human rights. She gave her opinion on the Tunisian crisis to European Alternatives as President of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and also of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean, and as substitute member of the Committee on Foreign Affair AE: Does Europe have the credibility to help Tunisia create a democratic political sphere? Hélène Flautre: Europe must meet two conditions in order to act as an effective partner to Tunisia. Firstly, we must learn the lessons of the revolution, take a critical approach to a review of the Association Agreement with Tunisia, and adapt it to this new set of circumstances. Secondly, the EU must place limits, and draw up a framework for negotiations with oppressive regimes like that of Ben Ali. This goes for all countries still ruled by dictatorships. I believe that the EU can re-establish legitimacy to its role in Tunisia by placing Member States and EU representatives, who can act as credible and competent advisors to Tunisians in the learning process of implementing democracy. The EU must also suspend negotiations with Tunisia and re-direct all its resources to ensuring free and fair elections. If it wishes to act as a genuine partner to Tunisia, the EU must now play a role in the democratic process. This change in EU policy should be applied to all policies and negotiations with autocratic regimes. AE: Do you believe that Union for the Mediterranean still has an important role to play? Hélène Flautre: The Union for the Mediterranean (UFM), and all the organisations for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation must learn from recent events in Tunisia. The UFM has placed too much emphasis on cooperation on technico-operational programmes, with little attention given to civil liberties and democracy. The experience of the Tunisian revolution demonstrates that we cannot continue to cooperate in strategic sectors while avoiding the issues of the state of democracy and civil liberties, and how we can ensure effective improvements in these areas. AE: We have witnessed the important role of new media in spreading the word on the protest movement amongst the Tunisian people. Do you think the internet will play a key role in the creation of new forms of citizen participation and debate? Hélène Flautre: The internet and social networks have undoubtedly played a catalytic role in mobilising people and disseminating information. It is also worth pointing out that Ben Ali employed considerable energy and resources using cyber-police in an attempt to control internet and telephone communication between dissidents. Oddly enough, this strategy was ultimately used against him too. The definitive lesson we must learn from the Tunisian experience has to be that there is no point in trying to control and censure all means of expression of political opinion in civil society. However, what we have witnessed is not an “internet revolution”. The Tunisian revolution is far from virtual, and is based on effective campaigns and real problems such as endemic corruption and unemployment. The internet has been essential in bringing the campaign to the Tunisian people and disseminating it amongst them. We must give all dictatorships, as well as the Hungarian regime, the message that imposing censorship on communication channels can only result in conflict between the government and the people. AE: How can the European Union strengthen the strong ties that exist between civil society in Europe and Tunisia, beyond inter-governmental level? Hélène Flautre: Real cooperation and solidarity facilitated the advent of the Tunisian revolution. Tunisian activists were able to count on the support of their compatriots in Europe and in France through associations and professional organisations such as the Association of Tunisian Women, Tunisian unions, the League for Human Rights and the legal profession. This kind of cooperation constituted a means of continuing the resistance, in particular, by advocating change in financial policy. The EU clearly has a special interest in increasing this kind of international exchange and cooperation, in order to strengthen societies which have been weakened by autocratic political regimes. The EU has specific financial measures for taking action in this area, such as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, the objective of which is the promotion of democracy and human rights in non-EU countries. This is not the first time that the importance of exchange between civil societies has been recognised. The absence of a Euro-Mediterranean partnership to promote cooperation and exchange between civil societies on democracy and civil liberties was highlighted in an evaluation of the Barcelona Process in 2005, as an essential element that was lacking in the Process. A partnership for cooperation on this issue is essential. Political will and EU funding must focus on the promotion of democracy and civil liberties from now on.
Labour Rights in the EU: a decent economy for decent work
“Everyone has the right to engage in work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation. Every citizen of the Union has the freedom to seek employment, to work, to exercise the right of establishment and to provide services in any Member State.Nationals of third countries who are authorised to work in the territories of the Member States are entitled to working conditions equivalent to those of citizens of the Union.”Article 15, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights Context Over 2011, European Alternatives is organising a deliberative consultation with citizens and stakeholders in a sample of six EU countries on transeuropean issues relating to the area of Justice, Security and Freedom contained in the Stockholm Programme (2010-2014). The consultations will be taking place in the UK, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, but citizens from throughout Europe will be involved. Protecting labour rights and guaranteeing decent working standards across all member states of the EU is one of the six topics around which citizens’ panels will be organised. These consultations are imagined to decline a specific set of shared demands at a European level in the areas of citizens’ rights, leading to specific actions, including the possibility of a European Citizens’ Initiative. Our approach The EU’s common market is blamed for many ills: for creating a ‘race to the bottom’ of rights for workers, for stealing jobs away from one country to give them to another, for exacerbating the recession and unemployment, for overworking people, or not allowing people to work enough…. How many of these criticisms are accurate? Could we imagine a common market that rather than making everyone’s lives worse, makes them better? To respond to these challenges, European Alternatives will be holding a citizens’ panel discussion, bringing together a diverse mix of European citizens and representatives of civil society to discuss: · how labour rights in the European Union could be improved through common action · how citizens throughout Europe can come together in a trans-European space to find collective solutions to common problems · how to exchange and develop best practices in the areas of: labour rights, decent work and social protection. The following themes will be explored: Reversing the ‘race to the bottom’ – in what way does current European legislation create a ‘race to the bottom’ of workers’ rights, based on delocalisation and social dumping. How could such a trend be reversed? What is the role of trade unions, collective bargaining and other forms of organised action? Fair and decent working conditions – what are minimum conditions of fairness and dignity in working life and how should these be guaranteed in Europe? What is a fair wage? What are decent working hours? What is fair treatment at work? Unemployment and social protection– in what ways should society protect those who lose their jobs or those who are unable to find employment? What happens to your pension if you move country over the course of your career? What minimum rights should be granted to the unemployed? What basic family policy should exist in Europe guaranteeing maternity and paternity rights as well as gender equality? Towards a common job market and a basic income:what skills and what conditions are needed for Europeans to be able to work in another country? In what ways does a common job market in Europe create new inequalities, and how should these be addressed? In a common market different standards of welfare provisions provide an impediment to free movement of the workforce: is a European basic income the answer to this issue? Alternatives to budget cuts:Austerity measures have become the new European norm, often justified by the claim that ‘there is no alternative’. Do we really think that there is no alternative? What European alternatives can we propose? The Stockholm Programme The document containing the European Commission’s response to the Council’s Stockholm Programme, begins with these words “People want to live in a European Union that is prosperous and peaceful, where their rights are respected and their security protected. They want to be able to travel freely, and to move temporarily or permanently to another European country in order to study, to work, to found a family, to set up a business or to retire. But they are disturbed to see that the context of stability and security that has prevailed in Europe in recent years is threatened by worldwide developments” European Alternatives thinks that discussions over the effective implementation of the EU fundamental rights is of great importance. The reference to “worldwide developments”, whether it is meant to address issues of security in terms of terrorism, or whether it refers to the global financial crisis and its effect on the labour market and welfare state, should be explored. As the EU finds itself struggling with low economic growth, high unemployment and welfare state cuts, what do European consider to be the way forward for a more just while competitive labour economy? Citizens’ Initiative The Lisbon Treaty introduces the possibility of the European Citizens’ Initiative. The treaty provides that “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”. Online signatures will be considered valid. The current proposals are that signatures will have to come from a minimum of 9 EU countries for the initiative to be valid. The way forward European Alternatives is looking to collaborate with partner organisations and individual activists around Europe to organise a series of transnational deliberative consultations aimed at producing a join European demand and setting up the necessary coalition to carry through that demand. This may include submitting a Citizens’ Initiative to the European Commission, requesting officially legislate over a European Basic Income programme. While aware of the challenge that the 1 million figure represents, a well-organised coordination across all…
Labour Rights in the EU: a decent economy for decent work
“Everyone has the right to engage in work and to pursue a freely chosen or accepted occupation. Every citizen of the Union has the freedom to seek employment, to work, to exercise the right of establishment and to provide services in any Member State.Nationals of third countries who are authorised to work in the territories of the Member States are entitled to working conditions equivalent to those of citizens of the Union.”Article 15, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights Context Over 2011, European Alternatives is organising a deliberative consultation with citizens and stakeholders in a sample of six EU countries on transeuropean issues relating to the area of Justice, Security and Freedom contained in the Stockholm Programme (2010-2014). The consultations will be taking place in the UK, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, but citizens from throughout Europe will be involved. Protecting labour rights and guaranteeing decent working standards across all member states of the EU is one of the six topics around which citizens' panels will be organised. These consultations are imagined to decline a specific set of shared demands at a European level in the areas of citizens’ rights, leading to specific actions, including the possibility of a European Citizens’ Initiative. Our approach The EU’s common market is blamed for many ills: for creating a ‘race to the bottom’ of rights for workers, for stealing jobs away from one country to give them to another, for exacerbating the recession and unemployment, for overworking people, or not allowing people to work enough…. How many of these criticisms are accurate? Could we imagine a common market that rather than making everyone’s lives worse, makes them better? To respond to these challenges, European Alternatives will be holding a citizens’ panel discussion, bringing together a diverse mix of European citizens and representatives of civil society to discuss: · how labour rights in the European Union could be improved through common action · how citizens throughout Europe can come together in a trans-European space to find collective solutions to common problems · how to exchange and develop best practices in the areas of: labour rights, decent work and social protection. The following themes will be explored: Reversing the ‘race to the bottom’ – in what way does current European legislation create a ‘race to the bottom’ of workers’ rights, based on delocalisation and social dumping. How could such a trend be reversed? What is the role of trade unions, collective bargaining and other forms of organised action? Fair and decent working conditions – what are minimum conditions of fairness and dignity in working life and how should these be guaranteed in Europe? What is a fair wage? What are decent working hours? What is fair treatment at work? Unemployment and social protection– in what ways should society protect those who lose their jobs or those who are unable to find employment? What happens to your pension if you move country over the course of your career? What minimum rights should be granted to the unemployed? What basic family policy should exist in Europe guaranteeing maternity and paternity rights as well as gender equality? Towards a common job market and a basic income:what skills and what conditions are needed for Europeans to be able to work in another country? In what ways does a common job market in Europe create new inequalities, and how should these be addressed? In a common market different standards of welfare provisions provide an impediment to free movement of the workforce: is a European basic income the answer to this issue? Alternatives to budget cuts:Austerity measures have become the new European norm, often justified by the claim that ‘there is no alternative’. Do we really think that there is no alternative? What European alternatives can we propose? The Stockholm Programme The document containing the European Commission's response to the Council's Stockholm Programme, begins with these words “People want to live in a European Union that is prosperous and peaceful, where their rights are respected and their security protected. They want to be able to travel freely, and to move temporarily or permanently to another European country in order to study, to work, to found a family, to set up a business or to retire. But they are disturbed to see that the context of stability and security that has prevailed in Europe in recent years is threatened by worldwide developments” European Alternatives thinks that discussions over the effective implementation of the EU fundamental rights is of great importance. The reference to “worldwide developments”, whether it is meant to address issues of security in terms of terrorism, or whether it refers to the global financial crisis and its effect on the labour market and welfare state, should be explored. As the EU finds itself struggling with low economic growth, high unemployment and welfare state cuts, what do European consider to be the way forward for a more just while competitive labour economy? Citizens’ Initiative The Lisbon Treaty introduces the possibility of the European Citizens’ Initiative. The treaty provides that “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”. Online signatures will be considered valid. The current proposals are that signatures will have to come from a minimum of 9 EU countries for the initiative to be valid. The way forward European Alternatives is looking to collaborate with partner organisations and individual activists around Europe to organise a series of transnational deliberative consultations aimed at producing a join European demand and setting up the necessary coalition to carry through that demand. This may include submitting a Citizens’ Initiative to the European Commission, requesting officially legislate over a European…
Rapporto di Human Rights Watch critica l’UE e l’italia
Human Rights Watch ha recentemente pubblicato il World Report 2011: i risultati non hanno gettato una luce positiva su molti paesi, incluso l'Italia e l'UE. Il rapporto condanna i governi occidentali per la natura 'soft' delle loro relazioni con governi considerati come repressivi. Il dialogo e la cooperazione sono le strategie utilizzate per rapportarsi con tali governi, e le Nazioni Unite e l'UE sono le organizzazioni che implementano maggiormente quest'approccio. Particolarmente criticati sono gli accordi commerciali e di partenariato che l'UE ha stipulato con il governo repressivo del Turkmenistan,senza porre alcuna condizionalità per quanto riguarda il miglioramento delle condizioni dei diritti umani nel paese. La revoca delle sanzioni UE in Uzbekistan, un paese colpevole di aver massacrato centinaia di suoi cittadini nel 2005, è stato altresi' criticato,soprattutto perche' il paese non ha adottato nemmeno uno dei requisiti richiesti tali da far ritirare le suddette sanzioni. Anche il recente accordo sull'immigrazione tra l'UE e la Libia è stato oggetto di pesanti critiche da parte di HRW. L'Italia è stata criticata per essere un paese con un alto tasso di 'razzismo e xenofobia'.Secondo il rapporto, molte nazioni trovano preoccupante la politica migratoria italiana, criticando in particolare il modo in cui vengono trattate le popolazioni Rom e Sinti. Questi due gruppi affrontano costantemente i problemi derivanti dall'alto livello di povertà in cui sono costretti a vivere e dalla discriminazione giornaliera. Kenneth Roth, Direttore esecutivo di HRW ha affermato “Anziché opporsi con fermezza ai leader violenti, molti governi, tra cui alcuni Paesi membri dell’Unione europea, preferiscono adottare politiche che non generano pressioni volte ad un cambiamento”.
Human Rights Watch Report criticises EU and Italy
Human Rights Watch recently published its World Report 2011 and the results have not shed a positive light on many countries, least of all Italy and the EU. The report condemned Western governments for the soft nature of their relations with repressive governments. Dialogue and cooperation mark the strategies in dealing with such governments, and the UN and the EU are the first to implement this approach. Particularly frowned upon are the trade agreements and partnership that the EU has with the repressive Turkmenistan government, without placing any conditionalities regarding improvements to human rights conditions in the country. The lifting of EU sanctions on Uzbekistan, a country which massacred hundreds of its citizens in 2005, has also been criticised, especially since the country neglected to fulfil any of the requirements to have these sanctions lifted. Recently the EU-Libya framework agreement regarding migrants has also come under fierce criticism from HRW. Italy was not missing from this list either. In fact Italy was criticised for being home to 'racism and xenophobia'. According to the report, Italy's immigration policy is worrysome for many countries as is its treatment of its Roma and Sinti population, two groups which constantly experience high levels of poverty and discrimination. Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW stated “Instead of leaders firmly opposing violence, many governments including some member countries of the EU adopt policies that do not generate pressure to change”
TN – 4th Meeting Report
The 4th meeting of the Transeuropa Network took place on the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of January at the Toynbee Hall, London. The event brought together more than 40 people from several European countries, whose main goal is to organise the 2011 edition of the Transeuropa Festival. The thematic sessions were the key part to the weekend. The groups met to discuss the central issues of Migrations, Roma rights, Media Freedom and Pluralism, Social Europe, Gender Equality and Public Space, with a specific focus on the core thematic of the festival. These discussions aimed to arrive at a clearer idea of what's planned in each city and aimed to build a narrative around each specific issues, in order to create one unique and transnational festival program. Niccolo Milanese and Federico Guerrieri of European Alternatives held a fundraising workshop, in order to motivate the young participants to find funds for the festival in their own countries, while Dominique Tuohy discussed the issues related with the communication of the Festival.
Manifestazione Contro La Ghettizzazione Dei Rom A Cluj-Napoca
Articolo di Daniel Peslari Traduzione di Mauro Longo Da qualche parte in Europa, i governanti di una città dell’Est hanno imparato una lezione dal Presidente di un grande Stato dell’Ovest. La lezione è stata impartita nel tardo agosto 2010, e la città dell’Est la sta applicando ora, durante i rigori dell’inverno. La città di cui stiamo parlando è Cluj-Napoca, in Romania, e il ‘grande’ esempio è, ovviamente, la Francia. La vicenda è la seguente: alcune famiglie Rom residenti in città, con documenti in regola e affitto e bollette pagati con puntualità, sono state forzatamente rimosse dalle loro case e spedite nel noto ghetto di Pata Rât, dove l’aria è irrespirabile per gli effluvi della discarica e dell’industria farmaceutica che si trovano nei dintorni. Inoltre, queste famiglie avevano bambini che andavano a scuola nel loro vecchio quartiere, e adulti che andavano a lavorare in città. A dicembre 2010, nell’arco di due giorni segnati da temperature a -10°, queste persone sono state trasferite dalle loro case a Pata Rât per iniziare una nuova vita tra i topi e la spazzatura, spesso in alloggiamenti estremamente angusti (12 persone in stanze da 16 m2). La vicenda è monitorata da Amnesty International e altre organizzazioni romene e internazionali in difesa dei diritti umani e dei Rom, inclusa European Alternatives, oltre che dal Consigliere Presidenziale per le Minoranze. Dopo un dibattito pubblico tenutosi all’Università Babe?-Bolyai, al quale i rappresentanti del Comune non hanno partecipato mandando invece una ‘lettera d’intenti’, gli organizzatori hanno deciso di protestare pubblicamente contro gli sfratti forzati. Alcune organizzazioni, comeAmare Phrala, Grupul de Ac?iune Social? Cluj e European Alternatives, erano al fianco dei Rom alla marcia di protesta, scandendo slogan come “dignità, non razzismo”, “scuole, non ghetti”, “siamo tutti uguali”, “vogliamo giustizia”, “no alle discriminazioni”. Erano presenti anche studenti Rom e cittadini romeni che capiscono che difendere i diritti dei Rom vuol dire anche difendere i propri stessi diritti ad una vita normale, alla giustizia e alla libertà d’espressione. Ma è triste osservare come, nonostante il Sindaco abbia dichiarato di essere intenzionato a discutere la questione, le prospettive di un cambiamento siano minime, in quanto la legge, in Romania, è estremamente permissiva e i legislatori possono fare (quasi) tutto ciò che vogliono, mentre la società civile è pressoché impotente. Grazie, presidente Sarkozy, e grazie, Sindaco di Cluj-Napoca per essere due così grandi esempi di solidarietà sociale e, va detto, Europea!
Visualising Transnationalism- First Workshop Report
Visualizing Transnationalism – First Workshop Report The 1st workshop of the project Visulizing Transnationalism took place in Berlin on January 22nd, hosted by the association Altes Finanzamt. The participants to the meeting have been: Luchezar Boyadjiev – artist (Sofia) Anna de Manincor / Zimmerfrei – artist (Bologna) /// www.zimmerfrei.co.it/ Jacopo Gallico– Stalker/ Osservatorio Nomade (Berlin) /// http://www.osservatorionomade.net/ Emanuele Guidi – curator and artistic coordinator EA (Berlin) Hackitectura.net – Architects and media activists (Spain) / http://hackitectura.net/blog/ Bouchra Kahlili – artist (Paris) Lorenzo Sandoval – Artist and Curator (Spain/Berlin) /// http://www.ieii.blogspot.com/ Maria Ptqk – curator (Spain/Berlin) /// http://ptqkblogzine.blogspot.com/; http://www.genderartnet.eu/emerge/ Nicolas Maleve– artist (Brussels) /// http://www.constantvzw.org/site/; http://www.genderartnet.eu/emerge/ The workshop was conceived as first preparatory meeting to present and discuss the practices of each individual participant so as to research common references and potential shared spaces of action. The context of the upcoming Transeuropa Festival – happening in twelve cities simultaneously – was used as starting point to face and tackle the notion of Transnationalism in contemporary Europe and beyond it. The term ‘transnational’ became a filter to look at one’s own practice, one’s own (private or public) life, as well as to one’s own interests and urgencies; a methodology that opened a wide field of references and suggestions, articulated through a set of keywords and questions. This collection of suggestions produced a first ‘diagram’ that will remain at the centre of a common dialogue in the upcoming weeks and that through a constant process of mapping by each individual participants will inform the conversation among them. The process-oriented methodology will enter now a second phase and the discursive practice will be combined with an exchange of visual material and information; an exercise that will allow to tackle the issue of Transnationalism and will be aimed at imagining proposals and messages to be shared during the festival. [photo gallery]
L’intergruppo MEDIA del Parlamento Europeo chiede alla Commissione di difendere la libertà d’informazione
Negli ultimi mesi European Alternatives ha organizzato una serie di iniziative per sensibilizzare cittadini e istituzioni europee sulla necessità di difendere l'indipendenza dell'informazione (vedi qui) Sosteniamo il comunicato stampa odierno dell'Intergruppo MEDIA del Parlamento europeo. Il comunicato chiede un ruolo molto maggiore delle istituzioni europee nel bloccare la “legge bavaglio” approvata recentemente dal governo ungherese. Crediamo, come ricordato nel comunicato stampa, che l'Unione europea debba difendere la libertà d'informazione non solamente con motivazioni tecniche, ma come parte di una difesa dei diritti fondamentali, della democrazia, e dello stato di diritto in tutti gli stati membri. Jean-Marie CAVADA – Président de l’intergroupe MEDIA Tanja FAJON – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Jorgo CHATZIMARKAKIS – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Helga TRUPEL – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Patrick LE HYARIC – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Bruxelles, le jeudi 3 février 2001 La Commissaire européenne Neelie Kroes a reçu le Président et les quatre Vice- Présidents de l’intergroupe MEDIA ce jeudi 3 février 2011 sur la question de la loi hongroise sur les médias pour les tenir informés de l’avancée des discussions avec le gouvernement hongrois. Ils ont constaté que l’ensemble des questions posées par la Commission au Gouvernement hongrois étaient seulement focalisées sur le champ technique de cette loi et ne tenaient absolument pas compte des valeurs démocratiques de l’Union. Une réunion entre le Gouvernement hongrois et les services de Madame Kroes se tiendra à partir du 7 février prochain à Bruxelles. S’ils soutiennent l’idée de la mise en place d’un groupe d’experts externes pour examiner consciencieusement cette loi, le Bureau de l’intergroupe MEDIA du Parlement européen regrette l’absence de volonté politique de cette consultation qui restera malheureusement encore une fois centrée sur les seules questions techniques, et non pas sur les valeurs politiques de l’Union européenne contenues dans la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis relève que « s’il est compréhensible que l’on commence par les problèmes techniques et juridiques, il faut absolument aller plus loin. » Jean-Marie Cavada souligne à ce propos « que le travail technique doit aboutir à une révision complète et démocratique de la loi sans aucune réserve ». Le bureau de l’intergroupe MEDIA continuera à surveiller de près cette question et à nourrir le dialogue avec la Commission Européenne sur la liberté de la presse. A ce titre, Tanja Fajon et Helga Trüpel ajoutent : « nous resterons vigilants sur cette question en Hongrie certes, mais aussi sur l’ensemble du continent européen ». A cet effet, l’intergroupe MEDIA traitera de ce sujet dans le cadre d’une audition sur la liberté de la presse le 1er mars au Parlement européen à Bruxelles afin de sensibiliser les institutions européennes et l’opinion publique sur l’importance de cette situation préoccupante en Europe.
L’inter-groupe MEDIA du Parlement Européen demande à la Commission de défendre la liberté des médias
Photo flickr Alternatives Européennes a organisé ces derniers mois une série d'actions pour sensibiliser les sociétés civiles européennes et la Comission Européenne au besoin de défendre et de renforcer le pluralisme et l'indépendance des médias. (see here) Nous accueillons très favorablement cette déclaration de l'Inter-groupe MEDIA du Parlement Européen pour un rôle plus important des institutions européennes dans le blocage de la “Loi sur les médias” totalitaire récemment promulguée par le gouvernement hongrois. C'est notre conviction, comme l'expose clairement le communiqué de presse, que l'Union européenne doit défendre la liberté des médias pas seulement sur un plan technique, mais également dans le cadre de la défense des droits fondamentaux, de la démocratie et de l'Etat de droit dans tous les pays membres. Jean-Marie CAVADA – Président de l’intergroupe MEDIA Tanja FAJON – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Jorgo CHATZIMARKAKIS – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Helga TRUPEL – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Patrick LE HYARIC – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Bruxelles, le jeudi 3 février 2001 La Commissaire européenne Neelie Kroes a reçu le Président et les quatre Vice- Présidents de l’intergroupe MEDIA ce jeudi 3 février 2011 sur la question de la loi hongroise sur les médias pour les tenir informés de l’avancée des discussions avec le gouvernement hongrois. Ils ont constaté que l’ensemble des questions posées par la Commission au Gouvernement hongrois étaient seulement focalisées sur le champ technique de cette loi et ne tenaient absolument pas compte des valeurs démocratiques de l’Union. Une réunion entre le Gouvernement hongrois et les services de Madame Kroes se tiendra à partir du 7 février prochain à Bruxelles. S’ils soutiennent l’idée de la mise en place d’un groupe d’experts externes pour examiner consciencieusement cette loi, le Bureau de l’intergroupe MEDIA du Parlement européen regrette l’absence de volonté politique de cette consultation qui restera malheureusement encore une fois centrée sur les seules questions techniques, et non pas sur les valeurs politiques de l’Union européenne contenues dans la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis relève que « s’il est compréhensible que l’on commence par les problèmes techniques et juridiques, il faut absolument aller plus loin. » Jean-Marie Cavada souligne à ce propos « que le travail technique doit aboutir à une révision complète et démocratique de la loi sans aucune réserve ». Le bureau de l’intergroupe MEDIA continuera à surveiller de près cette question et à nourrir le dialogue avec la Commission Européenne sur la liberté de la presse. A ce titre, Tanja Fajon et Helga Trüpel ajoutent : « nous resterons vigilants sur cette question en Hongrie certes, mais aussi sur l’ensemble du continent européen ». A cet effet, l’intergroupe MEDIA traitera de ce sujet dans le cadre d’une audition sur la liberté de la presse le 1er mars au Parlement européen à Bruxelles afin de sensibiliser les institutions européennes et l’opinion publique sur l’importance de cette situation préoccupante en Europe.
European Parliament MEDIA Integroup calls on Commission to defend media freedom
Photo flickr European Alternatives has been organising over the last few months a series of initiative to sensibile European societies and the European Commission of the need to defend and enforce the pluralism and independence of the media (see here) We strongly welcome today's statement of the European Parliament's MEDIA Integroup calling for a much greater role of the European institutions in blocking on democratic grounds the draconian “Media Law” recently passed by the Hungarian Government. It is our belief, as the press release makes clear, that the European Union needs to defend media freedom not only on technical grounds, but as part of a defence of fundamental rights, democracy, and the rule of law in all member states. Jean-Marie CAVADA – Président de l’intergroupe MEDIA Tanja FAJON – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Jorgo CHATZIMARKAKIS – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Helga TRUPEL – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Patrick LE HYARIC – Vice-Président intergroupe MEDIA Bruxelles, le jeudi 3 février 2001 La Commissaire européenne Neelie Kroes a reçu le Président et les quatre Vice- Présidents de l’intergroupe MEDIA ce jeudi 3 février 2011 sur la question de la loi hongroise sur les médias pour les tenir informés de l’avancée des discussions avec le gouvernement hongrois. Ils ont constaté que l’ensemble des questions posées par la Commission au Gouvernement hongrois étaient seulement focalisées sur le champ technique de cette loi et ne tenaient absolument pas compte des valeurs démocratiques de l’Union. Une réunion entre le Gouvernement hongrois et les services de Madame Kroes se tiendra à partir du 7 février prochain à Bruxelles. S’ils soutiennent l’idée de la mise en place d’un groupe d’experts externes pour examiner consciencieusement cette loi, le Bureau de l’intergroupe MEDIA du Parlement européen regrette l’absence de volonté politique de cette consultation qui restera malheureusement encore une fois centrée sur les seules questions techniques, et non pas sur les valeurs politiques de l’Union européenne contenues dans la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis relève que « s’il est compréhensible que l’on commence par les problèmes techniques et juridiques, il faut absolument aller plus loin. » Jean-Marie Cavada souligne à ce propos « que le travail technique doit aboutir à une révision complète et démocratique de la loi sans aucune réserve ». Le bureau de l’intergroupe MEDIA continuera à surveiller de près cette question et à nourrir le dialogue avec la Commission Européenne sur la liberté de la presse. A ce titre, Tanja Fajon et Helga Trüpel ajoutent : « nous resterons vigilants sur cette question en Hongrie certes, mais aussi sur l’ensemble du continent européen ». A cet effet, l’intergroupe MEDIA traitera de ce sujet dans le cadre d’une audition sur la liberté de la presse le 1er mars au Parlement européen à Bruxelles afin de sensibiliser les institutions européennes et l’opinion publique sur l’importance de cette situation préoccupante en Europe.
Is the EU a credible partner for the creation of a democratic structure in Tunisia?
Article by Alexandra Solom. Photo: Flickr/rebelo Translation by Ben Engel Having been Tunisia’s firm friend and partner throughout its history, the European Union has always maintained a privileged relationship with the country, brought about by cooperation within the framework of the first Association Agreement the EU ever signed with a south-Mediterranean country, and negotiations to make Tunisia an “advanced partner” of the Union. In the absence of a pluralist political system, Tunisia, this friend of Europe, Mr Ben Ali enjoyed a monopoly over this recognised partnership for a number of years. In the face of the collapse of the current regime, the finger points to the European Union’s rather tardy and cautious response: did the relationship historically enjoyed with Ben Ali justify such apathy and unwillingness to respond to the Jasmine Revolution, which came about through popular demand? In this context it might be debated whether or not the European Union is a credible partner to help Tunisia organise free pluralistic elections. That is the challenge faced today by the EU, which has just decided to send a high-level delegation to Tunisia to “gather information” about the situation on the ground. The recent demonstrations in Egypt and Yemen reaffirm the urgency for the EU to adopt a clear position on democratic aspiration in northern Africa and the Middle East. European Alternatives went to the meeting of MEPs of the Delegation for relations with the Maghreb to try to answer that question. Malika Benarab-Attou speaks in favour of a strong Europe, which would not hesitate to support the key democratic movements in Tunisian society and which dares to finally adopt a courageous and efficient foreign policy. (coming soon) (Click here for the French version) Hélène Flautre, who will go to Tunisia at the end of the week, gives us a different perspective on the Tunisian crisis, about the conditions that the EU will have to fulfil in order to help Tunisia, but also about the necessity to step up cooperation on civil liberty issues and to aid a swift transition to democracy. (Read here) Other contributions from institutional figures and militants alike will progressively enrich this dossier. Lakhdar Houamel presents his opinion on the role the EU could play in helping to make Tunisia a democratic country. (coming soon) (click here for the French version) Do not hesitate to contact us at paris@euroalter.com to give your opinion!
Paris: Movimento Studentesco
La sede dei Tory presa d'assalto a Londra, la rivolta di Piazza del Popolo a Roma, i blocchi metropolitani in Francia. Sono solo alcune delle immagini di un autunno che ci consegna l'emergere di una nuova composizione sociale che lotta contro le politiche di austerity. Non si tratta di semplici fiammate: da diversi anni in Europa si sedimentano percorsi di organizzazione, autoformazione e conflitto nelle università, dalla Grecia alla Spagna, dall'Austria all'Ucraina. Non si tratta di movimenti studenteschi classicamente intesi, ma immediatamente di lotte sui rapporti di lavoro, sempre più fondati sulla produzione dei saperi, e contro la precarietà permanente: centrali sono le questioni del welfare, del debito, della riappropriazione della ricchezza sociale. Non solo contro l'assenza di futuro, ma innanzitutto contro l'insopportabilità del presente. Scuole e università, espressioni del declassamento e del blocco definitivo della mobilità sociale, diventano quindi nelle lotte luoghi di produzione autonoma dei saperi e di organizzazione del conflitto per non pagare la crisi. Oltre alla falsa alternativa tra aziendalizzazione e controllo statale, la costruzione di una nuova università nasce dalla ricomposizione delle lotte di studenti, operai, precari, migranti – figure spesso idealtipiche le cui condizioni di vita e di lavoro, in realtà, si intrecciano e sovrappongono continuamente. É una rivolta generazionale? Sì, ma non nel senso sociologico o mediatico, dunque edulcorato ed esorcizzante, del termine. I giovani sono oggi paradigma di una condizione di precarietà permanente che riguarda tutti, e la radicalità delle forme del conflitto si fonda su questa consapevolezza che si trasforma in radicalità del conflitto. É questa, soprattutto, una composizione sociale compiutamente europea e transnazionale. I lessici, le parole d'ordine e le pratiche dei movimenti sono simili o immediatamente traducibili sul piano globale. E del resto, è ormai chiaro che non si può vincere contro le politiche di austerity esclusivamente all'interno dei confini nazionali: la sfida è sul piano europeo e transnazionale, e qui va giocata. Qui va reinventata una politica oltre la rappresentanza. É questo lo spazio e il tempo di produzione e organizzazione del comune. Ora è arrivato il momento di essere all'altezza di questa sfida. Su queste basi decine e decine di gruppi, collettivi e reti da tutta Europa e non solo (parteciperanno attivisti dal Canada, dagli Stati Uniti, dal Cile, dall'Africa) hanno convocato un grande meeting dei movimenti studenteschi e universitari a Parigi dall'11 al 13 febbraio (http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/for-a-new-europe-university-struggles-against-austerity/). Sarà uno spazio relazione tra esperienze e pratiche di conflitto, sarà un luogo di organizzazione e costruzione di azioni comuni, sarà innanzitutto un grande incontro costituente. É questo il Bologna Process dei movimenti e delle lotte, la costruzione di una nuova università che è fondata sulla riappropriazione collettiva della ricchezza sociale prodotta in comune. Insomma, l'Europa si unifica nelle lotte. E nelle lotte eccede i confini, come ci dimostra quello che sta avvenendo in Tunisia e in Algeria. Nelle piazze europee in autunno è echeggiata la parola d'ordine dell'insurrezione argentina del 2001: Que se vajan todos! A partire da qui bisogna costruire un programma comune per l'Europa dei movimenti.
Un altro stage è possibile: quadro normativo, reti, e controproposte in Italia
di Giulio Marseglia Questo articolo fa parte di un percorso di inchiesta sulla realtà degli stage in Europa. Il dibattito sul mercato del lavoro, in un mondo globalizzato e recentemente percorso da forti crisi economiche, vede al suo centro la questione dell’ingresso delle nuove generazioni nel circuito professionale. Nel continente europeo si è generalmente affermata la procedura per cui un giovane è obbligato a sostenere un periodo di stage come anticamera all’ottenimento di un contratto di lavoro. Tuttavia la regolamentazione dello stage soffre di molte carenze dal punto di vista delle tutele dello stagista in materia di retribuzione e mansioni. Il quadro normativo che regolamenta gli stage in Italia è il D.M. n. 142 del 25 marzo 1998 che chiarisce ambiti e modalità applicative della legge 196/97 del 24 giugno 1997 art. 18. Stando al testo di legge, lo stage non è considerato un rapporto di lavoro subordinato e, quindi, non comporta l’obbligo di retribuzione, né di misure previdenziali, da parte dell’azienda ma solo un discrezionale rimborso spese. Il decreto stabilisce, inoltre, il numero di tirocinanti che possono essere ospitati nelle attività dell’azienda in rapporto al numero dei suoi dipendenti organici. Questi paletti, che – nell’ottica del legislatore – dovrebbero impedire all’azienda di deflazionare le politiche di assunzione utilizzando la forza-lavoro degli stagisti – sono in realtà continuamente aggirati, senza che questo comporti alcuna sanzione che, di fatto, la legge non prevede. Sul territorio italiano sono nati diversi gruppi, associazioni e siti internet promossi da giovani che secondo diverse modalità cercano di concentrare l’attenzione dell’opinione pubblica su questo problema. Non+ è un'iniziativa dei giovani della CGIL: sono pervenuti alle cronache nazionali per alcune dimostrazioni che hanno promosso attraverso l'affissione di manifesti provocatori. Sono gli unici che hanno organizzato delle manifestazioni di piazza ad hoc. Infine si sono distinti per la creazione di due dichiarazioni: la dichiarazione dello stagista e la dichiarazione del praticante, intese a delineare le esigenze e le rivendicazioni di queste due categorie. Scambi Europei è un sito che si occupa di diffondere gli annunci di lavoro,stage o volontariato europeo per coloro che sono interessati ad esperienze all'estero. Ultimamente si sono occupati di lanciare una campagna di denuncia che si è concretizzata nella redazione del manifesto dello stagista e di un modello di lettera in risposta ad offerte di stage indecenti. La particolarità di queste iniziative consiste nella modalità attraverso le quali sono state portate avanti; entrambe sono infatti il frutto del lavoro di persone, non per forza legate ai gestori del sito, che su facebook hanno di volta in volta commentato ed “aggiustato” questi due testi. Infine, La Repubblica degli Stagisti rappresenta forse la realtà più strutturata e più dinamica. Nata come un forum di discussione si è progressivamente sviluppata procedendo alla creazione di progetti concreti di miglioramento della condizione degli stage e quindi degli stagisti. In primo luogo l'iniziativa “Chiaro stage“, che ha stilato dei criteri di trasparenza ed equità per determinare la validità di uno stage. Su questa base è stato implementato il progetto “Bollino Ok Stage” che consiste nel dare una sorta di imprimatur ad offerte di stage da parte di aziende che rispettano i criteri di Chiaro Stage. Da qualche mese sul sito è presente una sezione dedicata agli annunci di offerte di stage passati attraverso questo filtro. Conosci altri realtà non menzionate in questo articolo? Scrivimi o compila il nostro questionario!
An ever closer (student) Union
Alessandro Valera Demonstrations, occupations and other forms of protest have sprung up around the continent in the UK, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ireland, each contesting their government’s attempts to further slash education budgets and increase tuition fees. As opposed to other mobilisations such as the anti-war movement or poverty campaigns, these months have not witnessed any significant level of European coordination among student activists broadly protesting about similar issues. Students in Europe are getting mobilised about the same concerns: education moving from a universal right to become a prohibitive luxury. However, protests are fragmented around the continent and focused solely on national dynamics. It is ironic that this generation, born after Maastricht, often grown up with their first pocket money in Euros, is still unable to effectively frame its battles within a truly transnational framework. As individual EU member states (or sometimes their regions) are still in charge of education budget and reforms, it seems reasonable that students’ protests and mobilisation are aimed at these levels. However, there is room for a higher degree of coordination of local and national student unions to fights common causes. Students and their representative bodies could share best practice in terms of organisational structure, successful actions that led to satisfaction of students’ demands as well as subject-specific issues. The 2003 demonstration against the war in Iraq is a case in point. Even if foreign policy (just like education) remains an area managed by nation-states within the EU, students participating to the European Social Forum in Florence agreed on a simple matter: to demonstrate against the war on the same day. The rest of the world joined in and the first world-wide demonstration became reality. The war went ahead, but the determination of many European countries not to join the attacking coalition, can be partly attributed to unprecedented levels of manifested public disapproval. On top of this, the reduction in education budgets is part and parcel of a Europe-wide consensus – backed up and promoted by member states in the European Council and, to an extent, the European Commission itself – around deficit reduction and austerity measures. Fighting the economicist consensus of “there is no alternative” is key in demonstrating that a structurally different approach to education and research is possible. And European consensus can be shifted only by bottom-up European alternatives. For these reasons, we advocate a closer union and coordination between European students and collectives engaged in the same battles. The Paris student’s summit (in italian) called by the Edufactory network in February is a welcome step in this direction. For our part, we started asking six students around Europe to tell us about their main hopes as well as obstacles to a more effective collaboration between students in Europe. Are you a student in another country not mentioned below? What are your answers to these questions? Let us know and we’ll publish them. THE STUDENTS Name: Oisín Ó Dubhláin Country: Ireland Studies: Mental Heath Nursing At: Dublin City University Name: Jakub Biernat Country: Poland Studies: Law At: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin (photo by Patryk Mizerski/Radio Lublin) Name: Rosa Vighetto Country: Italy Studies: Foreign languages At: University of Turin, where she work with a student association called “Studenti Indipendenti”. Name: Mihail R. Doychinov Country: Bulgaria A Studies: Biomanagement and sustainable development At: St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University Name: Lucia Kula Country: Netherlands Studies: Law and Political Science At: Utrecht University of Applied Science and University of Amsterdam Name: Lorena Antonovici Country: Romania Studies: Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy At: Al. I. Cuza University of Iaşi What are you protesting about? Oisín : The issue which is radicalising students is the large raise in registration fees from 850€ when I started college to nearly 2500€ this year. This means many more students simply cannot afford to go on to university, drop out or are forced to work long hours just to survive while studying. But more generally students are fighting for a more equitable society which education of course is an integral part. Jakub we’re protesting against the commercialization of higher education, plans of introducing tuition fees in Poland and the Bologna Process. A year ago, we protested against the planned firing of 400 workers from our university, auxiliary personnel, mostly women. Now we’ve initiated a series of Lublin debates on higher education, with the aim of articulating our disagreement with the official policy of the “free market” approach to education. Our debate was widely reported on by the local and national media, so it is a good start. Rosa: In 2008 the italian Government proposed a reform which students all over Italy have been protesting about for the last two years. The biggest issue with this law is that instead of solving the problems that Italian universities developed in the last decades, it faces those problems without analysing their causes and what consequences the reform would have on the actual educational system. As a consequence the measures which are taken endanger the quality of university and its free admittance. The reform lacks specific norms necessary to enforce the law, which probably will cause a congestion of the whole bureaucratic system and the process could last for years. Mihail: Every time when someone ask me this question my emotions become more than my words! For so many years the Bulgarian government has taken less and less care of the students and the scientists. We want basic safety in student accommodations. Also, every year the tuition fees raise and our scholarships shrink, and specialists or scientists are asked to work for 200 euro a month. We also contrast the culture of corruption when some students get their certificates by bribing professors or officials. Lucia: Students in the Netherlands are protesting about government budget cuts on higher education. In these budget cuts students who take over a year longer to finish their study (Bachelor) will have to pay a tuition fee of almost €5000,- per year. Universities will also have a budget cut in their income for every student that doesn’t finish…
Les étudiants européens de plus en plus unis
photo flickr Article d’Alessandro Valera Traduction d’Alexis Gratpenche Partout en Europe, on a pu voir des manifestations, des occupations et d’autres formes de lutte encore : au Royaume-Uni, en Italie, aux Pays-Bas, en Pologne, en Slovénie, en Bulgarie, en Roumanie ou en Irlande. Tous ces mouvements sont composés d’étudiants en lutte contre leurs gouvernements respectifs qui veulent réduire drastiquement le budget de l’enseignement et augmenter les frais de scolarité. Contrairement à certaines autres mobilisations, telles les mouvements pacifistes ou les campagnes d’action contre la pauvreté, les mobilisations de ces derniers mois n’ont pas connu de réelle coordination des étudiants au niveau européen, bien qu’ils aient des revendications très similaires. Les étudiants européens se mobilisent autour d’une même inquiétude ; ils craignent tous que l’enseignement cesse d’être un droit universel pour devenir un luxe inaccessible. Malgré cela, la contestation en Europe est fragmentée et ne tient qu’aux dynamiques nationales. Ironiquement, cette génération de l’après Maastricht, constituée de jeunes qui ont en grande partie reçu leur premier argent de poche en euros, ne parvient pas encore à lutter efficacement dans un véritable cadre transnational. Etant donné que les décisions en matière de budget et de réforme de l’enseignement reviennent encore aux Etats-membres de l’Union européenne (et parfois même à leurs régions), il semble logique que les contestations et les manifestations étudiantes soient organisées au niveau national. Cependant, les syndicats étudiants nationaux et les groupes locaux ont la possibilité de coordonner leur lutte commune à un niveau supérieur. Les étudiants et leurs représentants pourraient ainsi partager leurs bonnes pratiques, qu’il s’agisse de structurer des organisations ou de mener des actions qui aboutissent à la satisfaction de leurs revendications. Ils seraient alors en mesure de débattre de questions précises. Le mouvement contre la guerre en Iraq de 2003 en est l’illustration. Tout comme l’enseignement, la politique étrangère reste le pré carré des nations dans l’Union européenne ; mais cela n’a pas empêché les étudiants réunis lors du Forum social européen de Florence de s’accorder sur un point : organiser à la même date une manifestation pacifiste. Le reste de la planète s’est joint à cette initiative et ainsi, pour la toute première fois, une manifestation mondiale s’est déroulée. La guerre a malgré tout éclaté mais le refus de nombreux Etats européens de faire partie de la coalition peut être imputé en partie à cette mobilisation citoyenne sans précédent. Il ne faut pas oublier non plus que les coupes budgétaires en matière d’enseignement font partie intégrante d’un consensus européen, que les Etats-membres ont soutenu et défendu au Conseil européen et même dans une certaine mesure à la Commission européenne, et qui vise à réduire les déficits et à prendre des mesures d’austérité. Le combat contre l’idéologie du tout-économique qui nous enseigne que “nous ne pouvons pas faire autrement” est primordial lorsqu’on veut démontrer qu’il est possible de concevoir et d’organiser différemment l’enseignement et la recherche. D’autant plus que seules des alternatives de fond sont capables de remettre en cause les consensus européens. Voilà pourquoi nous militons pour que les étudiants européens et les collectifs qui mènent les mêmes combats s’unissent et se coordonnent. Le sommet étudiant de Paris que le réseau Edufactory a convoqué en février est un premier pas encourageant (article en italien). Pour notre part, nous avons commencé par demander à six étudiants européens de nous parler de leurs principaux espoirs et des obstacles qui freinent la collaboration étudiante en Europe. Vous êtes étudiant dans un pays qui n’est pas cité ci-dessous et vous souhaitez répondre à ces questions, contactez-nous et nous publierons vos réponses. LES ETUDIANTS Nom: Oisín Ó Dubhláin Pays: Irlande Etudes: Infirmier (spécialisé en maladies mentales) A: L’Université de Dublin Nom: Jakub Biernat Pays: Poland Etudes: Droit A: L’Université Maria Curie-Sklodowska à Lublin (photo: Patryk Mizerski/Radio Lublin) Nom: Rosa Vighetto Pays: Italy Etudes: Langues étrangères A : L’Université de Turin, où elle travaille pour l’association étudiante “Studenti Indipendenti”. Nom: Mihail R. Doychinov Pays: Bulgaria A Etudes: Biomanagement et développement durable A: L’Université St. Kliment Ohridski de Sofia Nom: Lucia Kula Pays: Netherlands Etudes: Droit et sciences politiques A: L’Université d’Utrecht pour les sciences appliquées et à l’ Université d’Amsterdam Nom: Lorena Antonovici Pays: Romania Etudes: Psychologie clinique et psychothérapie A: L’Université Al. I. Cuza de Iaşi Pour quoi luttez-vous ? Oisín : C’est la hausse des frais d’inscription qui pousse les étudiants à se radicaliser, ils étaient de 850 € quand j’ai commencé mes études et cette année ils atteignent presque 2 500 €. Cela signifie qu’encore plus d’étudiants ne peuvent tout simplement pas se permettre de faire des études, doivent les arrêter ou n’ont pas d’autre choix que de travailler de longues heures en parallèle de leurs études. Plus globalement, les étudiants luttent aussi pour une société plus juste et l’enseignement en fait bien sûr partie intégrante. Jakub : Nous luttons contre la marchandisation de l’enseignement supérieur, contre la mise en place de frais de scolarité dans les universités polonaises et contre le processus de Bologne. Il y a un an, nous nous opposions au licenciement programmé de 400 salariés de notre université, des auxiliaires qui étaient en grande partie des femmes. A Lublin, nous avons lancé une série de débats autour de l’enseignement supérieur afin d’exprimer notre désaccord avec la politique du gouvernement qui vise à appliquer les principes du libre-échange à l’enseignement. Les médias locaux et nationaux ont largement couvert notre débat, ce qui est un bon début. Rosa : En 2008, le gouvernement italien a proposé une réforme et cela fait maintenant deux ans que des étudiants de toute l’Italie s’y opposent. Le plus problématique avec cette loi, c’est qu’on essaie de résoudre les problèmes qui sont apparus dans les universités italiennes au cours des dernières décennies sans étudier leurs causes et sans se soucier des conséquences réelles que la réforme aura sur le système d’enseignement supérieur. De cette manière, les mesures prévues mettent en danger la qualité de l’enseignement universitaire et sa gratuité. Cette réforme ne contient pas assez de normes précises pour garantir l’application de la loi et elle finira donc sûrement par encombrer la…
Un’Unione (studentesca) sempre più stretta
Foto da flickr Articolo di Alessandro Valera Traduzione di Mauro Longo Manifestazioni, occupazioni e altre forme di contestazione sono sorte per tutta Europa, tra Gran Bretagna, Italia, Olanda, Polonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania e Irlanda, per protestare contro i tentativi dei vari governi di tagliare i fondi per l’istruzione e aumentare le rette universitarie. Diversamente da altre mobilitazioni come il movimento contro la guerra o le campagne contro la povertà, in questi mesi non si è registrato un significativo livello di coordinamento europeo tra attivisti che manifestavano più o meno per le stesse ragioni. E con la stessa preoccupazione: che l’educazione smetta di essere un diritto universale per diventare un lusso proibitivo. Ciononostante, le proteste sono frammentate e incentrate unicamente sulle dinamiche nazionali. È ironico come questa generazione, nata dopo Maastricht, cresciuta con le prime “paghette” in euro, sia ancora incapace di concepire le proprie battaglie in un contesto transnazionale. Poiché gli stati membri dell’Unione Europea (o le autorità locali) sono ancora responsabili per i bilanci e le riforme dell’istruzione, sembra ragionevole che le proteste e le mobilitazioni studentesche siano rivolte a tali interlocutori. Di contro, esiste un margine per un più alto grado di coordinamento tra associazioni studentesche locali e nazionali per protestare su argomenti comuni. Gli studenti e i loro rappresentanti potrebbero condividere le proprie esperienze di strutture organizzative e azioni efficaci grazie alle quali le richieste degli studenti siano state accolte, anche su temi extra-scolastici. Le manifestazioni contro la guerra in Iraq nel 2003 ne sono un esempio. Anche se la politica estera (così come l’istruzione) rimane nella sfera dei governi nazionali, gli studenti che presero parte all’European Social Forum di Firenze si trovarono d’accordo su un punto molto semplice: manifestare contro la guerra nello stesso giorno. Il resto del mondo si associò e la prima manifestazione globale divenne realtà. La guerra non si fermò, ma la decisione di molti paesi europei di non entrare nella coalizione di guerra può almeno in parte essere attribuita ad un livello di disapprovazione pubblica mai raggiunto prima. Inoltre, i tagli ai finanziamenti per l’istruzione sono parte integrante di un’opinione diffusa in tutta Europa (appoggiata e promossa da molti membri al Consiglio Europeo e, in un certo senso, anche nella stessa Commissione) sulla necessità di ridurre il deficit e di promuovere misure di austerity. Combattere contro il consenso degli economisti sull’assenza di alternative è un aspetto centrale per dimostrare che un approccio strutturalmente differente all’istruzione e alla ricerca è possibile. E un’opinione diffusa europea può solo essere modificata da iniziative che nascano dalla base. Per questo motivo European Alternatives promuove una unione e una coordinazione più strette tra studenti e collettivi europei impegnati nelle stesse battaglie. Il summit studentesco di Parigi organizzato dal network Edufactory nello scorso Febbraio è un passo in questa direzione. Da parte nostra, abbiamo iniziato col chiedere a sei studenti europei quali siano le speranze e gli ostacoli lungo la strada per una più efficace collaborazione tra studenti in Europa. Sei uno studente in un paese che non figura nell’elenco? Quali sono le tue risposte a queste domande? Comunicacele e noi le pubblicheremo. GLI STUDENTI Nome: Oisín Ó Dubhláin Paese: Irlanda Facoltà: Medicina psichiatrica Università: Dublin City University Nome: Jakub Biernat Paese: Polonia Facoltà: Giurisprudenza Università: Università Maria Curie-Sklodowska di Lublino (foto di Patryk Mizerski/Radio Lublin) Nome: Rosa Vighetto Paese: Italia Facoltà: Lingue straniere Università: Università di Torino, dove lavora con un’associazione studentesca chiamata “Studenti Indipendenti”. Nome: Mihail R. Doychinov Paese: Bulgaria A Facoltà: Management ambientale e sviluppo sostenibile Università: Università St. Kliment Ohridski di Sofia Nome: Lucia Kula Paese: Netherlands Facoltà: Giurisprudenza e scienze politiche Università: Università delle scienze applicate di Utrecht e Università di Amsterdam Nome: Lorena Antonovici Paese: Romania Facoltà: Psicologia e psicoterapia clinica Università: Università Al. I. Cuza di Iaşi Per cosa stai protestando? Oisín: la questione che radicalizzando molti studenti è l’aumento delle tasse universitarie da 850€ quando mi sono iscritto a quasi 2500€ quest’anno. Ciò significa che molti più studenti semplicemente non si possono permettere di andare all’università e abbandonano gli studi o sono costretti ad orari di lavoro impossibili. Ma più in generale gli studenti lottano per una società più equa della quale l’istruzione è parte integrante. Jakub: protestiamo contro la commercializzazione dell’istruzione, contro i piani per introdurre tasse d’iscrizione in Polonia e contro il Processo di Bologna. Un anno fa, abbiamo protestato contro il previsto licenziamento di 400 lavoratori della nostra università, personale ausiliario, in maggioranza donne. Ora abbiamo iniziato una serie di dibattiti sull’istruzione secondaria, con lo scopo di articolare il nostro disaccordo con la politica ufficiale del “libero mercato” dell’istruzione. I dibattiti hanno avuto grande risalto sui media locali e nazionali e rappresentano un buon inizio. Rosa: nel 2008 il governo italiano ha proposto una riforma contro la quale gli studenti italiani hanno protestato per gli ultimi due anni. Il problema più grande di questa legge è che, invece di risolvere i problemi che hanno afflitto le università italiane nell’ultimo decennio, li affronta senza analizzarne le cause e le conseguenze che la riforma avrebbe sul sistema attuale. Di conseguenza le misure prese mettono in pericolo la qualità delle università e il libero accesso. La riforma manca di norme specifiche per essere attuata, cosa che probabilmente causerà una congestione del sistema burocratico mentre il processo potrebbe durare per anni. Mihail: ogni volta che mi fanno questa domanda le emozioni superano le parole! Per così tanti anni il governo bulgaro si è curato sempre meno di studenti e ricercatori. Chiediamo certezze per gli alloggi degli studenti. Inoltre, le tasse aumentano ogni anno mentre le borse di studio diminuiscono, e i ricercatori devono lavorare per 200€ al mese. Ci opponiamo anche alla cultura della corruzione attraverso la quale alcuni studenti si laureano pagando professori e funzionari. Lucia: gli studenti olandesi protestano contro i tagli ai bilanci dell’istruzione secondaria. Per via di questi tagli, gli studenti fuori corso saranno costretti a pagare 5000€ di tasse extra l’anno. Le università vedranno una riduzione dei propri budget per ogni studente che non si laurea in corso.…
Work with EA: Accounting and Administrative Intern
European Alternatives invites applications for an accounting and administrative intern. The post is based in our London office. The interns will perform various duties including: Helping updating European Alternatives Budget Helping with preparing Tax returns Keeping track of company's money, using Xero and other programs Helping with preparing Ledger reports Bookkeeping Plan and schedule meetings and appointments Help coordinating EA offices administration Accounting Internship Benefit: Relevant work experience in a transnational NGO Get a thorough knowledge of UK-European taxes and VAT regulations. Work with an international, multicultural team. Gain experience in coping with deadlines and time management. About the candidate: Demonstrable interest in, and understanding of, European politics. Friendly and open outlook. English mother tongue or mother tongue-level, strong administration and accounting skills. French or Italian an advantage. IT skills an advantage. Location & Conditions This post is available full time (10am-5.30pm) for 3-4 days per week for approximately 4 months (until June). This post abides by European Alternatives' charter for fair internships.
An ever closer (student) Union
By Alessandro Valera Demonstrations, occupations and other forms of protest have sprung up around the continent in the UK, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ireland, each contesting their government’s attempts to further slash education budgets and increase tuition fees. As opposed to other mobilisations such as the anti-war movement or poverty campaigns, these months have not witnessed any significant level of European coordination among student activists broadly protesting about similar issues. Students in Europe are getting mobilised about the same concerns: education moving from a universal right to become a prohibitive luxury. However, protests are fragmented around the continent and focused solely on national dynamics. It is ironic that this generation, born after Maastricht, often grown up with their first pocket money in Euros, is still unable to effectively frame its battles within a truly transnational framework. As individual EU member states (or sometimes their regions) are still in charge of education budget and reforms, it seems reasonable that students’ protests and mobilisation are aimed at these levels. However, there is room for a higher degree of coordination of local and national student unions to fights common causes. Students and their representative bodies could share best practice in terms of organisational structure, successful actions that led to satisfaction of students’ demands as well as subject-specific issues. The 2003 demonstration against the war in Iraq is a case in point. Even if foreign policy (just like education) remains an area managed by nation-states within the EU, students participating to the European Social Forum in Florence agreed on a simple matter: to demonstrate against the war on the same day. The rest of the world joined in and the first world-wide demonstration became reality. The war went ahead, but the determination of many European countries not to join the attacking coalition, can be partly attributed to unprecedented levels of manifested public disapproval. On top of this, the reduction in education budgets is part and parcel of a Europe-wide consensus – backed up and promoted by member states in the European Council and, to an extent, the European Commission itself – around deficit reduction and austerity measures. Fighting the economicist consensus of “there is no alternative” is key in demonstrating that a structurally different approach to education and research is possible. And European consensus can be shifted only by bottom-up European alternatives. For these reasons, we advocate a closer union and coordination between European students and collectives engaged in the same battles. The Paris student’s summit (in italian) called by the Edufactory network in February is a welcome step in this direction. For our part, we started asking six students around Europe to tell us about their main hopes as well as obstacles to a more effective collaboration between students in Europe. Are you a student in another country not mentioned below? What are your answers to these questions? Let us know and we’ll publish them. THE STUDENTS Name: Oisín Ó Dubhláin Country: Ireland Studies: Mental Heath Nursing At: Dublin City University Name: Jakub Biernat Country: Poland Studies: Law At: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin (photo by Patryk Mizerski/Radio Lublin)
Basta Berlusconi!
Photo: Giuliana di Febo Article by Elena Dalibot Translation by Joanne Hamilton In comparison to an ordinary Sunday on the hill of the Sacré Coeur in Paris, it is not so much the bells of the basilica that were heard on the 13th February, rather pots and pans and other kitchen utensils which were drummed by a hundred or so protestors, both male and female alike. They demanded the resignation of the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and called for the “dignity of the woman”, in a country where less than half of women have remunerated employment and only one child out of ten has a place in a nursery. In many European cities and all over the world, for example in Brussels, Madrid, Geneva, Berlin, London and Stockholm, processions were organised for this weekend. This was an act of support for the 230 protests that have taken place across Italy, notably in Rome, Milan, Genoa and Palermo, attracting hundreds of thousands of men and women. These spontaneous protests around the world are a result of the ‘Ruby-gate’ scandal, a story prominent in the news over the last few months, about how “Il Cavaliere” (the “Cavalier”) was offered sexual favours by Karima « Ruby » El Mahroug (at the time a minor) between February and May 2010. More generally, corruption, fiscal fraud and especially the way in which Berlusconi treats women and the image of women he portrays in the media, are added to the various scandals in which Berlusconi is implicated. Women are reduced to their physical appearance, without intellectual legitimacy, dependent on wealthy and powerful men in order to succeed. The slogans chanted are echoed throughout the world: “Resignation, resignation, resignation”, “Basta Berlusconi!”, “If not today, when?” In support of organizations such as Corrente Rosa fighting against the discrimination of women, numerous artists, intellectuals, trade unionists and members of parliament were present to make their anger heard. These included the film director Cristina Comencini, the leader of the largest Italian union the (CGIL), Susanna Camusso, and the chief editor of a prominent leftist newspaper, l’Unità, Concita De Gregorio. In Paris, the protest attracted men, women and children, both Italian and French; Giuliana, an Italian, helped to circulate information and protested on Sunday until the police broke up the gathering. According to her, “the dignity of the woman is a right, a very old struggle for which it is sad that we must still fight. In the media system set up by Berlusconi the message is that he represents the only hope in society and that there is no alternative. For him, women are not worthy of fighting a political battle with him on the basis of argumentation, as his views toward his political opponent Rosy Bindi highlight (vice-president of the House of Representatives whom he declared to be “more beautiful than intelligent” at the end of 2009). Many people are blind to him: he controls the media as a platform for his rhetoric. However, this protest shows that a social conscience is rising in opposition. The image that all the protests in Italy and around the world create is strong and I hope that it will allow us to overcome the media barrage that threatens to undermine this fight for the dignity of women.” Tuesday 15th February, the public prosecutor in Milan demanded the trial of Berlusconi for paying a minor for sex, for which he could face a three year jail term, and also for abusing his role, which could entail a twelve year prison sentence. The Prime Minister of Italy does not have any intention of being present at the trial and has accused the judges of having political motive. The protests of this weekend are, according to him, the expression of “puritan women”. It remains to be seen what the three women (Carmen D'Elia, Orsolina De Cristofaro et Giulia Turri) who make up the panel judging the Prime Minister on the 6th April 2011 in the court of Milan will decide. At the same moment in the spring of 2011 the convention on the status of women will take place in Italy. “We are not fighting solely against Berlusconi, but against a whole political system”, explained Giuliana. “Ruby-gate is not simply a matter of his private life or of his own morality as he claims, but it is a case of law! If we must abandon the idea of justice, the fundamental element of democracy, we are moving into the realm of a dictatorship.”
Transeuropa Network – 5th Meeting Report
The 5th meeting of the Transeuropa Network took place on the weekend of the 26th and 27th of February at the Casa Matei, Cluj-Napoca. The event brought together more than 40 people from several European countries, whose main goal is to organise the 2011 edition of the Transeuropa Festival. The main objectives of the meeting were: –Finalising the Festival program and being clear about the festival message –Finalising the Festival budget -Present challenges : get the communication structure for the festival period work, thematic groups work (based on forum structures), organising the travel for the festival –Thinking ahead : what can we get out of the Festival that will lead later activities, and the future of this network – we will think about the follow up to the Festival and talk about the future of Transeuropa Network, both in its formal aspects and in campaigns and activities it can run The weekend ended with a presentation of the Transeuropa Festival program to the public of Cluj-Napoca. European Alterantives and Transeuropa Network wish to thanks the Cluj group for the excellent organisation! Pictures of the event are available on the European Alternatives facebook page and the Transeuropa Cluj page. The next Transeuropa Network meeting will take place in London (Toynbee Hall) on the weekend of the 26th and 27th of March!
EA opens a new office in Romania
European Alternatives is happy to communicate the opening of its 5th office. After London, Paris, Bologna and Rome, European Alternatives lands in Eastern Europe, with a new office in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Here some pictures For more pictures, visit European Alterantives facebook page or the Transeuropa Cluj-Napoca page.
Interview with Jean Lambert, Green Party MEP for London
Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London, kindly agreed to meet up with us on December 17th, the last day of the Cancun Climate Summit, to give us her views on the prospects of reaching multilateral agreements on tackling climate change in a world currently undergoing a massive power shift away from the West, the implications of the recently agreed higher education reforms in the U.K., and the austerity measures imposed by many European governments in response to the financial crisis. Jean is an articulate and engaging speaker with a lot of interesting ideas. Check out what she had to say below. Apologies in advance for the somewhat haphazard filming in the first video…. Jean Lambert on Climate Change <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/m2oi2JdWEvo” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe> Jean Lambert on Education Reform and Student Protests <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/5vI1wElqzvg” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe> Jean Lambert on Social Europe and Economic Governance <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/inykURaue8U” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
European Campaign for the Rights of Interns
The intern population is configured as a surrogate of the work contract, a “reserve army” of hundreds and thousands of workers without rights and a salary, or, at best, with meager “expenses covered”. Given the clearly European scale of the phenomenon and the high mobility of interns, we intend to promote an initiative that is able to identify the weaknesses, contradictions, gaps and critical points of laws governing internships and apprenticeships in different European countries. The initiative aims to contribute to the development of a common platform of economic and political demands that can be taken forward at European level by a coalition of associations, movements, and civil society groups, creating a transnational dialogue among those who are already fighting for a significant improvement of the conditions of internships. The first steps of the initiative are promoted by European Alternatives, a civil society organization dedicated to promoting transnational politics and culture. European Alternatives believes that today’s challenges of democratic participation, social equality and cultural innovation cannot be effectively understood and addressed at national level. However, the initiative wants to network and aims to build a platform which is not reducible to a specific association. THE STEPS OF THE INITIATIVE The website of the initiative will collect articles and interviews on the various legal frameworks that regulate internships in different European countries, and on the various counter-proposals that emerge from collectives, associations, and unions. A dedicated space enables all visitors to put forwards proposals for the improvement of internships, or vote the proposals they think the most valid. Finally, a participatory questionnaire will seek to establish an “identikit of the intern” in Europe. Finally, we are currently working towards establishing a more scientific trans-european investigation able to map the situation of internships throughout Europe. Planning meeting, April 7, Rome Meeting for discussion with internship networks, trade unions, and collectives with the goal of discussing the possibility of carrying out policy initiatives at European level for a significant improvement in the regulation of internships. Similar meetings will be held in April in Paris and London. Conference, May 9, Bologna, in the context of Transeuropa Festival, the first trans-national festival held simultaneously in 12 European cities A debate on the status of interns and the reality of the labour market for young generations in the European context, with participants from the world of trade unions, university, NGOs, as well as an active participation of associations and collectives. Several discussion tables, open to all participants, will be divided by subject (ie the function of the internship, working conditions, the norms that regulate internships, the role of institutions, political opportunities at a European level) European Forum, May 14, London, in the context of Transeuropa Festival, the first trans-national festival held simultaneously in 12 European cities During the Transnational Forum on Social and Labour RIghts in Europe, we are organising a participative roundtable with organizations and collectives from different European countries who are fighting for a significant improvement in the conditions of internships. With participants from Italy, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Spain, and Britain, we will discuss the possibility of a European campaign with clear transnational demands for a regulation of internships at the EU level will be discussed.
Hungarian media law under investigation by the European Commission
A recently published media law in Hungary is under investigation by the European Commission. Neelie Kroes is the European commissioner responsible to investigation whether this law is in accordance with EU rules. This controversial media law came into effect in Hungary on January 1 2011 and many fear that this law will ensure Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban,will have too much control over the Hungarian media. The law was seen as problematic for numerous reasons; registration requirements are seen as creating unjustifiable obstacles to certain media providers. Furthermore, the requirement on balanced reporting, a law which is permissible in the individual member states if it is compatible with Union law, is also controversial. Finally, the commission doubts whether the provisions of imposing fines or restricting content to media providers within the country but originating from other Member states is a legitimate measure. Kroes has given Hungary two weeks to clarify these points in the new law and provide suggestions on how to address these doubts. Should they not provide a satisfactory response, the Commission threatens it will notify the Hungarian authorities and will take further action. Hungarian officials however, claim the law is in place to ensure that they combat racism within the media. Sign our petition for free media in Europe!
Il Parlamento europeo propone regole più chiare per i tirocini
di Jana Allenberg, traduzione di Adele Palermo Questo articolo fa parte di un percorso di inchiesta sulla realtà degli stage in Europa. Il 6 Luglio 2010 il Parlamento Europeo ha pubblicato una risoluzione tesa a “promuovere l’accesso dei giovani al mercato del lavoro, rafforzando il ruolo di praticante, stagista e tirocinante” (2009/2221 (INI). La risoluzione è nata in seguito alla crisi economica e ai suoi effetti negativi sulla disoccupazione giovanile nei paesi membri dell’Unione Europea. Secondo la risoluzione i giovani sono stati enormemente colpiti da una crescita spropositata del tasso di disoccupazione in Europa. Spesso questi si ritrovano a dover svolgere lavori precari regolati da contratti part-time, temporanei o a tempo determinato e hanno serie difficoltà a reperire un lavoro a tempo indeterminato. Allo stesso tempo i datori di lavoro sembrano preferire praticanti o stagisti ai normali dipendenti, così da poter risparmiare sulla forza lavoro; un circolo vizioso di sfruttamento che rende ancora più difficile l’inserimento dei giovani nel mercato del lavoro. Nella risoluzione il Parlamento europeo chiede che si realizzino forme migliori di praticantato facendo riferimento al VET (Vocational Education and Training) presente in paesi come l’Austria, la Germania e la Danimarca. Questo sistema cerca di promuovere il passaggio dei giovani dal mondo della scuola a quello del lavoro attraverso un’esperienza lavorativa che diventi effettivamente parte integrante del percorso educativo. Il Parlamento europeo chiede quindi agli stati membri di sostenere i programmi di tirocinio per incoraggiare le compagnie ad offrire ai giovani delle opportunità di preparazione al lavoro anche in periodi di crisi, precisando però che i programmi di tirocinio non devono sostituire i regolari contratti di lavoro. La risoluzione prevede delle forme di tirocinio più sicure e meglio organizzate e chiede ai paesi europei di aderire alla proposta di uno Statuto europeo per la qualità del tirocinio. Lo statuto dispone gli standard minimi per assicurare che i tirocini abbiano un valore educativo e non sostituiscano i contratti di lavoro regolare. Gli standard minimi dello statuto includono una bozza relativa alla descrizione del lavoro o delle qualifiche da acquisire, il tempo limite del tirocinio, una paga minima calcolata in base al costo della vita in ogni paese, assicurazione sul lavoro, indennità sociale calcolata in base agli standard locali nonché una connessione evidente al programma educativo in questione. Infine, il Parlamento europeo ha chiesto alla commissione di fornire delle statistiche relative ai tirocini per ogni paese membro, incluso il numero e la durata del tirocinio, gli indennizzi sociali e le paghe dei tirocinanti, l’eta’ dei tirocinanti così da poter realizzare uno studio comparativo dei diversi programmi di tirocinio già esistenti nei paesi membri dell’Unione Europea.
Le Parlement européen propose une amélioration des normes qui encadrent les stages
Article de Jana Allenberg Traduction de Stéphanie Klaczynski Le 6 juillet 2010, le Parlement européen a adopté une résolution intitulée « Promouvoir l'accès des jeunes au marché du travail, renforcer le statut du stagiaire, du stage et de l'apprenti » (2009/2221 (INI)). Cette résolution a été déclenchée par la crise économique et ses effets négatifs sur le taux de chômage des jeunes dans les pays membres de l’Union européenne. D’après cette résolution, les jeunes ont été démesurément affectés par la hausse massive des taux de chômage à travers l’UE. Ils doivent souvent faire face à des formes d’emplois précaires comme le travail marginal à temps partiel, le travail temporaire ou les contrats à durée déterminée et ont souvent des difficultés à trouver un emploi permanent. Parallèlement, les employeurs semblent remplacer plus souvent les salariés par des apprentis ou des stagiaires afin de faire des économies. En exploitant les jeunes, ils rendent encore plus difficile leur entrée dans le marché du travail. Dans cette résolution, le Parlement européen appelle à des apprentissages plus nombreux, de meilleure qualité et fait référence au double système de l’enseignement professionnel dans des pays tels que l’Autriche, l’Allemagne et le Danemark. Ce système vise à promouvoir la transition des jeunes du monde de l’éducation au monde du travail, en permettant aux stages pratiques de faire partie intégrante de leur éducation. Le Parlement européen appelle les États membres à soutenir les programmes d’apprentissage, à encourager les entreprises à offrir aux jeunes des opportunités de formation même dans une période difficile de crise économique et souligne le fait que les apprentissages ne doivent pas remplacer les embauches. Cette résolution appelle également à des stages plus sécurisés et mieux cadrés et demande à l’exécutif européen de suivre la proposition pour une Charte Européenne de qualité pour les stages en entreprise. La charte fixe des normes minimales pour s’assurer que les apprentissages ont une valeur pédagogique et ne remplace pas les emplois réguliers. Les normes minimales de la Charte incluent un aperçu de la description du poste ou des qualifications à acquérir, une durée limitée des stages en entreprise, une indemnité minimum basée sur les frais locaux de subsistance, une assurance sur le lieu de travail, des prestations de sécurité sociale en accord avec les normes locales et un lien clair avec le programme d’éducation en question. Le Parlement européen appelle la Commission à fournir des statistiques concernant les stages dans chaque État membre de l’UE, comprenant le nombre et la durée des stages, les prestations sociales, les indemnités versées aux stagiaires et les classes d’âge de ces derniers afin de réaliser une étude comparative sur les différents programmes de stages existant dans les Etats-membres de l’UE.
European Parliament proposes better regulations for internships
by Jana Allenberg On the 6th of July 2010, the European Parliament (EP) published a resolution “promoting youth access to the labour market, strengthening trainee, internship and apprenticeship status” (2009/2221 (INI)). The resolution was triggered by the economic crisis and its negative effects on youth unemployment in the EU Member States. According to the resolution young people have been disproportionately affected by a massive rise in unemployment rates across the EU. They often have to face insecure and precarious forms of employment like marginal part-time, temporary or fixed term employment and have difficulties in finding permanent employment. At the same time employers seem to be replacing regular employees with trainees or interns more frequently to save money; by exploiting young people they make it even harder for them to enter the labour market. In the resolution the EP calls for more and better apprenticeships and refers to the dual system within Vocational Educational and Training (VET) in countries such as Austria, Germany and Denmark. This system seeks to promote young people’s transition from education to employment by making practical working experiences an integral part of their education. The EP calls on EU Member States to support apprenticeship schemes, to encourage companies to offer young people training opportunities even in hard times and stresses that apprenticeships must not replace regular jobs. The regulation also calls for better and secured internships and asks the EU executive to follow the proposal for a European quality charter on internships . The Charter sets out minimum standards to ensure that internships have an educational value and do not replace regular jobs. The minimum standards of the Charter include an outline of the job description or qualifications to be acquired, a time limit on internships, a minimum allowance based on local standard living expenses, insurance in the area of work, social security benefits that comply with local standards and a clear connection to the educational programme in question. The EP calls the Commission to provide statistics on internships in each EU Member State, including the number and length of internships, social benefits and allowances paid to interns and age groups of interns to produce a comparative study on the different existing internship schemes in the EU Member States.
Conclusions provisoires pour la consultation sur les médias à Rome
Photo : Flickr
Interim findings for media consultation in Rome
Foto da Flickr Interim findings for media consultation in Rome Media Representation There are a number of distortions regarding how some social contexts are represented in the media: on the one hand the hierarchy of the news is made in accordance with principles which are too focused on domestic policy, on the other hand it is necessary to differentiate between traditional journalism and niche journalism. In the latter case, one can recognize a greater focus on different sections of society (especially with regard to the issue of immigration) which are generally presented according to a schematic that does not capture the complexity of the phenomenon. Secondly there is the question of who is defined as the recipient of the communication: there is a tendency to consider the reader / listener more as a voter rather than as a citizen / individual. Proposals: Greater involvement of foreign companies in the Italian media -Opening of foreign offices of the Italian with local media personnel -A reformulation of schedules which introduce in-depth programs scheduled at more accessible times -An effort to find a new equilibrium which tends to replace the aforementioned schematic with a more critical approach Pressure on journalists by political and economic powers The world of journalistic communication is exposed first and foremost to the pressures of organized crime, which constitutes a real threat to the media which strive to represent reality in a faithful and detailed manner. Furthermore, Italy suffers from the absence of “pure” editors: the majority of media owners are the businessmen who are not specialized in this particular profession and their efforts in the publishing field are merely a means to protect their own interests. Proposals: -Initiatives to raise public awareness on the damage that the crisis of legality has on the freedom of information -A reorganization of the regulatory framework that now allows a high level of insecurity within the journalistic profession -The organization of events that confront journalists with public opinion in order to reduce the separation between represented realities and the lived realities of individuals Public Sphere and Counterpower The reader / listener has rights which s/he does not exercise, furthermore, there are also major difficulties in public opinion in their ability to influence the choice of news which is presented and discussed in-depth. In addition, there is a problem of controlling sources and failure of specialization on behalf of journalists. Finally, it is necessary to specify that, although it is a sign of vivaciousness, informal media can not replace traditional media because there must be a regulation which protects the accuracy of the information, as the Feltri- Boffo case has recently shown. The principle to protect is the realization that good information is the fundamental basis for critically choosing and to monitoring attacks that freedom and pluralism of media suffer. Proposals: -Take paths alternative to that of traditional media -Impose the accuracy of information at least for scientific or objective data through readers and the introduction of observers appointed for this specific purpose -Record the rate of change in news with objective errors and make a periodic report showing the virtuous and non virtuous media under this aspect Pluralism and media concentration The presence of monopolies in the media market is a widespread problem throughout Europe, but Italy is an anomaly that constitutes a threat to other countries, because the mechanisms that have allowed the evolution of this situation can be reproduced outside the peninsula. Proposals: – an information campaign at a European level to explain and raise awareness of citiznes of the Italian problems in this context – a collection of signatures for popular initiative law that protects media pluralism in EU countries – the creation of a European Authority or at least European standards governing the activities of the national authorities -promoting European training for access to the journalistic profession
Campagna europea per i diritti dello stagista
Il popolo degli stagisti si configura come un surrogato dei lavori a contratto, una “armée de réserve” di centinaia di migliaia di lavoratori senza diritti, retribuiti, nel migliore dei casi, solo con un magro rimborso spese ed esclusi dai sistemi previdenziali. Il fenomeno ha una chiara rilevanza europea, non solo perché la forma stage è adottata da tutti i paesi membri e, salvo qualche variazione, con la stessa configurazione, ma anche per la sempre più rilevante presenza di offerte formative di carattere europeo che richiede un’alta mobilità dei giovani coinvolti. Intendiamo, quindi, promuovere un’iniziativa che sappia individuare i punti deboli e contraddittori, le lacune e le criticità, dei quadri normativi dei diversi paesi europei in materia di stage e tirocini. L’iniziativa si pone l'obiettivo di contribuire allo sviluppo di una piattaforma comune di rivendicazioni economiche e politiche che possano essere condotte a livello europeo da una coalizione di associazioni, movimenti e gruppi della società civile, mettendo in dialogo transnazionale quanti già si adoperano per un miglioramento significativo delle condizioni degli stage. Le prime tappe dell’iniziativa sono promosse da European Alternatives, organizzazione della società civile dedita a promuovere politiche e culture transnazionali. European Alternatives ritiene che oggi le sfide della partecipazione democratica, dell’uguaglianza sociale e dell’innovazione culturale non possono più essere effettivamente comprese e affrontate a livello nazionale. Per questo motivo, l’iniziativa vuole farsi rete europea e avere un taglio trasversale, al fine di costruire una piattaforma non riconducibile a una singola e specifica associazione. I PASSI DELL’INIZIATIVA Lavoro di inchiesta? E’ già attivo un sito internet che raccoglie articoli sui diversi quadri normativi che regolamentano gli stage nei diversi paesi europei e ospita interviste e video-interviste degli attori coinvolti a vario titolo nelle offerte formative esistenti o di quanti si occupano, su un piano teorico e politico e a partire da angolazioni diverse – dal diritto e la sociologia del lavoro, all’economia politica e di mercato- di questo fenomeno. Si tratta di uno spazio nel quale è possibile reperire, inoltre, informazioni sulle più recenti discussioni e risoluzioni parlamentari europee in materia di occupazione giovanile, di inserimento nel mondo del lavoro, di rafforzamento e statuto dei tirocini e degli stage. Molta attenzione è dedicata alle varie istanze, richieste e proposte che emergono da collettivi, associazioni, e sindacati che, già da tempo, si interrogano su come migliorare la condizione e garantire i diritti di quanti vi hanno accesso, trasformare le logiche che regolano i rapporti tra mondo del lavoro e formazione, rendere vincolanti i quadri normativi esistenti, vigilare sul concreto rispetto delle stesse. Il sito non intende offrire solo informazioni e riflessioni ma essere anche uno spazio partecipato e aperto a tutti. In quest’ottica è stato attivato un questionario che ha come obbiettivo quello di definire un primo “identikit dello stagista” in Europa e un forum di discussione da cui delineare un quadro di proposte aggregate per affinità. Infine, è in corso di progettazione un’inchiesta più accurata che possa fornire una cartografia dettagliata su un fenomeno che è per molti aspetti ancora poco indagato nella sua portata e nella sua conformazione. Incontro di progettazione, 7 aprile, Roma L’incontro tra reti di stagisti, sindacati, studenti e collettivi è finalizzato alla discussione e al confronto sulle diverse possibilità di azione politica a livello nazionale ed europeo per un significativo miglioramento della regolamentazione in fatto di stage. E’ l’occasione per mettere a fuoco le peculiarità della realtà italiana e trovare punti di contatto e di coordinamento tra le diverse organizzazioni esistenti sul territorio. Un momento essenziale e preparatorio agli incontri di discussione transnazionali previsti in maggio, che si svolgerà anche a Londra e Parigi nel mese di aprile. Conferenza, 9 maggio, Bologna, nel contesto di Transeuropa Festival, il primo festival transnazionale in simultanea in 12 città europee L’incontro coinvolgerà attori del mondo del sindacato, del lavoro, dell’università, oltre a rappresentati delle associazioni e dei collettivi. Il dibattito trasversale e partecipato è finalizzato a mettere a fuoco le dinamiche che regolano la forma stage nel più ampio contesto delle trasformazioni del mercato del lavoro, dell’occupazione giovanile, del welfare nel contesto nazionale ed europeo. Per raggiungere piattaforme condivise sulle specifiche tematiche, ci saranno diversi tavoli di lavoro e discussione aperti a tutti i partecipanti (i.e. la funzione dello stage, il rapporto formazione-lavoro, le condizioni e le garanzie di lavoro degli stagisti, i quadri normativi che regolano lo stage, il ruolo delle istituzioni, le opportunità politiche a livello europeo). Forum europeo, 14 maggio, Londra, nel contesto di Transeuropa Festival, il primo festival transnazionale in simultanea in 12 città europee All’interno del convegno europeo Transnational Forum on Labour and Social Rights, sarà organizzato un tavolo di lavoro e di discussione tra organizzazioni e collettivi dei diversi paesi europei – Italia, Francia, Germania, Bulgaria, Ungheria, Romania, Spagna, e Gran Bretagna – che sono impegnati per un significativo miglioramento delle condizioni degli stagisti. La discussione è finalizzata alla promozione di una campagna transnazionale per una regolamentazione degli stage a livello comunitario.
Campagne européenne pour les droits des stagiaires
Traduction de Camille Nore La communauté des stagiaires forme un substitut du corps salarié, une « armée de réserve » constituée de centaines de milliers de travailleurs sans droits ni salaire avec au mieux une faible « prise en charge de leurs frais ». L’ampleur du phénomène à l’échelle européenne et la grande mobilité des stagiaires nous incite à promouvoir une campagne capable d’améliorer les lois réglementant les stages, en identifiant leurs faiblesses, leurs contradictions mais également les vides juridiques et les contenus sujets à critiques des lois portant sur les stages et l’apprentissage dans différents pays européens Cette campagne a pour but de contribuer au développement d’une plateforme commune de revendications économiques et politiques, pouvant être portées au niveau européen par une coalition d’associations, de mouvements et de groupes de la société civile, afin de créer un dialogue transnational avec ceux se battant déjà pour une amélioration significative des conditions de stages. Les premières étapes de la campagne sont animées par Alternatives Européennes, une organisation de la société civile dont l’objectif est de promouvoir le potentiel transnational de la politique et de la culture en Europe. Alternatives Européennes est convaincu que les défis de la participation démocratique, de l’égalité sociale et de l’innovation culturelle ne peuvent se limiter au niveau national. Cependant, cette initiative a pour but de créer un réseau d’acteurs formant une plateforme qui ne pourrait être réductible à une seule association. LES ETAPES DE LA CAMPAGNE Le site Internet de la campagne rassemblera des articles et interviews sur les divers cadres légaux réglementant les stages dans les différents pays européens, et sur les divers contre-projets émergeant des collectifs, associations et syndicats. Un espace spécifique permet à tous les visiteurs d’exposer leurs projets pour l’amélioration des conditions de stages ou de voter pour les propositions les plus pertinentes selon eux. Enfin, un questionnaire participatif sera mis à disposition afin d’établir le « portrait-robot du stagiaire moyen » en Europe. Enfin, nous travaillons actuellement à l’élaboration d’une enquête transeuropéenne plus scientifique capable de dresser la situation des stagiaires à travers l’Europe. Réunion d’organisation, le 7 Avril à Rome Réunion de discussion avec les réseaux, syndicats et collectifs impliqués sur ce sujet, afin d’examiner la possibilité de mener des initiatives politiques au niveau européen pour une amélioration significative de la réglementation des stages. Des réunions similaires seront organisées en Avril à Paris et à Londres. Conférence le 9 Mai à Bologne, lors du festival Transeuropa, le premier festival Transnational organisé simultanément dans 12 villes européennes. Débat sur le statut des stagiaires et la réalité du marché du travail pour les jeunes générations en Europe, avec des participants venant des syndicats, de l’université, des ONG et une participation active des associations et des collectifs. Des ateliers de discussion ouverts à tous les participants seront divisés par sujet (comme la fonction du stage, les conditions de travail, les normes régulant les stages, le rôle des institutions, les opportunités politiques au niveau européen) Forum européen, le 14 Mai à Londres, lors du festival Transeuropa, le premier festival transnational organisé simultanément dans 12 villes européennes. Pendant le Forum Transnational sur les droit sociaux et les droits du travail en Europe, nous organisons une table ronde participative avec des organisations et des collectifs de divers pays européens se battant pour une amélioration significative des conditions de stages. Avec des participants venant d’Italie, de France, d’Allemagne, de Bulgarie, de Hongrie, de Roumanie, d’Espagne et de Grande-Bretagne, nous examinerons la possibilité d’une campagne européenne avec des revendications transnationales claires pour la réglementation des stages en Europe sera discutée.
European Campaign for the Rights of Interns
The intern population is configured as a surrogate of the work contract, a “reserve army” of hundreds and thousands of workers without rights and a salary, or, at best, with meager “expenses covered”. Given the clearly European scale of the phenomenon and the high mobility of interns, we intend to promote an initiative that is able to identify the weaknesses, contradictions, gaps and critical points of laws governing internships and apprenticeships in different European countries. The initiative aims to contribute to the development of a common platform of economic and political demands that can be taken forward at European level by a coalition of associations, movements, and civil society groups, creating a transnational dialogue among those who are already fighting for a significant improvement of the conditions of internships. The first steps of the initiative are promoted by European Alternatives, a civil society organization dedicated to promoting transnational politics and culture. European Alternatives believes that today's challenges of democratic participation, social equality and cultural innovation cannot be effectively understood and addressed at national level. However, the initiative wants to network and aims to build a platform which is not reducible to a specific association. THE STEPS OF THE INITIATIVE The website of the initiative will collect articles and interviews on the various legal frameworks that regulate internships in different European countries, and on the various counter-proposals that emerge from collectives, associations, and unions. A dedicated space enables all visitors to put forwards proposals for the improvement of internships, or vote the proposals they think the most valid. Finally, a participatory questionnaire will seek to establish an “identikit of the intern” in Europe. Finally, we are currently working towards establishing a more scientific trans-european investigation able to map the situation of internships throughout Europe. Planning meeting, April 7, Rome Meeting for discussion with internship networks, trade unions, and collectives with the goal of discussing the possibility of carrying out policy initiatives at European level for a significant improvement in the regulation of internships. Similar meetings will be held in April in Paris and London. Conference, May 9, Bologna, in the context of Transeuropa Festival, the first trans-national festival held simultaneously in 12 European cities A debate on the status of interns and the reality of the labour market for young generations in the European context, with participants from the world of trade unions, university, NGOs, as well as an active participation of associations and collectives. Several discussion tables, open to all participants, will be divided by subject (ie the function of the internship, working conditions, the norms that regulate internships, the role of institutions, political opportunities at a European level) European Forum, May 14, London, in the context of Transeuropa Festival, the first trans-national festival held simultaneously in 12 European cities During the Transnational Forum on Social and Labour RIghts in Europe, we are organising a participative roundtable with organizations and collectives from different European countries who are fighting for a significant improvement in the conditions of internships. With participants from Italy, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Spain, and Britain, we will discuss the possibility of a European campaign with clear transnational demands for a regulation of internships at the EU level will be discussed.
En Hongrie, la loi sur les medias fait lobjet dune enquête par la Commission Européenne.
Photo flickr arth2o Traductin de Camille Nore Une loi sur les medias récemment publiée fait l’objet d’une enquête par la Commission Européenne. Neelie Kroes est le Commissaire européen chargé de déterminer si la loi est conforme aux règles de l’Union Européenne. Cette loi controversée est entrée en vigueur en Hongrie le 1er Janvier 2011 et beaucoup craigne que Viktor Orban, le Premier Ministre, ait par la suite trop d’emprise sur les médias hongrois. Cette loi est considérée comme problématique pour de nombreuses raisons ; certains prestataires de médias perçoivent les conditions d’inscription comme des obstacles injustifiables. De plus, l’exigence d’une information équilibrée, qui loi autorisée dans les Etats membres seulement si elle est en accord avec la législation européenne, est tout aussi controversée. Enfin, la Commission reste incertaine notamment sur la question de la légitimité de condamner à des amendes ou de limiter le contenu aux prestataires de médias opérant en Hongrie mais originaires d’autres pays membres. Kroes a donné deux semaines à la Hongrie pour clarifier ces points dans la nouvelle loi et fournir des suggestions de modification. Si le pays ne donne pas de réponse satisfaisante, la Commission menace de prendre acte du comportement des autorités hongroises et de prendre les mesures nécessaires. Cependant, les représentants du gouvernement hongrois affirment que cette loi a été instaurée afin de combattre le racisme dans les médias. Signez notre pétition pour la liberté de la presse en Europe!
Hungarian media law under investigation by the European Commission
Photo flickr arth2o A recently published media law in Hungary is under investigation by the European Commission. Neelie Kroes is the European commissioner responsible to investigation whether this law is in accordance with EU rules. This controversial media law came into effect in Hungary on January 1 2011 and many fear that this law will ensure Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban,will have too much control over the Hungarian media. The law was seen as problematic for numerous reasons; registration requirements are seen as creating unjustifiable obstacles to certain media providers. Furthermore, the requirement on balanced reporting, a law which is permissible in the individual member states if it is compatible with Union law, is also controversial. Finally, the commission doubts whether the provisions of imposing fines or restricting content to media providers within the country but originating from other Member states is a legitimate measure. Kroes has given Hungary two weeks to clarify these points in the new law and provide suggestions on how to address these doubts. Should they not provide a satisfactory response, the Commission threatens it will notify the Hungarian authorities and will take further action. Hungarian officials however, claim the law is in place to ensure that they combat racism within the media. Sign our petition for free media in Europe!
Petition to the European Commission: any form of marriage and civil union should be recognised across the EU
Here is a draft letter in response to the European Commission’s Green Paper on 'Less bureaucracy for citizens: promoting free movement of public documents and recognition of the effects of civil status records', which you can copy and paste. Please don’t forget to state your full name and address at the end of the letter. ? Sent the letter to the following address by April 30 2011: European Commission?Directorate-General for Justice?Unit A1 – Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters?B-1049 Brussels?Fax No: + 32-2/299 64.57 E-mail: JUST-COOP-JUDICIAIRE-CIVILE@ec.europa.eu Dear European Commission, in response to the European Commission’s Green Paper on 'Less bureaucracy for citizens: promoting free movement of public documents and recognition of the effects of civil status records' I think there is a need for EU action to provide Europeans with greater legal certainty in relation to civil status matters and to remove the obstacles which they face when asking for a legal situation created in one Member State to be recognised in another. Several practical problems arising in the daily lives of citizens in cross-border situations could be solved by facilitating recognition of the effects of civil status records legally established in other EU Member States. In a majority of EU countries (17 out of 27) gay couples can celebrate their permanent unions or regulate their cohabitation. This takes different forms, including full marriage equality, civil partnerships, or regulation of cohabitation rights. Due to the economic interconnectedness of the EU countries, the phenomenon of same-sex couples needing to relocate to another country that does not recognise their union has become widespread. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights makes it clear that “the right to marry and the right to found a family shall be guaranteed in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of these rights”. However, there are at least four articles of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights that the current fragmentation of gay rights in Europe violates: Article 9: everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life Article 15: every citizen of the Union has the freedom to seek employment, to work, to exercise the right of establishment and to provide services in any Member State Article 24.3: every child shall have the right to maintain on a regular basis a personal relationship and direct contact with both his or her parents, unless that is contrary to his or her interests Article 33: the family shall enjoy legal, economic and social protection Furthermore, the Treaty of the European Union (amended most recently by the Lisbon Treaty) states: Article 3.2: The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured (…) This right is not currently fully respected for people in civil partnerships or same-sex marriages: if they move to seek work in other countries of the European Union, they may end up losing their rights if their partnership is not recognized. This can be particularly serious if one of the partners becomes ill or dies, or in case of a dispute over property, for example. For this reason, while a call for regulation of gay partnerships in the whole of the EU would be desirable but beyond its competences, focusing on one relatively small issue like the mutual recognition of all types of unions, may be a more achievable first-step. This said, the history of the European Union has been marked by a series of relatively small steps towards integration that have led to inevitable further integration. Our effort toward this specific single-issue campaign is moved by the awareness that this is a starting point and not just a final goal. The Stockholm Programme Section 2.3 of the Stockholm Programme specifies that measures to fight discrimination and homophobia should “be vigorously pursued”. Moreover, section 3.1.2 highlights how “mutual recognition should be extended to fields that are essential to everyday life, e.g. […] matrimonial property rights”. There is therefore a favourable legal and political framework within which to place a campaign for the recognition of all forms of partnerships across the EU. Kind regards, Please don’t forget to state your full name and your address here
Report from 6th Transeuropa Network, London
Over the weekend of March 26 and 27th several representatives of Transeruopa Network groups in Paris, Bologna, Amsterdam, Berlin, Sofia, Lublin, Cluj-Napoca, and Bologna, met in London to discuss the future of the network, preparations for Transeuropa Festival, and political initiatives the network may take forwards. Here you can find four documents presenting some of the discussions that took place: 1- the agenda of the meeting 2- summary of discussions held during the meeting 3. minutes from the communications workshop 4. document on how to stimulate participation at local level leading towards the festival
Report from 7th Transeuropa Network, Bologna
On April 16th and 17th, a small meeting of the Transeuropa Network was held in Bologna, gathering the video group as well as representatives of the Transeuropa Network local groups in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Prague/Bratislava, Sofia and Cluj-Napoca. Discussions focussed on the future of the network and of a proposal of new structure for European Alternatives and on the final preparations for Transeuropa Festival, while the video team shot a short film on the Transeuropa festival and prepared the next films that will be produced during the festival. Here you can find four documents presenting some of the discussions that took place: 1- the agenda of the meeting 2- summary of discussions held during the meeting 3. proposal for the future of European Alternatives and of the Transnational Network
Interview with Gabriele Del Grande, founder of Fortress Europe
Photo by: Raffaele Brustia Interview by Flore Murard-Yovanovitch Can you state how many deaths have occurred at the Meditterarnean border and approximately what percentage of these deaths are due to the rejections and the outsourcing policies of the EU border countries? Is a such an estimate even possible? No one can say for sure. Due the arrests and the dismissals of those who organised these sea passages at Tripoli, for now the departures from Libya have stopped. Hundreds of Eritrean and Somali people living on the borders at Tripoli, hope to leave sooner or later. They keep guard every night for fear of being arrested during the door to door police raids in the densely populated areas of the Libyan capital. Meanwhile, in the south of the country people are still moving, not knowing where they will end up. In the deserts, accidents continue to occur. Since the Spanish and Italian maritime borders are closed, the floods of migrants are moving towards the Turkish and Greek borders, where there was a significant increase in migrants last year and where the dead continue to be found every day. The majority of these deaths occur at border rivers such as the Evros which separates Turkey and Greece, rather than at sea. Why has Europe entrusted the control of its borders to Libya, a state which has not signed the Geneva Convention nor any other international humanitarian convention? It seems that Europe does not care much for these conventions and that Libya is very skilful at negotiation. Meanwhile, there are the Libyan contracts to supply gas to Italy, the commercial contracts involved in the rebuilding of Tripoli, Libya’s capital investments into Italian banks and military armaments purchases between Paris and Rome. In order for ‘reassurance’, Europe insists on countries signing the Geneva Convention on political asylum so it is likely that Libya will sign it. But this still does not reassure me in the least. Countries like Morocco and Egypt have signed the Convention and yet have never prevented and still do not prevent their border police from shooting dead those who attempt to cross their frontiers. This is evident in the example of the 14 deaths in Ceuta and Melilla in 2005 and the 50 or so victims shot along the borders between Egypt and Israel at Sinai in the last three years. We must also understand that not all those who are arriving at Lampadusa are refugees. The problem is much more complex than that. What do we call an Ethiopian boy leaving to look for work in Milan? Since he is not fleeing political persecution, do we lock him up in a cell for two or three years? Who decides who is saved and who is not? What do you think of the recent EU-Libya Framework Agreement and in particular the aspects relating to cooperation on so-called irregular migration? It’s very worrying. By closing the borders we are creating a problem that will continue to grow. It solves the need for deploying military devices and cooperating with the state police bodies like those in Libya. Why does Europe not invest its own money in mobility projects? Why not create an “Erasmus of the Mediterranean”? Why not introduce ‘freedom of movement’ within the Mediterranean, like in Eastern Europe? Did anything happen on the 1st of January 2007, when Italian borders were opened to the millions of Polish, Bulgarian and Romanian? But does the management of migrants and the protection of migrants’ rights in the Libyan state actually work? Is Europe allowing human rights violations in its cooperation with Libya? Firstly, yes it works. The numbers are there. They tell us that the people arriving at Lampadusa and Sicily are coming on boats from Tunisia and Egypt rather than Libya. But that is not the point. We need to broaden our perspective and look at the world as though it were a large city; a city with a poor neighbourhood and rich neighbourhood. Each morning the unemployed leave and go to the richer neighbourhood in search of work. The rich people are sick of seeing these beggars in their neighbourhood so they put an army around the borders of the neighbourhood so that no one can enter. After a week, hundreds are arrested and some have been killed and now there are no longer people coming to this affluent neighbourhood. So does it work? Yes, but only if we look at the situation from the perspective of the rich people. Europe is not only an accomplice but also a hypocrite by saying ‘everything is fine’, when no one, except for a few members of parliament, has the courage to speak out. Why has Europe become ‘a fortress’ by stopping the so-called influx of migrants? For the reasons highlighted above, the poorer citizens have discovered that in order to live, they must travel to another land and find their fortune. Europe is this land. Cheap manual labour is needed to sustain the European economic system, as well a younger generation of workers who can pay taxes and pension contributions. However, Europe wants to manage these workers like they would manage goods. They decide the quantities of imports needed and they import them, just like with any other good such as bananas or cars. So for those who travel without documents, refugees or not, this is a type of ‘political action’ that is breakng that pattern. They are taking away the right to travel and to decide where to live. Today citizens from the world’s richest countries are able to travel the world by aeroplane, while in the seas below so many people die for that same trip… What role does the active European citizen have to play in order to counteract this decline in migration and to ‘reopen’ the concept of asylum in Europe? There are thousands of things that can be done and thousands are already being done. This is because Europe is a paradoxical land. It is…
Interview avec Gabriele Del Grande, créatrice de Fortress Europe
Photo par : Raffaele Brustia Interview par : Flore Murard-Yovanovitch Traduction par : Adeline Monnin Pouvez-vous estimer combien de personnes sont décédées à la frontière méditerranéenne et quel pourcentage approximatif de ces décès est du au rejet et aux politiques d’externalisation des pays de l’UE faisant office de frontière ? Une telle estimation est-elle possible ? Personne ne peut le dire avec certitude. Pour l’instant, il n’y a plus aucun départ depuis la Libye à cause des arrestations et du renvoi de ceux qui organisaient les voyages maritimes vers Tripoli. Des centaines d’Érythréens et de Somaliens vivant à la frontière de Tripoli espèrent partir tôt ou tard. Ils montent la garde toute la nuit, de peur d’être arrêtés lors des raids policiers effectués de maison en maison dans les zones extrêmement peuplées de la capitale libyenne. Pendant ce temps au sud du pays, certains partent encore sans savoir où ils vont se retrouver. Les incidents sont encore monnaie courante dans les déserts. Depuis que les frontières maritimes de l’Espagne et de l’Italie sont fermées, le flux de migration s’est orienté vers les frontières grecques et turques, où le nombre de migrants a augmenté de manière significative l’année dernière et où on retrouve des morts chaque jour. La plupart de ces décès se produisent plutôt au niveau des fleuves qu’en mer, comme l’Évros qui sépare la Turquie et la Grèce. Pourquoi l’Europe a-t-elle confié le contrôle de ses frontières à la Libye, un État qui n’a signé ni la Convention de Genève, ni aucune autre convention humanitaire internationale ? Apparemment, l’Europe ne se préoccupe pas tellement de ces conventions ; de plus la Libye est très douée en matière de négociation. Et parallèlement, elle a des contrats avec l’Italie qu’elle fournit en gaz, certains contrats commerciaux ont été signés pour la reconstruction de Tripoli, et la Libye a aussi investi des capitaux dans les banques italiennes. Enfin, on note les achats d’armements militaires entre Paris et Rome. Pour « rassurer », l’Europe insiste sur le fait que la Convention de Genève doit être signée pour l’asile politique. Il est donc probable que la Libye finisse par la signer. Pourtant, cela ne me rassure pas le moins du monde : des pays comme le Maroc ou l’Égypte ont signé la Convention et malgré cela, ils n’ont jamais empêché (et ne le font toujours pas) leur police des frontières d’abattre ceux qui tentent d’entrer illégalement dans leur pays. Nous en avons une illustration parfaite avec les 14 morts à Ceuta et Melilla en 2005, ou encore les 50 victimes (environ) qui ont été abattues le long des frontières entre l’Égypte et Israël, au niveau du Sinaï, au cours des trois dernières années. Il faut également comprendre que ceux qui arrivent à Lampedusa ne sont pas tous des réfugiés, la situation est bien plus complexe. Comment appelons-nous un jeune Éthiopien qui part chercher du travail à Milan ? Puisqu’il ne fuit pas la persécution, allons-nous l’enfermer dans une cellule pendant deux ou trois ans ? Qui décide si l’on doit sauver quelqu’un ou non ? Que pensez-vous de l’accord-cadre passé récemment entre l’UE et la Libye, en particulier des aspects liés à la coopération sur cette soi-disant immigration clandestine ? C’est très inquiétant : en fermant les frontières, nous créons un problème qui ne fera que s’amplifier. Cet accord évite de déployer des installations militaires et de coopérer avec des polices d’État comme celles de la Libye. Pourquoi l’Europe n’investit-t-elle pas son argent dans des projets de mobilité ? Pourquoi ne pas créer un « Erasmus de la Méditerranée » ? Pourquoi ne pas étendre la « libre circulation » à la Méditerranée, comme pour l’Europe de l’Est ? S’est-il passé quoi que ce soit le 1er janvier 2007, lorsque les frontières italiennes ont été ouvertes à des millions de Polonais, de Bulgares et de Roumains ? Mais est-ce que la gestion des migrants et la protection de leurs droits fonctionnent réellement dans l’État libyen ? L’Europe, en coopérant avec la Libye, autorise-t-elle une violation de ces droits de l’homme ? Tout d’abord oui, cela fonctionne, les chiffres le prouvent. On nous dit que ceux qui arrivent par bateau à Lampedusa et en Sicile viennent de Tunisie et d’Égypte plutôt que de Libye, mais ce n’est pas le sujet. Nous devons élargir notre perspective et observer le monde comme s’il s’agissait d’une très grande ville, avec des quartiers pauvres et d’autres aisés. Chaque matin, les personnes au chômage se rendent dans les quartiers riches pour trouver du travail. Les habitants aisés n’en peuvent plus de voir ces mendiants dans leurs quartiers, alors ils placent une armée le long de leurs frontières, de telle sorte que personne ne puisse entrer. Au bout d’une semaine, on dénombre des centaines d’arrestations et de personnes abattues, et désormais plus personne ne s’approche de ces quartiers prospères. Donc, est-ce que ça marche ? Oui, mais uniquement si l’on se place du point de vue des personnes aisées. En disant que « tout va bien », l’Europe n’est plus seulement complice : elle devient hypocrite, quand personne à l’exception de quelques membres du parlement n’a le courage de dénoncer cette situation. Pourquoi l’Europe est-elle devenue une « forteresse » en stoppant le soi-disant flot de migrants ? Les citoyens les plus pauvres se sont rendus compte, à cause de tout ce que l’on a cité précédemment, que s’ils veulent vivre ils doivent tenter leur chance dans un autre pays. L’Europe est ce pays. Pour entretenir le système économique européen, une main d’œuvre à faible coût s’avère nécessaire, tout autant qu’une génération plus jeune de travailleurs qui peuvent payer des impôts et contribuer aux retraites. Cependant, l’Europe veut gérer ces travailleurs comme elle gère des marchandises : décider des quantités d’importations nécessaires et les importer, exactement comme elle le ferait pour des bananes ou des voitures. Alors un problème se crée pour ceux qui voyagent sans papiers, qu’ils soient ou non des réfugiés. On leur ôte le droit de voyager et de décider où vivre. De nos jours, les citoyens des plus les plus riches peuvent se rendre partout dans le monde par avion, alors qu’en dessous d’eux, en mer, des quantités de personnes meurent pour le même voyage……
Intervista a Gabriele Del Grande, Fondatore di Fortress Europe
Di Flore Murard-Yovanovitch. Foto di Raffaele Brustia A quanto ammonta oggi il numero delle vittime della frontiera nel Mediterraneo e approssimativamente la percentuale dovuta ai respingimenti e alla politica di esternalizzazione delle frontiere EU, sempre che una tale stima sia possibile? Nessuno può dirlo. I respingimenti e i contemporanei arresti a Tripoli di chi gestiva gli imbarchi, hanno di fatto azzerato le partenze dalla Libia, per ora. Il che ha reso tutto meno visibile e nessuna sa di preciso. A Tripoli, centinaia di eritrei e di somali vivono nelle periferie, sperando di partire prima o poi, montando i turni di guardia ogni notte per paura di essere arrestati durante le retate della polizia porta a porta nei quartieri popolari della capitale. Intanto, a sud la gente continua comunque a partire, si parte per l’avventura anche senza certezze; nel deserto continuano gli incidenti, senza parlare di quanto accade in Libia. Ma mentre le frontiere marittime spagnola e italiana sono chiuse di fatto, i flussi si sono spostati lungo quella turco-greca, dove l’anno scorso sono aumentati gli arrivi e dove i morti si contano ogni giorno, meno in mare, molti invece sul fiume Evros (lungo la frontiera terrestre tra i due Stati). Come spieghi che l’Europa scelga di affidare il controllo delle sue frontiere alla Libia, cioè a uno Stato che non ha firmato la Convenzione di Ginevra e nessun’altra convenzione internazionale umanitaria? L’Europa se ne infischia delle Convenzioni e la Libia è abilissima nelle negoziazioni. Sullo stesso piatto ci sono i contratti per le forniture del gas all’Italia, le golosissime commesse commerciali per la ricostruzione di Tripoli, gli investimenti dei capitali libici nelle banche italiane e lo “shopping” di armamenti militari del colonnello tra Roma e Parigi. Per “rassicurare”, l’Europa insiste sulla firma della Convenzione di Ginevra sull’asilo politico e probabilmente la Libia firmerà. Ma non mi rassicura affatto. Punto uno: Paesi come il Marocco o l’Egitto hanno firmato la convenzione, ma essa non ha mai impedito e non impedisce alle loro polizie di frontiera di uccidere a fucilate chi passa il confine (mi riferisco ai 14 morti di Ceuta e Melilla nel 2005 e alla cinquantina di vittime lungo il confine tra Egitto e Israele sul Sinai degli ultimi tre anni). Punto secondo: non tutte le persone che arrivavano a Lampedusa sono rifugiati. Il problema è ben più vasto. Cosa diciamo a uno ragazzo etiope partito per cercare lavoro a Milano? Siccome non è un perseguitato politico lo lasciamo marcire in cella per due o tre anni? Chi sceglie chi si salva e chi no? Cosa pensi del recente “EU-Libya Framework Agreement, in particolare a proposito della cooperazione sulla migrazione cosiddetta irregolare? E’ molto preoccupante. Per la “logica” per cui si genera un problema a monte, chiudendo le frontiere, e lo si risolve a valle dispiegando dispositivi militari e cooperando con le polizie di Stati come la Libia. Perché l’Europa non investe gli stessi soldi in progetti di mobilità? Perché non ci inventiamo l’”Erasmus del Mediterraneo”, non sperimentiamo la libertà di circolazione in alcune aeree nel Mediterraneo, come si è fatto con l’Europa orientale? Che fine hanno fatto i milioni di polacchi bulgari e rumeni che dovevano “invadere” l’Italia dal primo gennaio 2007 quando la frontiera è stata aperta? Ma “Funziona” la gestione dei flussi migratori e la tutela dei diritti dei migranti nello Stato libico? L’Europa non si rende complice di violazioni dei diritti umani nella cooperazione con la Libia? Sì “funziona”. I numeri sono numeri. Ed essi dicono che gli sbarchi a Lampedusa e in Sicilia, esclusa qualche barca partita dalla Tunisia o dall’Egitto, sono di fatto azzerati. Ma il punto è ancora un altro. Bisogna allargare la prospettiva, anzi “rimpicciolirla”: guardiamo al mondo come se fosse una città. C’è un quartiere povero da dove ogni mattina i disoccupati vanno in cerca di lavoro nei quartieri ricchi. I ricchi si stufano di vedere gli straccioni nel quartiere e spiegano l’esercito intorno alla baraccopoli perché nessuno possa uscire. Dopo una settimana, centinaia di arresti e qualche morto ammazzato, non ci sono più ingressi nei quartieri chic. L’accordo funziona? Sì, ma solo se si guarda le cose dalla parte del quartiere benestante. L’Europa non soltanto è complice, è pure ipocrita, dicendo che “tutto va bene”, quando nessuno, salvo pochi parlamentari, ha il coraggio di dire la verità. Perché l’Europa è diventata una “fortezza” illusa di fermare i cosiddetti “flussi”? Per il motivo di sopra, gli poveri hanno scoperto che esiste un modo per “riscattarsi” e consiste nel viaggiare verso le terre dove si trovano le ricchezze. E fa comodo all’Europa che ha bisogno di manodopera a basso costo per sostenere il proprio sistema economico, oltre che di un’iniezione di giovane generazioni per pagare i contributi e le pensioni… Però vuole gestire gli uomini come le merci. Si fa un saldo, si decide quanti importarne e si importano, come banane o automobili. Per questo chi viaggia senza documenti, rifugiato o meno, compie una specie di “azione politica” rompendo quello schema. Si riprende il diritto di viaggiare e di decidere dove abitare. Cosa che oggi è concessa soltanto ai cittadini dei paesi più ricchi in aerei in giro per il mondo, mentre nei mari sotto di loro tanta gente muore per quello stesso viaggio… Quale sarebbe il ruolo di ogni cittadino europeo “attivo” nel contrastare questa involuzione e tentare di “riaprire” l’Europa al concetto di asilo? Ci sono mille cose da fare e mille realtà già attive. Perché l’Europa una terra paradossale. E’ sia la terra dei respingimenti, della militarizzazione delle frontiere, ma anche la terra delle libertà, per ora almeno. Ogni città è organizzata in un’alternativa resistente. Nel villaggio globale, l’unico antidoto a politiche che generano povertà, ingiustizie e guerre è il contrordine “libertà di circolazione”. Un esempio solo: se i 4 milioni di profughi iracheni fuggiti dalle bombe di Bush & co, fossero scesi direttamente dall’aereo nel cuore di Londra e New York, anziché fermarsi in Siria, Giordania o nei campi profughi in Iraq, siamo davvero certi che i nostri governi…
Transeuropa Festival 2011
Transeuropa Festival 2011 – Trailer
Interview with Gabriele Del Grande, founder of Fortress Europe
Photo by: Raffaele Brustia Interview by Flore Murard-Yovanovitch Can you state how many deaths have occurred at the Meditterarnean border and approximately what percentage of these deaths are due to the rejections and the outsourcing policies of the EU border countries? Is a such an estimate even possible? No one can say for sure. Due the arrests and the dismissals of those who organised these sea passages at Tripoli, for now the departures from Libya have stopped. Hundreds of Eritrean and Somali people living on the borders at Tripoli, hope to leave sooner or later. They keep guard every night for fear of being arrested during the door to door police raids in the densely populated areas of the Libyan capital. Meanwhile, in the south of the country people are still moving, not knowing where they will end up. In the deserts, accidents continue to occur. Since the Spanish and Italian maritime borders are closed, the floods of migrants are moving towards the Turkish and Greek borders, where there was a significant increase in migrants last year and where the dead continue to be found every day. The majority of these deaths occur at border rivers such as the Evros which separates Turkey and Greece, rather than at sea. Why has Europe entrusted the control of its borders to Libya, a state which has not signed the Geneva Convention nor any other international humanitarian convention? It seems that Europe does not care much for these conventions and that Libya is very skilful at negotiation. Meanwhile, there are the Libyan contracts to supply gas to Italy, the commercial contracts involved in the rebuilding of Tripoli, Libya’s capital investments into Italian banks and military armaments purchases between Paris and Rome. In order for ‘reassurance’, Europe insists on countries signing the Geneva Convention on political asylum so it is likely that Libya will sign it. But this still does not reassure me in the least. Countries like Morocco and Egypt have signed the Convention and yet have never prevented and still do not prevent their border police from shooting dead those who attempt to cross their frontiers. This is evident in the example of the 14 deaths in Ceuta and Melilla in 2005 and the 50 or so victims shot along the borders between Egypt and Israel at Sinai in the last three years. We must also understand that not all those who are arriving at Lampadusa are refugees. The problem is much more complex than that. What do we call an Ethiopian boy leaving to look for work in Milan? Since he is not fleeing political persecution, do we lock him up in a cell for two or three years? Who decides who is saved and who is not? What do you think of the recent EU-Libya Framework Agreement and in particular the aspects relating to cooperation on so-called irregular migration? It’s very worrying. By closing the borders we are creating a problem that will continue to grow. It solves the need for deploying military devices and cooperating with the state police bodies like those in Libya. Why does Europe not invest its own money in mobility projects? Why not create an “Erasmus of the Mediterranean”? Why not introduce ‘freedom of movement’ within the Mediterranean, like in Eastern Europe? Did anything happen on the 1st of January 2007, when Italian borders were opened to the millions of Polish, Bulgarian and Romanian? But does the management of migrants and the protection of migrants’ rights in the Libyan state actually work? Is Europe allowing human rights violations in its cooperation with Libya? Firstly, yes it works. The numbers are there. They tell us that the people arriving at Lampadusa and Sicily are coming on boats from Tunisia and Egypt rather than Libya. But that is not the point. We need to broaden our perspective and look at the world as though it were a large city; a city with a poor neighbourhood and rich neighbourhood. Each morning the unemployed leave and go to the richer neighbourhood in search of work. The rich people are sick of seeing these beggars in their neighbourhood so they put an army around the borders of the neighbourhood so that no one can enter. After a week, hundreds are arrested and some have been killed and now there are no longer people coming to this affluent neighbourhood. So does it work? Yes, but only if we look at the situation from the perspective of the rich people. Europe is not only an accomplice but also a hypocrite by saying ‘everything is fine’, when no one, except for a few members of parliament, has the courage to speak out. Why has Europe become ‘a fortress’ by stopping the so-called influx of migrants? For the reasons highlighted above, the poorer citizens have discovered that in order to live, they must travel to another land and find their fortune. Europe is this land. Cheap manual labour is needed to sustain the European economic system, as well a younger generation of workers who can pay taxes and pension contributions. However, Europe wants to manage these workers like they would manage goods. They decide the quantities of imports needed and they import them, just like with any other good such as bananas or cars. So for those who travel without documents, refugees or not, this is a type of ‘political action’ that is breakng that pattern. They are taking away the right to travel and to decide where to live. Today citizens from the world’s richest countries are able to travel the world by aeroplane, while in the seas below so many people die for that same trip… What role does the active European citizen have to play in order to counteract this decline in migration and to ‘reopen’ the concept of asylum in Europe? There are thousands of things that can be done and thousands are already being done. This is because Europe is a paradoxical land. It is a land of rejections, militarisation of…
Promenade urbaine dans le Paris multiculturel : en savoir plus
Promenade urbaine dans le Paris multiculturel Promenade urbaine avec le géographe et urbaniste Vasoodeven Vuddamalay dans les quartiers indien, tamoul, pakistanais et africain de la Chapelle et de la Goutte d’Or samedi 7 mai de 16h à 18h Inscription à paris@euroalter.com Intervenant : Vasoodeven Vuddamalay, géographe et urbaniste Téléchargez la carte de la Goutte d'Or ici (extraite de En territoire tamoul à Paris, de Aude Mary) Ouvrages Aude, M., En territoire tamoul à Paris. Un quartier ethnique au métro La Chapelle, Autrement, 2008 Blanchard P., Deroo É., El Yazami D., Fournié P. et Manceron G., Le Paris arabe, La Découverte, 2003. Blanchard P. (dir) et Bancel N. en collaboration avec Lemaire S., Culture postcoloniale (1961-2006), traces et mémoires coloniales en France, Autrement, « Mémoires / Histoire ». Benguigui Y, Mémoires D'immigrés – L'héritage Maghrébin, Albin Michel, 2000 Boubeker A., Hajjat A, et Collectif, Histoire politique des immigrations (post)coloniales : France, 1920-2008, Editions Amsterdam, 2008 Stora B. Leclére T. La guerre des mémoires, la France face à son passé colonial, Ed. de l’Aube, La Tour-d'Aigues (Vaucluse) avril 2007 Todd Emmanuel, Le destin des immigrés, Assimilation et ségrégation dans les démocraties occidentales, Edition du Seuil, 1994 Articles en ligne Dossier sur les diasporas indiennes dans la ville de Paris co-ordonné par Catherine Servran-Schreiber : http://www.hommes-et-migrations.fr/index.php?/numeros/4834-diasporas-indiennes-dans-la-ville Le trésor caché du Quartier indien : esquisse ethnographique d’une centralité minoritaire parisienne, article de Graham Jones : http://remi.revues.org/3005 Article anthropologique et sociologique sur le quartier de Château rouge que l'auteur de l'article définit comme une centralité africaine à Paris : http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/12/13/PDF/CR-article-S_Bouly.pdf Redefining Boundaries? The Case of South Asian Muslims in Paris’ quartier indien : http://samaj.revues.org/index119.html Sites Internet Retour historique sur l'immigration dans le quartier de la goutte d'or : http://www.parisbalades.com/arrond/18/18ebarbes.htm Le café social: Lieu de rencontre pour aider l’intégration sociale de migrants âgés dans le 18e arrondissement– créé par l’association Ayem Zamen : http://www.cafesocial.org/ Blog de La Goutte d’Or – trésor cache de Paris Nord. Vous trouverez une présentation du quartier ainsi que des articles sur des coins intéressant du quartier par exemple l’Eglise Saint Bernard de la Chapelle qui a vu au fil des années plusieurs manifestations, y compris l’occupation par des sénégalais et maliens sans-papiers et qui représente la cœur de la vie associative du quartier : http://lagouttedor-tresorcachedeparis-nord.over-blog.com/pages/presentation-du-quartier-2965349.html Document sonore “Là-bas si j’y suis”, une émission France Inter de Daniel Mermet, Le Paris arabe (1) avec Pascal Blanchard, Eric Deroo et Driss El Yazami, mardi 7 septembre 2004 Expositions Exposition permanente de la CNHI (Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration) Palais de la Porte Dorée, 293, avenue Daumesnil, 75012 Paris
People, Power and Participation in France: coverage from national newspapers
The People, Power, Participation project has reached France in April, with two consultations, one of which in Vannes, Britanny. A first article published on Ouest France on April 20th introduces the consultation on labour and social rights in Europe. In the second article published by Le Telegramme, European Alternatives' Luigi Cascone, one of the main organisers of this forum, is pictured next to a summary of the PPP consultation.
Déconstruire le discours sur les Roms – en savoir plus
Déconstruire le discours sur les Roms Samedi 7 mai, 17h30 Photographie : Elena Dalibot Projection du film Roma Rights are Human Rights ('10, en bulgare, roumain, français, tchèque, allemand, anglais, sous-titres en français), réalisé par le réseau Transeuropa sous la direction de Séverine Lenglet. Discussion sur les discriminations et stéréotypes dont sont victimes les Roms en Europe et sur la déconstruction du discours politique sur ces populations. Intervenants : Damien Nantes est directeur de Hors la rue, une organisation à but non but lucratif qui soutient les mineurs non accompagnés à Paris et en banlieue parisienne. Ces enfants sont souvent Roms, vivant dans des bidonvilles de la région parisienne. Tommaso Vitale est notamment professeur de sociologie à Sciences Po, chercheur au Centre d'études européennes,Directeur scientifique du master Governing the Large Metropolis à Sciences Po. Ses thèmes de recherche principaux s’inscrivent dans les champs de la sociologie urbaine comparée et des politiques urbaines. Il a notamment travaillé sur la ségrégation spatiale des Roms et Sintis et sur les politiques locales envers ces groupes. En partenariat avec : Hors la rue Plus de détails sur l'événement ici. Documents institutionnels Communication de la Commission au Conseil, au Parlement européen, au Comité économique et social européen et au comité des régions, L'intégration sociale et économique des Roms en Europe, COM(2010)133 final Communication Staff Working Document, Roma in Europe : The Implementation of European Union Instruments and Policies for Roma Inclusion – Progress Report 2008-2010, Brussels, 7.4.2010, SEC(2010) 400 final Les Roms dans l’UE: questions et réponses, communiqué de presse RAPID Glossaire du Conseil de l'Europe sur les Roms Articles, analyses et ouvrages spécialisés BEE Cristiano, BOZZINI Emanuela, Mapping the European Public Sphere, Institutions, Media and Civil Society, Ashgate, Farnham, 2008 (en particulier le chapitre 10 de SCHULZ-FORBERG Hagen, « Cosmopolitanism or Ethnic Homogeneity? Roma Identity, European Integration and the European Public Sphere ») BEREZIN, Mabel, SCHAIN Martin, Europe without Borders, Remapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2003 GESLIN Laurent, « Les Roms, « étrangers proches » des Balkans », Le Monde diplomatique, juillet 2008 GUEST Milena, NACU Alexandra, Roms en Bulgarie, Roms en Roumanie – quelle intégration ?, Méditerranée, n° 110, 2008 LAZAROVA Galya, Des problèmes de l’intégration des Roms bulgares, Le rôle des images négatives médiatiques, Transitions, 2001 NACU Alexandra (2010) Les Roms migrants en région parisienne : les dispositifs d’une marginalisation, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, vol. 26, n° 1, pp. 141-160. NACU Alexandra (2011), The Politics of Roma Migration: Framing Identity Struggles among Romanian and Bulgarian Roma in the Paris region, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37: 1, 135 — 150 Legal protection against discrimination and public policies towards Roma, brochure publiée par l’ONG Romani CRISS (Roma Center for Social Intervention and Studies), 2007 Sites Internet Comité Helsinki Bulgarie Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 Commission européenne, DG Emploi, affaires sociales et égalité des chances, L’Union européenne et les Rroms Association Nadara Films Tony Gatlif, Latcho Drom, 1993 ; Gadjo dilo (1997) ; Swing (2001) ; Exils (2004) ; Transylvania (2006) Frédéric Castaignède , La cité des Roms, 2009
For a union of ever more citizens’ rights
poster for UN Declaration of Human Rights by Niccolo Milanese Over recent years there has been increased discussion of the problem of European Union member countries backsliding when it comes to fundamental rights. Article 2 of the treaty on European Union says that ‘the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between men and women prevail.’ The meaning of these values has been more explicitly listed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which was introduced with the Lisbon Treaty and applies to all EU citizens. Countries seeking to join the European Union need to show that they fulfil the ‘Copenhagen criteria’, which are supposed to ensure that the values of the European Union in the treaties are respected in that country. The case of Italy when it comes to media freedom, and more recently Hungary when it comes to constitutional reform, the independence of the judiciary, rights of minorities and media freedom, have posed what has come to be called the ‘Copenhagen dilemma’, whereby the European Union is very strict about criteria of democracy and fundamental rights for candidate countries, but for its own members has no effective monitoring or sanctioning tools. The one tool that the EU does have in the Treaties is the so called ‘Article 7 procedure’ which leads to the suspension of the voting rights of the ‘offending’ country in the European Council. This ‘nuclear option’ has never been implemented, and many regard the procedure as too vague, too politically charged and too drastic. There is an increasing demand for a clearer, independent procedure, and more options for sanctions. This demand has come from the European Parliament, but also from Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. Maintaining fundamental rights throughout Europe is clearly in the interest of all Europeans, and a country which starts to backslide on them is problematic not only for the people living in that country, but for the whole European Union democratic architecture which relies on democracy at every level: ultimately, a non-democratic country having a voice (and a veto) at the European Council very clearly poses a problem for all the other countries involved. Article 7 of the European Treaties, whilst not effective as a safeguard, has a strong constitutional logic behind it. It is worth noticing already that the respect of fundamental rights – as they are understood by the European Union – is intimately connected with the respect of democracy. One proposal to address the Copenhagen dilemma which has been particularly discussed in the context of the Tavares report on the situation in Hungary, and has been advocated by Princeton professor Jan-Werner Mueller, is the creation of a Copenhagen Committeewhich would monitor fundamental rights in European countries and give an ‘early warning’ signal where there is cause for concern. This proposal has the advantage of calling for a committee with one specific task and therefore addressing very directly the identified problem, and could potentially be instituted quickly. It is worthy of support for both of those reasons. It has the disadvantages of creating a further European institution where it is not clear that this is necessary, and in so do potentially instituting a particular view of EU fundamental rights which one might find objectionable : namely a view of them which is not political in a specific sense. This is the aspect I want to discuss further. The European Union already has an Agency for Fundamental Rights, with its headquarters in Vienna. This Agency has the mandate to ‘provide the relevant institutions and authorities of the [European] Community and its Member States when implementing Community law with information, assistance and expertise on fundamental rights in order to support them when they take measures or formulate courses of action within their respective spheres of competence to fully respect fundamental rights.’(Article 7, Regulation establishing the European Union Agency of Fundamental Rights). The Agency therefore has the objective of providing expertise and sharing information, and not of monitoring or ‘sounding the alarm’. Advocates of the Copenhagen Committee argue that the political will does not currently exist to change the mandate of the Fundamental Rights Agency to have this monitoring role, and so propose a new institution (which could potentially be merged with the Fundamental Rights Agency at a later date). Whether there is the political will to create a new institution with effective monitoring powers is of course a highly pertinent question. The presupposition of creating the Fundamental Rights Agency in the first place was that ensuring the respect of fundamental rights is not straightforward, and therefore that mutual learning between member states, as well as external advice, is beneficial to states which are trying to promote fundamental rights. Promoting fundamental rights is something we could hope European states will get better and better at, based on experience. Legal mechanisms exist for people who have suffered the loss of their fundamental rights in Europe to redress this, but the ideal, so to speak, is of a society in which no one’s fundamental rights are contravened. An important question is whether understandings of fundamental rights themselves (and not just the strategies used to promote them) develop over time. The history of the development of human rights from the French Revolution onwards clearly suggests they do. The values of the European Union as articulated in article 2 of the treaty are clearly open to different interpretations. What constitutes a society in which ‘justice prevails’ is a timeless question which arguably will not have a definitive answer, just answers which are (we can hope) better and better. Notice that this does not imply that anyinterpretation of a just society is acceptable: rather that there may be several legitimate interpretations, and that there is some possibility for learning from history – including experiences…
Pour une UE des droits citoyens
Par Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Maxence Salendre Au cours des dernières années, de nombreux pays membres de l’Union Européenne ont fait machine arrière sur les droits fondamentaux, un phénomène qui a alimenté de nombreux débats. L’article 2 du traité de l’Union Européenne énonce que « l’Union est fondée sur les valeurs de respect de la dignité humaine, de liberté, de démocratie, d’égalité, de l’État de droit, ainsi que de respect des droits de l’homme, y compris des droits des personnes appartenant à des minorités. Ces valeurs sont communes aux États membres dans une société caractérisée par le pluralisme, la non-discrimination, la tolérance, la justice, la solidarité et l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes ». La signification de ces valeurs a été formulée de manière encore plus claire dans la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne qui fut introduite par le Traité de Lisbonne et s’applique à tous les citoyens de l’UE. Les pays souhaitant rejoindre l’Union Européenne doivent démontrer qu’ils remplissent les « critères de Copenhague » qui ont supposément été instaurés afin de s’assurer que les valeurs de l’Union Européenne exposées dans les traités soient respectées dans les nouveaux états membres. Le cas de l’Italie concernant la liberté de la presse et, plus récemment, celui de la Hongrie concernant la réforme constitutionnelle, l’indépendance du pouvoir judiciaire, les droits des minorités ou (à nouveau) la liberté de la presse ont posé le problème de ce que certains appellent le « dilemme de Copenhague ». Un paradoxe qui rend l’Union Européenne incroyablement stricte quant aux critères d’entrée concernant la démocratie ou les droits fondamentaux des Etats candidats mais ne lui fournit aucun mécanisme de contrôle ou de sanction pour contrôler ses propres Etats membres. Le seul outil dont dispose l’UE est l’article « 7 procédure » du Traité qui autorise la suspension du droit de vote au Conseil Européen pour le pays fautif. Cette « option nucléaire » n’a cependant jamais été mise en place et nombreux sont ceux qui considèrent la procédure comme étant trop vague, trop radicale et trop dangereuse politiquement. L’instauration d’une procédure plus claire, plus indépendante ainsi que davantage de sanctions a été réclamée. Ces demandes émanent du Parlement Européen mais également de l’Allemagne, des Pays-Bas, du Danemark et de la Finlande. Le respect des droits fondamentaux dans toute l’Europe est clairement dans l’intérêt de tous les citoyens européens. Un Etat qui revient sur ces droits pose problème non seulement pour ses citoyens mais également pour toute l’architecture démocratique de l’UE qui est fondée sur une égalité totale à tout niveau. Un Etat non-démocratique qui possèderait une voix (et un droit de veto) au Conseil Européen serait une épine dans le pied des autres Etats membres. L’article 7 du traité européen, quoique peu efficace dans ses fonctions de garde-fou, soutient une logique constitutionnelle essentielle : le respect des droits fondamentaux – tels qu’ils sont entendus dans l’Union Européenne – est intimement lié au respect de la démocratie. La création d’un “Comité de Copenhague” surveillant le respect des droits fondamentaux dans les pays de l’UE et alertant le Conseil en cas de dysfonctionnement constitue l’une des propositions mises en avant pour résoudre le dilemme de Copenhague. Ce comité a été amplement discuté dans le rapport Tavares(basé sur le cas de la Hongrie) et est soutenu par Jan-Werner Mueller, professeur à l’Université de Princeton. Cette proposition a l’avantage d’appeler à la création d’un comité n’ayant qu’une prérogative ce qui lui confèrerait une rapidité d’action nécessaire en cas de dysfonctionnement. Pour cette raison, le soutien à sa création est primordial. Cette proposition a, en revanche, l’inconvénient d’appeler à la création d’une nouvelle institution européenne pour un objectif dont la nécessité semble limitée. De la même manière, la création d’une telle institution risque de normaliser une vision apolitique des droits fondamentaux de l’UE qui pourrait être remise en question. C’est là l’un des points dont je voudrais discuter en détail. L’Union Européenne possède déjà une Agence des Droits Fondamentaux dont le siège est situé à Vienne. Cette Agence a un mandat simple : « fournir aux institutions et aux autorités compétentes de la Communauté [Européenne] et de ses Etats membres, lors de la mise en place d’un nouveau texte législatif communautaire, toute l’information, l’assistance et l’expertise nécessaire concernant les droits fondamentaux afin de les aider à respecter pleinement ces droits lorsqu’ils formulent ou mettent en place des politiques publiques dans leurs domaines de compétences respectifs » (Article 7, Régulation établissant l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne). L’objectif principal de l’Agence est donc de fournir l’expertise et l’information nécessaires aux états membres et non de les contrôler ou de servir de signal d’alarme. Les défenseurs du Comité de Copenhague soulignent l’absence de volonté politique pour changer le mandat de l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux en faveur d’un rôle de surveillance. Ils proposent dès lors la création d’une nouvelle institution (qui pourrait fusionner avec l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux à une date ultérieure). Une question essentielle reste cependant en suspens : existe-t-il une volonté politique suffisante en Europe pour créer une nouvelle institution dont les pouvoirs de contrôle seront effectifs ? A l’époque de la création de l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux, le présupposé de départ était simple : le respect des droits fondamentaux ne s’auto-réalise pas et, dès lors, l’apprentissage mutuel entre les Etats membres et grâce aux activités de conseil externe sont bénéfiques aux Etats souhaitant promouvoir les droits fondamentaux. La promotion des droits fondamentaux est un domaine dans lequel nous serions en mesure d’espérer que les Etats de l’UE, par leur expérience, s’améliorent. Il existe en Europe des mécanismes législatifs visant à réparer les torts commis aux personnes ayant souffert de la perte d’un ou plusieurs droits fondamentaux. L’idéal restant évidemment l’établissement d’une société dans laquelle aucun de ces droits ne soit restreint ou déchu. Il est également essentiel de savoir si la compréhension des droits fondamentaux(et non uniquement les stratégies mises en place pour les promouvoir) évolue avec le temps. L’histoire du développement des droits de l’Homme, depuis la Révolution Française jusqu’à nos jours semble le démontrer. Les valeurs de l’UE apparaissant dans l’article 2 du Traité sont ambigües…
Consultation citoyenne sur les droits des Roms – Conseils bibliographiques et filmographiques
Consulation citoyenne sur les droits des Roms Samedi 18 juin, Douai Photographie : Elena Dalibot Dans le cadre du projet “Power People Participation“, Alternatives Européennes organise le samedi 18 juin à Douai la deuxième consultation citoyenne sur les droits des Roms en Europe. Plus de détails sur l'événement ici. Vous trouverez ci-dessous une liste bibliographique et filmographique pour préparer la consultation citoyenne. Documents institutionnels Communication de la Commission au Conseil, au Parlement européen, au Comité économique et social européen et au comité des régions, L'intégration sociale et économique des Roms en Europe, COM(2010)133 final Communication Staff Working Document, Roma in Europe : The Implementation of European Union Instruments and Policies for Roma Inclusion – Progress Report 2008-2010, Brussels, 7.4.2010, SEC(2010) 400 final Les Roms dans l’UE: questions et réponses, communiqué de presse RAPID Glossaire du Conseil de l'Europe sur les Roms Articles, analyses et ouvrages spécialisés BEE Cristiano, BOZZINI Emanuela, Mapping the European Public Sphere, Institutions, Media and Civil Society, Ashgate, Farnham, 2008 (en particulier le chapitre 10 de SCHULZ-FORBERG Hagen, « Cosmopolitanism or Ethnic Homogeneity? Roma Identity, European Integration and the European Public Sphere ») BEREZIN, Mabel, SCHAIN Martin, Europe without Borders, Remapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2003 GESLIN Laurent, « Les Roms, « étrangers proches » des Balkans », Le Monde diplomatique, juillet 2008 GUEST Milena, NACU Alexandra, Roms en Bulgarie, Roms en Roumanie – quelle intégration ?, Méditerranée, n° 110, 2008 LAZAROVA Galya, Des problèmes de l’intégration des Roms bulgares, Le rôle des images négatives médiatiques, Transitions, 2001 NACU Alexandra (2010) Les Roms migrants en région parisienne : les dispositifs d’une marginalisation, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, vol. 26, n° 1, pp. 141-160. NACU Alexandra (2011), The Politics of Roma Migration: Framing Identity Struggles among Romanian and Bulgarian Roma in the Paris region, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37: 1, 135 — 150 Legal protection against discrimination and public policies towards Roma, brochure publiée par l’ONG Romani CRISS (Roma Center for Social Intervention and Studies), 2007 Sites Internet Comité Helsinki Bulgarie Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 Commission européenne, DG Emploi, affaires sociales et égalité des chances, L’Union européenne et les Rroms Association Nadara Hors la Rue Films Tony Gatlif, Latcho Drom, 1993 ; Gadjo dilo (1997) ; Swing (2001) ; Exils (2004) ; Transylvania (2006) Frédéric Castaignède , La cité des Roms, 2009
For a union of ever more citizens’ rights
by Niccolo Milanese Over recent years there has been increased discussion of the problem of European Union member countries backsliding when it comes to fundamental rights. Article 2 of the treaty on European Union says that ‘the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between men and women prevail.’ The meaning of these values has been more explicitly listed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which was introduced with the Lisbon Treaty and applies to all EU citizens. Countries seeking to join the European Union need to show that they fulfil the ‘Copenhagen criteria’, which are supposed to ensure that the values of the European Union in the treaties are respected in that country. The case of Italy when it comes to media freedom, and more recently Hungary when it comes to constitutional reform, the independence of the judiciary, rights of minorities and media freedom, have posed what has come to be called the ‘Copenhagen dilemma’, whereby the European Union is very strict about criteria of democracy and fundamental rights for candidate countries, but for its own members has no effective monitoring or sanctioning tools. The one tool that the EU does have in the Treaties is the so called ‘Article 7 procedure’ which leads to the suspension of the voting rights of the ‘offending’ country in the European Council. This ‘nuclear option’ has never been implemented, and many regard the procedure as too vague, too politically charged and too drastic. There is an increasing demand for a clearer, independent procedure, and more options for sanctions. This demand has come from the European Parliament, but also from Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. Maintaining fundamental rights throughout Europe is clearly in the interest of all Europeans, and a country which starts to backslide on them is problematic not only for the people living in that country, but for the whole European Union democratic architecture which relies on democracy at every level: ultimately, a non-democratic country having a voice (and a veto) at the European Council very clearly poses a problem for all the other countries involved. Article 7 of the European Treaties, whilst not effective as a safeguard, has a strong constitutional logic behind it. It is worth noticing already that the respect of fundamental rights – as they are understood by the European Union – is intimately connected with the respect of democracy. One proposal to address the Copenhagen dilemma which has been particularly discussed in the context of the Tavares report on the situation in Hungary, and has been advocated by Princeton professor Jan-Werner Mueller, is the creation of a Copenhagen Committeewhich would monitor fundamental rights in European countries and give an ‘early warning’ signal where there is cause for concern. This proposal has the advantage of calling for a committee with one specific task and therefore addressing very directly the identified problem, and could potentially be instituted quickly. It is worthy of support for both of those reasons. It has the disadvantages of creating a further European institution where it is not clear that this is necessary, and in so do potentially instituting a particular view of EU fundamental rights which one might find objectionable : namely a view of them which is not political in a specific sense. This is the aspect I want to discuss further. The European Union already has an Agency for Fundamental Rights, with its headquarters in Vienna. This Agency has the mandate to ‘provide the relevant institutions and authorities of the [European] Community and its Member States when implementing Community law with information, assistance and expertise on fundamental rights in order to support them when they take measures or formulate courses of action within their respective spheres of competence to fully respect fundamental rights.’(Article 7, Regulation establishing the European Union Agency of Fundamental Rights). The Agency therefore has the objective of providing expertise and sharing information, and not of monitoring or ‘sounding the alarm’. Advocates of the Copenhagen Committee argue that the political will does not currently exist to change the mandate of the Fundamental Rights Agency to have this monitoring role, and so propose a new institution (which could potentially be merged with the Fundamental Rights Agency at a later date). Whether there is the political will to create a new institution with effective monitoring powers is of course a highly pertinent question. The presupposition of creating the Fundamental Rights Agency in the first place was that ensuring the respect of fundamental rights is not straightforward, and therefore that mutual learning between member states, as well as external advice, is beneficial to states which are trying to promote fundamental rights. Promoting fundamental rights is something we could hope European states will get better and better at, based on experience. Legal mechanisms exist for people who have suffered the loss of their fundamental rights in Europe to redress this, but the ideal, so to speak, is of a society in which no one’s fundamental rights are contravened. An important question is whether understandings of fundamental rights themselves (and not just the strategies used to promote them) develop over time. The history of the development of human rights from the French Revolution onwards clearly suggests they do. The values of the European Union as articulated in article 2 of the treaty are clearly open to different interpretations. What constitutes a society in which ‘justice prevails’ is a timeless question which arguably will not have a definitive answer, just answers which are (we can hope) better and better. Notice that this does not imply that anyinterpretation of a just society is acceptable: rather that there may be several legitimate interpretations, and that there is some possibility for learning from history – including experiences in other countries and parts of the…
Les choses s’améliorent : Histoires venues d’Europe
Beaucoup de personnes LGBT sont effrayées par leur orientation sexuelle et ne peuvent concevoir ce que sera leur vie, leur avenir en tant qu'adultes gays qui s'assument en tant que tels. Onze jeunes réalisateurs venant de partout en Europe ont rencontré des personnes LGBT de différents pays européens pour discuter de leur jeunesse. Ce projet cherche à donner un espoir pour les personnes lesbiennes, gays, bi, trans, en leur faisant savoir que “Les choses s'améliorent”.
Italy and the New Italians: an Interview with Migrant Writer Kossi Komla-Ebri
Italian doctor and author, Kossi Amékowoyoa Komla-Ebri was born in Togo (Tsévié) on 10 January 1954 and has written various books concerning immigration in Italy. He has been recognised time and again for his work and social commitment to promote intercultural exchange between Italy and Togo, and Africa in general. Interview by Maëva Kokodoko Translation by Danielle Moodie Maëva Kokodoko: You arrived in Italy in 1974. Was coming here easier in those days than it is today? Dr. Kossi Komla-Ebri: In those days it was more like an intellectual immigration so people did not have the same aggressive attitudes towards us as they do today. There was still this idea of African missionaries that the Italians had heard about but didn’t really know. When I arrived in Bologna, I remember it was the Greeks that people disliked. No one wanted to rent their houses to young people fleeing the military dictatorship in Greece and there were so many prejudices towards them that many people did not think the country would ever be allowed into the European Community. Attitudes towards us were quite different: people were curious. Many Africans came to Rome to study or on a pilgrimage so it was a different sort of immigration, and there were only a few of us anyway. These factors (intellectual immigrants and limited numbers) aroused curiosity and interest. There was no aggressiveness. M.K.: You have travelled around Europe a lot. Compared to other countries, do you think that Italy is behind in terms of integration? What does integration mean? Is it assimilation, multiculturism, interculturalsim or something else? K.K.E.: Italy is behind for the simple reason that it did not have a colonial experience after the Second World War, unlike Great Britain and France who both developed a closer relationship with people from other cultures because of their colonial experiences. It is only recently that Italy, essentially a country of emigration, became a country of immigration. Until 25 years ago, it was the Italians who were leaving, going to countries like the US, Belgium and France… Immigration in Italy is a fairly new phenomenon, even though it is now a structural phenomenon, not one of emergency as people seem to think. The problem is that Italy hasn’t decided which path to integration it wants to follow. As far as integration goes, I like to play with the phonetics of the word “integration”. For me it is an interaction between our different identities so it’s about making our different cultures interact. To give you an idea, it is not a building where I can say “Italy is a multicultural building”. Let’s put the Africans on the first floor, the Asians on the second… This is how you would end up with a very ghettoised building. Or seeing as we are all in the same building, but I am the owner, you must forget what you are and be like me. This would be an assimilating building. There is a third way which is, in my opinion, the solution: we all come out of the building and meet up in the square where we develop relationships with each other at the same level and try to make our different cultures interact. Interaction is the most important factor: encouraging and allowing the phenomenon of social and cultural inclusion. M.K.: The proposed Granata/Sarubbi law favours the normalization of birthright citizenship and would therefore modify the now obsolete 1992 law. Do you think this would constitute a decisive turning point? Are Italians ready to recognise this new Italy? K.K.E.: Italians will never really be ready, but this is the way to go. There are too many Italians with a residence permit. They are de facto Italians because they were raised in the Italian culture and have often never had any other cultural basis. They were born here, or came under family reunification, and were fed by the wolf of Italian culture. As such, there are two elements to consider: from a purely theoretical point of view we have to ask ourselves if there is such a thing as an Italian. What is the Italian identity? It is actually easier to find a Calabrian, Apulian or Genoese identity than it is to find the Italian one. We have to pinpoint what exactly constitutes the Italian identity, what it is that makes someone Italian. Is it knowing the language?Being born on Italian soil? If so, then the law is going in the right direction. It is necessary to grant an outright recognition of immigrants’ rights, especially the right to citizenship. Up to now, they have been asked to merely respect their duties but at the same time they have continually been denied their rights. The very fact that Italians continue to call us extra-comunitari indicates that they do not recognise our right to citizenship. I have lived here for 37 years so why is it that when I go out on the street, a fourteen year old boy still refers to me as extra-comunitarian? Because the idea that he has of an extra-communitarian, the image that he has, is one of a caricature. Many people say: “but Kossi it’s only a definition, the Swiss are also extra-communitarians.” Yet, the average Italian’s imagination does not work like that. If I ask an Italian on the street who is an extra-communitarian they will never include the Swiss or Americans. For example, a radio presenter speaking recently about the Strauss-Khan case in the US referred to the waitress as extra-communitarian, even though there they are all non-EU citizens! In this sense Italy has a long way to go. This law is essential. It will change the political status of immigrants in this country.The right to vote is vital to bring change to Italy. M.K.: Second generation Italians are Italian, or Italo-togolese, Italo-senegalese, Italo-somali… Should these differences be reduced, or safeguarded in order to improve integration and cohesion? K.K.E.: Hypothetically speaking, I think that if we bear in mind the notion of “diversity management”, pluridiversity,…
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A ground that needed to be purified: Coastei street Cluj
Schizophrenic, autistic or just terribly paranoid. These are some of the words uttered by the intellectuals present at the religious mass that opened the construction site for the new Faculty of Social Theology. The Orthodox leader Andrei Andreicu?, the bonhomme whose voice is so appropriate for telling children’s stories and whose vocabulary represents a great case study for Slavic influence on mediaeval Romanian language, celebrated this beautiful mass at no less than 35 degrees Celsius, another proof of his resistance…against Communism or merely pure sunshine. The metropolitan’s courage became even more admirable due to his keeping his backed turned for almost 2 hours to a colourful audience made of approximately 100 Roma and several tenths of Romanian and Hungarian students, professors, journalists and activists, who were peacefully holding banners and wondering if they had suddenly turned invisible or was it just the power of the religious celebration that kept the others from looking at them. As the vice-mayor later stated, the masked bodyguards that prevented us from reaching the other side are a recent acquisition of the public municipality, aimed at protecting the legal forces from threats and attacks from the Roma. Their impassibility was, however, at least more amusing than that of the priests who, also dressed in black, represented the protected minority. “What does theology mean?” a beautiful and beautifully dressed, clean and smart Roma girl asks me when holding banners together. She is 8 years old, so it’s probably not worth telling her bad things about the hypocrisy behind the Orthodox Church. But she has just lost her home, being thrown out from the house that she was living in together with her family on a -16 degrees Celsius/3.2 degrees Fahrenheit December day. She was moved on a hill right next to the city’s garbage dump, in a modular residence where 8 families share 4 rooms of 16 square meters each and a 6 meters bath. No heating, no warm water. Just stray dogs and tons of mud to reach the highway. That’s when I decide to discuss more about God, about how people studying about God are supposed to be good people, to whom one could ask for support. Who, from anti-Semitic and racist, have turned into Church leaders that almost all Romanian intellectuals adore and who represent a favourite target for doing business, especially when public authorities, public property and students to Cluj make up a comfortable and profitable deal. Then I stop and start keeping these thoughts for myself, thoughts that bear the image of the phone company whose CSR I had once admired, and for whose R&D department in Cluj the ground was originally purified. It is only after the above-stated company gave up the idea and decided to only produce rather than innovate in Romania (a process that should have brought more capital than just cheap labour was postponed again) that the municipality decided to give this public ground to the much respected Orthodox Church. Unreal as it may seem, we dare not scream, not even talk, while the mass pursues its century old trail. It is only when it ends that the silence of the sheets of paper is broken by the reactions of the protesters: some of us discuss with the Roma, some among ourselves about the incredible and we all agree on the incredible gesture of authorities, public and clerics, of having kept their faces back for such a long time. We all exclaim in awe when a car leaves the premises in haste, leaving a cloud of dust behind: it is the mayor, who has managed to avoid us in a particularly original manner. After having probably asked the priests to pray for his soul, he joined the opposite side of the crowd and, protected by the alerted policemen, he found his path far away from our comments and requests for humanity. Despite the efforts that were made by several NGOs and CSOs, professors, students and activists to raise awareness on the situation of the eviction to the city’s garbage dump of citizens that legally resided in Cluj-Napoca, public authorities did not allow them to express their views in the meetings of the Local Council, presided by the mayor, nor did they respond to their invitation of visiting the new social housing they had prepared by the city’s dump. As for the Church representatives, their attitude is even smarter, the image of the old man who declares not having known about the ground being inhabited and his calm and sometimes incoherent discourse thus maintaining public adulation levels higher than ever. This is the equation. The solution is still to be found. Article by Diana Prisacariu
A ground that needed to be purified: Coastei street Cluj
Article by Diana Prisacariu Schizophrenic, autistic or just terribly paranoid. These are some of the words uttered by the intellectuals present at the religious mass that opened the construction site for the new Faculty of Social Theology. The Orthodox leader Andrei Andreicu?, the bonhomme whose voice is so appropriate for telling children’s stories and whose vocabulary represents a great case study for Slavic influence on mediaeval Romanian language, celebrated this beautiful mass at no less than 35 degrees Celsius, another proof of his resistance…against Communism or merely pure sunshine. The metropolitan’s courage became even more admirable due to his keeping his backed turned for almost 2 hours to a colourful audience made of approximately 100 Roma and several tenths of Romanian and Hungarian students, professors, journalists and activists, who were peacefully holding banners and wondering if they had suddenly turned invisible or was it just the power of the religious celebration that kept the others from looking at them. As the vice-mayor later stated, the masked bodyguards that prevented us from reaching the other side are a recent acquisition of the public municipality, aimed at protecting the legal forces from threats and attacks from the Roma. Their impassibility was, however, at least more amusing than that of the priests who, also dressed in black, represented the protected minority. “What does theology mean?” a beautiful and beautifully dressed, clean and smart Roma girl asks me when holding banners together. She is 8 years old, so it’s probably not worth telling her bad things about the hypocrisy behind the Orthodox Church. But she has just lost her home, being thrown out from the house that she was living in together with her family on a -16 degrees Celsius/3.2 degrees Fahrenheit December day. She was moved on a hill right next to the city’s garbage dump, in a modular residence where 8 families share 4 rooms of 16 square meters each and a 6 meters bath. No heating, no warm water. Just stray dogs and tons of mud to reach the highway. That’s when I decide to discuss more about God, about how people studying about God are supposed to be good people, to whom one could ask for support. Who, from anti-Semitic and racist, have turned into Church leaders that almost all Romanian intellectuals adore and who represent a favourite target for doing business, especially when public authorities, public property and students to Cluj make up a comfortable and profitable deal. Then I stop and start keeping these thoughts for myself, thoughts that bear the image of the phone company whose CSR I had once admired, and for whose R&D department in Cluj the ground was originally purified. It is only after the above-stated company gave up the idea and decided to only produce rather than innovate in Romania (a process that should have brought more capital than just cheap labour was postponed again) that the municipality decided to give this public ground to the much respected Orthodox Church. Unreal as it may seem, we dare not scream, not even talk, while the mass pursues its century old trail. It is only when it ends that the silence of the sheets of paper is broken by the reactions of the protesters: some of us discuss with the Roma, some among ourselves about the incredible and we all agree on the incredible gesture of authorities, public and clerics, of having kept their faces back for such a long time. We all exclaim in awe when a car leaves the premises in haste, leaving a cloud of dust behind: it is the mayor, who has managed to avoid us in a particularly original manner. After having probably asked the priests to pray for his soul, he joined the opposite side of the crowd and, protected by the alerted policemen, he found his path far away from our comments and requests for humanity. Despite the efforts that were made by several NGOs and CSOs, professors, students and activists to raise awareness on the situation of the eviction to the city’s garbage dump of citizens that legally resided in Cluj-Napoca, public authorities did not allow them to express their views in the meetings of the Local Council, presided by the mayor, nor did they respond to their invitation of visiting the new social housing they had prepared by the city’s dump. As for the Church representatives, their attitude is even smarter, the image of the old man who declares not having known about the ground being inhabited and his calm and sometimes incoherent discourse thus maintaining public adulation levels higher than ever. This is the equation. The solution is still to be found.
Un mouvement pour une réelle démocratie
Photo Flickr Traduction de Sara Petrucci Entretien avec Gemma Galdon Clavell, Chercheur à l’Université autonome de Barcelone et membre des Indignés espagnols, sur la situation actuelle et le futur du mouvement des indignés ainsi que sur la dimension transnationale des manifestations. Pourriez-vous résumer les trois revendications les plus importantes qui sont, à votre avis, associées au mouvement pour une réelle démocratie? -La démocratie (la transparence, la responsabilité et une réforme électorale qui permette aux nouveaux partis d’obtenir une représentation significative et de mettre fin à la dominance bipartite) -La fin de la corruption (répandue parmi les hommes politiques, tolérée par bon nombre d’entre eux et qui, la plupart du temps, demeure impunie) -Limiter le pouvoir du « marché » & mettre en place des lois pour protéger les citoyens des grandes entreprises (particulièrement les banques, et surtout une nouvelle loi pour protéger les citoyens des saisies hypothécaires) Toutefois ces quelques points constituent également des revendications importantes : la neutralité d’internet et l’échange gratuit de dossiers internet entre utilisateurs, ainsi qu’une chance pour les jeunes générations et les autres secteurs de la population qui ont été mis à l’écart du « pacte de transition » d’avoir leur mot à dire. Pensez-vous que ces exigences sont réalisables dans un contexte purement national ? Elles pourraient être réalisées, si la dynamique pour une réforme néolibérale n’était pas mondiale. Si la pression à travers le monde n’était pas si forte sur les hommes politiques afin qu’ils prennent des décisions en faveur des entreprises, des réformes nationales seraient réalisables dans un contexte national. D’une certaine manière le résultat réel du processus de la mondialisation est la diminution de notre capacité à participer à la politique de manière significative, car dans le cas où un accord au niveau local/national va à l’encontre de l’hégémonie mondiale actuelle, cet accord sera écrasé. Dès lors, mon ressenti est que si les institutions européennes ne font pas preuve d’une volonté de rompre le consensus économique actuel, les revendications de reprise de contrôle de la politique au niveau local augmenteront. De deux choses l’une : soit l’Europe commence à agir comme un espace où la voix du citoyen est prise en compte de manière sérieuse, soit l’Europe cessera d’être un espace de prise de décision sur nos vies quotidiennes qui soit utile ou appréciable Il semblerait que le mouvement 15-M espagnol ait été une source d’inspiration pour d’autres manifestations à travers l’Europe. Selon vous, dans quelle mesure pouvons-nous déjà parler d’un mouvement transeuropéen? D’après vous quel(s) élément(s) manquent aujourd’hui pour garantir une meilleure coordination transnationale et de meilleures formes d’organisations collectives au-delà du niveau national ? Je ne pense pas que nous puissions parler d’un mouvement transeuropéen. L’inspiration (si vous voulez la nommer ainsi) pour le 15-M venait à l’origine de la place Tahrir et des révolutions du Moyen-Orient, puis des événements récents au niveau politique et économique en Islande (referendums, changement de gouvernement, une nouvelle constitution élaborée avec la participation et en s’appuyant beaucoup sur les réseaux sociaux, internet etc….). De plus, je dirais aussi que la coordination transnationale est inexistante pour le moment. Serait-elle souhaitable? Oui, mais de la même manière que les Etats membres n’ont pas été capables de construire un agenda européen et une collaboration transnationale, la population des Etats membres ne ressent pas de lien avec les événements se déroulant ailleurs. Les deux facteurs qui éventuellement contribuent à ce phénomène sont les suivants: d’une part, l’Espagne connaît assez de problèmes avec sa propre identité en tant qu’Etat ; d’autre part, il est difficile pour les Espagnols de considérer que leurs problèmes sont les mêmes que ceux des pays nordiques, particulièrement lorsque nos histoires et nos réalités sont si différentes : nos économies sont différentes, nos systèmes politiques sont différents, et, surtout, nos conditions économiques (instabilité de l’emploi, revenu minimal, etc. ) sont pires que partout ailleurs. L’idée que nous puissions proposer un agenda commun au niveau européen semble être une idée étrange pour la plupart, car bon nombre de personnes pensent que nos problèmes ne sont pas partagés par le reste de l’Europe. Cependant, si le processus d’intégration européenne ne se caractérisait pas par une course à l’abîme, cela pourrait changer. Simplement, je ne vois pas cela arriver. Néanmoins, je pense qu’il existe un scenario qui pourrait rendre l’ « Europe » pertinente : un processus par lequel les mouvements nationaux puissent se réunir dans leur lutte – pas nécessairement à travers le partage des mêmes revendications, espaces ou langues, mais en voyant leurs valeurs de changement et de justice répliquées partout ailleurs. Une unité dans l’action est la seule unité que je vois émerger. Et ce type d’unité ne connaît pas de frontières -ni les Pyrénées, ni Schengen, ni la Méditerranée… A son tour, le mouvement espagnol, s’est inspiré du printemps arabe et de la révolution du jasmin. A votre avis, est-ce que l’expansion et la construction sur ces exemples des revendications en Europe est une priorité pour les mouvements actuels?Est-ce que cela devrait-être le cas selon vous ? Je dirais que la plupart des gens ne ressentent pas le besoin d’un lien au-delà de la capacité à s’inspirer les uns les autres et échanger des messages de soutien. je ne veux pas dire que des réunions et des espaces d’échange d’idées et d’expériences ne seraient pas intéressants ou souhaitables, mais cela ne serait pas essentiel en termes de renforcement du mouvement. La raison pour laquelle le 15M a réussi à captiver l’imagination de la plupart des Espagnols (depuis le début du mouvement, le taux de soutien n’est pas descendu sous la barre des 80%) est fortement liée aux événements nationaux (historiques, politiques et économiques) ainsi qu’à la façon dont la crise est gérée (en faisant exactement l’inverse de ce que les gens ont besoin, en plaçant les intérêts privés avant le mandat démocratique du parti socialiste au pouvoir). En fait, si d’autres pays parvenaient à éveiller leur propre population et commençaient à prendre leur avenir en main, une unité d’action pourrait faire son apparition. Si…
A Movement for Real Democracy
Photo Flickr Interview with G. G. Clavell on the present and future of the movement of the indignados and the transnational dimension of protest. Could you sum up the three most important demands you feel are associated with the movement for real democracy? -Democracy (transparency, accountability, electoral reform that allows new parties to get significant representation and break the two-party dominance) -End to corruption (which is widespread among politicians, tolerated by many and goes mostly unpunished) -Limits to the power of ‘the market’ & laws to protect people from corporations (specially banks, and mainly a new law to protect people from mortgage repossession) Other important demands are internet neutrality and free exchange of internet files among peers, and generally a chance for the younger generations and the vast sectors of the population who were left out of the ‘pact of the transition’ to have a say. Do you think these demands are achievable within a purely national context? They could be, if it wasn’t because the drive for neoliberal reform is global. If there wasn’t such strong pressure on politicians worldwide to rule in the interest of corporations, national reforms would be achievable within a national context. In a way, the real outcome of the globalization process has been making us less able to participate in politics in a meaningful way, because if whatever is approved at the local/national level goes against the current global hegemony, it gets ditched. My feeling, then, is that if European institutions do not show a willingness to break with the current economic consensus, the demand to regain control of politics at the local level will increase. Either Europe starts acting as a space where people have their voices heard in a meaningful way, or Europe will stop being a useful or desirable space where decisions on our daily lives are taken. The Spanish 15-M movement seems to have been an inspiration for protests throughout Europe. To what extent do you think we can already speak of a trans-european movement? What do you think is still needed to guarantee a better transnational coordination and better forms of collective organisation beyond the national level? I don’t think we can speak of a trans-european movement. The ‘inspiration’ (if you want to call it that) for the 15m came initially from Tahrir and the middle-eastern revolts, and then from recent political and economic events in Iceland (referendums, change of government, new constitution being drawn up with participation and heavy reliance on social media and the internet, etc). I’d say transnational coordination at the moment is non-existent. Would it be desirable? Yes, but it feels like in the same way that MS have not been able to build a European agenda and collaboration, the population of the MS does not feel a strong association with events elsewhere. There might be two factors that contribute to that: on the one hand, Spain has enough problems with its own identity as a state; on the other, it is hard for Spanish people to feel their problems are the same as in other Northern or Central countries, specially when our history and reality is so different: our economies are different, our political system is different, and, most of all, our economic conditions (job instability, minimum wage, etc. ) are worse than anywhere around us. The idea that we might come up with a shared agenda at the European level seems very alien to most, as many feel our problems are not shared by the rest of Europe. If the process of European integration wasn’t a race to the bottom, this might change. But I just don’t see that happening. I do think, however, that there is a scenario that could make ‘Europe’ relevant: a process by which national movements got together in the struggle -not necessarily by sharing the same demands, spaces or languages, but by seeing their belief in change and justice replicated everywhere else. A unity in action is the only unity I see emerging. And this kind of unity has no borders -not the Pyrenees, nor Schengen, nor the Mediterranean… In its turn, the Spanish movement has been inspired by the Arab spring and Jasmin revolution movements. Is expanding and building on this connection a priority for the movements in Europe? Should it be? I’d say most people feel we don’t need a connection beyond the ability to inspire each other and exchange messages of support. That is not to say that having meetings and spaces where to exchange ideas and experiences wouldn’t be good or desirable, but not essential in terms of the movement keeping strong. The reasons why the 15m has managed to capture the imagination of most of the Spanish population (support rates have not been below 80% since the movements started) has a lot to do with national events (historical, political and economic) and by the way the crisis is being managed (by doing exactly the opposite of what people need, and putting private interests before the democratic mandate of the Socialist party in power). If other countries managed to strike a chord with their own populations and start taking their future into their own hands, unity in action could emerge. If something similar to the 15m, the Arab Spring or the Greek events happened elsewhere, building connections would be more of a priorit. The movements have a clear diffidence towards existing political structures, be it parties, trade unions, or supranational organisations. How should the movement then negotiate the question of power? What kind of strategies do you think will allow for the possibility of changing current legislation and decision-making structures? Do you see the creation of new political parties as a viable outcome of the protest movements? The movement is clear on one thing: everyone who’s claimed to represent the common people so far have done nothing but betray us all. There is a widespread feeling that, whatever we vote (even when we do), we always lose. So there is a rejection of anything that…
Activism, Collective, Commons: Interview with the Romanian Group for Social Action
An interview with four of the founding members of The Group for Social Action (GSA), an intellectual, activist, left-wing platform, launched in Cluj (Romania) at the beginning of 2011. The group brings together young intellectuals, activists and artists. Diana Prisacariu (European Alternatives): What is the reason behind the coming to life of the GSA platform and what means have you used to reach it? Ciprian Bogdan: Lately, we have noticed the existence of a significant number of people affiliated with the left-wing, yet they were not visible, nor organised enough in terms of numbers. The initiative of the GSA intended to correct this slip by founding a platform for this mass of critical voices, a mass which is both ‘heterogeneous’ (in terms of background and opinions) and open to dialogue at the same time. We actually tried to keep to one of the fundamental left-wing principles, a type of solidarity able to foster different opinions and visions. Adi Dohotaru: GSA was created to be a space of encounter for various left wing ideological options. Still, in the long run, we intend to contribute to the ignition of political debates and generate solutions for a “more democratic and more equitable society at the dawn of a post-capitalist world”, just like we mentioned in our declaration of principles. Lucian Butaru: We are mostly interested in contributing to the description of the problems. Nowadays, we deal with a kind of monopoly of the right-wing, which excludes alternative solutions from the very start. This process is meant to offer the necessary instruments to the “indignant” protesters. Norbert Petrovici: Cluj (Romania) is the place that has lately witnessed the birth of an important intellectual, left-wing movement and we needed a way to come up with a debate and social activism platform. Thus, GSA became a left-wing network among others, yet with a clearly stated aim to create meeting places or participate in any other solidarity proposals. Diana Prisacariu (EA): What are the main causes hindering a recognition of the left-wing legacy already in place in Romania? Which are the mechanisms that make right-wing monopoly prevail in the Romanian cultural environment? Ciprian Bogdan: It is not the nostalgic “return” of the left-wing tradition that matters, but rather the search for answers to the structural problems of contemporary society. Yet, if the relationship to the past is to be taken into consideration, it can be said that one of the impediments against taking on various elements of the left-wing heritage is their often conflictual intrinsic plurality. There exist different left-wing traditions that are often not compatible with each other, even on a fundamental level. Furthermore, some of these traditions were compromised because they protected, or, at least, they did not dare to be critical enough of the post-war societies of Eastern Europe. With regards to the present perception across Romania, the big public associates left-wing principles to the national-communist experiment, and, recently, with the unpredictable, sometimes almost conservative attempts, of the Social Democratic Party. Lucian Butaru: Therefore, the Romanian left-wing intellectuals find themselves in the awful situation of fighting a multiple war: first, against the comical representations of the left-wing parties widely spread among the population via various media channels controlled or influenced by the right-wing intellectuals; second, against the present left-wing orientations that, due to the nationalistic, conservative and, sometimes, non-democratic appearance, partially stick to the comic representations presented by the right-wing orientation; third, against the inequalities inherent to capitalism. Adi Dohotaru: Yet, if we are really keen on “bringing back” Romanian left-wing traditions, we can always refer to the XIXth century – first half of the XXth century movements. There used to exist a variety of movements like progressive anarchist, social-democratic, Marxist, feminist, etc. worth being analysed and looked at closely. There aren’t too many Romanians who remember our socialists (as opposed to the liberal and conservative movements) fiercely demonstrating for universal voting right, workers’ rights, rights of the farmers associated in agricultural cooperatives to receive land, women’s rights to be hired in the public sector, freedom of expression, or minorities’ rights. These ideas led to the appearance of numerous socialist magazines, hundreds of unions, protests, public campaigns, strikes, etc. This heritage, even if less important than in other European countries, remains unclaimed for two main reasons. On one hand, the quality of the historiography before 1989 is rather doubtful, since instead of critically analysing and filtering this heritage, it presents it in a declamatory, triumphalist and propagandistic manner, spoiling it of any real content. On the other hand, Romanian right-wing intellectuals and citizens reject this heritage because a major confusion between the democratic socialist left-wing and authoritarian Bolshevism is still perceived. This confusion is most often a type of manipulation technique used by the post-revolutionary right-wing discourse in order to articulate its cultural and ideological hegemony. To be straightforward, according to the discourse of this historiographical vulgate, any movement questioning capitalism (or rather “the free market” in their opinion) is anti-democratic and of an authoritarian persuasion. Norbert Petrovici: I cannot see an explicit stake in regaining a local or even national left-wing tradition, even if many ideas of the end of 19thcentury-beginning of the 20th century represent important theoretical ideas. I find the centre-peripheral type analyses extremely interesting, as well as the particular way of theorising the peripherisation of the Romanian countries. In my opinion, it is much more important to build regional and global networks that activate and produce alternative knowledge, allowing for a post-capitalist order to be taken into consideration. Diana Prisacariu (EA): The effects of the financial speculations in Southern European economies are much more discussed than the present situation in Eastern Europe. What are the defining aspects of the economic crisis in Romania? What was the response of the government to the blackmail of the financial markets? Ciprian Bogdan: The Romanian ruling class settled the issue of the financial crisis using a neoliberal logic: the one who pays for the crisis is the state itself, including the state employees and retired…
Le Militantisme, la Collectivité et le Peuple : Entretien avec le Groupe pour l’Action Sociale de Roumanie
oici l’entretien des quatre membres fondateurs du Groupe pour l’Action Sociale (GSA) de Roumanie (groupe roumain militant pour une action sociale), une plate-forme électorale de gauche composée d’intellectuels et d’activistes. Le GSA a été fondé au début de l’année 2011 à Cluj, en Roumanie, et il réunit des intellectuels, des activistes et des artistes de la nouvelle génération. Traduction de Jérémy Labbetoul Diana Prisacariu (Alternatives Européennes) : Pourquoi avez-vous créé la plate-forme GSA, et comment y êtes-vous parvenus ? Ciprian Bogdan : Nous avons récemment constaté qu’il existait un grand nombre de personnes affiliées à la gauche, mais qu’elles n’étaient ni visibles, ni suffisamment organisées en termes de nombres. Le GSA a donc vu le jour pour réparer cette erreur, en octroyant une plate-forme à cette foule de voix critiques, une foule aussi « hétérogène » (en termes de milieux et d’opinions) qu’ouverte au dialogue. Nous nous sommes attachés à l’un des principes fondateurs de la gauche, à savoir une solidarité à même d’encourager des opinions et des visions divergentes. Adi Dohotaru : Le GSA a été créé pour fournir un espace de rencontre aux diverses idéologies de la gauche. Ceci dit, sur le long terme, nous avons l’intention de contribuer au déclenchement de débats politiques et de proposer des solutions pour « une société plus démocratique et plus équitable à l’aube d’un monde post-capitaliste », comme nous l’avons évoqué dans notre Déclaration de principes. Lucian Butaru : Nous entendons principalement contribuer à la description et à l’analyse des problèmes. Nous faisons actuellement face à une sorte de monopole de la droite, qui étouffe toute solution alternative. Dans notre démarche, nous voulons faire en sorte que les protestants “indignés” disposent des outils nécessaires pour se faire entendre. Norbert Petrovici : Cluj a récemment vu naître un important mouvement intellectuel de gauche, et il nous fallait élaborer une plate-forme propice au débat et au militantisme social. C’est ainsi que le GSA est devenu un réseau de gauche parmi d’autres, mais ayant un objectif clairement défini : celui de créer des lieux de rencontre ou de prendre part à d’autres projets ayant trait à la solidarité. Diana Prisacariu (AE) : Quels principaux facteurs déjà à l’œuvre en Roumanie empêchent la reconnaissance de l’héritage de la gauche ? En vertu de quels mécanismes le monopole de la droite s’exerce-t-il dans l’environnement culturel de la Roumanie ? Ciprian Bogdan : Ce n’est pas un « retour nostalgique à la gauche d’antan » qui se joue ici, mais plutôt la recherche de réponses aux problèmes structurels de la société actuelle. Cependant, bien que les liens avec le passé doivent être pris en compte, force est de constater que l’un des obstacles à l’acceptation des différents aspects de l’héritage de la gauche est leur pluralité, souvent intrinsèquement conflictuelle. Il existe plusieurs traditions de gauche souvent incompatibles entre elles, même sur les questions essentielles. De plus, certaines de ces traditions étaient compromises, dans la mesure où elles n’étaient pas assez critiques envers les sociétés d’après-guerre en Europe de l’Est. En ce qui concerne la conception actuellement en cours dans toute la Roumanie, le grand public assimile les principes de la gauche à l’expérience nationale-communiste, et, plus récemment, aux tentatives imprévisibles, et parfois conservatrices, du parti social-démocrate. Lucian Butaru : Ainsi en Roumanie, les intellectuels de gauche se retrouvent dans la situation détestable de devoir se battre sur plusieurs fronts : tout d’abord, contre les représentations caricaturales des partis de gauche largement diffusées par les canaux médiatiques contrôlés ou influencés par des intellectuels de droite ; puis contre certaines convictions de gauche actuelles qui, du fait de leur apparence nationaliste, conservatrice et parfois antidémocratique, correspondent partiellement à l’image pittoresque véhiculée par les partis de droite ; et enfin contre les inégalités inhérentes au capitalisme. Adi Dohotaru : Toutefois, si l’on est partisan de l’idée de « renouer » avec les traditions de la gauche roumaine, on peut toujours faire référence aux mouvements du 19e siècle et du début du 20e. Il existait une foule de mouvements, comme le mouvement progressiste-anarchiste, le mouvement social-démocratique, le marxisme, le féminisme, etc. qui méritent d’être analysés et étudiés attentivement. Peu de Roumains se souviennent de nos socialistes (contrairement aux mouvements libéraux et conservateurs) qui militaient ardemment pour le droit de vote universel, les droits des travailleurs, le droit des fermiers associés à des coopératives agricoles à se faire allouer des terres, le droit des femmes à l’accès à des emplois du secteur public, la liberté d’expression, ou encore les droits des minorités. Ces idéaux ont conduit à l’émergence de nombreuse revues socialistes, de centaines de syndicats, de manifestations, de campagnes publiques, de grèves, etc. Cet héritage, bien que moins important que celui d’autres pays d’Europe, demeure renié pour deux principales raisons. D’une part, la qualité de l’historiographie d’avant 1989 est pour le moins douteuse, dans la mesure où, au lieu d’analyser et de filtrer cet héritage de manière critique, elle présente cet héritage d’une manière déclamatoire, triomphaliste et propagandiste, et est ainsi dépouillé de tout contenu authentique. D’autre part, les intellectuels et les citoyens de droite en Roumanie rejettent cet héritage à cause de l’amalgame qui perdure entre la gauche démocrate socialiste et le bolchevisme autoritaire. Ce genre d’amalgame résulte le plus souvent d’un procédé de manipulation employé par le discours postrévolutionnaire de la droite, afin d’asseoir son hégémonie culturelle et idéologique. Pour résumer, selon cette vulgate historiographique, tout mouvement mettant en doute le capitalisme (ou plutôt le « libre marché » de leur point de vue) est antidémocratique et de conviction autoritariste. Norbert Petrovici : J’ai du mal à voir l’intérêt de renouer avec une tradition de la gauche, que ce soit sur le plan national ou local, bien que de nombreuses idées de la fin du 19e siècle et du début du 20e constituent un cadre théorique essentiel. Je trouve les analyses de type centre-périphérie extrêmement intéressantes, tout comme la théorisation particulière de la « périphérisation » des pays roumains. À mon sens, l’essentiel est d’instaurer des réseaux locaux et…
Attivismo, collettività, beni comuni: intervista con il Group for Social Action rumeno
Intervista a quattro dei membri fondatori del Group for Social Action (GSA), piattaforma intellettuale, attivista e di sinistra lanciata a Cluj (Romania) agli inizi del 2011. Il gruppo riunisce giovani intellettuali, attivisti e artisti. Intervista: Diana Prisacariu Traduzione: Adele Palermo Diana Prisacariu (European Alternatives): Qual ‘è la ragione che ha dato vita alla piattaforma GSA e come vi siete mossi per realizzarla? Ciprian Bogdan: Di recente avevamo notato l’’esistenza di un numero significativo di affiliati persone dialla sinistra che non riuscivano, però, a ottenere visibilità o a organizzarsi sufficientemente in modo da avere un impatto numerico. L’’iniziativa del GSA era intesa a colmare questa lacuna attraverso la creazione di una piattaforma dedicata a quasta massa di voci critiche, una massa allo stesso tempo eterogenea (in termini di background e opinioni) e aperta al dialogo. Abbiamo cercato di far fede a uno dei principi fondanti la sinistra, quella forma di solidarietà capace di incoraggiare opinioni e punti di vista diversi. Adi Dohotaru: Il GSA è stato creato per essere il luogo di incontro di varie opzioni ideologiche di sinistra. Tuttavia vorremmo, in un’ottica futura, contribuire a dare l’’input a dibattiti politici e all’’attuazione di soluzioni tese alla realizzazione di “”una società più democratica ed equa all’’alba di un mondo post-capitalistico””, proprio come è affermato nella nostra dichiarazione di principi. Lucian Butaru: Il nostro interesse principale èsiamo principalemte interessati a contribuire alla descrizione delle problematiche. Oggigiorno dobbiamo fare i conti con una sorta di monopolio della destra, monopolio che esclude a priori soluzioni alternative. Questo processo è teso a fornire gli strumenti necessari alle proteste degli “”indignati””. Norbert Petrovici: Cluj (Romania) è il luogo che ha recentemente assistito alla nascita di un importante movimento intellettuale di sinistra; ecco perchè avevamo bisogno di realizzare una piattaforma per il dibattito e l’’attivismo sociale. Così il GSA è diventato una delle reti della sinistra, un network con lo scopo dichiarato di creare luoghi di incontro o di partecipare a qualunque altra proposta di solidarietà. Diana Prisacariu (EA): Qquali sono i principali ostacoli che ancora oggi impediscono in Romania il riconoscimento dell’eredità della sinistra? Quali sono i meccanismi che fanno sì che la destra prevalga nell’ambiente culturale rumeno? Ciprian Bogdan: Non ci interessaè un ritorno “”nostalgico”” alla tradizione di sinistra a interessarci, bensì la ricerca di risposte ai problemi strutturali della società contemporanea. Se dobbiamo, però, tenere in considerazione il rapporto con il passato, si potrebbe dire che uno degli impedimenti alla realizzazione di molti degli elementi obiettivi legati all’’eredità della sinistra è sicuramente il suo carattere intrinseco di pluralità conflittuale. Esistono diverse tradizioni di sinistra, spesso non compatibili tra loro anche su piani basilari. Tuttavia alcune di queste tradizioni furono compromesse perchè proteggevano o, quantomeno, non osavano essere sufficientemente critiche nei confronti delle società post-belliche dell’’Europa dell’’Est. Considerando la percezione reale, La popolazione rumena tende ad associare i principi della sinistra all’’esperimento nazional- comunista e, di recente, ai tentativi imprevedibili e a volte addiriuttura conservatori del Partito Sociald Democratico. Lucian Butaru: Dunque tuttavia gli intellettuali di sinistra rumeni si trovano in una situazione terribile, quella di dover combattere una guerra su più fronti: il primo è quello di una guerra contro le rappresentazioni comiche dei partiti di sinistra note alla popolazione perchè diffuse attraverso vari media controllati o influenzati dagli intellettuali della destra; la seconda guerra è quella contro gli attuali orientamenti della sinistra che, a causa dell’’apparenza nazionalistica, conservatrice e, a volte, non democratica, in parte si addicono alle rappresentazioni comiche fatte dall’’orientamento di destra. Il terzo fronte è quello di lotta contro le diseguaglianze connesse al capitalismo. Adi Dohotaru: Se davvero volessimo ripristinare la tradizione della sinistra rumena, potremmo sempre far riferimento ai movimenti del XIX secolo e della prima metà del XX. Esisteva allora una ricca varietà di movimenti come quello anarchico progressista, quello social democratico, quello marxista, femminista e via di seguito, una varietà che meriterebbe di essere analizzata in toto. Non ci sono molti rumeni che ricordino i nostri socialisti (quelli che si opponevano ai movimenti liberali e conservatori), che si battevano strenuamente per il diritto di voto universale, per i diritti dei lavoratori, dei contadini associati in cooperative agricole per ottenere le terre, il diritto delle donne di essere assunte nel settore pubblico, libertà di espressione o per i diritti delle minoranze. Queste idee hanno portato alla nascita di numerose riviste socialiste, centinaia di unioni sindacati, proteste, campagne pubbliche, scioperi. Tale eredità, anche se meno incisiva che in altri paesi europei, rimane tuttavia sepolta per due ragioni principali: da un lato la qualità dubbia della storiografia precedente il 1989 la quale, anziché è avere un approccio critico di filtraggio e analisi di tale eredità, tendeva a presentarla in modo declamatorio, trionfalista e propagandistico, spogliandola di ogni contenuto concreto. Dall’’altro lato gli intellettuali di destra così come i cittadini rumeni hanno rifiutato tale eredità perchè ancora erroneamente associavano la social democrazia di sinistra al bolscevismo. Tale confusione è spesso generata da una tecnica di manipolazione tecnica utilizzata dal discorso della destra post- rivoluzionaria, al fine di articolare la sua egemonia culturale e ideologica. In sintesi, secondo il discorso di questa vulgata storiografica, un qualsiasi movimento che mettesse in discussione il capitalismo (o meglio il “”libero mercato”,” secondo la loro opinione) sarebbe anti-democratico nonché è una forma di persuasione autoritaristica. Norbert Petrovici: Non vedo nessun vantaggio esplicito nel riacquistare una tradizione di sinistra, sia essa locale che o nazionale, anche se molte delle idee della fine del diciannovesimo e gli inizi del ventessimo secolo costituiscono un’’importante riserva teoretica. Considero il tipo di analisi centro-periferica estremamente interessante, così come il modo particolare di teorizzare la periferizzazione dei paesi rumeni. Dal mio punto di vista è molto più importante costruire dei network regionali e globali che attivino e producano conoscenza alternativa, facendo sì che si possa considerare l’’esistenza di un ordine post-capitalista. Diana Prisacariu (EA): Gli effetti delle speculazioni finanziarie nelle economie dell’Europa meridionale vengono discusse più ampiamente rispetto a quelle dei paesi dell’’Europa dell’’Est. Quali sono gli aspetti salienti della crisi economica rumena?…
Italy and the New Italians: an Interview with Migrant Writer Kossi Komla-Ebri
Italian doctor and author, Kossi Amékowoyoa Komla-Ebri was born in Togo (Tsévié) on 10 January 1954 and has written various books concerning immigration in Italy. He has been recognised time and again for his work and social commitment to promote intercultural exchange between Italy and Togo, and Africa in general. Interview by Maëva Kokodoko Translation by Danielle Moodie Maëva Kokodoko: You arrived in Italy in 1974. Was coming here easier in those days than it is today? Dr. Kossi Komla-Ebri: In those days it was more like an intellectual immigration so people did not have the same aggressive attitudes towards us as they do today. There was still this idea of African missionaries that the Italians had heard about but didn’t really know. When I arrived in Bologna, I remember it was the Greeks that people disliked. No one wanted to rent their houses to young people fleeing the military dictatorship in Greece and there were so many prejudices towards them that many people did not think the country would ever be allowed into the European Community. Attitudes towards us were quite different: people were curious. Many Africans came to Rome to study or on a pilgrimage so it was a different sort of immigration, and there were only a few of us anyway. These factors (intellectual immigrants and limited numbers) aroused curiosity and interest. There was no aggressiveness. M.K.: You have travelled around Europe a lot. Compared to other countries, do you think that Italy is behind in terms of integration? What does integration mean? Is it assimilation, multiculturism, interculturalsim or something else? K.K.E.: Italy is behind for the simple reason that it did not have a colonial experience after the Second World War, unlike Great Britain and France who both developed a closer relationship with people from other cultures because of their colonial experiences. It is only recently that Italy, essentially a country of emigration, became a country of immigration. Until 25 years ago, it was the Italians who were leaving, going to countries like the US, Belgium and France… Immigration in Italy is a fairly new phenomenon, even though it is now a structural phenomenon, not one of emergency as people seem to think. The problem is that Italy hasn’t decided which path to integration it wants to follow. As far as integration goes, I like to play with the phonetics of the word “integration”. For me it is an interaction between our different identities so it’s about making our different cultures interact. To give you an idea, it is not a building where I can say “Italy is a multicultural building”. Let’s put the Africans on the first floor, the Asians on the second… This is how you would end up with a very ghettoised building. Or seeing as we are all in the same building, but I am the owner, you must forget what you are and be like me. This would be an assimilating building. There is a third way which is, in my opinion, the solution: we all come out of the building and meet up in the square where we develop relationships with each other at the same level and try to make our different cultures interact. Interaction is the most important factor: encouraging and allowing the phenomenon of social and cultural inclusion. M.K.: The proposed Granata/Sarubbi law favours the normalization of birthright citizenship and would therefore modify the now obsolete 1992 law. Do you think this would constitute a decisive turning point? Are Italians ready to recognise this new Italy? K.K.E.: Italians will never really be ready, but this is the way to go. There are too many Italians with a residence permit. They are de facto Italians because they were raised in the Italian culture and have often never had any other cultural basis. They were born here, or came under family reunification, and were fed by the wolf of Italian culture. As such, there are two elements to consider: from a purely theoretical point of view we have to ask ourselves if there is such a thing as an Italian. What is the Italian identity? It is actually easier to find a Calabrian, Apulian or Genoese identity than it is to find the Italian one. We have to pinpoint what exactly constitutes the Italian identity, what it is that makes someone Italian. Is it knowing the language?Being born on Italian soil? If so, then the law is going in the right direction. It is necessary to grant an outright recognition of immigrants’ rights, especially the right to citizenship. Up to now, they have been asked to merely respect their duties but at the same time they have continually been denied their rights. The very fact that Italians continue to call us extra-comunitari indicates that they do not recognise our right to citizenship. I have lived here for 37 years so why is it that when I go out on the street, a fourteen year old boy still refers to me as extra-comunitarian? Because the idea that he has of an extra-communitarian, the image that he has, is one of a caricature. Many people say: “but Kossi it’s only a definition, the Swiss are also extra-communitarians.” Yet, the average Italian’s imagination does not work like that. If I ask an Italian on the street who is an extra-communitarian they will never include the Swiss or Americans. For example, a radio presenter speaking recently about the Strauss-Khan case in the US referred to the waitress as extra-communitarian, even though there they are all non-EU citizens! In this sense Italy has a long way to go. This law is essential. It will change the political status of immigrants in this country.The right to vote is vital to bring change to Italy. M.K.: Second generation Italians are Italian, or Italo-togolese, Italo-senegalese, Italo-somali… Should these differences be reduced, or safeguarded in order to improve integration and cohesion? K.K.E.: Hypothetically speaking, I think that if we bear in mind the notion of “diversity management”,…
Interview with Cristina Bermejo Toro, Confederal Secretary of the youth section of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) Madrid
Foto da Flickr Interview by: Monica Tinelli Interview with Cristina Bermejo Toro, Confederal Secretary of the youth section of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) Madrid, the number one Spanish Trade Union in terms of number of members and delegates elected in the union elections. The youth section of this Union is pursuing actions and campaigns not only by promoting social conditions and decent work for young people but also with the improvement of areas such as health, education, environment, drug addiction, young migrants, disabled or excluded.Being an active part in supporting the rights of young people, participating in both the Spanish Youth Council and in the boards at regional and local levels, the CCOO has recently published investigations on the conditions of the internships in Spain emphasizing the critical points and promoting demands for changes in the fight against the exploitation of young workers. What purpose do you think internships should serve? The aim of internships should be, first, contacting students with the labor market. But placements should always have a formative character, alternating with the theoretical studies in college or vocational school (= vocational training). In many European countries legal regulations for internships are often non-existent or extremely limited. Why do you think this is? In your experience, is this leading to a possible misuse of the practice of internships? In Spain legal regulation is virtually nonexistent. There are only some cooperation agreements between companies and universities, but the conditions governing them are minimal. There is no general law and this has led to a misuse of the practices, because in many cases become the formula for doing legal contracts. Do you see a need for greater legal safeguards and labour rights for interns? What are your proposals to improve the situation of interns? It is absolutely necessary to regulate the conditions of development practices. Our proposals are: a) There should be a collaboration agreement from the school with businesses (eg in Spain, many companies offer internships unilaterally, without learning centres); b) The practices must be performed by students who are in training, not by people who have already obtained the degree (to them and they can make contracts.); c) The partnership should pick up conditions such as training program, day and hour, maximum of practices, financial aid (not wages), insurance, etc. Practices should never be an employment relationship; d) Trainees must be supervised by a tutor in the company and the other in their school, who ensure that the conditions of the agreement; e) Trainees within the educational process, should be aware of safety and occupational health of the company (health & safety); f) The representation of workers or the union in the company must report the number of trainees and what functions do, to make sure they do not replace the functions of other workers. In July 2010 the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding the Commission to provide a study of internships in Europe, and come up with some proposals to improve the legislative environment. Do you see a possible role for European institutions in improving the legislation regarding internships in Europe? The European institutions have an obligation to at least establish a basic regulatory practices, as it is a phenomenon that is occurring throughout Europe and in many cases, in situations of fraud and as a form of sub-contracting. What do you think of the proposal to set up up a European Mark of Quality for internships, guaranteeing that internships offered are effectively formative and non-exploitative? Should or could this mark be binding, with companies not fulfilling minimum standards unable to advertise for internships for a certain period of time? Regulation at European level should be aimed at ensuring the quality of practice, considering them as a formative process and not as a form of exploitation of young workers. Therefore, they must also consider ways to penalize companies that do not meet quality standards. What do you think of proposals to develop a minimum retribution based on local living cost standards? Who should bear the cost for this? Establish a minimum wage is the same as setting a salary. To do this, for example in Spain, and there are contracts for young people within the labor laws that involve a pay cut, but with all the guarantees of social protection. Practices must not nullify these forms of contract with lower pay and no social protection. Therefore, trainees should receive financial assistance for their studies on transportation, meals or lodging, but not as a salary.
Interview avec Cristina Bermejo Toro, secrétaire confédérale de la section dédiée aux jeunes pour les Commissions ouvrières (Comisiones Obreras, CCOO) à Madrid
Photo Flickr Interview par : Monica Tinelli Interview avec Cristina Bermejo Toro, secrétaire confédérale de la section jeunes pour les Commissions ouvrières (Comisiones Obreras, CCOO) à Madrid, le syndicat espagnol rassemblant le plus de membres et de délégués élus lors des élections syndicales. Dans ce syndicat, la section consacrée aux jeunes mène des actions et des campagnes encourageant de meilleures conditions sociales et un travail convenable pour les jeunes, faisant également progresser des domaines tels que la santé, l’éducation, l’environnement, la dépendance aux drogues, les jeunes migrants, handicapés ou exclus. Le CCOO soutient activement les droits des jeunes et participe au Spanish Youth Council ainsi qu’aux conseils régionaux et locaux. Récemment, le CCOO a publié des enquêtes menées sur les conditions relatives aux stages, en Espagne, mettant l’accent sur des points critiques et demandant des changements dans la lutte contre l’exploitation des jeunes travailleurs. Selon vous, à quoi devrait servir un stage ? Un stage devrait avant tout mettre les étudiants en relation avec le marché du travail, mais toujours dans le but de former, alternant avec les études théoriques à l’université ou dans les établissements d’enseignement professionnel (= formation professionnelle). Dans beaucoup de pays européens, la réglementation juridique pour les stages est souvent inexistante ou extrêmement limitée. Qu’en pensez-vous ? D’après votre expérience, cela risque-t-il de conduire à une mauvaise utilisation des stages ? En Espagne, la réglementation est quasiment inexistante. Il n’existe que quelques accords de coopération entre les sociétés et les universités, qui ne sont par ailleurs que très peu réglementés. Aucune loi générale n’a été créée et cela a engendré un mauvais usage des stages, car dans beaucoup de cas cela se transforme en formule pour passer des contrats. À votre avis, y a-t-il besoin de davantage de sécurité légale et de droits du travail pour les stagiaires ? Que proposez-vous pour améliorer la situation de ces stagiaires ? Les conditions des stages de développement doivent absolument être régulées. Nos propositions sont les suivantes : a) Les écoles et les entreprises doivent passer un accord de collaboration (en Espagne, beaucoup de sociétés proposent des stages de manière unilatérale, sans centres de formation). b) Les exercices doivent être effectués par des étudiants en cours d’apprentissage, et non pas par des personnes déjà diplômées (pour eux on peut établir des contrats). c) La partenariat doit remplir certaines conditions, comme le programme de stage, les heures de travail, un nombre maximal de stages, l’aide financière (pas des salaires), l’assurance, etc. Un stage ne doit pas se transformer en relation d’emploi. d) Les stagiaires doivent être supervisés par un tuteur dans la société et par un autre tuteur dans l’école, qui doivent s’assurer que les conditions de l’accord sont respectées. e) Dans le cadre de l’éducation, les stagiaires doivent connaître les règles de sécurité et de la médecine du travail de la société (santé et sécurité). f) Les représentants des employés, ou le syndicat de la société, doivent faire état du nombre de stagiaires et des fonctions qu’ils remplissent, afin de s’assurer qu’ils n’occupent pas les fonctions d’autres employés. En juillet 2010, le Parlement européen a voté une résolution demandant à la Commission de mener une enquête sur les stages en Europe et d’en tirer certaines propositions, afin d’améliorer la législation. Selon vous, les institutions européennes ont-elles un rôle à jouer dans l’amélioration de la législation relative aux stages en Europe ? Les institutions doivent au moins établir des règles de bases pour les stages, car ce phénomène touche toute l’Europe et dans de nombreux cas, mène à des situations de fraude et prend la forme de sous-contrat. Que pensez-vous de l’éventualité d’un label de qualité européen pour les stages, garantissant que les stages proposés sont réellement formateurs et n’exploitent pas les stagiaires ? Ce label doit-il, ou peut-il, être contraignant vis-à-vis des sociétés ne remplissant pas les normes minimales, incapables de promouvoir des stages pendant une certaine période ? La législation européenne doit assurer la qualité des stages, les considérant comme un processus formateur et non comme une forme d’exploitation des jeunes travailleurs. C’est pourquoi elle doit aussi envisager de pénaliser les sociétés ne remplissant pas les normes de qualité. Que pensez-vous des propositions visant à mettre au point une rétribution minimale basée sur le coût de la vie local ? Qui doit en supporter le coût ? Établir une paye minimale revient à fixer un salaire. Pour cela, par exemple en Espagne, il existe des contrats pour les jeunes compris dans la loi du travail qui stipulent une réduction de salaire, mais avec toutes les garanties de protection sociale. Les stages ne doivent pas annuler ces formes de contrat avec une paye plus faible et aucune protection sociale. Pour cette raison, les stagiaires doivent bénéficier d’une assistance financière pour les études, les trajets, les repas ou le logement, mais pas en tant que salaire.
Intervista a Cristina Bermejo Toro, Segretario confederale della sezione Juventud di Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) di Madrid.
Foto da Flickr Intervista di Monica Tinelli Intervista a Cristina Bermejo Toro, Segretario confederale della sezione Juventud di Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) di Madrid, prima unione sindacale in Spagna per numero di affiliati e delegati eletti nelle elezioni sindacali. La sezione giovanile di questo sindacato porta avanti campagne ed azioni volte non solo alla promozione di condizioni sociali e di lavoro dignitose per i giovani, ma anche al miglioramento di settori come quello della salute, dell’educazione, dell’ambiente, della tossicodipendenza, dei giovani migranti, disabili o esclusi. Nel rendersi parte attiva nel sostenere i diritti dei giovani, partecipando sia al Consiglio della Gioventù spagnolo che ai consigli di amministrazione di livello regionale e locale, CCOO ha recentemente pubblicato inchieste sulle condizioni dei tirocinanti presso le aziende spagnole sottolineando i punti critici e facendosi promotrice di richieste di cambiamenti effettivi nella battaglia allo sfruttamento dei giovani lavoratori. Quali ritenete debbano essere gli obiettivi di un tirocinio? L’obiettivo dei tirocini dovrebbe essere, in primo luogo, mettere in contatto gli studenti con il mercato del lavoro. Tuttavia i tirocini nelle aziende dovrebbero sempre avere un carattere formativo, e porsi come alternativa allo studio teorico dell’università o degli istituti di formazione professionale. In molti paesi europei disposizioni di legge per i tirocini sono spesso inesistenti o molto limitate. Quali sono secondo voi le motivazioni di queste mancanze? Secondo la vostra esperienza, sono proprio queste lacune a condurre ad un utilizzo scorretto delle forme di tirocinio? In Spagna, la regolamentazione legale dei tirocini e’ praticamente inesistente. Esistono solamente alcuni accordi di collaborazione (Convenios de colaboracion) tra aziende ed università, ma le condizioni che questi accordi stabiliscono sono minime. Non esiste una normativa generale e cio’ ha provocato un uso improprio della pratica dei tirocini, dal momento che in molti casi si convertono in una formula per non stipulare contratti legali. Vedete la necessità di una maggiore tutela giuridica dei diritti lavorativi dei tirocinanti? Quali sono le vostre proposte per migliorare la loro situazione? E’ assolutamente necessario regolare le condizioni di sviluppo dei tirocini. Le nostre proposte in merito sono: a. L’esistenza di un accordo di collaborazione tra l’istituto scolastico e le aziende (ad esempio in Spagna, molte imprese offrono tirocini in maniera unilaterale, senza contattare o tenere in considerazione gli istituti scolastici): b. i tirocini devono realizzarsi solamente per soggetti che fanno parte di un processo di formazione, e non per persone che hanno già’ ottenuto un titolo di studio finale (dal momento con a questi ultimi si possono stipulare contratti regolari); c. l’accordo di collaborazione dovrebbe contenere condizioni come: piano formativo del tirocinio, giornata lavorativa e orario, durata massima del tirocinio, aiuti finanziari(non salario), assicurazione etc. I tirocini non dovrebbero essere in nessun caso assimilati a relazioni lavorative vere e proprie; d. i tirocinanti dovrebbero essere seguiti da un tutor, non solo all’interno dell’impresa ma anche nell’istituto scolastico, al fine di assicurare che le condizioni stipulate nell’accordo di collaborazione siano rispettate; e. i tirocinanti, all’interno del loro processo formativo, devono essere al corrente delle norme di health&safety proprie dell’azienda; f. i rappresentanti dei lavoratori o il sindacato presente nell’azienda, deve essere a conoscenza del numero di tirocinanti e delle loro funzioni, in modo tale da potersi assicurare che questi soggetti non vadano a sostituire le funzioni di altri lavoratori e a ricoprire posizioni vacanti che non spettano loro. Nel luglio 2010 il Parlamento europeo ha approvato una risoluzione chiedendo alla Commissione di fornire uno studio sui tirocini in Europa, e di elaborare alcune proposte per migliorarne il contesto legislativo. Vedete un possibile ruolo per le istituzioni europee nel migliorare la legislazione in merito ai tirocini in Europa? Le istituzioni europee hanno l’obbligo di stabilire, come minimo, una regolamentazione basilare per quanto riguarda le esperienze di tirocinio dal momento che si tratta di un fenomeno che riguarda l’Europa intera e che in molti casi produce situazioni fraudolente o di sub contrattazione. Cosa ne pensate della proposte di istituire un marchio europeo di qualità per i tirocini, garantendo che gli stage offerti siano effettivamente formativi e non si riducano allo sfruttamento? Dovrebbe o potrebbe questo marchio essere obbligatorio, per le aziende che non soddisfano gli standard minimi? Una regolamentazione a livello europeo dovrebbe avere come obiettivo quello di garantire la qualità’ dei tirorcini, considerandoli anzitutto come un processo di formazione per gli studenti e non come una forma di sfruttamento dei giovani lavoratori. Per questo motivo e’ necessario che vengano aumentate le forme di sanzione nei confronti delle imprese che non si adeguano agli standard di qualita’. Qual’e la vostra posizione in merito allo sviluppo di una retribuzione minima basata sugli standard del costo della vita locale. Chi dovrebbe sostenere questo costo? Stabilire una retribuzione minima e’ lo stesso che stabilire un salario. Per questo, per esempio in Spagna, esistono gia’ contratti per i giovani all’interno della legislazione lavorativa che comportano una riduzione dello stipendio, ma hanno tutte le garanzie di protezione sociale. I tirocini non devono vanificare queste forme di contratto con retribuzioni inferiori e senza protezione sociale. Per questo motivo, i tirocinanti dovrebbero ricevere assistenza finanziaria per i loro studi per cio’ che rigurarda le spese per i mezzi di trasporto, vitto, alloggio, ma non uno stipendio vero e proprio.
Trans Europa… Rights and discrimination of trans people in Europe
Alessandro Valera interviews Julia Ehrt, from Transgender Europe Below: Julia Ehrt. Photo by Anja Weber Julia Ehrt is one of the two co-chairs of Transgender Europe, a network association uniting trans* organisations in more than 20 European countries. The aim of Transgender Europe is to network among trans* organisations to share information for the well-being of transgender people living in Europe (not only in countries who are member of the EU, but also of the Council of Europe) and to be a voice of the community on a political level. AV: What are the main forms of discrimination towards trans* people in Europe? JE: We need to distinguish between direct and indirect forms of discrimination. Direct discrimination is what people face on a daily basis in the streets or on the work place. Indirect discrimination is what we refer to as structural, inflicted by the state itself or by the legislation. The main forms of indirect discrimination are the difficulties arising from legal gender recognition –the possibility to change your first name or your gender mark in official documentation. In several countries this is not possible at all. In the countries where this is possible very often there are unreasonable requirements: people have to prove they are permanently sterile, they have to have had sexual reassignment surgery and in all country one has to present a diagnosis of transexuality or similar documentation, which basically means a diagnosis of being mentally ill. Changing name and gender is fundamental, because without it multiple other discriminations will follow, as the person will not have papers identifying them. Simple things like picking up mail at the post office, paying with a credit card or checking-in in an airport can become impossible. Direct discrimination is not much better. The main fields are access to the work market, hate crimes and hate violence including hate killings. We gather data in these areas through various research projects including Trans Murder Monitoring Project, which records killing of trans* people worldwide. In the last 3.5 years in Europe we had more than 41 trans* people killed. Another research from the UK conducted with data from the TransEuro Study (2008) confirmed that 80% of trans* people receive negative comments, verbal, physical and sexual harassment in their everyday life. This means that if you are a visible trans* person you face direct discrimination every day, as that remaining 20% are those people whose trans* condition is not visible. Access to the job market is equally catastrophic: unemployment rates are considerably higher than in the rest of population. AV: You are mentioning the possibility of changing gender from male to female or vice-versa. What about those people who do not associate themselves with either (or both) gender? JE: I see this as a two-step struggle. If you are able to change your gender from male to female without unreasonable conditions like sterilisation, this would be an important step in the right direction. However, having more options would not do harm to anyone while helping a lot of people who do not see themselves properly labelled as either male or female. AV: What is the country in Europe in which the dignity of trans* people is best respected, both in terms of social attitudes and legal provision? JE: It is very difficult to judge and measure social attitudes, so I would not be able to give an answer to that. In terms of policy and legal procedure in place, Scotland is the place to be or to look for. When it comes down to legal issues, Scotland has very good gender recognition legislation and is the only country which has trans* specific hate crime legislation. As part of the UK they also have very reasonable anti-discrimination legislation. In terms of anti-discrimination protection, Sweden is excellent, too. In terms of gender legal recognition, Spain and Portugal are very good. However, in Portugal the law is quite new, so one has to see how the practice will evolve. Good legislation and good enforcement and practice no not always automatically go together. Below: Yara and Sass working for trans*rights AV: And in which country is the situation for trans *people particularly worrying? JE: In terms of hate crimes and killing of trans* people in Turkey and Italy the situation is particularly serious, with 13 murders each in the last 3.5 years out of a total of 41 in Europe. In terms of legal provision Italy is one of the worst, too. Their legal gender recognition law is particularly bad: to change name or gender you need to be sterilised, have undergone sex reassignment surgery and be forced to divorce, if married. A court has recently ruled that sterilisation should not be mandatory, but we have to see whether the ruling will be implemented across Italy. Ireland does not have any legislation in place to change name or gender despite losing a case with the Irish Constitutional Court on this issue. Ireland is obliged to provide a possibility to change name and gender but has been reluctant to do so. In terms of legal gender recognition, Sweden is also surprisingly bad, as it still requires unreasonable conditions. However, such legislation is under revision and in six months, the situation could change considerably. AV: What, if anything, is the EU doing to safeguard the interest and wellbeing of trans people? JE: The main area where EU has competence that apply to trans* people is anti-discrimination. However, the problem is that discrimination on ground of gender identity or gender reassignment is not found in the Treaty of the European Union. However, by virtue of several Court cases, discrimination on these grounds are included under the domain of “sex”. But you have to know this and it is difficult to get hold of the rulings confirming this. There is also a problem of implementation: several EU member states do not implement this at all, some do it partially and a few, such as Germany, do…
Trans Europa… Droits et discrimination de la population trans’ en Europe
Alessandro Valera interviewe Julia Ehrt, de Transgender Europe Traduction par Elisa Sance Ci-dessous : Julia Ehrt. Photo de Anja Weber Julia Ehrt est une des deux co-présidentes de Transgender Europe, un réseau associatif réunissant les organisations trans’ de plus de 20 pays d’Europe. Le but de Transgender Europe est de créer des relations entre les organisations trans’ de façon à partager les informations pour le bien-être de la population transgenre vivant en Europe (pas seulement dans les pays membres de l’UE, mais aussi du Conseil de l’Europe) et d’être la voix de la communauté sur le plan politique. AV: Quelles sont les principales formes de discrimination envers la population trans* en Europe ? JE: Il faut distinguer les formes directes et les formes indirectes de discrimination. La discrimination directe, c’est celle à laquelle les gens font face quotidiennement dans la rue ou sur leur lieu de travail. La discrimination indirecte, c’est celle que nous appelons structurelle, elle est infligée par l’état lui-même ou par la législation. Les principales formes de discrimination indirecte sont les difficultés émanant de la reconnaissance légale du genre – la possibilité de changer de prénom ou de marque de genre dans les documents officiels. Dans plusieurs pays, ce n’est absolument pas possible. Dans les pays où c’est possible, très souvent il y a des conditions excessives à remplir : les personnes doivent apporter la preuve qu’elles sont stériles de façon définitive, elles doivent avoir eu recours à la chirurgie pour changer de sexe et dans tous les pays un diagnostic de transsexualité ou tout autre document similaire est demandé, ce qui revient fondamentalement à devoir fournir un diagnostic de maladie mentale Changer de prénom et de genre officiellement est fondamental car sans cela, de multiples autres discriminations s’en suivent puisque la personne n’aura pas de papiers adéquats. De simples actions, comme celle d’aller récupérer son courrier à la poste, de payer avec une carte de crédit ou de s’enregistrer sur un vol dans un aéroport peuvent devenir impossibles à réaliser. La discrimination directe est un problème sérieux. Elles s’opèrent principalement dans les domaines de l’accès au marché du travail, des crimes de haine et dans les cas de violence envers les transsexuels (qui incluent des meurtres). Nous récoltons des données sur ces domaines à travers différents projets de recherches dont Trans Murder Monitoring Project, qui enregistre les meurtres sur la population trans’ à travers le monde. Ces 3,5 dernières années en Europe, plus de 41 personnes trans’ ont été tuées. Une autre étude venant du Royaume-Uni, qui a été conduite avec des données provenant de la TransEuro Study (2008), confirme que 80% de la population trans’ est victime de remarques négatives et de harcèlement verbal, physique ou sexuel au quotidien. Cela signifie que si vous présentez des signes apparents de votre transsexualité, vous faites face à la discrimination directe tous les jours ; les 20% restant représentent les personnes dont la transsexualité n’est pas apparente. L’accès au marché du travail est tout aussi catastrophique : le taux de chômage est considérablement plus élevé par rapport au reste de la population. AV: Vous évoquez la possibilité de passer du genre masculin au genre féminin ou vice-versa. Qu’en est-il des personnes qui ne s’identifient à aucun (ou aux deux) genres ? JE: Je vois cela comme un combat en deux temps. Si on avait la possibilité de passer du genre masculin au genre féminin sans qu’il y ait de conditions excessives comme la stérilisation, cela constituerait un pas important dans la bonne direction. AV: Quel est le pays en Europe où la dignité de la population trans’ est la mieux respectée, à la fois en termes d’attitudes sociales qu’en termes de dispositions légales ? JE:Il est très difficile de juger et d’évaluer les attitudes sociales, je ne suis donc pas en mesure de répondre à cela. En termes de politiques et de procédures législatives en vigueur, l’Ecosse est l’endroit où il faut être ou l’exemple vers lequel tendre. L’Ecosse a une excellente législation permettant la reconnaissance des genres et c’est le seul pays ayant une législation spécifique à la population trans’ en matière de crimes de haine. Le Royaume-Uni a également une législation anti-discrimination très convenable. En termes de protection contre la discrimination, la Suède est bien placée. Pour la reconnaissance légale des genres, l’Espagne et le Portugal sont très bien. Cependant, au Portugal la loi est récente, il faut donc voir de quelle manière les pratiques vont évoluer. Une bonne législation ne va pas toujours de pair avec une bonne application de la loi. Ci-dessous : Yara et Sass travaillent pour trans’rights AV: Et dans quel pays la situation est-elle particulièrement préoccupante pour la population trans ? JE: En termes de crimes de haine et de meurtres portant sur la population trans’, la situation est particulièrement grave en Turquie et en Italie, avec 13 meurtres dans chacun de ces pays dans les 3,5 dernières années sur un total de 41 en Europe. L’Italie est également une des pires en termes de dispositions législatives. Leur loi sur la reconnaissance légale des genres est particulièrement mauvaise : pour pouvoir changer de prénom ou de genre vous devez être stérilisé, être passé par la chirurgie de changement de sexe et si vous étiez marié, vous êtes obligé de divorcer. Un tribunal a récemment décrété que la stérilisation ne devrait pas être obligatoire, mais il faut voir si cette décision va être mise en application dans toute l’Italie. L’Irlande n’a aucune législation en vigueur concernant le changement de prénom ou de genre même si la Cour Suprême d’Irlande a rendu un avis contraire sur cette question. L’Irlande est désormais obligée de permettre de changer de prénom ou de genre, mais elle est peu disposée à le faire. En terme de reconnaissance légale des genres, la Suède est également très mauvaise puisqu’elle continue d’imposer des conditions excessives. Mais cette législation est en cours de révision et la situation pourrait considérablement changer dans 6 mois. AV: Qu’est-ce que fait l’UE, si elle agit, pour préserver les intérêts et le bien…
Trans Europa… diritti e discriminazioni per i transessuali in Europa.
Alessandro Valera intervista Julia Ehrt da Transgender Europa Traduzione: Mauro Longo Sotto: Julia Ehrt Photo di Anja Weber Julia Ehrt è una delle due leader di Transgender Europe, una rete che riunisce trans*organizzazioni di oltre 20 paesi Europei. Lo scopo di Transgender Europe è di condividere informazioni per il benessere di organizzazioni trans* in Europa (non solo in quei paesi membri dell’Unione Europea, ma anche per quelli riuniti nel Consiglio d’Europa) e di rappresentare la comunità a livello istituzionale. AV: quali sono le principali forme di discriminazione a scapito delle persone trans* in Europa? JE: innanzitutto bisogna distinguere tra discriminazione diretta e indiretta. La prima si incontra quotidianamente nelle strade e sul lavoro. La seconda può essere definita come strutturale, perpetrata dallo stesso stato e dalle sue leggi. Le manifestazioni principali di discriminazione indiretta sono rappresentate dalla difficoltà di riconoscere legalmente la transessualità –la possibilità di cambiare il tuo nome o il tuo genere sui documenti ufficiali. In diversi paesi ciò non è possibile. Nei paesi dove invece è possibile, spesso i requisiti sono irragionevoli: ad esempio bisogna dimostrare di essere permanentemente sterili, o di aver subito un’operazione per cambiare sesso, e in tutti i paesi bisogna presentare una diagnosi di transessualità o un documento simile, ovvero nient’altro che una dichiarazione di infermità mentale. Cambiare legalmente nome e genere è fondamentale, poiché altrimenti susseguiranno una serie di ulteriori discriminazioni come l’assenza di documenti. Semplici azioni come ritirare la posta, pagare con una carta di credito o eseguire il check-in all’aeroporto diventano impossibili. La discriminazione diretta non è certo migliore. Principalmente si tratta di accesso al mercato del lavoro, crimini e violenze basate sull’odio, inclusi gli omicidi. Raccogliamo dati in queste aree attraverso varie ricerche, che includono Trans Murder Monitoring Project, che tiene traccia dei transessuali uccisi nel mondo. Negli ultimi tre anni e mezzo, 41 transessuali sono stati uccisi in Europa. Una ricerca britannica, che ha utilizzato i dati dallo studio TransEuro del 2008, conferma che l’80% dei transessuali riceve giudizi negativi, violenza verbale, fisica e sessuale nella loro vita di tutti i giorni. Il restante 20% rappresenta coloro la cui transessualità non risulta evidente. L’accesso al mercato del lavoro è ugualmente catastrofico: il tasso di disoccupazione per i transessuali è sensibilmente più alto del resto della popolazione. AV: Nella tua risposta ti riferisci a coloro che decidono di cambiare genere. Quali sono invece i problemi per coloro che non si riconoscono in nessuno dei due generi (o in entrambi)? JE: Il loro è un doppio sforzo. Essere in grado di cambiare genere senza doversi sottoporre a trattamenti irragionevoli come la sterilizzazione rappresenterebbe un grosso passo in avanti. In ogni caso, avere libertà di scelta non comprometterebbe la libertà di nessuno e migliorerebbe la vita di molti che non si riconoscono nelle etichette “maschio” o “femmina”. AV: Qual è il paese in Europa che maggiormente rispetta la dignità dei transessuali, sia in termini di comportamenti sociali che di disposizioni di legge? JE: È molto difficile giudicare e misurare i comportamenti sociali, per cui non mi sento in grado di dare una risposta. In termini di politiche e di procedure legali, la Scozia è il paese migliore in cui trovarsi. In termini di leggi, la Scozia ha delle normative che riconoscono la transessualità come genere ed è l’unico paese che prevede una specifica legislazione per i crimini connessi all’odio verso i transessuali. Inoltre, in quanto parte del Regno Unito, molto buone sono anche le leggi anti-discriminazione in genere. In termini di protezione contro la discriminazione, anche la Svezia si comporta bene. In termini di riconoscimento legale della transessualità, Spagna e Portogallo hanno delle buone leggi. Comunque, in Portogallo la legge è abbastanza recente, e bisogna quindi aspettare di vedere come la situazione evolverà. Una buona legge non sempre vuol dire una sua buona applicazione. Sotto: Yara e Sass che lavorano per trans*diritti AV: E in che paese, invece, la situazione è particolarmente preoccupante? JE: In termini di reati connessi all’odio, la situazione è particolarmente grave in Turchia e in Italia, con 13 omicidi in entrambi i paesi negli ultimi tre anni e mezzo sui 41 totali in Europa. L’Italia è uno dei paesi peggiori anche in termini di ambiente legislativo. La legge sul riconoscimento di genere è particolarmente negativa: per cambiare nome o genere bisogna essere sterilizzati, aver subito un intervento chirurgico e si è costretti a divorziare, se sposati. Una corte ha recentemente stabilito che la sterilizzazione non dovrebbe essere obbligatoria, ma bisogna vedere se tale sentenza sarà attuata. In Irlanda non esiste una legge per cambiare nome o genere nonostante una sentenza della Corte Costituzionale in merito. L’Irlanda è obbligata a fornire la possibilità di cambiare nome e genere ma si è finora mostrata riluttante a provvedere. In termini di riconoscimento legale, anche la Svezia si comporta sorprendentemente male, laddove richiede tuttora che siano soddisfatte condizioni irragionevoli. Comunque tale legge è in fase di revisione e la situazione potrebbe cambiare considerevolmente nel corso dei prossimi sei mesi. AV: Che cosa fa l’UE per salvaguardare gli interessi e i diritti dei transessuali? JE: L’area principale in cui l’Unione ha competenza è quella contro le discriminazioni. Ciononostante, il problema è che la discriminazione in base al genere non ha fondamento nel Trattato dell’Unione. Comunque, in virtù di numerose sentenze, la discriminazione a scapito dei transessuali è stata inserita nell’ambito delle discriminazioni sessuali. Alcuni stati, inoltre, non implementano affatto, o solo parzialmente, le direttive europee in merito, e solo alcuni, quale ad esempio la Germania, hanno recepito le normative nella loro interezza. AV: C’è qualcos’altro che l’UE potrebbe fare all’interno delle proprie competenze? JE: L’UE potrebbe fare molto, ma ci vorrebbero volontà e coraggio a livello politico. La discriminazione si potrebbe combattere seguendo l’approccio della libertà di movimento. Quando alcuni cittadini non riescono a viaggiare perché non hanno documenti che rispecchiano il loro genere, nome e aspetto, ci troviamo di fronte ad una violazione della libertà di movimento. Tale volontà politica sta crescendo, ma non ad una velocità sufficiente. Si potrebbe, in…
Libya: interference or support?
nterview by: Luigi Cascone Translation by: Chris Mckee Mrs Malika Benarab-Attou is a member of the Delegation for relations with the Magreb countries and the Arab Magreb Union. A member of the Culture and Education Committee of the European Parliament, she is also the coordinator for the Greens/European Free Alliance group. One of the striking things about the Libyan crisis, and the recent uprisings in the Arab world in general, seems to be the complete inability of Europe to respond to the issues at hand. Just like in Bosnia and Kosovo, the European Union has been incapable of having an effective human rights policy, even when these violations are carried out just outside its doorstep. How do you explain this? Whenever we analyse the EU’s relations with the countries of the Mediterranean and North Africa, a number of historical and strategic elements must be considered. The history of colonialism, particularly for France, is a key factor in the North African equation. Much like the current period, this history is characterised by the prevalence of economic interests, specifically those related to the exploitation and distribution of energy sources derived from oil. Therefore this ‘strategic-economic’ aspect makes it difficult to compare the events in Kosovo and Yugoslavia in the 1990s with events in the Arab world today. The UN has approved a resolution to establish a no-fly zone. Firstly do you approve of this, and in your opinion, why has the international community waited so long before condemning the atrocities currently taking place in Libya? It’s clear that the delay with which the international community has responded to these dramatic events is largely due to the trauma that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused the Western coalition. Europe is simply afraid of getting bogged-down in another military operation. However, I must admit to being a little worried by the resolution passed by the UN Security Council. Of course, action must be taken to stop the atrocities currently being perpetrated by Colonel Gaddafi, but I’m not sure that this represents the best course of action. The European Parliament has recognised the National Transition Committee before all the national governments, a much needed measure necessary to help destabilise Gadaffi. The EU has implemented the measures outlined by the UN resolution of 1970, incorporating a weapons embargo, travel restrictions, and freezing the assets of the Gadaffi family (the EU has went even further than the measures outlined by the resolution). The EU can also resort to a number of other methods to stop men such as Gadaffi, if only on a financial and commercial level by cutting off the cash-flows that finance the main mercenaries responsible for the most deplorable crimes. Tripoli can simply not afford to ignore the effect of these measures. The situation is extremely volatile, and any error or miscalculation could alter the delicate dynamics within the region. The thousands of victims claimed by the civil war in the 1990s in Algeria, which shares a common border with Libya, reminds us just how quickly an internal conflict can quickly degenerate into a bloody war. The Libyan rebel forces have repeatedly asked for military aid from the European Union in order to stand a chance against the airforce of the Libyan government. The Arab League has also requested a no-fly zone, and thousands have already died. In such desperate times, what can be done to so that a policy of pacificism is not confused with one of indifference? As I have said, it is imperative that we stop the violence inflicted on the Libyan people by Gadaffi and the need for humanitarian action is undeniable. However, at the same time, we must consider the importance of the role played by petrol in the framework of a Western intervention in Libya. The European Parliament has adopted a resolution that offers both strong support to the Libyan people, and at the same time, a clear desire not to intrude. In politics, it is often difficult to distinguish between the two, but we believe that we must develop a strategy capable of supporting the legitimate fight for human rights by the Libyan people, without entailing any sort of intervention in a neo-colonial sense. How well do you feel the EU has responded to these events? What possibilities can you envisage in terms of a Common Foreign Policy for the EU? While the revolutionary movements in North Africa have shown that a Common Foreign Policy for the EU does not yet exist, they have however reminded us of the necessity of having such a policy in order to help the EU act and become a genuine force for change. The European External Action Service EEAS) as introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, must be implemented as soon as possible. Finally, Member States must also refrain from taking up individual positions over these events, as was the case in Libya. Even more generally, it is important that all the European countries reconsider their policy towards the countries of the Mediterranean, with whom we share common roots and a common culture. And if we wish to continue to play an important role in the region, we must establish a policy of cooperation that is fully transparent, particularly in relation to migration policy. For this, a deconstruction of the political approach that portrays immigrants as invaders and criminals is absolutely necessary. Our border policy must be re-evaluated to help guarantee a genuine partnership between all the countries that are linked together by the vast waters of the Mediterranean. This movement, that some commentators have compared to a springtime for the Arab people, has become a beacon of hope for thousands of people living under oppression and persecution. The removal of Ben-Ali by a population that voiced its democratic aspirations as one has catalysed a process that will change the political make-up of the Middle-East. The role of the European Union in this delicate period is to support this quest for freedom, by firstly helping these people throughout the…
Lybie: ingérence ou soutien
Paris, Vendredi, 18 Mars, 2011 Interviewé par: Luigi Cascone Madame Malika Benarab-Attou est membre de la Délégation pour les relations avec les pays du Maghreb et l’Union du Maghreb Arabe. Membre de la Commission de l’éducation et de la culture du Parlement européen, elle en est aussi la coordinatrice pour le groupe des Verts/ALE. Ce qui est frappant dans la crise libyenne, et lors des récents soulèvements au Maghreb en général, c’est la totale incapacité européenne à faire face à ces questions. Tout comme en Bosnie et au Kosovo, l’Union européenne se montre incapable d’avoir une politique efficace par rapport à la défense des droits de l’homme, mêmes quand ces violations sont perpétrées à une centaine de kilomètres. Comment expliqueriez-vous cela? Lorsqu’on analyse les relations de l’UE avec les pays de la Méditerranée et du Maghreb, il faut tenir compte des facteurs historiques et stratégiques. Le passé colonial, surtout pour la France, est un élément clé dans l’équation nord-africaine. Ce passé, comme la période actuelle malheureusement, est marqué par la prépondérance des intérêts économiques, notamment liés à l’exploitation et à la distribution des ressources énergétiques dérivées d’hydrocarbures. Cette dimension « stratégico-économique » rend difficile toute comparaison entre les événements du Kosovo et de Yougoslavie des années 90 et ceux des révolutions arabes d’aujourd’hui. L’ONU a approuvé une résolution pour garantir une no-fly zone. Que pensez-vous de cette résolution? Selon vous, pourquoi la communauté internationale a attendu si longtemps pour condamner les atrocités en Libye? Il est évident que le retard avec lequel la communauté internationale a répondu à ces évènements dramatiques est largement du au traumatisme que les guerres en Irak et en Afghanistan ont causé aux États-Unis et à la coalition occidentale. L’Europe craignait de s’enliser pour plusieurs années dans une autre mission sur le terrain. Cependant, en ce qui concerne la résolution du Conseil de sécurité, je dois admettre qu’elle me laisse plutôt inquiète. Il est bien sûr indispensable d’agir pour arrêter les massacres de Kadhafi, mais je ne suis pas sûre qu‘il s’agisse de la meilleure solution. Une guerre n’est jamais la meilleure solution. Le Parlement Européen a reconnu le Conseil National de Transition avant l’ensemble des gouvernements nationaux. Ce geste politique était essentiel pour affaiblir Kadhafi. L’UE a également mis en place rapidement les mesures préconisées par la résolution 1970 des Nations Unies, à savoir l’embargo sur les armes, l’interdiction de voyager et le gel des avoirs du clan Kadhafi (L’UE est d’ailleurs allé plus loin que les mesures indiquées par la résolution). L’UE disposait de nombreux autres moyens pour bloquer le Raïs, ne serait-ce qu’au niveau financier ou commercial de manière à arrêter tout flux d’argent susceptible de financer les mercenaires principaux responsables de crimes les plus horribles. Ces moyens de pression ne pouvaient pas laisser le régime de Tripoli indifférent La situation est explosive dans la région. Toute erreur ou faux-pas peut modifier l’équilibre et les dynamiques régionales. L’Algérie, pays frontalier de la Libye, avec ses milliers de victimes pendant la guerre civile des années 90, nous rappelle combien un conflit interne peut dégénérer en un conflit sanglant. Les groupes rebelles libyens ont plusieurs fois demandé l’aide militaire de l’Union Européenne pour pouvoir avoir une chance de lutter contre les avions du gouvernement. La ligue arabe a demandé aussi une no fly zone. Il y a déjà des milliers de morts. Dans des cas si désespérés, comment faire pour ne pas confondre le pacifisme avec l’indifférence? Je répète, la nécessité d’arrêter la violence de Kadhafi contre son peuple est impérieuse et l’importance de l’action humanitaire est incontestable, mais en même temps, il faut tenir compte de l’énorme importance que le pétrole joue dans l’architecture de l’intervention occidentale en Libye. Le Parlement européen a adopté une résolution qui prévoit à la fois un très fort soutien pour la population libyenne et l’interdiction de toute forme d’ingérence. En politique, il est difficile de déterminer exactement la limite entre l’un et l’autre, mais nous pensons que nous devons développer une réponse capable de soutenir la lutte légitime pour les droits du peuple libyen, sans mettre en place des politiques d’intervention de type néo-colonialiste. Comment jugeriez-vous les actions que l’UE a menées pendant ces crises? Et quelles perspectives voyez- vous pour une politique étrangère commune de l’Union? Si les mouvements révolutionnaires en Afrique du Nord ont montré qu’il n’existait pas encore de réelle Politique Etrangère Commune de l’Union Européenne. ils nous ont également rappelé la nécessité d’un telle politique pour permettre à l’UE d’agir et d’être un véritable acteur. Il faut mettre en œuvre dès que possible le Service Européen pour l’Action Extérieure institué par le Traité de Lisbonne. Enfin, il est nécessaire que les États membres s’abstiennent d’afficher des positions individuelles comme cela a été le cas pour la question libyenne. En raisonnant dans une perspective plus large, il est nécessaire que tous les pays européens reconsidèrent leur politique envers les pays de la Méditerranée avec lesquels nous partageons des racines et une civilisation communes. Si nous souhaitons continuer à être des acteurs clés dans cette région, nous devons établir une politique de partenariat sans hypocrisie, en particulier dans le domaine des politiques migratoires. Une déconstruction du discours politique qui décrit souvent les immigrés comme des envahisseurs et des criminels est indispensable. Nous avons besoin de repenser une politique des frontières qui garantisse un partenariat véritable entre les pays riverains de ce pont commun qu’est la Méditerranée. Ce mouvement, que certains commentateurs ont comparé à un Printemps des peuples du monde arabe, a allumé la flamme de l’espoir pour des millions de personnes vivant sous l’oppression. L’expulsion de Ben Ali par une population qui affirme avec force ses aspirations démocratiques a déclenché un processus qui va définitivement changer la géopolitique du Moyen-Orient. Le rôle de l’Union Européenne dans cette période délicate, est de soutenir le mouvement pour la liberté, en aidant ces peuples à suivre le chemin de la transition démocratique, en restant attentif au risque que de nouveaux régimes autoritaires puissent prendre la place de ceux chassés avec…
Libia: eccessiva ingerenza o sostegno?
Intervista di Luigi Cascone Traduzione di Romana Rubeo Malika Benarab-Attou è membro della Delegazione per le relazioni con i Paesi del Maghreb e l’Unione del Maghreb arabo. Membro della Commissione per la cultura e l’istruzione del Parlamento Europeo e capogruppo dei Verdi Europei – Alleanza Libera per l’Europa, in seno al Parlamento stesso. Nella crisi libica e, più in generale, nelle recenti rivolte che hanno interessato l’area del Maghreb, ciò che colpisce è l’incapacità europea di fronteggiare tali questioni. Proprio come in Bosnia e in Kosovo, l’Unione Europea sembra inadeguata ad esprimere una politica efficace sui temi della difesa dei diritti umani, persino quando le violazioni vengono perpetrate a un centinaio di chilometri di distanza. Come spiega tutto ciò? Nell’analisi dei rapporti tra l’UE e i paesi dell’area Mediterranea e maghrebina, non si può esulare dai fattori storici e strategici. Nell’equazione nordafricana, il passato coloniale è un elemento chiave, specialmente per la Francia. Un passato che, come oggi, è purtroppo contrassegnato dalla preponderanza degli interessi economici, legati soprattutto allo sfruttamento e alla distribuzione di risorse energetiche derivanti da idrocarburi. Questa dimensione “strategico-economica” rende difficile qualsivoglia comparazione tra gli avvenimenti che hanno interessato il Kosovo e la Yugoslavia negli anni ’90 e quelli delle rivoluzioni arabe odierne. L’ONU ha approvato una risoluzione che impone la no-fly zone, cosa ne pensa? Secondo il suo parere, come mai la comunità internazionale ha atteso così a lungo prima di condannare le atrocità in Libia? Mi sembra evidente che il ritardo con cui la comunità internazionale ha risposto a questi eventi drammatici è dettato dal trauma che i conflitti iracheno e afgano hanno generato negli Stati Uniti e nella coalizione occidentale. L’Europa temeva di restare, ancora una volta, arenata per molti anni in una missione sul campo. Ad ogni modo, la risoluzione approvata dal Consiglio di Sicurezza mi lascia alquanto perplessa. Se da un lato era assolutamente indispensabile agire per fermare il massacro di Gheddafi, non sono sicura che questa sia la migliore soluzione possibile. La guerra non è mai la soluzione più giusta. Il Parlamento Europeo ha riconosciuto il Consiglio Nazionale di Transizione di fronte ai governi nazionali. Questo atto politico ha notevolmente contribuito a indebolire la posizione di Gheddafi. Nello stesso tempo, l’UE ha attuato rapidamente le misure previste dalla risoluzione 1970 delle Nazioni Unite: embargo sulle armi, divieto di viaggio e congelamento dei beni per i membri della famiglia di Gheddafi; in questo senso l’UE si è spinta persino oltre le misure previste dalla risoluzione. L’Europa disponeva di altri mezzi per bloccare il Rais: ad esempio, a livello finanziario o commerciale, poteva bloccare qualsiasi flusso di denaro potenzialmente impiegato per finanziare i mercenari, principali responsabili dei più atroci crimini. Questi mezzi di pressione non avrebbero potuto lasciare indifferente il regime di Tripoli. La situazione nella regione è esplosiva: un qualsiasi errore, un passo falso, potrebbero alterare l’equilibrio e le dinamiche regionali. Le migliaia di vittime della guerra civile nel corso degli anni ’90 in Algeria, confinante con la Libia, ci ricordano come un conflitto interno possa espandersi e degenerare. I ribelli libici hanno chiesto più volte il sostegno militare dell’Unione Europea per difendersi dagli attacchi aerei del governo. Anche la lega araba ha chiesto l’istituzione di una no-fly zone e ci sono già migliaia di vittime. In questi casi drammatici, qual è la linea che divide il pacifismo dall’indifferenza? Lo ripeto: era assolutamente necessario fermare la violenza di Gheddafi contro il suo popolo, così come è incontestabile la valenza del’azione umanitaria. Nello stesso tempo, però, bisogna considerare l’enorme importanza che il petrolio riveste nella decisione occidentale di intervenire in Libia. Il Parlamento europeo ha adottato una risoluzione che prevede un sostegno concreto alla popolazione libica, combinato però con il divieto di qualsiasi forma di ingerenza. In politica, è molto difficile stabilire confini netti, ma noi restiamo dell’idea che si debba sviluppare una risposta in grado di sostenere la lotta legittima del popolo libico per i diritti, senza intervenire con logiche di stampo neocolonialista. Come giudica le azioni che l’UE ha intrapreso durante queste crisi? Vede delle prospettive per una politica estera comune dell’Unione? I movimenti rivoluzionari del Nord Africa hanno dimostrato da un lato l’assenza di una reale politica estera comune dell’Unione Europea: d’altro canto, hanno sottolineato la necessità di tale politica, per consentire all’Europa di agire e di rappresentare un attore credibile. Bisognerebbe istituire quanto prima il Servizio Europeo per l’Azione esterna, previsto dal Trattato di Lisbona. Inoltre, sarebbe auspicabile che gli Stati membri si astenessero dall’intraprendere azioni individuali, come è avvenuto per la questione libica. Volendo poi ragionare in una prospettiva più ampia, è ora che i paesi europei riconsiderino la loro politica verso l’area del Mediterraneo, con la quale condividiamo radici e civiltà. Se aspiriamo a ad avere un ruolo chiave in quella regione, dobbiamo attuare una politica di partenariato scevra da ipocrisie, specialmente per quanto riguarda le politiche migratorie. E’ indispensabile destrutturare una linea di pensiero, che vede gli immigrati come invasori e criminali. Dobbiamo assolutamente ripensare la politica della gestione delle frontiere, per garantire una collaborazione effettiva tra i Paesi che si affacciano sul Mediterraneo. Questo movimento, che alcuni commentatori hanno paragonato a una primavera dei popoli arabi, ha acceso il lume della speranza per milioni di persone che vivono nell’oppressione. La cacciata di Ben Ali, da parte di un popolo che afferma con forza le proprie aspirazioni democratiche, ha scatenato un processo che cambierà per sempre la geopolitica del Medio Oriente. In questo momento delicato, l’Unione Europa dovrebbe sostenere il movimento per le libertà, aiutando i popoli nel difficile cammino della transizione democratica e sorvegliando affinché non si instaurino nuovi regimi autoritari al posto di quelli cacciati con enormi difficoltà. Quello che stiamo vivendo è un momento storico. L’Europa non può limitarsi esclusivamente ai bombardamenti e alla chiusura delle frontiere.
Tunisia: from the point of view of an activist exiled in Italy: An interview with Osama Al Saghir
Article by Stefano Pietrosanti Translation by Danielle Moodie In 1789 French patriots sparked off the row of modern times. The masses showed that no oppressive force would ever have been capable of apprehending the anger that was borne of their humiliation for having been denied the right to decide their own destiny – both as men and as citizens. They did this for the right embodied in the dignity of expressing themselves through their desire for freedom. I want to call this to mind in the introduction to my interview with Osama Al Saghir, founder, and former president of the Young Italian Muslims, Tunisian citizen, and refugee in Italy. Let’s start with you, when did you move to Italy? Why? I arrived in Italy in 1994, as Ben Ali’s government repression against opposition activists was worsening, particularly with regards to Nahda, which is the party that my father worked for. What is Nahda? It is an Islamic party which aims to establish a democratic renaissance, returning to the foundations of Islam, and Arabic culture. Presenting it as an influence that was in line with extremist views was one of the strategies brought forward by the regime and it received tacit agreement from global media; however Nahda’s moderate stance has actually been criticised by the Muslim Brotherhood itself. How did Ben Ali come to power? This gentleman managed to overthrow the government in 1987, having had a medical team declare the incompetence of his ageing predecessor, Bourguiba. The coup was supported by various western secret service agencies and particularly by Craxi’s Italy. At first, Ben Ali promised to carry out a series of liberalising reforms and to uphold a peaceful state. It was not long, however, before he showed the oppressive nature of his power. He stamped out the opposition and passed himself off, to the west, as an enemy of Islamic extremism even though it was neither influential, strong nor embedded in Tunisia. For no other reason than to defend their own economic interests in the region, global powers accepted the role that he had made for himself. What is more, his actions were not even the expression of an intellectual vision, unlike Bourguiba, who was always the man that dreamed of and denoted a modernized and secular Tunisia influenced by Ataturk; he was the man who slammed Geddafi for his anti-western sentiments. Ben Ali, on the other hand, was no more than a brutish dictator, who censored any condemnation, and who in the end could not even manage to maintain a semblance of economic efficiency. Instead he and his wife’s family ransacked the country. What do you mean? Look, it basically worked like this: If a foreign businessman wanted to invest in the country, all he had to do was to find one of Trabelsi’s (Ben Ali’s wife) relatives to act as a business associate. He would transfer a certain percentage to them and apart from that, he would be exempt from tax and could expect to avoid any friction with the law. And then the revolution. Exactly, the revolution. First of all, I want Europeans to understand something: this is not a bread revolution. It is not a protest on the part of a brutalized and starving population. Or at least, that is not the only driving force. For us, since the flower is the national symbol of Tunisia, this is a Jasmine revolution. It is the salvation of pride in a country that has been home to one of the cultural bosoms of the Arab world (the famous Zaitouna University); a pride in a country whose population is capable of democratic self-rule but has always been denied the right. Now these people have risen, in the most peaceful way possible given their circumstances: they are accepting their dead without killing because they would sooner set themselves on fire than murder a man from the regime. Tunisians want to participate in a democratic state; they want autonomy for one and for all. How is European civil society perceived in all of this? European civil society? Where is it? Where has it been? Of course, we have relied on the help of certain courageous non-governmental organisations, and your people have accommodated us, but those of you who take an interest are a small, educated minority. You see, my family ran away from a dictatorship with the desire to live in a free, democratic state. I am a convinced democrat and I feel like I belong in Italy because I have grown up here, but also because I feel at home here. Nevertheless I have never had the right to vote. I have been here for 17 years: I have studied and lived my life with western democracy all around me, and yet I have never been able to take part. As such I have assisted in the regression, not only of the Italy’s openness but also that of Europe. People almost prefer to be frightened by a stereotype than to look reality straight in the face. I have seen Europe support dictators who are in contempt of the values engraved in its flags, its hymn books and its constitutions; and by doing so allowing any notion of a European dream to waste away. This is also the case for the Arabs – and there are many – who arrive here and think of Europe as a synonym for the hope of freedom and dignity. By nourishing a European dream, you would protect yourselves a hundred times more than any tyrant. What is the climate now? Do you think the revolution could have a domino effect across the Arab world? It is probable that it could spread, but it is impossible to say how or when. The only certainty is that across the entire region there is a strong intolerance of corrupt authoritarian regimes, who take no interest in the country they run. Of course, in Tunisia the outcome is democratic, but people are still on the streets…
Tunisie : le point de vue d’un activiste exilé en Italie : entretien avec Oussama Al Saghir
Par Stefano Pietrosanto Traduit par Audrey Ubertino En 1789, les patriotes français ont déclenché le conflit des temps modernes. Le peuple a montré qu’aucune force oppressive ne pourrait appréhender la colère née de son humiliation de s’être vu refuser le droit de décider de son propre destin, à la fois en tant qu’homme et en tant que citoyen. Il a fait cela pour le droit consacré à la dignité de s’exprimer à travers leur désir de liberté. Je souhaite rappeler ce fait dans l’introduction de mon entretien avec Oussama Al Saghir, fondateur et ancien président des Jeunes musulmans italiens, citoyen tunisien et réfugié en Italie. Commençons avec vous, quand vous-êtes vous installé en Italie ? Pourquoi ? Je suis arrivé en Italie en 1994, au moment où la répression du gouvernement Ben Ali contre les militants de l’opposition empirait, en particulier contre le Nahda, le parti pour lequel travaillait mon père. Qu’est-ce que le Nahda ? Il s’agit d’un parti islamique dont le but est d’établir une renaissance démocratique, en revenant aux fondements de l’Islam et de la culture arabe. Présenter le parti comme une force fidèle aux idées extrémistes a été l’une des stratégies avancées par le régime et elle a reçu l’accord tacite des médias internationaux ; cependant, l’attitude modérée du Nahda a en fait été critiquée par les Frères Musulmans eux-mêmes. Comment Ben Ali est-il arrivé au pouvoir ? En 1987, ce monsieur est parvenu à renverser le gouvernement, en faisant déclarer son prédécesseur vieillissant Bourguiba incompétent par une équipe médicale. Le coup d’Etat a été soutenu par plusieurs agences des services secrets occidentales, en particulier par l’Italie de Craxi. Au départ, Ben Ali a promis de mener une série de réformes de libéralisation et de maintenir un état pacifique. Cependant, il n’a pas tardé à montrer la nature oppressive de son pouvoir. Il a réprimé l’opposition et il s’est fait passer, en occident, pour un ennemi de l’extrémisme islamiste, même s’il n’était ni influent, puissant ou établi en Tunisie. Dans l’unique but de défendre leurs propres intérêts économiques dans la région, les grandes puissances mondiales ont accepté le rôle qu’il s’était donné. Qui plus est, ses actions n’étaient même pas l’expression d’une vision intellectuelle, contrairement à Bourguiba qui a toujours été l’homme qui rêvait et projetait une Tunisie modernisée et laïque, influencée par Atatürk ; c’était l’homme qui a critiqué Kadhafi pour ses sentiments antioccidentaux. Ben Ali, à l’inverse, n’était rien de plus qu’un grossier dictateur, qui a censuré chaque condamnation, et qui, en fin de compte, n’est même pas parvenu à maintenir un semblant d’efficacité économique. Au lieu de cela, lui et la famille de sa femme ont pillé le pays. Que voulez-vous dire ? Regardez, en gros, cela fonctionnait de cette manière : si un homme d’affaire étranger voulait investir dans le pays, tout ce qu’il avait à faire était de trouver un des membres de la famille Trabelsi (la femme de Ben Ali) afin de devenir son associé. Il leur transfèrait un certain pourcentage et, en dehors de cela, il était exempté d’impôts et pouvait espérer éviter toute difficulté avec la loi. Et ensuite la révolution. Exactement, la révolution. Tout d’abord, je veux que les européens comprennent quelque chose : ce n’est pas une révolution pour du pain. Ce n’est pas une protestation de la part d’une population brutalisée et affamée. Ou du moins, ce n’est pas le seul moteur. Pour nous, puisque la fleur est le symbole national de la Tunisie, il s’agit d’une révolution de jasmin. C’est le salut de la fierté dans un pays qui a abrité l’un des berceaux culturels du monde arabe (la célèbre université Zitouna) ; une fierté dans un pays dont la population est capable d’autonomie démocratique mais dont le droit lui a toujours été refusé. Aujourd’hui, ces personnes se sont soulevées, de la manière la plus pacifique possible étant donné les circonstances : ils acceptent leurs morts sans tuer car ils préfèreraient s’immoler par le feu plutôt que d’assassiner un homme du régime. Les Tunisiens veulent prendre part à un état démocratique ; ils veulent l’autonomie pour tous. Comment est perçue la société civile européenne dans tout ça ? La société civile européenne ? Où est-elle ? Où était-elle ? Bien sûr, nous avons pu compter sur l’aide de certaines organisations non gouvernementales courageuses, et votre peuple nous ont accueillis, mais ceux d’entre vous qui s’intéressent sont des petites minorités instruites. Vous savez, ma famille a fui une dictature avec le désir de vivre dans un état libre et démocratique. Je suis un démocrate convaincu et je me sens à ma place en Italie car j’ai grandi ici, mais aussi parce que je me sens chez moi. Néanmoins, je n’ai jamais eu le droit de vote. Cela fait 17 ans que je suis ici : j’ai étudié et fait ma vie entouré par la démocratie occidentale et cependant, je n’ai jamais pu y participer. Au contraire, j’ai assisté à la régression, non seulement de l’ouverture de l’Italie, mais aussi celle de l’Europe. Les gens préfèrent presque avoir peur d’un stéréotype que de regarder la réalité en face. J’ai vu l’Europe soutenir des dictateurs qui méprisent les valeurs inscrites dans ses drapeaux, ses hymnes et ses constitutions ; ce faisant, elle laisse s’évanouir la possibilité d’un rêve européen. C’est également le cas pour les Arabes – et il y en a beaucoup – qui arrivent ici et qui pensent que l’Europe est synonyme d’espoir de liberté et de dignité. En nourrissant un rêve européen, vous vous protègeriez cent fois plus que n’importe quel tyran. Quel est le climat à présent ? Pensez-vous que la révolution peut avoir un effet domino dans tout le monde arabe ? Il est probable qu’elle pourrait s’étendre, mais il est impossible de dire comment ou quand. La seule certitude est que, dans toute la région, il y a une forte intolérance aux régimes autoritaires corrompus, qui n’ont aucun intérêt dans les pays qu’ils dirigent. Bien sûr, en Tunisie, l’issue est démocratique, mais les gens sont toujours dans la rue car ils veulent bâtir une démocratie accomplie. Aucune république ne peut être…
Tunisia: Il punto di vista di un attivista rifugiato in Italia: Intervista a Osama Al Saghir
Foto da Flickr Kpjas Articolo di Stefano Pietrosanti Nel 1789, i patrioti francesi accesero la miccia della modernità. Il popolo, per il diritto incarnato nella dignità dell’uomo che si esprime tramite l’aspirazione alla libertà, dimostrò che nessuna forza oppressiva sarebbe mai stata capace d’arrestare la rabbia figlia dell’umiliazione di colui cui la libertà di decidere del proprio destino – di uomo e di cittadino – venga negata. Voglio ricordare questo nell’introdurre l’intervista a Osama Al Saghir, fondatore ed ex presidente dei Giovani Musulmani Italiani, cittadino tunisino rifugiato in Italia. -Cominciamo da te, quando ti sei trasferito in Italia? Per quali motivi? Sono arrivato in Italia nel 1994, a seguito dell’inasprirsi della repressione del Governo di Ben Alì contro gli attivisti dell’opposizione e in particolare del Nahda, il partito islamico in cui militava mio padre. -Che cos’è Nahda? E’ un partito islamico che cerca di costruire un rinascimento democratico, richiamandosi alle basi culturali e religiose arabe e islamiche. Presentarla come una forza schierata su posizioni estremiste è stata una delle manipolazioni portate avanti dal regime con il tacito assenso di molti media globali; in realtà è stato criticato dalla stessa Fratellanza Musulmana per le sue posizioni moderate. -Come è arrivato al potere Ben Alì? Nel 1987 questo signore, prima ufficiale dell’esercito e ambasciatore, riuscì nel portare a termine un golpe contro il suo predecessore, Bourguiba, facendolo dichiarare incapace di governare a causa della vecchiaia da un’equipe medica. Il golpe fu appoggiato da vari servizi segreti occidentali, in primo luogo da quelli dell’Italia di Craxi. Inizialmente Ben Alì promise di attuare una serie di liberalizzazioni e si attenne a una condotta pacifica, ma presto dimostrò la natura oppressiva del suo potere, schiacciando i partiti di opposizione e spacciandosi in Occidente per un nemico dell’islamismo radicale, tendenza che in Tunisia non è stata né influente, né forte, né radicata. Le principali potenze accettarono il ruolo che si proponeva di coprire, se non altro per difendere i propri interessi economici nella regione. Oltretutto, a differenza di Bourguiba, le sue azioni non erano nemmeno espressione di una visione intellettuale: Bourguiba fu pur sempre l’uomo che sognò e disegnò una Tunisia modernizzata, laica, influenzato da Ataturk; fu l’uomo che schiaffeggiò Gheddafi per una delle sue sparate anti-occidentali. Ben Alì è stato semplicemente un rozzo repressore di ogni dissenso, che alla fine non è riuscito nemmeno a mantenere una parvenza di efficienza economica, saccheggiando il paese assieme alla famiglia della moglie. -Che vuoi dire? Guarda, in sunto funzionava così: se un imprenditore straniero voleva investire, bastava trovasse un aggancio nominando socio un parente della Trabelsi (la moglie di Ben Alì), cui doveva versare una percentuale, per il resto non pagava tasse né si doveva aspettare particolari grane con la legge. -E poi la rivolta. Esatto, la rivolta. Dovete capire prima di tutto una cosa in Europa: questa non è una rivolta del pane, non è la protesta di un popolo abbrutito o affamato. O almeno, non solo, non è quella la ragione scatenante. Questa per noi è la rivoluzione dei gelsomini, il fiore simbolo della Tunisia. E’ la sollevazione di orgoglio di un paese che ha ospitato una delle culle culturali del mondo arabo(la famosa università Zaitouna), di un popolo capace di autodeterminarsi democraticamente cui questo diritto è stato sempre negato. Ora questo popolo si è sollevato nella maniera più pacifica possibile per la situazione in cui si trovava: sta accettando i suoi morti senza uccidere, piuttosto che ammazzare un uomo del regime da fuoco alla sua carne. I tunisini vogliono una democrazia, uno stato partecipato, vogliono l’autodeterminazione, nel rispetto di se stessi e di tutti. -In questo come è percepita la società civile europea? La società civile europea? Dov’è? Dove è stata? Certo, abbiamo contato sull’aiuto di alcune coraggiose associazioni non governative e i vostri popoli ci hanno accolto, ma coloro che si interessano tra di voi sono una piccola minoranza informata. Vedi, la mia famiglia è scappata da un regime dittatoriale per il desiderio di vivere in uno stato democratico, libero; io sono un convinto democratico e mi sento parte dell’Italia, perché ci sono cresciuto, ma anche se la sento come una mia terra, nemmeno qui ho mai avuto il diritto di voto. Vivo qui da 17 anni. Ho studiato, ho fatto le mie esperienze, ho visto attorno a me la democrazia dell’Occidente, eppure non ho ancora mai potuto partecipare. Anzi, ho assistito a una regressione dell’apertura del paese, come dell’Europa, quasi si preferisse aver paura di uno stereotipo che guardare in faccia alla realtà. Ho visto l’Europa appoggiare questi dittatori in spregio dei valori che ha inscritti nelle sue bandiere, nei suoi inni, nelle sue costituzioni. Così voi lasciate marcire qualunque possibilità di un sogno europeo, anche tra quegli arabi – e sono molto numerosi – che quando vengono qui, quando pensano all’Europa, hanno in mente una speranza di libertà e dignità. Il nutrire un sogno europeo vi tutelerebbe cento volte di più di qualsiasi tiranno. -Qual è il clima adesso? La rivolta può avere una valenza sistemica per il mondo arabo? E’ probabile che possa espandersi, ma non possiamo immaginare i tempi, né i modi. L’unica sicurezza è che c’è una forte insofferenza in tutta l’aerea per regimi autoritari, corrotti, che non fanno l’interesse dei paesi che governano. Sicuramente in Tunisia adesso lo scoppio è democratico e vuole costruire una democrazia compiuta, per questo la gente è ancora nelle piazze: nessuna repubblica potrà essere costituita da gente fedele al vecchio regime, da membri del partito del presidente che, all’ultimo minuto, hanno preteso di ripulire la loro casacca. Vogliamo uomini fedeli a un nuovo ordinamento, libero. Questa rivolta è un grande richiamo di libertà: il popolo da solo, prima e oltre ogni leader politico, a dispetto dell’incredulità di tutti – anche mia – ha rovesciato un tiranno guadagnandosi, come credo molti occidentali non saprebbero fare, gli spazi di libertà con le unghie e con i denti su internet e nelle strade, aggirando la censura coi messaggi sui blog, coi video dei cellulari, accedendo clandestinamente…
Une politique commune dasile dans lUnion Européenne
Traduction : Camille Nore Le non-refoulement est un concept qui interdit aux Etats de renvoyer des réfugiés ou des demandeurs d’asile vers des territoires où il y a un risque que leur vie ou leur liberté soit menacée à cause de la race, de la religion, de la nationalité, de l’appartenance à un groupe social particulier ou de l’opinion politique. [1] Le contexte En 1999, durant le sommet de Tampere, les Chefs d’Etats des pays européens ont appelé à la réalisation d’un Système Européen Commun d’Asile (SECA) afin d’harmoniser la législation concernant l’asile. Les tentatives d’harmonisation ont été initialement élaborées avec le programme deTampere et plus tard avec le programme de la Hague en 2004. Par la suite, les Etats membres ont réaffirmé leur volonté de collaborer avec le programme de Stockholm de 2009 adopté par le Conseil Européen, établissant les priorités politiques en matière de liberté, de sécurité et de justice pour la période de 2010/2014. A cette occasion et comme étant stipulé dans le Traité de Lisbonne, les Etats membres se sont engagés à créer une politique commune d’asile (SECA) d’ici 2012. Afin d’avoir un Système Européen Commun d’Asile efficace, qui devra être adopté par la majorité qualifiée, les Etats membres doivent systématiquement suivre de bonnes procédures et doivent accepter de hautes normes d’harmonisation ainsi que la modification de leurs « instruments relatifs à l’asile ». Les Etats membres doivent poursuivre les négociations du règlement de Dublin II (pour une procédure plus efficace), de la directive sur les résidents longue durée (dont le nombre de bénéficiaires de la protection internationale a augmenté sous sa coupe ), de la directive qualification (afin de minimiser la diversité à travers les Etats membres concernant la liste des problèmes à prendre en considération lors de l’évaluation des candidatures), des conditions d’accueil (pour une plus grande qualité des conditions d’accueil et la limitation des mouvements irréguliers des demandeurs d’asile), de la régulation Eurodac (pour l’utilisation des données, le plus grand problème étant de savoir si les empreintes digitales des demandeurs d’asile doivent être accessibles aux services du maintien de l’ordre) et de la directive des procédures d’asile (pour une meilleure qualité de la procédure par les Etats membres), afin d’établir un ensemble de règles claires, garantissant le respect des droits des demandeurs d’asile. Les négociations devraient mener à une législation harmonisée qui devrait garantir de hautes normes de protection pour les demandeurs d’asile qui sont quelquefois traités comme des immigrants illégaux et ne peuvent bénéficier des protections qu’ils méritent. Le manque d’unité parmi les législations des Etats membres a conduit à un système défaillant dans lequel les demandeurs d’asile ne sont pas traités de la même manière. La négociation sur l’efficacité des procédures des demandes d’asile semble être une priorité dans l’agenda de l’Union Européenne, mais l’Europe devrait maintenir son statut international de promoteur des droits de l’homme en conservant le principe de protection internationale des réfugiés à travers l’application de hautes normes de droits de l’homme. La directive actuelle a deux inconvénients majeurs. Elle ne protège pas les droits des demandeurs d’asile suffisamment et crée en même temps d’importantes disparités de traitement entre les Etats membres.[2] Sylvie Guillaume, Membre du Parlement Européen, à propos de la directive sur les procédures d’asile de 2005. Le processus actuel de réforme de la procédure d’asile devrait prendre plus en compte les besoins spécifiques des demandeurs d’asile. Une preuve de cette volonté a été manifestée par le vote du Parlement Européen (du 06/04/2011) en faveur d’un rapport sur les mesures qui doivent être prises envers les personnes réclamant l’asile pour cause de persécutions basées sur leur orientation ou identité sexuelle. Selon ce rapport, elles devraient être protégées par le concept de « demandeurs d’asile avec des besoin spécifiques » en raison de la situation de grande vulnérabilité dans laquelle ils se trouvent. Cela mènera à une meilleure gestion de la procédure (responsables qualifiés, soutien spécialisé) et de la situation (circonstances personnelles confidentielles). Cela devra également limiter les procédures abusives et humiliantes auxquelles certains individus ont été sujets. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/czech-phallometric-test-slammed_n_863731.html Problèmes actuels Selon l’agence pour les réfugiés des Nations Unies, il y a d’importantes différences dans la manière dont les Etats membres de l’Union Européenne évaluent les candidatures à l’asile. La recherche s’est basée sur plus de 1000 cas. Les pays européens (contrairement à beaucoup d’autres pays) accordent l’asile selon des évaluations individuelles d’après la directive des procédures d’asile. Par conséquent, les demandes devraient être traitées de manière égale par les Etats coopérateurs et les demandeurs d’asile devraient avoir les mêmes chances peu importe où ils se sont inscrits dans l’Union Européenne. Cependant, le rapport a montré que la directive des procédures d’asile n’était pas appliquée de la même manière dans tous les Etats membres et était quelque fois appliquée en violation avec le droit international des réfugiés. Les candidats n’ont pas toujours le droit d’obtenir des entretiens personnels, ou n’ont pas assez de temps pour se préparer à l’entretien ou pour expliquer leurs demandes. Il y a des problèmes avec les interprètes (pas toujours disponible ou qualifiés). Les raisons des décisions dans des cas individuels n’ont pas toujours été données et beaucoup de demandes ont fait l’objet d’un processus accéléré avec des garanties de réussite réduites. Les listes des pays d’origines sûrs ont beaucoup variées et le processus de désignation de ces pays n’a pas toujours été transparent. [3] Ce sont là certains des problèmes identifiés dans le rapport qui pourraient causer l’expulsion de personnes ayant droit à la protection internationale. Rappel: le programme de Stockholm Une Europe responsable, solidaire et unifiée face aux problèmes d’asile et de migration: Le développement d’une politique de migration de l’Union globale et tournée vers l’avenir, basée sur la solidarité et la responsabilité, reste un objectif clé pour l’Union. Des agences et bureaux compétents opérants dans ce secteur devraient se charger de la mise en application efficace de tous les instruments légaux pertinents et en avoir le plein usage. Une migration bien gérée peut être profitable à tous les intéressés. Le pacte européen…
Common Asylum Policy in the EU
Non-refoulement is a concept which prohibits States from returning a refugee or asylum seeker to territories where there is a risk that his or her life or freedom would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion[1]. Context In 1999, during the Tampere Summit, the Heads of States of the EU countries called for the establishment of a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) aiming to the harmonisation of asylum legislation. The attempts of harmonization initially developed with the Tampere programme and later with the Hague programme in 2004. Subsequently, Member States reaffirmed their will to collaborate with the 2009 Stockholm Programme adopted by the European Council, establishing the political priorities in the area of freedom, security and justice for the period 2010/2014. In this occasion Member States committed themselves to create a common asylum policy (CEAS) by 2012 as it is provided by the Lisbon Treaty. In order to have an efficient Common European Asylum System, which will have to be adopted by a qualified majority, Member States should consistently follow good procedures and should accept high standards of harmonisation with the amendment of their “asylum instruments”. Member States have to carry on the negotiations on the Dublin II regulation (for a more efficient procedure), the Long Term Resident Directive (which added beneficiaries of international protection to its scope), the Qualification Directive (to minimise diversity across Member States regarding the list of issues to take into consideration when assessing applications) , the Reception Conditions (for higher standards of reception conditions and limitation of secondary movements of asylum applicants ), the Eurodac Regulation (for the concerns on the use of data, the main question is whether asylum seekers fingerprints should be accessible to law enforcement services) and the Asylum Procedures Directive (for higher standards for Member States procedure), in order to establish a clear set of rules guaranteeing the respect of asylum seekers rights. The negotiations should lead to a harmonised legislation which should guarantee high standards of protection for asylum seekers which are sometimes treated as illegal migrants and can't benefit from the protection they deserve. The lack of unity throughout Member states legislation has led to a malfunctioning system in which asylum seekers are not treated equally. The negotiation on the efficiency of asylum seeking procedures seems to be a priority in the EU agenda, but Europe should maintain its international position of promoter of human rights by safeguarding the principle of international protection of refugees through the application of high standard human rights. The current directive has two major drawbacks. It does not protect asylum seekers rights sufficiently and at the same time creates major disparities of treatment between Member States[2]. Sylvie Guillaume,Member of the European Parliament, speaking about the 2005 asylum procedures directive. The current process of reform on asylum procedure should take more into account the specific needs of asylum seekers. A good example of this willingness was demonstrated by the European Parliament vote (the 06/04/2011) in favour of a report on the measures that have to be taken towards people claiming asylum because of persecutions based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. According to this report they should be covered by the concept “asylum seekers with special needs” due to the situation of great vulnerability which they face. This will lead to a better management of the procedure (i.e.: trained officers, expert advice) and of the situation (i.e.: non-disclosure of personal circumstances). It should also limit the abusive or humiliating procedures to which some individuals have been subject to. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/czech-phallometric-test-slammed_n_863731.html Current issues According to the UN refugee agency there are significant differences in the way EU Member States assess asylum applications. The research was based on the study of more than 1000 cases. European countries (contrary to many other countries) grant asylum on individual assessments following the Asylum Procedure Directive. Therefore claims should be treated equally by the cooperating States and asylum seekers should have the same chances no matter where they apply in the EU. However, the report showed that the Asylum Procedure Directive was not applied the same way in all Member States and sometimes was applied in ways that violated international refugee law. Applicants did not always have the chance to obtain personal interviews, or were not given enough time to prepare for interviews or to explain their claims. There are issues with interpreters (not always available and not always qualified). The reasons for decisions in individual cases were not always given and many claims were channelled into accelerated processes with reduced safeguards. Lists of so-called safe countries of origin varied widely and the process for this designation was not always transparent.[3] These are some of the problems identified in the report that could cause the refoulement of people entitled to international protection. Reminder: Stockholm Programme A Europe of responsibility, solidarity and partnership in migration and asylum matters: The development of a forward-looking and comprehensive Union migration policy, based on solidarity and responsibility, remains a key policy objective for the Union. Effective implementation of all relevant legal instruments needs to be undertaken and full use should be made of relevant Agencies and Offices operating in this field. Well-managed migration can be beneficial to all stakeholders. The European Pact on Immigration and Asylum provides a clear basis for further development in this field. Europe will need a flexible policy which is responsive to the priorities and needs of Member States and enables migrants to take full advantage of their potential. The objective of establishing a common asylum system in 2012 remains and people in need of international protection must be ensured access to legally safe and efficient asylum procedures. European Alternatives believes that Europe urgently needs to harmonize its legislation with high standards of protection for refugees. This will guarantee the respect of the principle of non-refoulement of vulnerable people, maintaining high the European values of human rights. We also believe that the efficiency of the procedure with a…
A Movement for Real Democracy
Interview with G. G. Clavell on the present and future of the movement of the indignados and the transnational dimension of protest. Could you sum up the three most important demands you feel are associated with the movement for real democracy? -Democracy (transparency, accountability, electoral reform that allows new parties to get significant representation and break the two-party dominance) -End to corruption (which is widespread among politicians, tolerated by many and goes mostly unpunished) -Limits to the power of ‘the market’ & laws to protect people from corporations (specially banks, and mainly a new law to protect people from mortgage repossession) Other important demands are internet neutrality and free exchange of internet files among peers, and generally a chance for the younger generations and the vast sectors of the population who were left out of the ‘pact of the transition’ to have a say. Do you think these demands are achievable within a purely national context? They could be, if it wasn’t because the drive for neoliberal reform is global. If there wasn’t such strong pressure on politicians worldwide to rule in the interest of corporations, national reforms would be achievable within a national context. In a way, the real outcome of the globalization process has been making us less able to participate in politics in a meaningful way, because if whatever is approved at the local/national level goes against the current global hegemony, it gets ditched. My feeling, then, is that if European institutions do not show a willingness to break with the current economic consensus, the demand to regain control of politics at the local level will increase. Either Europe starts acting as a space where people have their voices heard in a meaningful way, or Europe will stop being a useful or desirable space where decisions on our daily lives are taken. The Spanish 15-M movement seems to have been an inspiration for protests throughout Europe. To what extent do you think we can already speak of a trans-european movement? What do you think is still needed to guarantee a better transnational coordination and better forms of collective organisation beyond the national level? I don’t think we can speak of a trans-european movement. The ‘inspiration’ (if you want to call it that) for the 15m came initially from Tahrir and the middle-eastern revolts, and then from recent political and economic events in Iceland (referendums, change of government, new constitution being drawn up with participation and heavy reliance on social media and the internet, etc). I’d say transnational coordination at the moment is non-existent. Would it be desirable? Yes, but it feels like in the same way that MS have not been able to build a European agenda and collaboration, the population of the MS does not feel a strong association with events elsewhere. There might be two factors that contribute to that: on the one hand, Spain has enough problems with its own identity as a state; on the other, it is hard for Spanish people to feel their problems are the same as in other Northern or Central countries, specially when our history and reality is so different: our economies are different, our political system is different, and, most of all, our economic conditions (job instability, minimum wage, etc. ) are worse than anywhere around us. The idea that we might come up with a shared agenda at the European level seems very alien to most, as many feel our problems are not shared by the rest of Europe. If the process of European integration wasn’t a race to the bottom, this might change. But I just don’t see that happening. I do think, however, that there is a scenario that could make ‘Europe’ relevant: a process by which national movements got together in the struggle -not necessarily by sharing the same demands, spaces or languages, but by seeing their belief in change and justice replicated everywhere else. A unity in action is the only unity I see emerging. And this kind of unity has no borders -not the Pyrenees, nor Schengen, nor the Mediterranean… In its turn, the Spanish movement has been inspired by the Arab spring and Jasmin revolution movements. Is expanding and building on this connection a priority for the movements in Europe? Should it be? I’d say most people feel we don’t need a connection beyond the ability to inspire each other and exchange messages of support. That is not to say that having meetings and spaces where to exchange ideas and experiences wouldn’t be good or desirable, but not essential in terms of the movement keeping strong. The reasons why the 15m has managed to capture the imagination of most of the Spanish population (support rates have not been below 80% since the movements started) has a lot to do with national events (historical, political and economic) and by the way the crisis is being managed (by doing exactly the opposite of what people need, and putting private interests before the democratic mandate of the Socialist party in power). If other countries managed to strike a chord with their own populations and start taking their future into their own hands, unity in action could emerge. If something similar to the 15m, the Arab Spring or the Greek events happened elsewhere, building connections would be more of a priorit. The movements have a clear diffidence towards existing political structures, be it parties, trade unions, or supranational organisations. How should the movement then negotiate the question of power? What kind of strategies do you think will allow for the possibility of changing current legislation and decision-making structures? Do you see the creation of new political parties as a viable outcome of the protest movements? The movement is clear on one thing: everyone who’s claimed to represent the common people so far have done nothing but betray us all. There is a widespread feeling that, whatever we vote (even when we do), we always lose. So there is a rejection of anything that came…
Activism, Collective, Commons: Interview with the Romanian Group for Social Action
An interview with four of the founding members of The Group for Social Action (GSA), an intellectual, activist, left-wing platform, launched in Cluj (Romania) at the beginning of 2011. The group brings together young intellectuals, activists and artists. Diana Prisacariu (European Alternatives): What is the reason behind the coming to life of the GSA platform and what means have you used to reach it? Ciprian Bogdan: Lately, we have noticed the existence of a significant number of people affiliated with the left-wing, yet they were not visible, nor organised enough in terms of numbers. The initiative of the GSA intended to correct this slip by founding a platform for this mass of critical voices, a mass which is both ‘heterogeneous’ (in terms of background and opinions) and open to dialogue at the same time. We actually tried to keep to one of the fundamental left-wing principles, a type of solidarity able to foster different opinions and visions. Adi Dohotaru: GSA was created to be a space of encounter for various left wing ideological options. Still, in the long run, we intend to contribute to the ignition of political debates and generate solutions for a “more democratic and more equitable society at the dawn of a post-capitalist world”, just like we mentioned in our declaration of principles. Lucian Butaru: We are mostly interested in contributing to the description of the problems. Nowadays, we deal with a kind of monopoly of the right-wing, which excludes alternative solutions from the very start. This process is meant to offer the necessary instruments to the “indignant” protesters. Norbert Petrovici: Cluj (Romania) is the place that has lately witnessed the birth of an important intellectual, left-wing movement and we needed a way to come up with a debate and social activism platform. Thus, GSA became a left-wing network among others, yet with a clearly stated aim to create meeting places or participate in any other solidarity proposals. Diana Prisacariu (EA): What are the main causes hindering a recognition of the left-wing legacy already in place in Romania? Which are the mechanisms that make right-wing monopoly prevail in the Romanian cultural environment? Ciprian Bogdan: It is not the nostalgic “return” of the left-wing tradition that matters, but rather the search for answers to the structural problems of contemporary society. Yet, if the relationship to the past is to be taken into consideration, it can be said that one of the impediments against taking on various elements of the left-wing heritage is their often conflictual intrinsic plurality. There exist different left-wing traditions that are often not compatible with each other, even on a fundamental level. Furthermore, some of these traditions were compromised because they protected, or, at least, they did not dare to be critical enough of the post-war societies of Eastern Europe. With regards to the present perception across Romania, the big public associates left-wing principles to the national-communist experiment, and, recently, with the unpredictable, sometimes almost conservative attempts, of the Social Democratic Party. Lucian Butaru: Therefore, the Romanian left-wing intellectuals find themselves in the awful situation of fighting a multiple war: first, against the comical representations of the left-wing parties widely spread among the population via various media channels controlled or influenced by the right-wing intellectuals; second, against the present left-wing orientations that, due to the nationalistic, conservative and, sometimes, non-democratic appearance, partially stick to the comic representations presented by the right-wing orientation; third, against the inequalities inherent to capitalism. Adi Dohotaru: Yet, if we are really keen on “bringing back” Romanian left-wing traditions, we can always refer to the XIXth century – first half of the XXth century movements. There used to exist a variety of movements like progressive anarchist, social-democratic, Marxist, feminist, etc. worth being analysed and looked at closely. There aren’t too many Romanians who remember our socialists (as opposed to the liberal and conservative movements) fiercely demonstrating for universal voting right, workers’ rights, rights of the farmers associated in agricultural cooperatives to receive land, women’s rights to be hired in the public sector, freedom of expression, or minorities’ rights. These ideas led to the appearance of numerous socialist magazines, hundreds of unions, protests, public campaigns, strikes, etc. This heritage, even if less important than in other European countries, remains unclaimed for two main reasons. On one hand, the quality of the historiography before 1989 is rather doubtful, since instead of critically analysing and filtering this heritage, it presents it in a declamatory, triumphalist and propagandistic manner, spoiling it of any real content. On the other hand, Romanian right-wing intellectuals and citizens reject this heritage because a major confusion between the democratic socialist left-wing and authoritarian Bolshevism is still perceived. This confusion is most often a type of manipulation technique used by the post-revolutionary right-wing discourse in order to articulate its cultural and ideological hegemony. To be straightforward, according to the discourse of this historiographical vulgate, any movement questioning capitalism (or rather “the free market” in their opinion) is anti-democratic and of an authoritarian persuasion. Norbert Petrovici: I cannot see an explicit stake in regaining a local or even national left-wing tradition, even if many ideas of the end of 19thcentury-beginning of the 20th century represent important theoretical ideas. I find the centre-peripheral type analyses extremely interesting, as well as the particular way of theorising the peripherisation of the Romanian countries. In my opinion, it is much more important to build regional and global networks that activate and produce alternative knowledge, allowing for a post-capitalist order to be taken into consideration. Diana Prisacariu (EA): The effects of the financial speculations in Southern European economies are much more discussed than the present situation in Eastern Europe. What are the defining aspects of the economic crisis in Romania? What was the response of the government to the blackmail of the financial markets? Ciprian Bogdan: The Romanian ruling class settled the issue of the financial crisis using a neoliberal logic: the one who pays for the crisis is the state itself, including the state employees and retired…
Libya: interference or support?
Interview by: Luigi Cascone Translation by: Chris Mckee Mrs Malika Benarab-Attou is a member of the Delegation for relations with the Magreb countries and the Arab Magreb Union. A member of the Culture and Education Committee of the European Parliament, she is also the coordinator for the Greens/European Free Alliance group. One of the striking things about the Libyan crisis, and the recent uprisings in the Arab world in general, seems to be the complete inability of Europe to respond to the issues at hand. Just like in Bosnia and Kosovo, the European Union has been incapable of having an effective human rights policy, even when these violations are carried out just outside its doorstep. How do you explain this? Whenever we analyse the EU’s relations with the countries of the Mediterranean and North Africa, a number of historical and strategic elements must be considered. The history of colonialism, particularly for France, is a key factor in the North African equation. Much like the current period, this history is characterised by the prevalence of economic interests, specifically those related to the exploitation and distribution of energy sources derived from oil. Therefore this ‘strategic-economic’ aspect makes it difficult to compare the events in Kosovo and Yugoslavia in the 1990s with events in the Arab world today. The UN has approved a resolution to establish a no-fly zone. Firstly do you approve of this, and in your opinion, why has the international community waited so long before condemning the atrocities currently taking place in Libya? It’s clear that the delay with which the international community has responded to these dramatic events is largely due to the trauma that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused the Western coalition. Europe is simply afraid of getting bogged-down in another military operation. However, I must admit to being a little worried by the resolution passed by the UN Security Council. Of course, action must be taken to stop the atrocities currently being perpetrated by Colonel Gaddafi, but I’m not sure that this represents the best course of action. The European Parliament has recognised the National Transition Committee before all the national governments, a much needed measure necessary to help destabilise Gadaffi. The EU has implemented the measures outlined by the UN resolution of 1970, incorporating a weapons embargo, travel restrictions, and freezing the assets of the Gadaffi family (the EU has went even further than the measures outlined by the resolution). The EU can also resort to a number of other methods to stop men such as Gadaffi, if only on a financial and commercial level by cutting off the cash-flows that finance the main mercenaries responsible for the most deplorable crimes. Tripoli can simply not afford to ignore the effect of these measures. The situation is extremely volatile, and any error or miscalculation could alter the delicate dynamics within the region. The thousands of victims claimed by the civil war in the 1990s in Algeria, which shares a common border with Libya, reminds us just how quickly an internal conflict can quickly degenerate into a bloody war. The Libyan rebel forces have repeatedly asked for military aid from the European Union in order to stand a chance against the airforce of the Libyan government. The Arab League has also requested a no-fly zone, and thousands have already died. In such desperate times, what can be done to so that a policy of pacificism is not confused with one of indifference? As I have said, it is imperative that we stop the violence inflicted on the Libyan people by Gadaffi and the need for humanitarian action is undeniable. However, at the same time, we must consider the importance of the role played by petrol in the framework of a Western intervention in Libya. The European Parliament has adopted a resolution that offers both strong support to the Libyan people, and at the same time, a clear desire not to intrude. In politics, it is often difficult to distinguish between the two, but we believe that we must develop a strategy capable of supporting the legitimate fight for human rights by the Libyan people, without entailing any sort of intervention in a neo-colonial sense. How well do you feel the EU has responded to these events? What possibilities can you envisage in terms of a Common Foreign Policy for the EU? While the revolutionary movements in North Africa have shown that a Common Foreign Policy for the EU does not yet exist, they have however reminded us of the necessity of having such a policy in order to help the EU act and become a genuine force for change. The European External Action Service EEAS) as introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, must be implemented as soon as possible. Finally, Member States must also refrain from taking up individual positions over these events, as was the case in Libya. Even more generally, it is important that all the European countries reconsider their policy towards the countries of the Mediterranean, with whom we share common roots and a common culture. And if we wish to continue to play an important role in the region, we must establish a policy of cooperation that is fully transparent, particularly in relation to migration policy. For this, a deconstruction of the political approach that portrays immigrants as invaders and criminals is absolutely necessary. Our border policy must be re-evaluated to help guarantee a genuine partnership between all the countries that are linked together by the vast waters of the Mediterranean. This movement, that some commentators have compared to a springtime for the Arab people, has become a beacon of hope for thousands of people living under oppression and persecution. The removal of Ben-Ali by a population that voiced its democratic aspirations as one has catalysed a process that will change the political make-up of the Middle-East. The role of the European Union in this delicate period is to support this quest for freedom, by firstly helping these people throughout the…
Les conditions de détention provisoire des migrants dans les camps
Traduction de Jérémy Labbetoul Les lacunes de la législation européenne en ce qui concerne les conditions des migrants (notamment le temps de détention maximal, variable d’un pays à l’autre) suscitent, à travers l’Union Européenne, des interprétations très différentes de ce que sont des normes acceptables. Les mesures appliquées par les autorités devraient être proportionnelles à la situation. Cependant, ce n’est pas toujours le cas : des procédures abusives, arbitraires ou inutiles ont été signalées dans de nombreux documents d’ ONG et d’institutions européennes (chambres d’isolement, utilisation abusive des menottes, migrants assimilés à des criminels). Ces procédures témoignent d’une progression vers la criminalisation de la migration. Parfois, certaines normes élémentaires, qui devraient pourtant être de rigueur dans les lieux destinés à accueillir des personnes (hygiène, séparation des hommes et des femmes, etc.) ne sont pas respectées. Les migrants font face à une situation humiliante et dégradante. Il arrive que les droits de l’homme soient bafoués. Du fait de l’absence de communication avec l’extérieur et du manque de transparence de la part des autorités, les migrants ont du mal à faire entendre leur voix. Alternatives Européennes est préoccupée par les conditions de détention provisoire des immigrés clandestins au sein des camps de migrants, qui s’apparentent parfois à des zones de non-droit. Bien que la Directive Retour de L’Union Européenne 2008/115/CE (qui n’a pas été adoptée par tous les États membres) garantisse certains droits fondamentaux, elle est parfois moins favorable aux droits des migrants que les législations nationales. Ceci pourrait entraîner un nivellement par le bas des normes applicables. Liste des problèmes essentiels relatifs aux camps de migrants et à la détention provisoire Les camps de migrants · L’accès à l’assistance juridique, à l’information, aux soins médicaux et à la communication avec l’extérieur est très limité et parfois refusé par les autorités.L’assistance juridique gratuite n’est pas assurée. Les migrants ne savent rien de la suite des événements, ils ne reçoivent aucune information au sujet des procédures, qui de plus sont souvent expéditives . Des pratiques comme la réduction des droits de visites ou la destruction de téléphones dotés de caméras, afin d’empêcher que des documents vidéos ne soient remis à des activistes, ont été signalées. · Les camps de migrants sont souvent situés dans des bâtiments ressemblant à des prisons, voire dans des bâtiments rattachés à des prisons.Ceci peut conduire à faire l’amalgame entre les migrants et les criminels. Le personnel travaillant au sein des camps est parfois le même que celui des établissements pénitentiaires, bien qu’il n’ait suivi aucune autre formation plus adaptée. Par conséquent, les migrants sont parfois traités comme des criminels. · Les bâtiments ne sont pas correctement entretenus et sont souvent insalubres et surpeuplés. · On note un manque de transparence au niveau des conditions de détention, et l’accès des ONG aux camps est restreint. Les migrants · Les migrants se heurtent à de nombreux obstacles lorsqu’ils souhaitent entamer une procédure de demande d’asile.Des détenus et des associations ont signalé que, dans certains camps, les formulaires nécessaires ne sont pas livrés aux demandeurs d’asile [1]. · Les migrants sont victimes de sanctions arbitraires et d’une répression punitive. Des cas de viols, de comportements dégradants, et de violences, notamment de coups, ont été signalés. [2]. · La détention a des répercussions morales et psychologiques sur les migrants, et conduit à des rébellions, à des dépressions et dans les cas les plus graves, à des suicides. Bien qu’opposée au principe de camps de migrants, Alternatives Européennes est convaincue que tant que ces camps existeront, les organisations de défense des droits de l’homme devront être autorisées à y entrer, afin d’apporter une assistance médicale et juridique aux migrants, et de contrôler les conditions de leur détention provisoire. La création de directives communes à l’attention des personnels des camps peut également être un facteur de changement. L’application de ces directives devrait être contrôlée régulièrement. En ce qui concerne les réfugiés, il est stipulé dans l’article 31 de la Convention des Nations Unies relative au statut des réfugiés de 1951 (également appelée « Convention de Genève ») que, (1) Les États contractants n’appliqueront pas de sanctions pénales, du fait de leur entrée ou de leur séjour irréguliers, aux réfugiés qui, arrivant directement du territoire où leur vie ou leur liberté était menacée au sens prévu par l’article 1er [3],entrent ou se trouvent sur leur territoire sans autorisation, sous la réserve qu’ils se présentent sans délai aux autorités et leur exposent des raisons reconnues valables de leur entrée ou présence irrégulières. (2) Les États contractants n’appliqueront aux déplacements de ces réfugiés d’autres restrictions que celles qui sont nécessaires; ces restrictions seront appliquées seulement en attendant que le statut des réfugiés dans le pays d’accueil ait été régularisé ou qu’ils aient réussi à se faire admettre dans un autre pays. En vue de cette dernière admission les États contractants accorderont à ces réfugiés un délai raisonnable ainsi que toute faciliténécessaire. La détention des demandeurs d’asile devrait être évitée, comme le recommande l’Agence des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés. Toutefois, la possibilité de faire une demande n’est pas toujours garantie dans les camps, et des ONG ont signalé que les procédures de demande d’asile sont parfois entravées. Alternatives Européennes préconise des solutions alternatives aux camps de migrants. Nous sommes convaincus que ces camps ne sont pas la meilleure solution pour garantir leurs droits, et que des alternatives impliquant les États et les ONG peuvent être trouvées, comme la libération conditionnelle. L’Union Européenne devrait tendre vers de telles alternatives plutôt que vers la détention. Elle devrait de plus harmoniser sa réglementation conformément à la Convention des Nations Unies de 1951, comme prévu par les deux programmes de cinq ans pour la création d’un Système d’asile commun à l’Europe. Une réglementation précise visant des normes élevées de protection, facilement compréhensible par tous les États membres et les demandeurs d’asile, est attendue avec impatience. Pour plus d’information : Migreurop, Campaign of parliamentary visits for a right of access inside detention centres for migrants, http://www.migreurop.org/article1905.html, 04/2011 (texte en anglais). Version française : Campagne pour un…
Conditions of migrants temporary detention in camps
The gaps in European legislation as regards to migrants conditions (such as the maximum time of detention, which changes from one country to another) open the door to very different interpretations on what are acceptable standards across the EU. The measures used by the authorities should be proportionate to the situation. However this is not always the case: abusive, arbitrary or unnecessary procedures have been reported in many documents from NGOs and European institutions, like the use of seclusion rooms or unnecessary handcuffing, treating migrants like criminals, mirroring a tendency towards the criminalisation of migration. Sometimes the basic standards that should be expected in places aimed at the reception of people (hygiene, separation between men and women…) are not ensured. Migrants face humiliating and degrading situation. Human rights are sometimes violated. The lack of communication with the external word, and the lack of transparency from the authorities, makes their voices difficult to be heard. European Alternatives is concerned about the conditions in which illegal migrants are temporarily detained in camps, which sometimes look like lawless areas. Although the EU Return Directive 2008/115/CE (not implemented by all member states) guarantees some fundamental rights, it is sometimes less favourable to migrants’ rights than national legislations. This could lead to a lowering of the applicable standards. List of key problems related to camps and temporary detention of migrants Camps Access to legal assistance, information, health or communication with the external world are very limited and sometimes denied by the authorities. Free legal aid is not guaranteed. Migrants have no idea about what is going to happen, they are not informed about the procedures which are often rushed through. Practices such as reducing permissions to visits or breaking telephone cameras in order to avoid shooting videos that could be given to activists have been reported. Camps are often located in buildings similar to prison, or even in buildings attached to prisons.This can lead to the amalgam between migrants and criminals. The staff working in camps is sometimes the same as those working in prisons and have not benefited from a different and need-specific training. Therefore migrants are sometimes treated as criminals. The buildings are not adequately kept and are often insalubrious and overcrowded. There is a lack of transparency in regards to the conditions of detentions, and NGOs’ access to the camps is limited. Migrants Migrants face many obstacles when it comes to procedures for asylum seeking. Detainees and associationsreported that in some camps application forms are not given to asylum seekers[1]. Migrants are victim of arbitrary treatments and punitive repression.Rapes, degrading attitudes, violence, beatings have been reported[2]. The detention has moral and psychological impact on migrants, leading to rebellions, depression and in worst cases to suicides. While opposing the idea of camps for migrants, European Alternatives believes that while camps exist, human rights organizations should be allowed inside them, to give legal and medical assistance as well as to monitor the conditions in which migrants are temporarily detained. The creation of common guidelines which will have to be used by camps staff can also encourage changes. The implementation of these guidelines should be monitored regularly. For what regards refugees, according to article 31of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (also known as the Geneva Convention) of 1951, (1) The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1[3], enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. (2)The Contracting States shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they obtain admission into another country. The Contracting States shall allow such refugees a reasonable period and all the necessary facilities to obtain admission into another country. The detention of asylum seekers should be avoided, as recommended by the United Nation Refugee Agency. However, in camps the right to apply is not always guaranteed and it has been reported, by NGOs that procedures for asylum seeking are sometimes hindered. European Alternatives advocates for alternatives solutions to camps.We believe that camps are not the best solution to guarantee their rights. Other alternatives involving States and NGOs can be found, such as release on condition. The European Union should aim towards those alternatives rather than detention and unify its regulation in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention, as it was planned in the two five-year programmes for the creation of a Common European Asylum System. A clear regulation setting high standards of protection, which could be easily understood and implemented by all Member States and asylum seekers, is eagerly awaited. More info: Migreurop, Campaign of parliamentary visits for a right of access inside detention centres for migrants – http://www.migreurop.org/article1905.html, 04/2011. European Council on Refugees and Exiles, Return Directive: EU fails to uphold human rights, http://www.ecre.org/files/ECRE%20press%20release%20Returns%20Dir.pdf, 06/2008. European Parliament, Directorate-General Internal Policies, The conditions in centres for third country national (detention camps, open centres as well as transit centres and transit zones) with a particular focus on provisions and facilities for persons with special needs in the 25 EU member states, http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_eu-ep-detention-centres-report.pdf, 12/2007. [1]Migreurop, http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/Conclusions_generales_de_la_campagne_et_resumes_des_visites.pdf , p.3,5,6 [2] European Parliament, Directorate-General Internal Policies, The conditions in centres for third country national (detention camps, open centres as well as transit centres and transit zones) with a particular focus on provisions and facilities for persons with special needs in the 25 EU member states, http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_eu-ep-detention-centres-report.pdfp. 185,186 [3] Article 1 of the Convention as amended by the 1967 Protocol : A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing…
Le contrôle des flux migratoires par lUE au-delà de ses frontières
Traduction de Camille Nore « Toute personne est libre de quitter n’importe quel pays, y compris le sien » Article 12.2 du Pacte International relatif aux Droits Civils et Politiques. L’Europe étend le contrôle aux frontières vers le sud. Afin d’améliorer l’efficacité du combat contre l’immigration illégale en provenance des pays sub-sahariens, l’Europe a entrepris un programme agressif en la matière en coopération avec les Etats bordant la Méditerranée et par la suite avec les pays sahéliens. Le but étant de réduire les mouvements migratoires dans la région du Sahara, mais cela est trop souvent fait sans respecter les droits de l’Homme. Depuis 2001, les représentants des pays méditerranéens (l’Algérie, la Lybie, le Maroc, la Mauritanie et la Tunisie au sud, l’Espagne, la France, l’Italie, Malte et le Portugal au nord) sont « parvenus à un accord » quant à la gestion des flux migratoires entre l’Afrique et l’Europe. Les résultats de ces accords sont clairement favorables à l’Europe qui étend son contrôle vers le sud. Le durcissement de la politique de migration dans les Etats d’Afrique du Nord a été confirmé lors de la Conférence Ministérielle sur la Migration en Méditerranée Occidentale (Tunis, Octobre 2002). Alors que ces mesures ne concernaient initialement que les contrôles des côtes méditerranéennes et atlantiques, elles s’étendent maintenant à quelques Etats du Sahel. L’Europe s’est dotée de ressources matérielles et financières lui permettant d’assurer le contrôle de ses frontières et au-delà, grâce à la création de plusieurs programmes tel que le SIVE (Système Intégré de Surveillance Extérieur) en 1998, système de surveillance électronique des côtes sud espagnoles, Frontex en 2004, pour la gestion des opérations aux frontières externes de l’Union Européenne ou le programme Sahamed géré par l’Italie depuis Mars 2010. De plus, plusieurs accords inter-Etats ont été conclus entre des Etats européens et nord africains. Ces mesures ne répondent pas aux questions concernant l’immigration, le contrôle aux frontières et surtout le respect des droits de l’Homme : elles déplacent simplement le problème ailleurs, hors de vue des citoyens européens. Les migrants voyageant vers l’Europe font face à beaucoup de dangers pendant leur voyage et n’ont aucune protection. Ces voyages peuvent avoir des conséquences psychologiques et physiques. Les migrants sont souvent retenus en camp de détention pour un temps allant de quelques jours à plusieurs mois. Pendant cette période il y a eu des preuves de violation des droits de l’Homme de manière répétée. Les migrants, détenus dans des conditions inacceptables, n’ont pas accès à l’information, ne peuvent pas parler à un avocat et sont ensuite renvoyés sans pouvoir récupérer leurs biens ou leur argent. Ils subissent quelque fois des actes dégradants comme la torture ou le viol. Les réfugiés voient quelque fois leurs papiers déchirés par la police et les demandeurs d’asile ne voient jamais leurs droits respectés, au dépend du droit international. Ce mépris continu envers les droits de l’Homme a a été dénoncé par beaucoup d’organisations telles qu’Amnesty International ou Human Rights Watch. De plus, ce phénomène migratoire est une source importante de revenu à la fois pour les compagnies aériennes (et autres acteurs privés) et pour les agents de l’Etat qui ont établi un système d’impôts en totale illégalité dépouillant les migrants de leurs modestes ressources financières (les officiers de police demandent de l’argent aux migrants dans de nombreux « check points »). Alternatives Européennes préconise la création d’une collaboration meilleure, plus juste et mieux structurée entre l’Union Européenne et les pays tiers dans la zone des contrôles aux frontières et qui prendra efficacement en compte les droits des immigrants. Plus d’informations : Migreurop, Aux frontières de l'Europe, contrôles, enfermements, expulsions. http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/Migreurop-2010-FR.pdf Frontex: le film (avec le camp no border de Lesbos 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOuFo5egBqE&feature=related [1]Les pays sahéliens font habituellement référence: au Sénégal, à la Mauritanie, au Niger, au Burkina Faso, au Tchad, au Soudan, au Cap Vert, et quelque fois à Djibouti, à l’Ethiopie, à l’Erythrée, à la Somalie et au Kenya.
EU’s control of migration beyond its borders.
“Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own.” Article 12.2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Europe is pushing border controls down south. In order to improve the effectiveness of the fight against illegal immigration from sub-Saharan countries, Europe has undertaken an aggressive program in cooperation with the states bordering the Mediterranean and subsequently with the Sahelian[1] countries. The aim is to reduce migratory movements in the Sahara region, but too often this is done without respecting human rights. Since 2001, representatives of Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia in the south and Spain, France, Italy, Malta and Portugal in the north) have “reached an agreement” on the issue of migratory flow management between Africa and Europe. The results of these agreements are clearly favourable to Europe which is expanding its control southwards. The tightening of migration policy in the States of North Africa was confirmed at the Ministerial Conference on Migration in Western Mediterranean (Tunis, October 2002). While those measures initially concerned controls in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast of Africa, they now extend to some states of the Sahel area. Europe endowed itself with material and financial resources allowing it to ensure the control of its borders and also beyond its borders with the creation of several programs such as SIVE in 1998, a system of electronic surveillance of the southern coasts of Spain, Frontex in 2004 for the management of operations at the external borders of the EU or the Sahamed programme managed by Italy since march 2010. In addition, several inter-state agreements were concluded between European and Northern African states. These measures do not answer questions related to immigration, border control, and especially respect for human rights: they merely shift the problem elsewhere, out of sight of European citizens. Migrants travelling to Europe face many dangers during their journey and have no protection. These journeys may have psychological or physical consequences. Migrants are often trapped in detention camp for a time ranging from a few days to several months. During this period there has been evidence of human rights being violated repeatedly. The migrants detained in unacceptable conditions have no access to information, are not able to talk to a lawyer and are then discharged without being able to take back their belongings or their money. They sometimes face torture, rape degrading acts. Refugees sometimes see their papers torn by police and Asylum Seekers never see their rights respected in defiance of international law. This continued disregard of human rights has been denounced by many organizations such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Moreover, this phenomenon of migration is a significant source of revenue for both carriers (and other private actors) and for States ‘agents who have established a system of taxation in complete illegality which strips migrants of their modest financial resources (police officers will ask money to migrants in a number of “check points”). European Alternatives advocates for the establishment of a better, fairer and well-structured collaboration between the EU and third-countries in the area of border controls which will effectively take into account migrant rights. More infos: Migreurop, Aux frontières de l'Europe, contrôles, enfermements, expulsions. http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/Migreurop-2010-FR.pdf Frontex: The Movie (feat. noborder camp in lesvos 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOuFo5egBqE&feature=related [1] Sahelian countries, usually refers to: Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Tchad, Sudan, Cape Verde island and sometimes also Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya.
Lettera aperta degli eurodeputati ai Ministri degli Interni dellUnione Europea sul caso dei migranti tunisini.
Foto: flickr European Alternatives assieme a numerose altre associazioni della società civile sta organizzando una mobilitazione transnazionale a favore della libertà di movimento. Per più informazioni e per unirti, visita www.europewithoutborders.eu Comunicato Stampa – Strasburgo, 9 giugno 2011 Consiglio Giustizia & Affari Interni Lettera aperta degli eurodeputati ai Ministri degli Interni dell’Unione Europea sul caso dei migranti tunisini. Hélène Flautre, eurodeputata del Gruppo Verdi/ALE ed altri eurodeputati appartenenti a differenti gruppi politici nel Parlamento Europeo hanno inviato una lettera aperta all’attenzione dei Ministri degli Interni degli Stati Membri dell’UE in vista della loro riunione al consiglio GAI del 9 e 10 giugno. In seguito alla visita al Parlamento Europeo di una delegazione di migranti tunisini arrivati sul territorio europeo dall’Isola di Lampedusa, gli eurodeputati hanno chiesto solennemente di metter fine alla situazione precaria e umiliante di queste persone, decidendo, nel corso della riunione del Consiglio GAI, di attivare la direttiva 55/2001 che concede una protezione temporanea in caso di afflusso massiccio di migranti. Lettera aperta degli eurodeputati ai Ministri degli Interni degli Stati membri dell’Unione Europea in vista della riunione del Consiglio Giustizia & Affari interni del 9 e 10 giugno. Oggi, mercoledì 8 giugno, abbiamo accolto al Parlamento Europeo una delegazione di tunisini arrivati sul territorio dell’Unione Europea dall’isola di Lampedusa dal 14 gennaio in avanti. I delegati chiedono, a nome dei 25000 tunisini che hanno lasciato la Tunisia dopo la caduta del regime di Ben Ali, di attivare la direttiva 55/2001 che permette la concessione di una protezione temporanea in caso di afflusso massiccio di migranti. Le testimonianze che abbiamo raccolto motivano la concessione di un diritto temporaneo di soggiorno e lavoro per questi tunisini, in particolar modo per coloro che provengono dal sud est della Tunisia. Questa regione, storicamente svantaggiata, soffre duramente in seguito alla riduzione delle attività turistiche e doganali, sulle quali incidono direttamente le drammatiche conseguenze umane e sociali della guerra in Libia. Queste circostanze eccezionali rendono il ritorno dei migranti in Tunisia particolarmente difficile nel breve periodo. Al contrario, l’accoglienza temporanea nell’UE permetterebbe una soluzione positiva per tutti coloro che, dopo aver conquistato la libertà, desiderano solamente vedere rispettata la propria dignità. È essenziale per gli stessi migranti, per le loro famiglie, e per il sostegno reale al processo di democratizzazione in corso. Per questo motivo, considerando che le condizioni di applicazione sono oggigiorno presenti, vi chiediamo solennemente di voler metter fine alla situazione precaria e umiliante di queste persone decidendo, nel corso della riunione del Consiglio Giustizia & Affari Interni del 9 e 10 giugno prossimi, di attivare la direttiva 55/2001. Vogliate gradire, signori Ministri, i sensi della nostra più alta considerazione. Kader Arif (Francia, S&D) Jean-Luc Bennahmias (Francia, ALDE) José Bové (Francia, Verdi/ALE) Rosario Crocetta (Italia, S&D) Karima Delli (Francia, Verdi/ALE) Hélène Flautre (Francia, Verdi/ALE) Nathalie Griesbeck (Francia, ALDE) Sylvie Guillaume (Francia, S&D) Eva Joly (Francia, Verdi/ALE) Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (Francia, Verdi/ALE) Patrick Le Hyaric (Francia, GUE/NGL) Catherine Trautmann (Francia, S&D) Marie-Christine Vergiat (Francia, GUE/NGL) Bernadettte Vergnaud (Francia, S&D) Isabelle Zerrouk Addetto stampa Verdi/ALE al PE Tel fisso 00 32 2 284 27 42 Tel ufficiale 00 32 477 319 474 Sito internet: www.greens-efa.org Traduzione Greta Galeazzi
Lettre ouverte de députés européens aux Ministres de l’Intérieur de l’UE sur le cas des migrants tunisiens
Conseil Justice et Affaires Intérieurs Lettre ouverte de députés européens aux Ministres de l'Intérieur de l'UE sur le cas des migrants tunisiens Hélène Flautre, députée européenne du Groupe Verts/ALE ainsi que plusieurs eurodéputés de différents Groupes politiques du PE, ont adressé une lettre ouverte à l'attention des Ministres de l'Intérieur des Etats membres de l'UE en vue de leur réunion du Conseil JAI des 9 et 10 juin. Suite à la visite au Parlement européen d'une délégation de migrants tunisiens arrivés sur le sol de l'Union européenne par l'île de Lampedusa, les députés demandent solennellement de bien vouloir mettre fin à la situation précaire et humiliante de ces personnes en décidant, lors de la réunion de Conseil JAI, d'activer la directive 55/2001 octroyant une protection temporaire en cas d'afflux massif. Lettre ouverte de députés européens aux Ministres des Etats membres de l'UE en charge des Affaires Intérieures en vue de la réunion du Conseil JAI des 9 et 10 juin Ce mercredi 8 juin, nous avons reçu au Parlement européen une délégation de Tunisiens arrivés sur le sol de l'Union européenne par l'île de Lampedusa depuis le 14 janvier. Ils plaident au nom des 25 000 tunisiens qui ont quitté la Tunisie suite à la chute du régime de Ben Ali, en faveur de l'activation de la directive 55/2001 qui permet l'octroi d'une protection temporaire en cas d'afflux massif. Les témoignages que nous avons recueillis motivent l'octroi d'un tel droit temporaire au séjour et au travail pour ces personnes tunisiennes, notamment issues du sud Est de la Tunisie. Cette région historiquement déshéritée souffre durement de la baisse drastique des activités touristiques et transfrontalières, directement impactée par les conséquences humaines et sociales dramatiques de la guerre en Lybie. Ces circonstances exceptionnelles rendent le retour à court terme en Tunisie particulièrement difficile. Au contraire, l'accueil temporaire dans l'UE permettrait une issue positive pour tous ceux qui après avoir conquis leur liberté veulent tout simplement voir leur dignité respectée. C'est essentiel pour eux-mêmes, pour leurs proches et pour le soutien effectif au processus de démocratisation en cours. C'est pourquoi, considérant que les conditions de mise en œuvre sont aujourd'hui réunies, nous vous demandons solennellement de bien vouloir mettre fin à la situation précaire et humiliante de ces personnes en décidant, lors de la réunion de Conseil JAI des 9 et 10 Juin prochains, d'activer la directive 55/2001. Veuillez agréer, Messieurs les Ministres, nos salutations respectueuses. Kader Arif (France, S&D) Jean-Luc Bennahmias (France, ALDE) José Bové (France, Verts/ALE) Rosario Crocetta (Italie, S&D) Karima Delli (France, Verts/ALE) Hélène Flautre (France, Verts/ALE) Nathalie Griesbeck (France, ALDE) Sylvie Guillaume (France, S&D) Eva Joly (France, Verts/ALE) Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (France, Verts/ALE) Patrick Le Hyaric (France, GUE/NGL) Catherine Trautmann (France, S&D) Marie-Christine Vergiat (France, GUE/NGL) Bernadettte Vergnaud (France, S&D) Isabelle Zerrouk Attachée de presse Verdi/ALE al PE Tel fisso 00 32 2 284 27 42 Tel ufficiale 00 32 477 319 474 Sito internet: www.greens-efa.org
Open letter to the European deputies of the EUs Ministers of Home Affairs regarding the situation of Tunisian migrants
Photo: flickr European Alternatives, together with other civil society organisations, is organising a transnational movement in favour of freedom of movement. For more information and to join us visit www.europewithoutborders.eu Justice and Home Affairs Council Hélène Flautre, European deputy of the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA), as well as numerous Euro deputies from other political groups within the European Parliament, have addressed an open letter to the Ministers of Home Affairs of the Member States of the EU, in view of their meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) on the 9 and 10 of June. Following the visit to the European Parliament by a delegation of Tunisian migrants who had arrived on European soil via Lampedusa Island, the deputies are solemnly requesting that an end is brought to the precarious and humiliating situation of these people during the meeting of the EFA council, by activating Directive 55/2011, which provides temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons. Open letter to European deputies to the Ministers of Home Affairs of the EU Member States in view of the JHA council meeting of the 9th and 10th June. This Wednesday 8th June, we received a delegation of Tunisians to the European Parliament, who arrived on European soil via Lampedusa Island as of the 14th January. They request, on behalf of the 25,000 Tunisians who left Tunisia following the fall of Ben Ali’s regime, the activation of directive 55/2001 which allows a temporary protection to be allocated in the event of a massive influx of displaced persons. The accounts that we have heard provide grounds for the allocation of a temporary right to stay and work for these Tunisian people, particularly those who have came from the southeast of the country. This historically impoverished region has suffered badly from the fall in tourist and trans-border activity in the region, a direct consequence of the dramatic human and social consequences from the war in Libya. These exceptional circumstances make returning to Tunisia particularly difficult in the short-term. At the same time, the temporary acceptance into the EU would provide a positive solution for all those concerned, who after having achieved freedom; simply want to have their right to dignity respected. This is imperative for themselves, for their family and friends, and to provide effective support to the democratisation process that is currently underway. This is why, taking into account the fact that all the conditions for implementation are today fulfilled, we are asking you solemnly to put an end to the precarious and humiliating situation of these people during the meeting of the EFA council, by activating Directive 55/2011providing temporary protection in the event of a mass influx. Please accept our most sincere regards. Kader Arif (France, S&D) Jean-Luc Bennahmias (France, ALDE) José Bové (France, Greens/EFA) Rosario Crocetta (Italy, S&D) Karima Delli (France, Greens/EFA) Hélène Flautre (France, Greens/EFA) Nathalie Griesbeck (France, ALDE) Sylvie Guillaume (France, S&D) Eva Joly (France, Greens/EFA Nicole Kiil-Nielsen (France,Greens/EFA) Patrick Le Hyaric (France, GUE/NGL) Catherine Trautmann (France, S&D) Marie-Christine Vergiat (France, GUE/NGL) Bernadettte Vergnaud (France, S&D) Translation: Chris Mckee
Niccolo Milanese interviewé sur les droits des Roms (projet PPP) par Radio Scarpe Sensée en France
Le projet People Power Participation se poursuit avec de nouvelles consultations organisées, la dernière en date ayant eu lieu à Douai dans le nord de la France. A la suite de la consultation de Sliven (Bulgarie) sur les droits des Roms qui a eu lieu le 4 juin dernier, la Maison de l’Europe à Douai a accueilli cette seconde consultation sur la situation des Roms en Europe le 18 Juin dernier. Retrouvez ici les conclusions de la consultation de Douai ! La veille, Niccolo Milanese a été interviewé par un membre de Radio Scarpe Sensée, une radio locale associative. Cela a été l’occasion d’évoquer l’activité d’Alternatives Européennes, mais aussi l’approche que nous développons face à la situation actuelle des Roms en Europe. Ecoutez ici son interview sur le site de Radio Scarpe Sensée !
Niccolo Milanese’s interview on Roma rights (PPP) by French local associative radio
People Power Participation project goes on with new consultations, the latest having been led in Douai, north of France. Following Sliven’s consultation on Roma rights on June 4th in Bulgaria, the Maison de l’Europe in Douai welcomed this second consultation about the situation of Roma in Europe on June 18th . Read here the findings of Douai’s consultation ! The day before, Niccolo Milanese has been interviewed by Radio Scarpe Sensée, a French local associative radio. This was the occasion to talk about European Alternatives’ activity and our approach of the Roma situation in Europe. Listen to it here on Radio Scarpe Sensée website !
Jurisprudence de la Cour de Justice de lUnion Européenne : les affaires Maruko et Römer
Par Maëva Kokodoko «Une discrimination directe se produit lorsqu'une personne est traitée de manière moins favorable qu'une autre ne l'est, ne l'a été ou ne le serait dans une situation comparable… Une discrimination indirecte se produit lorsqu'une disposition, un critère ou une pratique apparemment neutre est susceptible d'entraîner un désavantage particulier pour des personnes d'une religion ou de convictions, d'un handicap, d'un âge ou d'une orientation sexuelle donnés… » Article 2 de la Directive 2000/78/CE du Conseil du 27 novembre 2000 portant création d'un cadre général en faveur de l'égalité de traitement en matière d'emploi et de travail. Le droit relatif aux unions homosexuelles diffère d’un Etat Membre à l’autre. Le mariage des couples homosexuels est autorisé au Pays-Bas, en Belgique, en Suède, au Portugal et en Espagne. En France et en Allemagne par exemple, ont été créées des institutions permettant l’union des couples homosexuels : le PACS en France et le partenariat enregistré (Lebenspartnerschaft) en Allemagne. Si d’un côté le PACS permet d’unir juridiquement des couples homosexuels ou hétérosexuels, le Lebenspartnerschaft allemand ne concerne que les couples homosexuels. Dans les deux cas, le législateur a voulu accorder la possibilité aux couples homosexuels de formaliser leur union. Cependant le législateur n’a pas eu pour objectif de rentre l’institution du mariage et celle du partenariat identiques, mais tout au plus comparables ou assimilables. Cela a donc eu des conséquences pour les couples homosexuels qui se voient bien souvent considérés comme des individus de seconde catégorie, ayant les mêmes devoirs que tous les citoyens mais pas les mêmes droits. Le monde du travail ne représente qu’un seul des nombreux domaines dans lesquels les Etats Membres ont encore du chemin à parcourir pour garantir l’égalité de traitement. (voir). La CJUE avec son arrêt Römer c./Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg du 10 mai 2011 continue sur sa lancée qui, depuis la jurisprudence Maruko a permis de soulever la question de la discrimination en raison de l’orientation sexuelle. Jurisprudence de la Cour de Justice de l'Union Européenne (CJUE) Affaire Maruko rendu par la CJCE[1] du 1er avril 2008 M. Maruko a conclu un partenariat enregistré avec un allemand affilié au vddb, un fond de pension spécial réservé aux personnes travaillant dans le milieu théâtral. A la mort de son partenaire, M. Maruko fit une demande au vddb pour obtenir une pension de conjoint survivant. L’organisme refusa de satisfaire à la demande de M.Maruko, en indiquant que les statuts ne prévoient pas le versement de cette pension aux partenaires enregistrés. Seuls les conjoints (donc unis par le mariage) sont susceptibles de bénéficier de cette prestation. M. Maruko a estimé qu’il y avait là une discrimination à raison de son orientation sexuelle. La CJCE, saisie d’un renvoi préjudiciel[2], c’est tout d’abord demandée si la question de la pension de conjoint survivant entrait bien dans le champ d’application de la Directive 2000/78 portant création d'un cadre général en faveur de l'égalité de traitement en matière d'emploi et de travail. Après avoir répondu positivement à cette première question, la Cour a répondu à l’interrogation qui nous intéresse, à savoir s’il y avait une discrimination envers les personnes ayant conclu un partenariat enregistré qui les placerait dans une situation moins favorable que celle dont bénéficieraient les personnes liées par le mariage. La Cour a rappelé que la Directive 2000/78 a pour objectif de lutter contre les discriminations liées aux travails, en faisant valoir ainsi le principe d’égalité de traitement. La discrimination fondée sur l’orientation sexuelle fait partie des discriminations retenues par la directive. Par ailleurs, la Cour a constaté que depuis 2004 selon la loi allemande le partenariat de vie est assimilé au mariage en ce qui concerne la pension de veuve ou de veuf. La Cour a fait valoir que si la juridiction allemande (à laquelle l’affaire est renvoyée) décide que les époux survivants et les partenaires de vie survivants sont dans une situation comparable en ce qui concerne cette prestation de survie, la règlementation allemande doit être considérée comme constitutive d’une discrimination directe fondée sur l’orientation sexuelle, au sens des articles 1er et 2, paragraphe 2, sous a), de la Directive 2000/78. “Les dispositions combinées des articles 1er et 2 de la directive 2000/78 s'opposent à une réglementation telle que celle en cause au principal en vertu de laquelle, après le décès de son partenaire de vie, le partenaire survivant ne perçoit pas une prestation de survie équivalente à celle octroyée à un époux survivant, alors que, en droit national, le partenariat de vie placerait les personnes de même sexe dans une situation comparable à celle des époux pour ce qui concerne ladite prestation de survie. Il incombe à la juridiction de renvoi de vérifier si un partenaire de vie survivant est dans une situation comparable à celle d'un époux bénéficiaire de la prestation de survie prévue par le régime de prévoyance professionnelle géré par la Versorgungsanstalt der deutschen Bühnen”. Selon la CJCE, les situations étaient comparables. Il y avait donc là une discrimination directe pour laquelle aucune justification ne pouvait être acceptée[3]. Cet arrêt constitua une avancée importante par rapport à la jurisprudence antérieure. Dans l’affaire Grant du 17 février 1998 (datant d’avant l’entrée en vigueur de la Directive 2000/78) la discrimination fondée sur l’orientation sexuelle n’avait pas été admise. Arrêt Römer du 11 mai 2011 Un ancien employé de la ville d’Hambourg ayant conclu un partenariat enregistré, a demandé de bénéficier du même système de calcul de pension auquel ont droit les employés mariés. Or, les statuts du Land de Hambourg prévoient une subdivision des classes d’impôts dans lequel les pensions complémentaires d’entreprise sont moins favorables aux personnes non mariées. Le partenariat civil n’est pas dans ce cas assimilé au mariage, ce qui implique qu’une personne liée par un partenariat tombe dans le champ des personnes non mariées et ne bénéficie pas du niveau de pension complémentaire auquel ont droit les personnes mariées. La question était encore une fois de savoir s’il y avait là une discrimination en raison de l’orientation sexuelle puisqu’une…
Case law of the European Court of Justice: the cases of Maruko and Römer
By Maëva Kokodoko Translation by Amy Jolley “Direct discrimination shall be taken to occur where one person is treated less favourably than another is, has been or would be treated in a comparable situation. Indirect discrimination shall be taken to occur where an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice would put persons having a particular religion or belief, a particular disability, a particular age, or a particular sexual orientation at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons…” Article 2 from the Directive 2000-78/CE of the Council from 27th November 2000 establishing a general framework for the equal treatment in employment and occupation The law relating to homosexual unions differs between Member States. The marriage of homosexual couples is authorised in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal and Spain. In France and Germany, for example, institutions which allow for the union of homosexual couples have been created – the PACS (contract of civil union) in France and the Lebenspartnerschaft (registered partnership) in Germany. If on one hand the PACS legally unites homosexual and heterosexual couples, the German Lebenspartnerschaft only applies to homosexual couples. In both cases, the legislature intended to give homosexual couples the possibility to legalise their union. However, the legislature had not intended for the institution of marriage and partnerships to be identical, but at the most, comparable or equivalent. Therefore, this has had consequences for homosexual couples, who often see themselves considered as second-class individuals, as having the same duties as all citizens but not the same rights. The workplace is just one of the many areas in which the Member States still have a long way to go before ensuring equal treatment. (see link). The ECJ, with its ruling on Römer versus Freie and Hansestadt Hamburg on 10th May 2011, continues to forge ahead in the same vein which, since the Maruko case law, has helped to raise the issue of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. Case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) The Maruko Case delivered by the ECJ [1] from 1st April 2008 Mr. Maruko has entered into a registered partnership with a German affiliated with the VddB, a special pension fund reserved for persons working within the theatre industry. Upon the death of his partner, Mr. Maruko made an application to the VddB in order to access a surviving spouse's pension. The agency refused to comply with Mr. Maruko's request, indicating that the statutes do not provide for the payment of this pension to the registered partners. Only spouses (united by marriage) are eligible to benefit from this allowance. Mr. Maruko considered that this was discrimination as a result of his sexual orientation. The ECJ, on hearing the preliminary ruling [2], was to firstly consider whether the issue of the surviving spouse's pension fell well within the scope of the Directive 2000/78, establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation. After having positively responded to this first question, the Court answered the question which interests us, that is to know whether there was discrimination against persons who have entered into a registered partnership which would put them in a less favourable position than that which would benefit the persons united by marriage. The Court recalled that the Directive 2000/78 intended to fight against discriminations related to employment, by making the argument for equal treatment. Discrimination based on sexual orientation forms part of the discriminations retained by the Directive. In addition, the Court noted that, since 2004, according to German legislation life partnership is comparable to marriage with regards to the widow or widower's pension. The Court argued that if the German court (to which the case will be refered back) decides that the surviving spouses and life partners are in a comparable situation as regards this provision of survival, the German regulations must be considered as constitutive of direct discrimination based on sexual orientation, according to Articles 1 and 2, paragraph 2, under a), of Directive 2000/78. “The combined provisions of Articles 1 and 2 of the Directive 2000/78 preclude legislation such as that at issue whereby, after the death of his life partner, the surviving partner does not receive a survival allowance equivalent to that granted to a surviving spouse, whereas in national law, the life partnership would place persons of the same sex in a situation comparable to that of spouses so far as concerns the aforementioned survival allowance. It rests with the court to determine whether the surviving life partner is in a situation comparable to that of a beneficiary spouse of the survival allowance provided for by the professional pension scheme managed by the Versorgungsanstalt der deutschen Bühnen.” According to the ECJ, the situations were comparable. There was therefore a direct discrimination for which no justification could be accepted [3]. This decision constituted significant headway over the precedent cases. In Grant, from 17th February 1998 (prior to the enforcement of the Directive 2000/78), discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation had not been accepted. Römer case, 11th May 2011 A former employee of the city of Hamburg, having entered into a registered partnership, sought to benefit from the same pension calculation system to which the married employees are entitled. However, the statutes of Hamburg province include a subdivision of tax classes into which supplementary business pension plans are less favourable to unmarried persons. Civil Partnership, in this case, is not comparable to marriage, which implies that a person bound by a partnership falls within the same scope of unmarried persons and does not enjoy the level of supplementary pension rights to which married persons are entitled. The issue was once again to understand whether there was discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation since regulations which are unfavourable to unmarried couples are also unfavourable to couples (homosexual) having entered into a partnership. In this case, the ECJ has followed the reasoning of a 'comparable situation' from the Maruko case law. It states that in order to be entitled to the same pension, the situation must be comparable (not identical!)…
Une carte subjective de la ville: Cluj vu par nous-mêmes à travers les Gendered and Artistic Networks
Traduction d'Adelina Ionescu La carte [?klu?na?poka] a été créée pendant un atelier organisé à Cluj-Napoca (Roumanie), dans le cadre du projet « Visualizing Traditionalism », qui est fortement lié au Festival Transeuropa 2011. GenderArtNet, un projet expérimental de cartographie, constitue le point de départ ; il explore l’interrelation du genre, de l’ethnicité, de la race, de la classe sociale et des sexualités dans l’Europe contemporaine. Un groupe de personnes s'intéressant à la cartographie et à la classification, ont discuté et travaillé ensemble à Cluj-Napoca (Roumanie) pendant une semaine. Certains d’entre eux sont venus en avion, d’autres en bus, à pied ou en faisant du stop, selon qu’ils viennent de Cluj ou d’ailleurs. Diverses conversations sur Cluj-Napoca et la Transylvanie ont eu lieu. En utilisant la polysémie des symboles et des déplacements imaginaires, les discours sur la ville et la nation ont commencé à s’ouvrir à de surprenants raccourcis, à des diversions temporelles, ou à des géométries élastiques. Le consumérisme a été vu comme un vecteur des extrémités spatiales – « Le centre commercial est au début ou à la fin du monde ? » – ou une force d’anéantissement – « L’hôpital qui soigne les maladies mentales et celui soignant le cancer ainsi que le cimetière sont ignorés à cause du 1er et du 2nd centre commercial.» L’omniprésence des édifices religieux réunissant des communautés de personnes essayant d’échapper à « la peur du lendemain » a tournoyé à travers le temps : pendant la période communiste, pendant le Moyen-Âge, puis par le sol où l’archéologie se confronte à des questions liées àl’identité nationale pour revenir à la religion : « ces os, sont-ils catholiques ?» ; les frontières ont été perçues en tant qu’ horizons : « Tous les jeunes regardent l’aéroport ». Les figures historiques, ressuscitées en programmes européens, ont été vues aux côtés du retour aux pratiques ancestrales. La ville des étudiants Erasmus et la région où un nom est crucifié. La compression du temps et de l’espace, le bus Roissy qui amenait les touristes à la tour Eiffel amène maintenant les utilisateurs de Cluj à la prochaine station. Le centre-ville en tant que force expulsatrice, qui ne laisse pas entrer les Roms, le centre-ville en tant qu’espace de traduction culturelle pour la confession se déroulant à la périphérie. Le « triangle de la paternité » qui unit la mairie, l’administration et l’université, où la ville est projetée et conçue. Et les bars et la musique, et les bars et l’échange des connaissances, et les bars et la circulation. Et la circulation et les rencontres dans autant de langues avec ceux qui les parlent ou refusent de les apprendre. Une carte, donc. Au recto. Un arrière-plan. Les formes des rues ont été empruntées et déplacées aléatoirement de Openstreetmap, le wikipedia des cartes. Différents goûts du hasard, une sélection difficile. Une grille.. Six régions ont été identifiées et classées, inspirées par une visite du Jardin botanique. « Ornamental », « Geolyrical », « Taxonomical », « Afraid of tomorrow », « Fermentational », « Miraculous », « Exobotanical », « The end of the world ». Dans la tension entre les étiquettes de grilles et les réseaux de rues déconstruites, les symboles et les fragments de texte cherchent des affinités, s’attirent et se repoussent l’une à l’autre. Au verso. La polysémie des symboles cherchant un écho dans les mots clés. La classification périodique des éléments instables et subjectifs. Pour plus d’informations, veuillez visiter la galeérie de photos ci-jointe au http://www.genderartnet.eu/cluj/ Texte par GenderArtNet.eu Édité par Diana Prisacariu
A subjective map of the city: Cluj seen by us through Gendered and Artistic Networks
The map [?klu? na?poka] has been produced during a workshop held in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) in the context of “Visualizing Transnationalism”, a project strongly connected to Transeuropa Festival 2011. The point of departure is the project GenderArtNet, an experimental mapping project exploring the interrelation of gender, ethnicity, race, class and sexualities in contemporary Europe. For a week, a group of people interested in cartography, classification and tagging discussed and worked together in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Some came by plane, other by bus, walking or hitchhiking, living in Cluj, or living abroad. Different conversations about Cluj-Napoca and Transylvania took place. Using the polysemy of icons and fictional displacements, the discourses about the city and the nation began to open up to surprising shortcuts, temporal diversions, elastic geometries. Consumerism was seen as a vector for spatial extremities -“The mall is at the beginning or at the end of the world?”- or a force of obliteration -“Mental disease hospital and cancer, cemetery are ignored because of Mall one and Mall two”. The omnipresence of religious buildings gathering communities of people seeking to escape the “fear of tomorrow” spiraled through time: through the communist period, through the Middle Age, then through the ground where archeology meets questions of national identity to get back to religion: “are these bones catholic?” Borders were seen as horizons: “Every young person is looking at the airport”. Historical figures resurrected as European programs were seen side by side with the revival of ancestral practices. The city of Erasmus students and the region where a noun is crucified. Time and space compression, the Roissy bus that used to drive tourists to the Eiffel Tower brings Cluj commuters to their next station. The city center as an expelling force, leaving no room for the presence of Romas, city center as a space of cultural translation for the confession taking place at the peripheries. The “triangle of authorship” that connects the city hall, administration and university, where the city is planned and designed. And the bars and the music, and the bars and the exchange of knowledge, and the bars and the flows. And the flows and the encounters in so many languages with those who speak them or refuse to learn them. A map, then. On the recto. A background. From Openstreetmap, the wikipedia for maps, street shapes were borrowed and displaced at random. Different tastes of randomness, a difficult selection. A grid. Six regions were identified and labeled inspired by a visit to the Botanical Garden. “Ornamental”, “Geolyrical”, “Taxonomical”, “Afraid of tomorrow”, “Fermentational”, “Miraculous”, “Exobotanical”, “The end of the world”. In the tension between the grid labels and the deconstructed street networks, icons and text fragments are looking for affinities, attract and repulse each other. On the verso. The polysemy of icons looking for an echo in keywords. A periodic table of unstable subjective elements. For more information, please check the attached picture gallery and http://www.genderartnet.eu/cluj/ Text by GenderArtNet.eu edited by Diana Prisacariu
EA Bologna ricerca tirocinanti
European Alternatives è un’organizzazione non-profit con uffici a Londra, Parigi, Bologna, Roma e Cluj-Napoca. European Alternatives è sostenuta da diversi partners privati e istituzionali, e può contare su vari team di giovani volontari in ognuna delle città. European Alternatives vuole esplorare il potenziale di una politica e di una cultura transnazionale, con la convinzione che oggi non sia possibile capire le sfide relative alla partecipazione democratica, all'uguaglianza sociale e all'innovazione culturale se ci si ferma ai confini delle singole nazioni. European Alternatives propone tirocini formativi e di orientamento nella sede di Bologna. Sono due le tipologie previste. 1. Assistant project manager – Contribuire all’organizzazione e coordinamento di campagne transnazionali; – Networking con enti pubblici o privati, associazioni, organizzazioni presenti a Bologna e legati ai temi e alle attività di European Alternatives; – Azioni di fundraising dell'associazione; – Realizzazione di application per bandi di finanziamento europei; – Realizzazione di articoli e ricerche sui temi centrali per l'organizzazione; – Eventuale partecipazione agli eventi europei dei progetti di European Alternatives; – Contribuire all’organizzazione del Festival Transeuropa 2011 a Bologna; – Contribuire all’organizzazione, partecipazione e coordinamento di eventi pubblici e seminari di approfondimento. 2. Assistant editor – Costruzione di database tematici e di stakeholders; – Traduzione e correzione di articoli e testi dall'inglese o dal francese; – Azioni di fundraising dell'associazione; – Realizzazione di articoli e ricerche sui temi centrali per l'organizzazione. – Realizzazione di application per bandi di finanziamento europei; – Partecipazione agli eventi europei dei progetti di European Alternatives; – Contribuire al coordinamento e al lavoro di segreteria dell’associazione bolognese; – Contribuire all’organizzazione del Festival Transeuropa 2011 a Bologna; – Contribuire all’organizzazione, partecipazione e coordinamento di eventi pubblici e seminari di approfondimento. Periodo: da un minimo di 3 mesi a massimo di 6 mesi: 3 giorni a settimana da concordare con i responsabili dell’ufficio bolognese. Rimborso: 10 euro al giorno (comprensivi di costo trasporto in bus e pasto) Clausola: sottoscrizione della carta etica Per la selezione, si prega di scrivere una e-mail con oggetto Tirocinio: (1 o 2) a bologna@euroalter.com con allegato CV e lettera motivazionale. I candidati saranno contattati dai referenti di European Alternatives, Damiano Razzoli e Sara Saleri per stabilire un appuntamento. Nota: per chi fosse studente all’Università di Bologna, European Alternatives ha stipulato una “convenzione per lo svolgimento delle attività di tirocinio” con l’Ateneo.
Non-discriminazione in base allorientamento sessuale
Le coppie sposate ed i partner registrati sono in una situazione comparabile. image: freehindou.com Intervista : Maëva Kokodoko Traduzione: Greta Galeazzi Un mese dopo la decisione della Corte di Giustizia dell’Unione Europea (CGUE) dell’11 maggio 2011, numerosi interrogativi si pongono sull’impatto della giurisprudenza Maruko/Römer (vedere sintesi dei casi) e della Direttiva 2000/78/CE che stabilisce un quadro generale per la parità di trattamento in materia di occupazione e di condizioni di lavoro. Nei due casi, la legislazione nazionale accordava un trattamento meno favorevole alle persone che avevano sottoscritto un’unione civile registrata rispetto al trattamento accordato alle persone sposate. La CGUE ha affermato che, nei due casi, la situazione delle coppie sposate e di quelle unite in un patto civile registrato è paragonabile. Una legge che sfavorisce una coppia in un patto civile costituisce una discriminazione diretta[1]. Abbiamo posto alcune domande al Prof. Jean-Philippe Lhernould, professore di Diritto Privato, membro dell’Institut de droit social et sanitaire dell’Université de Poitiers, esperto presso la Commissione Europea ed autore di numerose pubblicazioni tra cui “Diritti sociali delle coppie omosessuali”. Maëva: La CGUE lascia al giudice nazionale un largo margine di manovra per determinare se le situazione è comparabile. Questa soluzione non è oggi poco soddisfacente o ipocrita da parte della CGUE? Jean-Philippe Lhernould: Avete ragione se consideriamo che la comparazione è l’elemento chiave del processo di valutazione dell’esistenza di una discriminazione. Detto ciò, il processo di rinvio pregiudiziale si basa sulla cooperazione tra la CGUE ed il giudice nazionale, che implica che quest’ultimo conserva un margine di manovra. M.: La CGUE assume in modo sufficiente un ruolo di protettrice del diritto alla non discriminazione in base all’orientamento sessuale? JP L.:Domanda molto generale. Diciamo che la CGUE sceglie la via che sembra giuridicamente più corretta. Il fatto che qualifichi come “discriminazione diretta” le situazioni presenti nelle sentenze Römer et Maruko può portarci a considerarla come una protettrice di questo diritto. M.: Dovrebbe definire in modo più preciso la nozione di situazione comparabile? JP L.:Delle sentenze future giudicanti fatti differenti potrebbe dare un’occasione del genere alla CGUE. Non bisogna però dimenticare che il ruolo del giudice è risolvere un litigio, non legiferare. M.: D’altra parte la CGUE, indicando che la discriminazione negli affari Römer et Maruko è stata diretta, ha forse protetto maggiormente i diritti delle coppie unite in patti civili rispetto al giudice nazionale tedesco che ha affermato che nel caso Maruko la discriminazione è stata indiretta ed ha così lasciato spazio a possibili giustificazioni. JP L:Infatti. Il giudice tedesco avrebbe pertanto dovuto seguire la qualificazione sostenuta dalla CGUE. M.: Le coppie omosessuali (in un patto civile) hanno gli stessi doveri ma non gli stessi diritti delle coppie eterosessuali (spostate). Cosa pensate di questa affermazione? JP L:Dipende dall’analisi delle legislazioni nazionali interessate. In Francia, i due status sono praticamente identici, ad esclusione dell’adozione. Come giurista, non ho alcun commento su questa restrizione, che riflette una questione molto delicata. M.: Pensate che le legislazioni nazionali facciano troppo spesso referenza all’idea tradizionale di matrimonia quando si parla di diritti, e dimenticano questa referenza per i doveri (contributi e tasse)? JP L: Domanda interessante. Uno studio più approfondito potrebbe in effetti rivelare che il regime matrimoniale appaia sostanzialmente nel campo dei diritti. Un regime contributivo (fondato sulle imposte) sostiene meno le differenze legate al regime matrimoniale piuttosto che la causa di prestazione che risiede nei contributi versati. M.: Nella sentenza Römer la Corte indica che il partenariato civile si trova “in una situazione giuridica e fattuale paragonabile a quella di una persona sposata in ciò che concerne la pensione”. L’elemento “fattuale” indica che il giudice nazionale riesaminerà la questione caso per caso? JP L.:E’ un problema che ho sollevato nel mio commento alla sentenza Römer. E’ difficile sapere ciò che la CGUE ha voluto dire, od anche se la Corte abbia voluto dare un significato preciso a queste parole. Se paragoniamo la giurisprudenza uomini/donne, il paragone è fatto in funzione del beneficio accordato, e non dalla situazione fattuale. M.: Se il caso entra nel campo di applicazione della direttiva 2000/78, è preferibile invocare la direttiva o la Convenzione Europea dei Diritti dell’Uomo (CEDU)? Per quale motivo? JP L.:Domanda molto interessante. Davanti al giudice nazionale, in teoria, non si può invocare la direttiva poiché non ha effetto diretto orizzontale (occorre quindi ricorrere all’interpretazione conforme del diritto interno). Il vantaggio della CEDU è che può essere invocata direttamente… ma bisognerà convincere il giudice, in assenza di una sentenza della Corte Europea dei Diritti dell’Uomo sulle discriminazioni legate all’orientamento sessuale, di applicare una disposizione generale (art. 14) ad un caso concreto. Peraltro, il regime di giustificazione non è lo stesso. M.: La nozione di situazione paragonabile potrebbe in futuro essere generalizzata ed utilizzata (per esempio come la nozione del buon padre di famiglia) per accordare più diritti alle coppie omosessuali (in un partenariato civile)? JP L.: La Halde (Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l'Egalité) l’ha già utilizzata. La comparazione è la chiave dell’azione nella discriminazione: è quindi il punto di partenza per rispondere ad una richiesta di diritti da parte delle coppie omosessuali. La questione non è di “accordare più diritto” ma di ristabilire l’uguaglianza di trattamento. Ulteriori informazioni: Krzysztof Smiszer, Discriminazione in base all’orientamento sessuale ed i casi Maruko e Römer della Corte di Giustizia dell’UE (Slides, ingl.) Decisione della Corte di Giustizia dell’UE Römer del 11 maggio 2011 Direttiva 2000/78/CE del Consiglio del 27 novembre 2000 che stabilisce un quadro generale per la parità di trattamento in materia di occupazione e di condizioni di lavoro. [1] La giurisdizione tedesca alla quale il caso Maruko era stato rinviato, ha giudicato che la discriminazione è stata indiretta.
Non-discrimination based on sexual orientation
image: freehindou.com Interview by Maeva Kokodoko Translation by Dierdre Brophy It has now been one month since the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of May 11th 2011, and several questions come to the fore concerning the impact of the Maruko/Römer cases (See case summaries) and of Directive 2000/78/EC which sets out a general framework for equal treatment in employment and work. In both cases, the national legislation in question gave less favourable treatment to registered partners in comparison with married couples. Both decisions of the Court of Justice confirmed that the situation of married couples and registered partnerships is comparable. The Court held that provisions which disadvantage couples in registered partnerships, in the cases in question, constitute direct discrimination[1]. We invited Professor Jean-Philippe Lhernould, lecturer in private law and a member of the Institute of social and health law at the University of Poitiers, expert at the European Commission, and author of numerous publications including « Social Law and Same-sex Couples » to answer some questions on the subject. Maëva : The CJEU leaves a wide margin of appreciation to the national judge to determine whether situations are comparable. Isn’t the Court's position unacceptable and hypocritical? Jean-Philippe Lhernould : That would certainly appear to be the case when we take into consideration that comparison is the key element of the process of evaluation of the existence of discrimination. Having said that, the reference for a preliminary ruling is based on cooperation between the Court of Justice and the national judge, which implies that a certain margin of appreciation is maintained at national level. M : Do you believe that the Court of Justice is currently fulfilling its obligation to protect the right to nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation. JP L : Well that is a very general question. To put it another way, one might say that the Court aims for the solution that it judges to be most correct from a legal point of view. The fact that the Court decided that the cases of Römer and Maruko constituted “direct discrimination” can however be objectively viewed as protectionist. M: Should the Court provide further detail on the concept of comparable situations? JP L : Future cases, based on different fact situations, might provide the Court with such an opportunity. However, don't forget that the role of the judge is not to legislate, but to decide the case in hand. M : On the other hand, in view of the declaration by the Court of Justice that the cases of Maruko and Römer involved direct discrimination, perhaps it has taken a more protectionist stance than that taken by the German court, which judged the discrimination to be indirect, thus leaving open the possibility for justification of the discrimination. JL P : Exactly. The German judge would however have had to apply the qualification set down by the Court of Justice. M : Would you agree that same-sex couples in a registered partnership have the same duties, but not the same social rights as oppositesex married couples? JP L : That depends on the legislation in each country. In France, the legal status of both is almost identical, except concerning adoption. As a lawyer, I do not wish to comment on that restriction, which is based on a delicate issue. M : Do you think that there is a tendency in national legislation to invoke traditional idea of marriage when the issue of rights or advantages for samesex couples arises, but to avoid it when it comes to duties or payments? JP L: That’s an interesting question. However, the system of marriage is based essentially on rights. A regime based on contributions (based on the payment of allowances) brings the institutions of marriage and civil partnership even closer as the allowance is based on what has been contributed. M : In the Römer case the Court notes that the life-partner must be “in a legal and factual situation comparable to that of a married person as regards that pension”. Does the “factual” element mean that the national judge will have to treat the issue on a case by case basis? JP L : That is one of the issues raised in my written commentary on the Römer case. It is difficult to determine the intention of the Court of Justice regarding that phrase, or even if a particular meaning was intended at all. In the cases on male/female equality, the comparison is based on the advantage sought, rather than the factual situation. M : Where a person comes within the remit of Directive 2000/78, is it better to base the case on the directive or the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) ? JP L : Interesting question. In principle, the directive cannot be invoked before the national judge as it does not have horizontal direct effect, and must therefore be interpreted in accordance with national law. The ECHR can be relied upon directly, but the judge would have to be convinced to apply Article 14 of the Convention, which may be difficult in the absence of a decision by the European Court of Human Rights on discrimination based on sexual orientation. Besides, there are different rules for justification of the discrimination set out in the ECHR. M : Could the Court expand the notion of “comparable situations” in the future to grant greater rights to same sex couples in a registered partnership ? JP L : HALDE (The High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination and Equality) has already used the idea in this way. Comparability is key in any case on discrimination, and is therefore the starting point for the rights of samesex couples. The issue is not to “give more rights” to samesex couples but to re-establish equality of treatment. Further information: Krzysztof Smiszer, Sexual orientation discrimination and the Maruko and Römer ECJ cases (Slides) Decision of the CJEU Römer of May 11th 2011 Directive 2000/78/EC of the Council of November 7th 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation [1]…
Actuellement muets (CURRENTly silenced)
Article par Federico Guerrieri Traduction par Mélanie Boulland Aujourd’hui nous nous retrouvons à faire face àun énième coup porté contre la liberté de la presse en Europe : la chaîne de télévision italienne « Current » est sur le point d’être annulée par Sky Italia. La raison officielle donnée par le groupe de Rupert Murdoch a été attribuée à une chute du taux d’écoute . Sky, dans son communiqué de presse officiel, insiste sur le fait que « la performance (de Current) n’est malheureusement plus à son apogée », citant que le taux d’écoute moyen a chuté de 20% par rapport à l’année précédente. Cependant, c’est là où l’argument ne tient pas la route : depuis sa création il y a environ 3 ans, Current Italia a constamment été capable de produire des programmes de grande qualité. C’est un fait évident puisque non seulement la chaîne a reçu une reconnaissance largement répandue ; mais qu’en plus une pléthore de récompenses nationales et internationales lui a été décernée, parmi lesquelles le Prix Rossellini, la récompense de la liberté de l’Information décernée par l’Union Nationale des Reporters, et en 2010 la récompense « Hot Bird TV » en tant que meilleure chaîne d’Europe. La véritable motivation qui a poussée Sky à ne pas renouveler son contrat avec Current Italia est dû au fait que Current est perçue comme une chaîne à problèmes dans sa recherche constante de la vérité, mais également dû à sa réputation d’être une des rares voix isolées qui a résisté au gag de l’information imposé par la Piduista ou le gouvernement Mason de Silvio Berlusconi. Current n’a jamais évité la critique des pouvoirs en place, de Rupert Murdoch lui-même en passant par l’Eglise Catholique. Al Gore, le fondateur du programme de télévision, a accusé en des termes douteux, l’entreprise New Corp de Murdoch, d’avoir forcé Sky Italia à annuler Current après avoir « renvoyé un journaliste de gauche (Keith Olbermann) qui a été critique vis-à-vis de Murdoch ».Gore a également fait une autre déclaration intéressante bien pire : « Sky Italia est actuellement en train de négocier avec le gouvernement pour entrer dans le marché terrestre digital et a besoin d’un accord de Berlusconi pour y aller ». C’est encore un autre exemple clair de ce qui se passe dans un marché fortement oligopolistique : plutôt que de se concurrencer, les principales compagnies trouvent un moyen de s’entendre sur un accord leur permettant de servir leurs propres intérêts et leurs gains personnels. Et ceux qui payent pour cela sont les citoyens eux-mêmes, qui voient leur droit d´être informé sapé de plus en plus chaque jour. En 2009, Alternatives Européennes a présenté au Parlement européen un rapport sur la situation des médias en Italie. Ses recherches soulignaient le problème du manque de liberté et de pluralisme de l’information en Italie, et le décrivait comme un virus ayant le potentiel d’infecter un certain nombre d’autres pays européens. Le Parlement européen à cette époque était composé d’une large majorité d’éléments conservateurs qui ont voté contre la résolution d’une sanction de l’Italie, par seulement une majorité de trois votes. Aujourd’hui, en seulement deux ans plus tard, nous sommes à présent témoins d’un processus de « Berlusconisation » en Europe, plus que jamais alarmant, qui emporte dans son sillage de nombreux affronts à la liberté et au pluralisme de l’information. Et comment : En Hongrie par exemple, ont été votées des lois tellement draconiennes que l’OSCE n’a pas hésité à les condamner comme étant des lois « totalitaires ». La Bulgarie ne doit pas non plus être dispensée de tout reproche quand elle est reconnue comme le pays où la liberté de la presse est la plus restreinte d’Europe. Pendant que la France avec ses récentes restrictions sur Internet, imposées par le gouvernement Sarkozy, a été pour la première fois placée sur la liste des pays sous surveillance de Reporters sans Frontières, en étant classée comme un « ennemi d’Internet ». Rupert Murdoch lui-même est en train d’essayer d’acquérir BskyB : et s’il devait y parvenir, il se retrouverait alors dans une position dominante sur le marché des médias britanniques. D’autres évènements dans le paysage politique font pleinement écho aux sentiments ressentis dans cet article. La révolution espagnole par exemple, a été délibérément ignorée par les médias locaux et l’on ne peut oublier que l’une des principales demandes du mouvement espagnol de protestation est précisément la nécessité d’une plus grande liberté des médias. Il est absolument nécessaire que cette question de la liberté et du pluralisme de l’information soit considérée au niveau européen. C’est cette nécessité qui a poussé Alternatives Européennes à lancer la campagne intitulée « Initiative européenne pour le Pluralisme des Médias » L’absence d’une quelconque liberté d’information est une attaque réelle et authentique aux droits fondamentaux des citoyens. Current Italia est un des rares médias qui a le courage d’enquêter, de raconter, et par-dessus tout, D’INFORMER, le rendant en quelque sorte unique à la télévision européenne et italienne. Pour cette raison, Alternatives européennes soutient la campagne pour sauver Current Italia, et espère que la chaîne restera très visible sur SKY. Nous encourageons aussi Al Gore à amener Current TV sur la TNT, de façon à ce qu’elle puisse être visible pour ceux qui n’ont pas les moyens de payer pour les chaînes câblées, étant donné que nous croyons que la liberté de l’information est un droit pour chacun. Current TV suggère que vous aussi vous aidiez sa cause, en écrivant directement à l’adresse suivante pour demander que Current TV ne soit pas retirer des ondes : tom.mockridge@skyTV.it, responsable de Sky Italia.
CURRENTly silenced
Article by Federico Guerrieri. Translation by Chris Mckee Today we find ourselves dealing with the umpteenth blow struck against the freedom of the press in Europe: the Italian television channel ‘Current’ is set to be cancelled by Sky Italia. The official motivation given by Rupert Murdoch’s group has been attributed to an alleged drop in viewing figures. Sky, in its official press release, emphasised that “the performance (of Current) is unfortunately no longer on the rise”, citing that the average viewing figures had fallen by 20% in relation to the previous year. However this is where their argument does not seem to hold up: from the moment of its creation around three years ago, Current Italia has been able to consistently produce programs of the highest quality. This has been evidenced not only from the widespread recognition that the channel has received, but also in the plethora of national and international awards that it has been given, which include the Rosellini Prize, the Freedom of Information Award given by the National Union of Reporters, and the 2010 Hot Bird TV Award as the best news channel in Europe. The real motivation that has pushed Sky to not renew its contract with Current Italia is that Current is seen as a “problem channel” due to its constant search for the truth, and its status as one of the few and isolated voices that have resisted the gag on information imposed by the Piduista or Mason-like government of Silvio Berlusconi. Current has never shirked from criticising the powers that be, from Rupert Murdoch himself to the Catholic Church. Al Gore, the founder of the television program, has accused Murdoch’s News Corp, in no uncertain terms, of having forced Sky Italia to cancel Current after having “hired a left-wing journalist (Keith Olbermann) who has often been very critical of Murdoch.” Gore has also made another interesting claim that is worth considering: “Sky Italia is currently negotiating with the government to enter into the terrestrial digital market and needs the all-clear from Berlusconi for it to go-ahead.” This here is yet another clear example of what happens in a strongly oligopolic market: rather than competing, the main companies find a means of agreement to further their own interests and personal gains. And the ones punished for this are the citizens themselves, who see their right to be informed eroded more and more every day. In 2009, European Alternatives presented the European Parliament a dossier on the state of the media in Italy. Its findings outlined the problem of freedom and the pluralism of information in Italy, described as a virus with the potential to infect a number of other countries in Europe. The European Parliament at the time, composed of a large majority of conservative elements, voted against a resolution to sanction Italy by a majority of only three votes. Today, only two years down the line, we are now witnessing a process of “Berlusconisation” in Europe that is as alarming as ever, bringing with it a number of serious affronts to freedom and pluralism of information. And how: Hungary for example has now voted in laws so draconian that the OSCE has not hesitated to condemn as “totalitarian”. Bulgaria must also not be let off the hook for its attempts to be recognised as the country where press freedom is the most restricted in Europe, while France, thanks to the recent internet restrictions imposed by Sarkozy’s government, has for the first time been placed on the Reporters without Border’s list of countries under surveillance for being classed as an “enemy of the internet.” Rupert Murdoch himself is attempting to acquire BskyB: should he succeed, he would find himself in a dominant position within the British media market. Other events on the European political landscape fully echo the sentiments explored in this piece . The Spanish Revolution, for example, was deliberately ignored by the local media and one cannot forget that one of the main demands of the Spanish protest movement was precisely the need for greater media freedom. It is absolutely necessary that the issue of the freedom and pluralism of information is considered on a European level. It is this requirement that has pushed European Alternatives to launch a campaign entitled “European Initiative for Media Pluralism”. The absence of any freedom of information is a real and genuine attack on the fundamental rights of the people. Current Italia is one of the few media outlets that has the courage to investigate, to tell, and above all, TO INFORM, making it somewhat unique in Italian and in European television. For this reason European Alternatives supports the campaign to save Current Italia, and hopes that the channel remains very much visible on SKY. We also encourage Al Gore to bring Current TV onto terrestrial television, so that it can be visible to those who cannot afford to pay for cable television, as we believe that the freedom of information is a right for everyone. Current TV has also stressed that you too can help its cause, by writing directly to the following address to ask that Current TV is not taken off the airwaves: tom.mockridge@skyTV.it, Chief Executive of Sky Italia.
Ma ville, mon quartier
Transeuropa Elections Count-down!
We are delighted to announce we are arranging for our first-ever round of online voting – part of a wider drive to get turn the network into an innovative experiment in bottom-up transnational democracy! All existing and new members will be called to vote on thematic priorities for the Network's local groups to work on in September and October. A series of proposals emerging from the recent Network meeting in Sofia will soon be published on this website. How wil it work? Elections take place between July 29 and August 5th. Any existing member or new member who signs up before August 4th will receive an email with a token to securely vote online. What's the network about? Read here! How can I become a member? Information here!
Interview with Cristina Bermejo Toro, Confederal Secretary of the youth section of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) Madrid
Interview by: Monica Tinelli Interview with Cristina Bermejo Toro, Confederal Secretary of the youth section of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) Madrid, the number one Spanish Trade Union in terms of number of members and delegates elected in the union elections. The youth section of this Union is pursuing actions and campaigns not only by promoting social conditions and decent work for young people but also with the improvement of areas such as health, education, environment, drug addiction, young migrants, disabled or excluded.Being an active part in supporting the rights of young people, participating in both the Spanish Youth Council and in the boards at regional and local levels, the CCOO has recently published investigations on the conditions of the internships in Spain emphasizing the critical points and promoting demands for changes in the fight against the exploitation of young workers. What purpose do you think internships should serve? The aim of internships should be, first, contacting students with the labor market. But placements should always have a formative character, alternating with the theoretical studies in college or vocational school (= vocational training). In many European countries legal regulations for internships are often non-existent or extremely limited. Why do you think this is? In your experience, is this leading to a possible misuse of the practice of internships? In Spain legal regulation is virtually nonexistent. There are only some cooperation agreements between companies and universities, but the conditions governing them are minimal. There is no general law and this has led to a misuse of the practices, because in many cases become the formula for doing legal contracts. Do you see a need for greater legal safeguards and labour rights for interns? What are your proposals to improve the situation of interns? It is absolutely necessary to regulate the conditions of development practices. Our proposals are: a) There should be a collaboration agreement from the school with businesses (eg in Spain, many companies offer internships unilaterally, without learning centres); b) The practices must be performed by students who are in training, not by people who have already obtained the degree (to them and they can make contracts.); c) The partnership should pick up conditions such as training program, day and hour, maximum of practices, financial aid (not wages), insurance, etc. Practices should never be an employment relationship; d) Trainees must be supervised by a tutor in the company and the other in their school, who ensure that the conditions of the agreement; e) Trainees within the educational process, should be aware of safety and occupational health of the company (health & safety); f) The representation of workers or the union in the company must report the number of trainees and what functions do, to make sure they do not replace the functions of other workers. In July 2010 the European Parliament passed a resolution demanding the Commission to provide a study of internships in Europe, and come up with some proposals to improve the legislative environment. Do you see a possible role for European institutions in improving the legislation regarding internships in Europe? The European institutions have an obligation to at least establish a basic regulatory practices, as it is a phenomenon that is occurring throughout Europe and in many cases, in situations of fraud and as a form of sub-contracting. What do you think of the proposal to set up up a European Mark of Quality for internships, guaranteeing that internships offered are effectively formative and non-exploitative? Should or could this mark be binding, with companies not fulfilling minimum standards unable to advertise for internships for a certain period of time? Regulation at European level should be aimed at ensuring the quality of practice, considering them as a formative process and not as a form of exploitation of young workers. Therefore, they must also consider ways to penalize companies that do not meet quality standards. What do you think of proposals to develop a minimum retribution based on local living cost standards? Who should bear the cost for this? Establish a minimum wage is the same as setting a salary. To do this, for example in Spain, and there are contracts for young people within the labor laws that involve a pay cut, but with all the guarantees of social protection. Practices must not nullify these forms of contract with lower pay and no social protection. Therefore, trainees should receive financial assistance for their studies on transportation, meals or lodging, but not as a salary.
Trans Europa… Rights and discrimination of trans people in Europe
Alessandro Valera interviews Julia Ehrt, from Transgender Europe Below: Julia Ehrt. Photo by Anja Weber Julia Ehrt is one of the two co-chairs of Transgender Europe, a network association uniting trans* organisations in more than 20 European countries. The aim of Transgender Europe is to network among trans* organisations to share information for the well-being of transgender people living in Europe (not only in countries who are member of the EU, but also of the Council of Europe) and to be a voice of the community on a political level. AV: What are the main forms of discrimination towards trans* people in Europe? JE: We need to distinguish between direct and indirect forms of discrimination. Direct discrimination is what people face on a daily basis in the streets or on the work place. Indirect discrimination is what we refer to as structural, inflicted by the state itself or by the legislation. The main forms of indirect discrimination are the difficulties arising from legal gender recognition –the possibility to change your first name or your gender mark in official documentation. In several countries this is not possible at all. In the countries where this is possible very often there are unreasonable requirements: people have to prove they are permanently sterile, they have to have had sexual reassignment surgery and in all country one has to present a diagnosis of transexuality or similar documentation, which basically means a diagnosis of being mentally ill. Changing name and gender is fundamental, because without it multiple other discriminations will follow, as the person will not have papers identifying them. Simple things like picking up mail at the post office, paying with a credit card or checking-in in an airport can become impossible. Direct discrimination is not much better. The main fields are access to the work market, hate crimes and hate violence including hate killings. We gather data in these areas through various research projects including Trans Murder Monitoring Project, which records killing of trans* people worldwide. In the last 3.5 years in Europe we had more than 41 trans* people killed. Another research from the UK conducted with data from the TransEuro Study (2008) confirmed that 80% of trans* people receive negative comments, verbal, physical and sexual harassment in their everyday life. This means that if you are a visible trans* person you face direct discrimination every day, as that remaining 20% are those people whose trans* condition is not visible. Access to the job market is equally catastrophic: unemployment rates are considerably higher than in the rest of population. AV: You are mentioning the possibility of changing gender from male to female or vice-versa. What about those people who do not associate themselves with either (or both) gender? JE: I see this as a two-step struggle. If you are able to change your gender from male to female without unreasonable conditions like sterilisation, this would be an important step in the right direction. However, having more options would not do harm to anyone while helping a lot of people who do not see themselves properly labelled as either male or female. AV: What is the country in Europe in which the dignity of trans* people is best respected, both in terms of social attitudes and legal provision? JE: It is very difficult to judge and measure social attitudes, so I would not be able to give an answer to that. In terms of policy and legal procedure in place, Scotland is the place to be or to look for. When it comes down to legal issues, Scotland has very good gender recognition legislation and is the only country which has trans* specific hate crime legislation. As part of the UK they also have very reasonable anti-discrimination legislation. In terms of anti-discrimination protection, Sweden is excellent, too. In terms of gender legal recognition, Spain and Portugal are very good. However, in Portugal the law is quite new, so one has to see how the practice will evolve. Good legislation and good enforcement and practice no not always automatically go together. Below: Yara and Sass working for trans*rights AV: And in which country is the situation for trans *people particularly worrying? JE: In terms of hate crimes and killing of trans* people in Turkey and Italy the situation is particularly serious, with 13 murders each in the last 3.5 years out of a total of 41 in Europe. In terms of legal provision Italy is one of the worst, too. Their legal gender recognition law is particularly bad: to change name or gender you need to be sterilised, have undergone sex reassignment surgery and be forced to divorce, if married. A court has recently ruled that sterilisation should not be mandatory, but we have to see whether the ruling will be implemented across Italy. Ireland does not have any legislation in place to change name or gender despite losing a case with the Irish Constitutional Court on this issue. Ireland is obliged to provide a possibility to change name and gender but has been reluctant to do so. In terms of legal gender recognition, Sweden is also surprisingly bad, as it still requires unreasonable conditions. However, such legislation is under revision and in six months, the situation could change considerably. AV: What, if anything, is the EU doing to safeguard the interest and wellbeing of trans people? JE: The main area where EU has competence that apply to trans* people is anti-discrimination. However, the problem is that discrimination on ground of gender identity or gender reassignment is not found in the Treaty of the European Union. However, by virtue of several Court cases, discrimination on these grounds are included under the domain of “sex”. But you have to know this and it is difficult to get hold of the rulings confirming this. There is also a problem of implementation: several EU member states do not implement this at all, some do it partially and a few, such as Germany, do it fully. AV:…
Tunisia: from the point of view of an activist exiled in Italy: An interview with Osama Al Saghir
In 1789 French patriots sparked off the row of modern times. The masses showed that no oppressive force would ever have been capable of apprehending the anger that was borne of their humiliation for having been denied the right to decide their own destiny – both as men and as citizens. They did this for the right embodied in the dignity of expressing themselves through their desire for freedom. I want to call this to mind in the introduction to my interview with Osama Al Saghir, founder, and former president of the Young Italian Muslims, Tunisian citizen, and refugee in Italy. Let’s start with you, when did you move to Italy? Why? I arrived in Italy in 1994, as Ben Ali’s government repression against opposition activists was worsening, particularly with regards to Nahda, which is the party that my father worked for. What is Nahda? It is an Islamic party which aims to establish a democratic renaissance, returning to the foundations of Islam, and Arabic culture. Presenting it as an influence that was in line with extremist views was one of the strategies brought forward by the regime and it received tacit agreement from global media; however Nahda’s moderate stance has actually been criticised by the Muslim Brotherhood itself. How did Ben Ali come to power? This gentleman managed to overthrow the government in 1987, having had a medical team declare the incompetence of his ageing predecessor, Bourguiba. The coup was supported by various western secret service agencies and particularly by Craxi’s Italy. At first, Ben Ali promised to carry out a series of liberalising reforms and to uphold a peaceful state. It was not long, however, before he showed the oppressive nature of his power. He stamped out the opposition and passed himself off, to the west, as an enemy of Islamic extremism even though it was neither influential, strong nor embedded in Tunisia. For no other reason than to defend their own economic interests in the region, global powers accepted the role that he had made for himself. What is more, his actions were not even the expression of an intellectual vision, unlike Bourguiba, who was always the man that dreamed of and denoted a modernized and secular Tunisia influenced by Ataturk; he was the man who slammed Geddafi for his anti-western sentiments. Ben Ali, on the other hand, was no more than a brutish dictator, who censored any condemnation, and who in the end could not even manage to maintain a semblance of economic efficiency. Instead he and his wife’s family ransacked the country. What do you mean? Look, it basically worked like this: If a foreign businessman wanted to invest in the country, all he had to do was to find one of Trabelsi’s (Ben Ali’s wife) relatives to act as a business associate. He would transfer a certain percentage to them and apart from that, he would be exempt from tax and could expect to avoid any friction with the law. And then the revolution. Exactly, the revolution. First of all, I want Europeans to understand something: this is not a bread revolution. It is not a protest on the part of a brutalized and starving population. Or at least, that is not the only driving force. For us, since the flower is the national symbol of Tunisia, this is a Jasmine revolution. It is the salvation of pride in a country that has been home to one of the cultural bosoms of the Arab world (the famous Zaitouna University); a pride in a country whose population is capable of democratic self-rule but has always been denied the right. Now these people have risen, in the most peaceful way possible given their circumstances: they are accepting their dead without killing because they would sooner set themselves on fire than murder a man from the regime. Tunisians want to participate in a democratic state; they want autonomy for one and for all. How is European civil society perceived in all of this? European civil society? Where is it? Where has it been? Of course, we have relied on the help of certain courageous non-governmental organisations, and your people have accommodated us, but those of you who take an interest are a small, educated minority. You see, my family ran away from a dictatorship with the desire to live in a free, democratic state. I am a convinced democrat and I feel like I belong in Italy because I have grown up here, but also because I feel at home here. Nevertheless I have never had the right to vote. I have been here for 17 years: I have studied and lived my life with western democracy all around me, and yet I have never been able to take part. As such I have assisted in the regression, not only of the Italy’s openness but also that of Europe. People almost prefer to be frightened by a stereotype than to look reality straight in the face. I have seen Europe support dictators who are in contempt of the values engraved in its flags, its hymn books and its constitutions; and by doing so allowing any notion of a European dream to waste away. This is also the case for the Arabs – and there are many – who arrive here and think of Europe as a synonym for the hope of freedom and dignity. By nourishing a European dream, you would protect yourselves a hundred times more than any tyrant. What is the climate now? Do you think the revolution could have a domino effect across the Arab world? It is probable that it could spread, but it is impossible to say how or when. The only certainty is that across the entire region there is a strong intolerance of corrupt authoritarian regimes, who take no interest in the country they run. Of course, in Tunisia the outcome is democratic, but people are still on the streets because they want to build an accomplished democracy. No…
Conditions of migrants in temporary detention camps
The gaps in European legislation as regards to migrants conditions (such as the maximum time of detention, which changes from one country to another) open the door to very different interpretations on what are acceptable standards across the EU. The measures used by the authorities should be proportionate to the situation. However this is not always the case: abusive, arbitrary or unnecessary procedures have been reported in many documents from NGOs and European institutions, like the use of seclusion rooms or unnecessary handcuffing, treating migrants like criminals, mirroring a tendency towards the criminalisation of migration. Sometimes the basic standards that should be expected in places aimed at the reception of people (hygiene, separation between men and women…) are not ensured. Migrants face humiliating and degrading situation. Human rights are sometimes violated. The lack of communication with the external word, and the lack of transparency from the authorities, makes their voices difficult to be heard. European Alternatives is concerned about the conditions in which illegal migrants are temporarily detained in camps, which sometimes look like lawless areas. Although the EU Return Directive 2008/115/CE (not implemented by all member states) guarantees some fundamental rights, it is sometimes less favourable to migrants’ rights than national legislations. This could lead to a lowering of the applicable standards. List of key problems related to camps and temporary detention of migrants Camps Access to legal assistance, information, health or communication with the external world are very limited and sometimes denied by the authorities. Free legal aid is not guaranteed. Migrants have no idea about what is going to happen, they are not informed about the procedures which are often rushed through. Practices such as reducing permissions to visits or breaking telephone cameras in order to avoid shooting videos that could be given to activists have been reported. Camps are often located in buildings similar to prison, or even in buildings attached to prisons.This can lead to the amalgam between migrants and criminals. The staff working in camps is sometimes the same as those working in prisons and have not benefited from a different and need-specific training. Therefore migrants are sometimes treated as criminals. The buildings are not adequately kept and are often insalubrious and overcrowded. There is a lack of transparency in regards to the conditions of detentions, and NGOs’ access to the camps is limited. Migrants Migrants face many obstacles when it comes to procedures for asylum seeking. Detainees and associationsreported that in some camps application forms are not given to asylum seekers[1]. Migrants are victim of arbitrary treatments and punitive repression.Rapes, degrading attitudes, violence, beatings have been reported[2]. The detention has moral and psychological impact on migrants, leading to rebellions, depression and in worst cases to suicides. While opposing the idea of camps for migrants, European Alternatives believes that while camps exist, human rights organizations should be allowed inside them, to give legal and medical assistance as well as to monitor the conditions in which migrants are temporarily detained. The creation of common guidelines which will have to be used by camps staff can also encourage changes. The implementation of these guidelines should be monitored regularly. For what regards refugees, according to article 31of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (also known as the Geneva Convention) of 1951, (1) The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1[3], enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. (2)The Contracting States shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they obtain admission into another country. The Contracting States shall allow such refugees a reasonable period and all the necessary facilities to obtain admission into another country. The detention of asylum seekers should be avoided, as recommended by the United Nation Refugee Agency. However, in camps the right to apply is not always guaranteed and it has been reported, by NGOs that procedures for asylum seeking are sometimes hindered. European Alternatives advocates for alternatives solutions to camps.We believe that camps are not the best solution to guarantee their rights. Other alternatives involving States and NGOs can be found, such as release on condition. The European Union should aim towards those alternatives rather than detention and unify its regulation in accordance with the 1951 UN Convention, as it was planned in the two five-year programmes for the creation of a Common European Asylum System. A clear regulation setting high standards of protection, which could be easily understood and implemented by all Member States and asylum seekers, is eagerly awaited. More info: Migreurop, Campaign of parliamentary visits for a right of access inside detention centres for migrants – http://www.migreurop.org/article1905.html, 04/2011. European Council on Refugees and Exiles, Return Directive: EU fails to uphold human rights, http://www.ecre.org/files/ECRE%20press%20release%20Returns%20Dir.pdf, 06/2008. European Parliament, Directorate-General Internal Policies, The conditions in centres for third country national (detention camps, open centres as well as transit centres and transit zones) with a particular focus on provisions and facilities for persons with special needs in the 25 EU member states, http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_eu-ep-detention-centres-report.pdf, 12/2007. [1]Migreurop, http://www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/Conclusions_generales_de_la_campagne_et_resumes_des_visites.pdf , p.3,5,6 [2] European Parliament, Directorate-General Internal Policies, The conditions in centres for third country national (detention camps, open centres as well as transit centres and transit zones) with a particular focus on provisions and facilities for persons with special needs in the 25 EU member states, http://www.libertysecurity.org/IMG/pdf_eu-ep-detention-centres-report.pdfp. 185,186 [3] Article 1 of the Convention as amended by the 1967 Protocol : A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear,…
Rapport sur les droits des immigrants sous surveillance en Italie
par Costanza Hermanin, Open Society Traduction par Camille Nore Mercredi 22 Juin, la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme a reçu les plaintes contre l’Italie d’un groupe d’immigrants somaliens et érythréens refoulés vers la Libye par des navires italiens dans leur tentative d’atteindre les côtes italiennes. Bien que l’affaire « Hirsi et autres contre l’Italie » remonte à 2009 et que de nouvelles mesures aient été adoptées en réponse à cela, l’afflux actuel d’immigrants nord-africains continue de susciter de l’inquiétude concernant les Droits de l’Homme des immigrants arrivant en Italie. Le 17 Juin, l’Italie a signé de nouveaux accords sur le contrôle conjoint et le rapatriement avec le Conseil de Transition Libyen, envisageant des retours vers un pays actuellement en guerre. La veille, elle a triplé le temps maximum de la détention administrative, de 6 à 18 mois. Dans l’affaire Hirsi, les demandeurs étaient à bord de trois bateaux transportant 200 personnes, stoppés par les gardes-côtes italiens au large des côtes Maltaises. Les passagers ont été transférés sur des navires militaires italiens et ont été reconduits vers la Libye, en accord avec un traité bilatéral conclu entre les deux pays en 2008. Les plaintes affirment que l’interception des immigrants est une violation des droits des demandeurs à rechercher l’asile politique, les exposant au risque de torture ou de traitements inhumains ou dégradants dans les camps de détention en Libye ou dans leurs pays d’origine. Après le classement de l’affaire Hirsi et les critiques en 2010 à propos de la politique de refoulement exprimées à la Commission des Droits de l’Homme des Nations Unies, l’Italie a arrêté de refouler les immigrants, dont les réfugiés potentiels, vers la Libye. Mais en plus du nouvel accord avec le Conseil de Transition Libyen, elle a également signé des accords similaires avec la Tunisie, préparant le terrain pour une reprise des refoulements en haute mer. L’Italie se moque aussi totalement des fondamentaux des Droits de l’Homme sur son propre sol, en accord avec les pouvoirs nationaux d’urgence déclarés face à l’afflux de personnes fuyant les crises d’Afrique du Nord. Jusqu’ici cette année, quelques 14 000 demandeurs d’asile d’Afrique sub-saharienne et environ 20 000 immigrants économiques sont arrivés sur les côtes italiennes. En plus d’utiliser ses pouvoirs d’urgence afin de centraliser la gestion des sites de débarquement et de mettre en place des “cités de tentes”, le gouvernement est également en train d’interdire l’accès à ces centres sauf à quelques ONG. Les restrictions s’appliquent aussi aux visites accordées aux journalistes, une interdiction qui a conduit aux protestations de la Fédération Italienne de la Presse et de l’Ordre des Journalistes. Les quelques spécialistes pouvant visiter les camps – Médecins Sans Frontières, quelques députés et un reporter indépendant du journal “Repubblica” – ont rapporté des preuves claires de non respect des normes fondamentales des Droits de l’Homme et ont demandé la fermeture immédiate des camps. Le reportage du journaliste indépendant, qui a réussi à entrer dans le camp de détention du Palazzo San Gervasio à Basilicata, contient une séquence vidéo de détenus tunisiens attestant de conditions de détention difficiles, de violence et de blessures. Les immigrants détenus ont dit n’avoir eu aucune information concernant la possibilité de demander l’asile, de contacter leur famille ou de se voir fournir une assistance légale, ce qui est clairement non conforme aux normes Européennes et nationales. Un avocat d’une ONG locale qui par la suite a tenté d’entrer dans le camp après plusieurs appels avec les détenus, a dû attendre une semaine avant de pouvoir rencontrer ses futurs clients. Le reportage a également mis en lumière les conditions de détention inadéquates à l’intérieur du camp Palazzo San Gervasio, qui a été l’un des trois camps installés pour héberger la vague d’immigrants. Les sites étaient initialement conçus comme des camps d’accueil temporaires. Cependant, les « cités de tentes » ont été transformées en camps de détention après que d’autres gouvernements européens, dont la France et l’Allemagne aient fait objection à la politique italienne visant à fournir aux immigrants un «permit humanitaire temporaire » leur permettant de voyager en Europe. Bien que la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme ait la possibilité de réexaminer les refoulements en haute mer effectués en 2009, l’interdiction du gouvernement d’accéder aux installations empêche un examen national approfondi de la politique actuelle relative aux centres de détention des immigrants italiens. . L’Italie dénombre la plus faible population de réfugiés parmi l’Union Européenne. Elle devrait alors se concentrer sur l’accélération des procédures d’asile plutôt que sur l’accroissement des détentions, ou sur la signature de plus d’accords de rapatriement avec des pays non sécurisés.
Italys Migrant Rights Record Under Scrutiny
by Costanza Hermanin, Open Society The European Court of Human Rights will on Wednesday, June 22, hear complaints raised against Italy by a group of Somali and Eritrean migrants who were pushed back to Libya by Italian naval vessels in their attempt to reach the Italian coast. While the Hirsi and Others v. Italy case dates back to 2009, new policies adopted in response the current influx of migrants from North Africa continue raising concern over human rights of migrants landing in Italy. On June 17 Italy signed new agreements on patrolling and repatriation with the Libyan Transition Government, envisaging returns to a country currently at war. One day earlier, it tripled the maximum time for the administrative detention of migrants, from six to 18 months. In the Hirsi case, the applicants were on board three boats carrying around 200 people that were stopped by the Italian coast guard off the coast of Malta. The passengers were transferred to Italian ships and returned to Libya, under a 2008 bi-lateral agreement signed between the two countries. The complaint argues that the interception violated the applicants’ rights as to seek political asylum, while also exposing them to the risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment in detention camps in Libya, or in their home countries. After the filing of Hirsi and the 2010 criticism of the push-back policy at UN Human Rights Committee, Italy stopped openly pushing back migrants, including potential refugees, to Libya. But it in addition the new agreement with the Libyan Transitional Committee, it has also signed similar agreements with Tunisia, setting the stage for a resumption of push-backs at sea. Italy is also now riding roughshod over basic human rights on its own soil, under national emergency powers declared in response to the influx of people fleeing North African crises. So far this year, some 14,000 asylum seekers from sub-Sahara Africa, and around 20,000 economic migrants have arrived on Italy’s shores. In addition to using its emergency powers to centralize the management of landing sites and set up “tent city” reception centers, the government is also forbidding access to these centers to anyone but a few NGOs. Restrictions also apply on visits from journalists, a ban that led to protests from the Italian Federation of the Press and the Order of Journalists. Those few observers able to visit the camps—Medecins Sans Frontiers, a few MPs and a freelance reporter from Repubblica—have reported clear evidence of disregard for basic human rights standards and asked for the immediate closure of the camps. The reporting by the freelance journalist who managed to enter the Palazzo San Gervasio detention camp in Basilicata included a video shot by Tunisian detainees testifying to harsh conditions, violence, and injuries. The migrants detained there said they had been given no information about the possibility of seeking asylum, contacting their family or being provided with legal assistance, in open disregard of European and national norms. A lawyer from a local NGO who subsequently tried to enter the camp following phone contacts with detainees had to wait one week before gaining access to her prospective clients. The reporting also highlighted the inadequate camp conditions inside the Palazzo San Gervasio camp, which was one of 3 new tent camps set up to accommodate the surge of migrants. The sites were initially designed as temporary reception camps. However, the tent towns were turned into detention camps after other European governments including France and Germany objected to Italy’s policy of providing migrants with temporary humanitarian permits allowing them to travel. While the European Court of Human Rights will have a chance to review the push-backs performed in 2009, proper national scrutiny over current policy in Italian migrant detention centers is prevented by the government ban on the access to these facilities. Italy has one of the smallest refugee populations of any European Union country. It should focus on speeding up its asylum procedures, rather than extending detention, or signing more repatriation agreements with unsafe countries.
Panels de citoyens: les droits en matière de migration et dasile
Traduction par Adelina Ionescu Conclusions provisoires Traduction par Adelina Ionescu L’introduction a ancré le débat dans l’actualité de la lutte des migrants en Europe pour la reconnaissance de leurs droits La situation des tunisiens – enjeu de négociation politique entre la France et l’Italie, et sujet instrumentalisé pour la remise en cause des accords de Schengen a été au centre de la discussion avec Edda Pando La consultation a été aussi l’occasion de rappeler les fondamentaux théoriques d’acceptation de l’autre ( JP Cavalié, Cimade) « Entre multiculturalisme et assimilation : nouvelles formes d’intégration » Modératrice : Karima Ben Ahmed, Forum Femmes Méditerranée Discussion-débat : Pour une partie des participant(e)s de cette table ronde, le multiculturalisme représente le mélange des cultures (héritage, patrimoine culturels). Ce brassage culturel permet le partage des savoirs et donc un enrichissement mutuel entre les immigré(e)s et les non- immigré(e)s. Pour les autres participant(e)s, le terme même de culture est problématique puisqu’il renferme, il est rattaché à une nation, un état. Ce concept sépare les personnes. Il ne faut pas idéaliser la culture et la concevoir de façon évolutive. De plus, d’autres termes, tels que multiculturalisme, inter culturalisme, pluriculturalisme dérivant du mot « culture » viennent ajouter du flou à ce concept. Les participant(e)s pensent que chaque individu est porteur d’identités multiples, de part le pays (la région) de naissance, les différentes migrations et les personnes fréquentées au travail dans la vie sociale… . Tous les participant(e)s se sont mis(e)s d’accord pour dire que l’assimilation est liée au colonialisme. C’est un concept qui sert à diviser et à faire peur. L’assimilation est une négation du vécu des personnes avant leur arrivée dans un nouveau pays, une nouvelle région. Propositions : Faire attention au concept de multiculturalisme qui pourrait déboucher sur une forme de relativisme culturel, notamment concernant les violences exercées sur les femmes. Remettre à plat et repenser le concept de culture qui enferme et se rattache à une nation et à des frontières. Repenser à un modèle sociétal basé sur le respect des droits fondamentaux et l’égalité. La question économique doit être traitée en parallèle des questions sociales : favoriser l’emploi. La question des femmes migrantes est importante : lutter contre les stéréotypes et préjugés, promouvoir le rôle positif de celles-ci et être vigilent sur le relativisme culturel. Redéfinir le concept de citoyenneté de façon plus ouverte en tenant compte du lieu de résidences pour les migrant(e)s : participation active dans la société (droit de vote et de siéger dans les assemblées) Favoriser le double processus d’intégration en termes de droits et devoirs (la société d’accueil envers les migrant(e)s et les migrant(e)s envers la société d’accueil) De ces propositions doivent déboucher sur des actions à court et long terme. Court terme : Les gouvernements doivent donner la citoyenneté de résidence à tous et toutes les migrant(e)s, (participation politique : droit de vote et de siéger dans les assemblées) L’Union Européenne et les états doivent favoriser et soutenir le travail associatif pour des rencontres citoyennes (initiatives locales et travail de proximité). Les gouvernements doivent mener des campagnes publicitaires afin de promouvoir le rôle et l’apport positif des migrant(e)s aux sociétés d’accueil. Long terme : Faire évoluer les mentalités sur la question d’un mode unique d’organisation sociale en tenant compte d’une société plurielle. Ne plus parler d’assimilation concernant les migrant(e)s Le droit d’asile et les accords de Schengen Animateur : Niccolo Milanese Propositions : Simplifier la loi sur les migrations en Europe : à cause de la grande complexité juridique des lois concernant les migrations, il est très difficile de fournir de l’assistance juridique aux immigrés, et les procédures manquent de transparence. Cette loi devrait être simplifiée en Europe, afin que les immigrés bénéficient d’un ensemble de droits, et que les États Membres connaissent leurs responsabilités. Le droit eu travail devrait être garanti aux demandeurs d’asile L’accès des citoyens aux centres de détention et aux procédures juridiques publiques : À présent, un nombre très restreint de personnes bénéficient du droit de rendre visite aux immigrés arrivés en Europe, qui sont placés en détention, qu’il s’agisse d’une loge, d’un centre ou d’un camp de détention. La situation varie en fonction des pays de l’UE en ce qui concerne le permis de visiter ces espaces. Les immigrés arrêtés devraient bénéficier des normes minimales d’assistance juridique et plusieurs d’organisations non gouvernementales devraient avoir accès à ces espaces. Préférablement, les citoyens devraient avoir le droit de visiter les centres de détention afin d’observer les procédures judiciaires (ces procédures devraient se dérouler de manière publique). Promouvoir la mobilité : en encourageant la mobilité, l’Union Européenne promouvrait la conscience de soi concernant notre propre appartenance à la catégorie des immigrés ; cela créerait une plus grande solidarité entre les immigrés de l’Europe et les européens indigènes. La révision du règlement de Dublin : le règlement de Dublin oblige actuellement les demandeurs d’asile de traiter leur demande d’asile dans le pays où ils ont immigré. Cela a créé des problèmes administratifs, issus du fait que certains pays relèvent les empreintes digitales de tous les nouveaux arrivés (la Grèce par exemple), pendant que d’autres pays ne le font pas ; cela mène à une concentration d’immigrés envoyés vers les États qui prennent les empreintes digitales, cela constituant une preuve de leur arrivée dans le pays. Cela peut aussi donner lieu à des abus, parce qu’un État peut décider de ne pas relever les empreintes digitales et envoyer les migrants à un autre pays qui le fait, en « s’en lavant les mains » de cette responsabilité. Le Règlement devrait être révisé et politique de migration réellement coordonnée devrait être mise en place pour l’Europe, en commençant avec une politique coordonnée en ce qui concerne le droit d’asile EXTREME DROITE – comment répondre au développement d’un discours d’exclusion ? Modérateur : Julien Coclet, Urban Prod Propositions d’actions : définir clairement le terme étranger prendre du temps pour penser les réponses = rationaliser permettre de nouvelles formes de participation éducation civique : apprendre à lire et comprendre les…
Citizens Panels: Migration and Asylum Rights
translation: Maëva Kokodoko interim findings The introduction focused on the current struggle that migrants are going through in Europe in order to obtain the recognition of their rights. The situation of Tunisian people, which is involving political negotiations between France and Italy and is also used as an excuse to question the Schengen Agreement, was at the Heart of the discussion with Edda Pando. The consultation was also an opportunity to review fundamental values of acceptance of others (JP Cavalié, Cimade). Between multiculturalism and assimilation: new forms of integration Moderator: Karim Ben Ahmed, “Forum Femmes Méditerranée”. > Discussion-debate : For some of the participants of this roundtable, multiculturalism represents the blending of cultures (cultural heritage). This cultural mix allows the sharing of knowledge and thus a mutual enrichment between immigrants and non-immigrants. For the other participants, the term culture itself is problematic since it is restrictive and refers to the ideas of nation or state. This concept separates people. We should not idealize culture and conceive it in an evolving way. In addition, other terms such as multiculturalism or inter-culturalism, derived from the word “culture” are adding vagueness to this concept. The participants believe that each individual has multiple identities, due to the country (region) of birth, different migrations and people met at work and in social life. All participants have agreed to say that assimilation is linked to colonialism. It is a concept used to divide and frighten. Assimilation is a negation of peoples’ personal experiences before their arrival in a new country, a new region. > Proposals : Pay attention to the concept of multiculturalism that could lead to a form of cultural relativism, especially regarding the violence inflicted on women. Analyse and rethink the restrictive concept of culture which is related to nations and borders. Rethinking a societal model based on respect for human rights and equality. The economic issue must be addressed in parallel with social issues: promoting employment. The issue of migrant women is important: fight against stereotypes and prejudices, promote their positive role and be wary of cultural relativism. Redefining the concept of citizenship more openly taking into account migrants’ place of residence: active participation in society (right to vote and to sit in assemblies). Promote the double processes of integration in terms of rights and duties (the host society towards migrants and migrants towards the host society) These proposals should lead to actions in short and long run. Short run: Governments should grant citizenship of residence to all migrants, (political participation: right to vote and sit in the assemblies). The European Union and the states should promote and support the work of associations and organisations for citizens meeting (local initiatives and outreach work). Governments should conduct campaigns to promote the role and positive contribution of migrants to the host societies. Long run: Changing mentalities on the issue of a single mode of social organisation, taking into account a diverse society. No longer talking about assimilation when it comes to migrants. Migrant rights Moderator : Niccolo Milanese The right to asylum and the Schengen agreements > Proposals : Simplification of migration law throughout Europe: the legal complexity of laws relating to migration has become so great in Europe that it is very difficult to give legal aid to migrants, and the procedures are highly opaque. The law should be simplified throughout Europe in order to give a clear set of rights to migrants and responsibilities to member states. Asylum-seekers should be allowed the right to work Citizens’ access to detention centres and legal processes in public: At the moment very few people are able to visit the places where migrants arriving on European shores are detained, whether they be holding-rooms, detention-centres or camps. The situation varies between EU countries as to whether anyone is allowed to visit these spaces. As a bare minimum legal aid should be available to all migrants being detained and a plurality of NGOs should be allowed access to these spaces. Preferably, citizens should have the right to visit detention centres as observers to all legal proceedings (ie. these legal proceedings should take place in public). Promoting mobility : By promoting mobility, the European Union can promote the self-understanding that we are all migrants, and this will build greater solidarity between migrants to Europe and native Europeans. Revision of the Dublin Regulation: The Dublin convention currently obliges asylum seekers arriving in Europe to process their application in the country where they arrived.. This has both caused administrative problems arising from the fact that some countries systematically take the finger-prints of all new arrivals (Greece for example), whilst others don’t, leading to a concentration of migrants being sent to those countries that do because there is proof that they arrived there. It is also open to abuse, because a state can decide not to take finger-prints and send the migrants to another country that does, thereby ‘cleaning its hands’ of the responsibility for those migrants. The Regulation should be revised and a genuinely coordinated migration policy for Europe put in place, starting from a coordinated policy for asylum. Extreme right – how to respond to the development of a discourse of exclusion? Moderator: Julien Coclet, Urban Prod Action proposals: clearly define the term foreigner take time to think the answers = streamline enable new forms of participation civic education: learn to young people to read and understand newspapers stop identity checks based on racial profiling create networks 'without borders' – migrants without borders show the different forms of oppression and spread the message: i.e. “Théâtre de l’Opprimé” (Theatre of the Oppressed) give automatic residence permit for a year show that the real problems are economical improve the representativeness of parliaments (national assembly) but not by quotas but through education put under spotlight leaders from immigrant heritage Detention camps: Moderator: Ségolène Pruvot, European Alternatives, JP Cavalié, CIMADE. Brief historical background: Camps for migrants were legally introduced in France in 1938 for the…
Résultats intermédiaires de la consultation sur les droits des LGBT à Cluj
Résultats intermédiaires de la consultation sur les droits des LGBT à Cluj traduction par Elisa Sance Discrimination sur le lieu de travail Modératrice : Angela Anton Débat : Le début du débat s'est trouvé polarisé autour de 2 perspectives très différentes, toutes deux émanant de représentants de la communauté LGBT. La première était centrée sur la législation existante qui prévient toute pratique discriminatoire relative à l'orientation sexuelle d'un employé, tandis que la seconde faisait état d'exemples concrets de personnes qui ont été licenciées parce qu'elles sont L, G, B ou T. Nous avons compris que dans les secteurs d'activités tels que la finance, la comptabilité, le management et le tourisme il n'y a pas de discrimination, où si elle intervient, c'est de façon bien moins préjudiciable pour l'employé que dans d'autres secteurs comme celui de la production ou dans les petites entreprises. Le manque de confiance dans le système judiciaire roumain ne fait que compliquer une situation déjà très délicate. Conclusions : Mise en place de cours contre les discriminations pour les employeurs ; employés et employeurs doivent suivre avec une grande régularité des cours sur l’extinction d'incendies et la sécurité sur le lieu de travail ; pourquoi ne devraient-ils pas suivre également des cours anti-discrimination dans ce cas ? Si ils ont lieu 2, 5 ou 10 fois, le discours sera intégré et on passera du discours (tourné en dérision la première fois) à la pratique. Une législation stricte au niveau des entreprises visant à combattre la discrimination et à imposer des sanctions si besoin est. Des campagnes pour donner des outils pour l’action aux employés LGBT, par exemple par le biais d’objets ou de posters. Reconnaissance mutuelle Modératrice : Diana Prisacariu Débat : D’abord envisagé comme une histoire de volonté ou de mentalités, de différences Est/Ouest sur le sujet en Europe, le débat a évolué, plaçant au centre de la résolution du problème la relation entre les communautés locales LGBT, soutenues par des associations, des intellectuels et des personnalités publiques, et les organisations et personnes concernées basées à Bruxelles. Mettre à la disposition du public roumain les bonnes pratiques des autres pays serait un moyen efficace pour parvenir à une reconnaissance mutuelle. Un point de désaccord central a porté sur l’importance principale ou secondaire à porter aux conséquences négatives de la discrimination dans l’action des partisans des droits des LGBT. La principale conclusion a été que notre lutte devait être pacifique et tournée vers le positif plutôt que basée sur des sanctions envers ceux qui discriminent. Solutions : Des alliances internes entre la population LGBT, les ONG, les intellectuels engagés et les personnalités publiques désireuses de présenter la situation de la communauté LGBT roumaine d’une façon positive et avertie. Des campagnes sous forme de plaidoyer (positif) concentrées sur la démonstration de la façon dont les pays largement perçus comme des modèles à suivre par la Roumanie (ex : le Royaume-Uni, les Pays-Bas, les pays Scandinaves) traitent leurs communautés LGBT. Les LGBT devraient comprendre qu’il est crucial d’être à la fois un bon citoyen et un bon employé, et non pas uniquement un défenseur des droits des LGBT ; c’est le meilleur moyen de remporter véritablement le respect et la confiance de la majorité hétérosexuelle. En d’autres termes, les droits ne peuvent devenir actifs que s’ils sont en lien avec des responsabilités. Utiliser des soutiens internationaux, par exemple des ambassades et fondations internationales, pour financer et donner une plus grande visibilité aux évènements LGBT. C’est un moyen diplomatique et non agressif de parvenir à d’importants résultats car cela transmet d’importants messages en direction des décideurs et majoritaires. Représentation médiatique de la population LGBT Modérateur : Lucian Dunareanu Débat : Par des exemples concrets et des questions adressées directement aux participants, le modérateur a montré combien les média sont capables de désinformer. La raison principale pour laquelle la réalité n’est pas toujours présentée est que les lecteurs sont attirés précisément par les scandales. En conséquence, les informations relatives aux minorités (quelles qu’elles soient) transmises au public – le sont non seulement en très faible quantité mais aussi d’un point de vue négatif. Cette situation est accentuée en Roumanie du fait que, selon l’un des participants, certains média très important sont aux mains des néo-conservateurs. La répugnance et le rejet sont le résultat de l’ignorance et, en conséquence, tout le monde est d’accord sur la nécessité qu’il y a de combattre l’ignorance de plusieurs façons : Solutions : Ne restez pas silencieux ! Protestez chaque fois qu’une information est incorrecte ou discriminatoire. Recherchez des personnes importantes désireuses de promouvoir des évènements relatifs aux LGBT, comme le festival international des films gay ! C’est vraiment utile pour obtenir une bonne médiatisation (qui soit aussi durable). Organisez des évènements gratuits de façon à toucher un public qui, sans cela, n’aurait probablement pas été intéressé ! La population LGBT devrait avoir suffisamment confiance en soi pour s’autoriser à être plus visible en ville ! Etant donné la réticence des média traditionnels à nous soutenir, utilisons au maximum les nouveaux média pour promouvoir notre cause ! Utiliser les arts alternatifs, comme le théâtre et les expositions, pour parler de nous ! Utiliser l'espace que les chaînes de télévision doivent dédier à la diffusion de spots à visée sociale pour nos campagnes ! Ne pas avoir peur de payer pour la publication d'articles positifs, si cela est possible et légal ! Violence à l'encontre de la population LGBT Modérateur : Daniel Peslari Débat : La violence en Roumanie est presque routinière ; elle est tacitement soutenue par les institutions qui devraient essayer de l'enrayer, comme l'église. Les femmes et les enfants en sont ses principales victimes. La situation s'aggrave, c’est pourquoi la question des violences envers les LGBT semble presque périphérique. D'après plusieurs participants, les minorités sont en général perçues comme des intrus, c’est le cas par exemple de la population allemande de Sibiu (une ville au sud de la Transylvanie) à laquelle ses propriétés ont été rendues après qu’elle ait été forcée de les laisser…
INTERIM FINDINGS OF THE CONSULTATION ON LGBT RIGHTS IN CLUJ
Discrimination at the workplace Moderator: Angela Anton Discussion: The beginning of the discussion was polarized between 2 very different perspectives, both coming from representatives of the LGBT community. The former focused on existing legislation that prevents any discriminatory practice due to the sexual orientation of the employee, whilst the latter showed concrete examples of people who were fired because of their being L or G or B or T. We understood that in fields of activity such as finances, accounting, management and tourism discrimination does not occur or it is, at least, much less damaging for the employee than in others, such as production and in small enterprises. The lack of confidence in the Romanian judicial system only complicates a situation which is already very delicate. Conclusions: Anti-discrimination courses for employers; both employers and employees are due to follow with strong regularity courses on fire extinction and protection at the workplace; why shouldn’t they also have anti-discrimination then? If practiced for the 2nd. 5th and 10th time, it will become embedded and turn from (laughed at) discourse into non-discriminatory practices Strict corporate legislation aimed at fighting discrimination, enforcing sanctions, if needed Campaigns for empowerment of the LGBT employee, via articles and posters, for example Mutual recognition Moderator: Diana Prisacariu Discussion: First assessed as a matter of will and mentalities, different between Western and Eastern Europe, the discussion evolved towards placing the cornerstone of the issue in the relations between the local LGBT communities, supported by associations, academics and public personalities and the stakeholders based in Bruxelles. An even more efficient means for achieving mutual recognition is that of good practices from other countries being widely made available to the Romanian public. An important element of disagreement between participants was whether the negative consequences of discriminating should be the main focus of LGBT rights supporters or not. The main conclusion was that our fight has to be peaceful and positively-orientated rather than based on sanctions for those who discriminate. Solutions: Internal alliances between LGBT people, NGOs, involved academics and public personalities willing to expose the situation of the Romanian LGBT community in an informed and positive way (Positive) advocacy campaigns focused on showing the way that countries that are widely perceived as role-models for Romania (eg UK, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian Countries) treat their LGBT communities LGBT should understand that, at the same time, it is very important to be a good citizen and a good employee, and not only a defender of LGBT rights; this is the main means to gain genuine respect and confidence from the heterosexual majority; thus, rights can only become active in relation to responsibilitie. Use international supporters, for example embassies and international foundations, for funding and making LGBT events visible. It is a soft means of achieving important results that this kind of diplomacy is, because it conveys important messages to decision-maker and majoritarian alike. Media Representation of LGBT people Moderator: Lucian Dunareanu Discussion: By concrete examples given and questions addressed directly to the participants, the moderator showed the level at which the media are capable of inducing misinformation. The main cause of a situation in which it is not reality that is conveyed is that it is precisely scandalous information that attracts readers. Consequently, the already very little amount of information related to (all kinds of) minorities that is transmitted to the audience is done from a negative perspective. Moreover, this is emphasised in Romania by the fact that, according to one of the participants, certain very important media are dominated by neo-conservatories. Reluctance and rejection are the results of ignorance and, consequently, everybody agreed on the necessity of fighting ignorance by several means possible: Solutions Don’t be silent! Protest every time when information is not correct or discriminatory! Look for important people willing to support LGBT-related events, such as the International Gay Film Festival! This is very useful for obtaining fair (and longer) coverage Organize free events so as to gain audience that otherwise might not be interested in attending! LGBT people should be confident enough to let themselves be more visible in town! Given that traditional media is reluctant to supporting us, let’s use new media to the full for promoting our cause! Use alternative art, such as theatre and exhibitions, to talk about us! Use the space that TV stations have to keep for social advertising for our campaigns! Don’t be afraid to pay for positive articles, if this is possible and legal! Violence against LGBT people Moderator: Daniel Peslari Discussion: Violence in Romania is almost routine, tacitly supported by institutions that should be doing something to stop it, such as the Church. Women and children are its main victims. The situation is worsening, so the question of LGBT being victims of violence appears almost eccentric. According to several participants, minorities are generally perceived as intruders, for example the German population from Sibiu (a town in southern Transylvania) who have received their properties back in the centre after having been forced to leave them to the state in 1948. The now majoritarian Romanian population sees them as outsiders, though they continue to play a major role in the cultural and economic development of the community (see Sibiu European Capital of Culture 2007). Violence directed against LGBT people becomes very complicated when corruption, medical procedures, complex legislation, low self-confidence and bureaucracy all enter the equation. Solutions: Very severe legislation to be created and implemented via European and national procedures Affiliation to local networks of LGBT people so as to feel part of a community (eg psychological support) and, if needed, prove that you are a victim of violence specifically against LGBT and not a typical one
Roma Rights conference in Spain on Lebrija TV
Lebrija TV, a Spanish station, has mentioned the conference on Roma Rights to be held in Seville on September 29th. The conference is part of the People Power Participation project. To watch the video clip (in Spanish) click on the image below:
The Observer: Eurobonds and democracy must go together
Eurobonds and democracy must go together“Eurobonds risk pulling economic decision making even further out of the hands of citizens” (Photo: EdMadrid) By NICCOLO MILANESE Economists are increasingly in agreement that some form of Eurobonds will be necessary to overcome the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Eurobonds would ensure liquidity in the Eurozone and create a unified European bond market large enough to stop speculative sovereign debt attacks. But leaders and decision-makers should know that the economic problems will not be resolved without ultimately resolving the democratic problems as well. Eurobonds must be set up not with the perspective of appeasing the markets alone, but with the perspective of restoring control over the markets both by politics and by European citizens.
Primo numero della rivista Transeuropa
Transeruopa è la prima rivista gratuita di politica e cultura veramente transnazionale, pubblicata in edizioni italiana, inglese, e francese, e distribuita come free press in caffè, librerie, e spazi culturali di tantissime città europee. La rivista è editata da Transeuropa Network, una nuova rete di attivisti, artisti, e studenti in Europa. A gennio sarà online il nuovo sito della rivista, con tutti gli articoli, informazioni sui punti di distribuzione in giro per l'Europa, e molto più. Nel frattempo ecco qui sotto il primo numero! Se sei interessato/a ad avere la rivista distribuita in uno spazio della tua città, contattaci!
Stage presso l’ufficio di Roma di European Alternatives
La posizione richiede un/a candidato/a con ottima conoscenza italiano e inglese. La descrizione delle competenze richieste, così come il resto della procedura di selezione, avverrà in inglese. European Alternatives, civil society organisation based in London, Paris, Rome, Bologna, and Cluj-Napoca, devoted to promoting a transnational politics and culture, is seeking an intern to join its Rome team. The position would suite candidates eager to work in an international environment with an interest in international relations, the European Union, NGO work, and journalism. Internships at European Alternatives follow our fair internship charter. They are not remunerated, but include expenses, lunch, and frequent European travel. Duties of the candidates will include: Editorial: Helping to edit our Transeuropa Magazine, commission and review articles Language: Translating articles and other documents from and into Italian and English (and others) Administration: Carry out some administrative tasks Project Management: Help organising events in Italy and abroad, writiting reports and follow-up on activities organised The following characteristics are necessary for this position: Fluent knowledge of Italian and English (both written and spoken) A degree in a social science, law, languages or another relevant discipline An interest in European affairs and adherence to European Alternatives’ mission Availability to travel and eagerness to engage with a diversity of people Solid knowledge of the Microsoft Office (or Open Office) package The following characteristics, though not essential, are desirable: Knowledge of other European languages Ability to use Photoshop or other photo editing software Experience in organising events, publishing articles or writing reports Creative and professional use of photo and video cameras. If interested, please send a motivational letter and your CV by January 24 to a.valera@euroalter.com
European Alternatives aderisce alla manifestazione nazionale per la Costituzione
Photo di flickr elephotoniric European Alternatives si batte per un'Europa più giusta democratica, aperta ai cittadini e baluardo delle libertà civili e politiche. Preoccupati dal progressivo peggioramento delle libertà democratiche in Italia, prime fra tutti la libertà d'informazione, European Alternatives aderisce con convinzione alla manifestazione nazionale a difesa della Costituzione. Il comunicato stampa dell'iniziativa: “Una grande giornata per l'orgoglio costituzione segnata dal tricolore, con un unica colonna sonora: l'inno di Mameli e un unico documento di riconoscimento: la Carta costituzionale. Questa la decisione assunta oggi a Roma da numerose associazioni e che ha proposto come data orientativa il 5 marzo prossimo”. Lo afferma Articolo21 in una nota. “Modi e forme dello svogimento saranno discusse da domani sul sito di Articolo21 e sui siti delle singole associazioni coinvolte. Saranno invitate tutte le forze politiche, associative, culturali, sindacali, a prescindere da qualsiasi logica di schieramento di parte e di partito. Perchè l'unico punto di unificazione è costituito dall'amore per la legalità repubblicana e per la dignità costituzionale”. “All'iniziativa hanno aderito fino a questo momento, oltre ad Articolo21, l'Anpi, Rassegna sindacale, Libera e Libera Informazione, i Comitati Dossetti per la Costituzione, il Popolo Viola, gli Indignati, Libertà e Giustizia, Confronti, Reporter senza rete, la Rete degli Studenti, l'Udu, i Ricercatori, Agende Rosse, Movem, Move On Italiano, Libera cittadinanza, la Consulta romana per la Laicità, European Alternatives. Tra le prime adesioni a titolo personale: Fabio Granata, Flavia Perina, Angela Napoli, Pino Pisicchio, Roberto Zaccaria, Vincenzo Vita, Leoluca Orlando, Pina Picierno, Francesca Puglisi.” ADERISCI ALLA PROPOSTA DI MANIFESTAZIONE
LUE è Un Partner Credibile Per La Costruzione Di Uno Spazio Democratico In Tunisia?
Immagine : Flickr/ rebelo Articolo di Alexandra Solom Traduzione di Greta Galeazzi Partner inoppugnabile della Tunisia sul piano storico, l’Unione Europea ha da sempre nutrito una relazione privilegiata con questo paese, guidata da una cooperazione intensa nel quadro del primo Accordo di associazione che la UE abbia mai firmato con un paese del sud del Mediterraneo, e dai negoziati in base ai quali la Tunisia possa diventare un «partner avanzato» dell’Unione. Priva di un sistema politico pluralista, questa Tunisia amica dell’Europa era incarnata dalla persona di Ben Ali, che ha quindi rappresentato un partner riconosciuto dell’Unione nel corso di tutti questi anni. In seguito alla destituzione del regime, la reazione tardiva e prudente dell’Unione Europea è stata denunciata: la relazione storica intrattenuta con Ben Ali giustificava forse una tale timidezza nel prendere posizione rispetto alla Rivoluzione del Gelsomino, che si è imposta per volontà popolare? In questo contesto, si può forse considerare che l’Unione Europea possa essere un partner credibile per aiutare la Tunisia ad organizzare delle elezioni libere e pluraliste? Questa è la sfida che è posta oggi alla UE, che ha appena deciso di inviare una delegazione di alto livello in Tunisia per «informarsi meglio» sulla situazione sul campo. Le recenti manifestazioni in Egitto e in Yemen confermano l’urgenza per la UE di determinare una posizione chiara sulle aspirazioni democratiche nell’Africa del Nord e nel Medio Oriente. Per tentare di rispondere a questa domanda, European Alternatives ha partecipato all’incontro con i parlamentari europei membri della Delegazione per le relazioni con il Maghreb. Malika BENARAB-ATTOU, perora la causa di un’Europa forte, che non esiti a sostenere i movimenti democratici chiave nella società tunisina e che osi infine sviluppare una politica estera coraggiosa ed efficace. Hélène FLAUTRE, che si recherà in Tunisia nel fine settimana, ci consegna un’analisi trasversale della crisi tunisina, sia sulle condizioni che la UE deve adempiere per aiutare la Tunisia, ma anche sulla necessità di accentuare la cooperazione in materia di libertà civili, per favorire la nascita rapida della democrazia. Altri contributi istituzionali ma anche da parte di attivisti arricchiranno progressivamente questo dossier. Ad esempio Lakhdar HOUAMEL esporrà la sua opinione sul ruolo che l’UE può adottare per aiutare lo spazio democratico in Tunisia. Non esitate a contattarci su paris@euroalter.com per darci la vostra opinione!
Basta Berlusconi!
Foto : Giuliana Di Febo Articolo di Elena Dalibot Traduzione di Greta Galeazzi A differenza della solita domenica, sulle colline del Sacro Cuore di Parigi non sono le campane della basilica che hanno suonato il 13 Febbraio ma piuttosto le pentole e altri utensili da cucina sbattuti da un centinaio di manifestanti, donne e uomini. Reclamano le dimissioni del Presidente del Consiglio italiano, Silvio Berlusconi, e richiedono la “dignità della donna” nel paese in cui meno della metà delle Italiane hanno un impiego remunerato e solo un bambino su dieci trova posto in un asilo. In molte città d’Europa e del mondo delle manifestazioni sono state organizzate questo weekend, ad esempio a Bruxelles, Madrid, Ginevra, Berlino, Londra e Stoccolma, per sostenere le 230 manifestazioni che avvengono in Italia, a Roma, Milano, Genova e Palermo, radunando centinaia di migliaia di uomini e donne. Queste manifestazioni spontanee nel mondo fanno seguito al “caso Ruby” che è stato il principale argomento di cronaca degli ultimi mesi, riguardante le prestazioni sessuali di Karima “Ruby” El Mahroug (minorenne all’epoca dei fatti) al “Cavaliere” tra febbraio e marzo 2010. Agli scandali nei quali Berlusconi è implicato si aggiungono i casi di corruzione, di frode fiscale, e soprattutto il modo in cui Berlusconi tratta le donne e l’immagine che ne trasmette ai media: ridotte alla loro apparenza fisica, senza legittimità intellettuale, dipendente da uomini ricchi e potenti per ottenere successo. Gli slogan scanditi globalmente si fanno eco: “Dimissioni, dimissioni, dimissioni”, “Basta Berlusconi!”, “Se non ora quando?”. Molto artisti, intellettuali, sindacalisti, parlamentari erano presenti per manifestare la propria rabbia, tra cui la regista Cristina Comencini, la dirigente del più importante sindacato italiano (CGIL) Susanna Camusso e la redattrice in capo di un importante giornale di sinistra, L’Unità, Concita De Gregorio, a fianco di associazioni che lottano contro la discriminazione delle donne come Corrente Rosa. A Parigi la manifestazione ha radunato uomini, donne e bambini, Italiani e Francesi: Giuliana, Italiana, ha contribuito a diffondere informazioni ed ha manifestato domenica fino a quando la polizia non ha disperso il raduno. Secondo lei “la dignità delle donne è un diritto, una conquista antica per cui è triste dover ancora combattere. Nel sistema mediatico messo in piedi da Berlusconi, il messaggio trasmesso è che egli è la sola speranza della società e non vi sono alternative. Per lui, le donne non sono nemmeno degne di uno scontro politico basato sul dibattito come hanno mostrato le sue esternazioni contro l’avversaria politica Rosy Bindi (vice-presidente della Camera dei Deputati, giudicata, da Berlusconi, “più bella che intelligente” alla fine del 2009). Molta gente è cieca: Berlusconi possiede i media, utilizza la retorica. Ma questo manifestazione mostra che una coscienza sociale si è sollevata contro di lui. L’impatto di tutte queste manifestazioni, in Italia e nel mondo, è forte, e spero che permettano di superare la barriera mediatica che si oppone alla lotta per la dignità della donna”. Martedì 15 Febbraio, la procura di Milano ha chiesto il processo per Berlusconi per concussione e prostituzione minorile. Il Presidente del Consiglio italiano, passibile di tre anni di reclusione, non ha intenzione di presentarsi al processo ed ha accusato i giudici di agire a scopo sovversivo. Le manifestazioni di questo weekend sono, a suo giudizio, l’espressione di donne “puritane”. Resta da vedere cosa decideranno Carme D’Elia, Orsolina De Cristofaro e Giulia Turri, le tre donne del tribunale di Milano che formeranno il collegio incaricato di giudicare il Presidente del Consiglio il 6 aprile 2001. “Non combattiamo solamente Berlusconi, ma tutto il sistema politico” ha spiegato Giuliana. “Il caso Ruby non riguarda solo la sua vita privata e la sua moralità come sostiene lui, ma anche la legge!” Se si abbandona l’idea della giustizia, quintessenza della democrazia, allora ci si ritrova nella dittatura”.
EA scrive all’ENI
European Alternatives aderisce alla proposta di Crisis Action di richiedere chiarimenti al direttore Generale dell'Eni, in merito alla posizione adottata in Libia. Gentile Sig. Scaroni, Le scriviamo a causa del legame tra le compagnie di petrolio che operano in Libia e la responsabilità del regime di Gheddafi per la violenza intenzionale e di vaste proporzioni contro i cittadini libici. I miliardi di dollari di ricavi petroliferi che contribuiscono ai fondi pubblici ogni anno hanno aiutato Gheddafi a consolidare il suo potere negli ultimi quattro decenni. Con l’intensificazione della violenza in Libia, temiamo che questi ricavi petroliferi potrebbero ulteriormente aiutare Gheddafi nel suo intento di mantenere il potere e favorire in tal modo la sua capacità di commettere violazioni dei diritti umani e altre violenze sui civili. Intendiamo condividere questa lettera con la stampa e altre istituzioni di pubblico interesse. Accogliamo favorevolmente la decisione presa dell’Unione Europea di adottare sanzioni mirate a prevenire Gheddafi, la sua famiglia e i membri del governo ad accedere ai beni patrimoniali e le risorse probabilmente ottenute dalla diversione dei fondi pubblici durante gli ultimi quattro decenni. Tuttavia, siamo profondamente preoccupati poichè queste sanzioni non sono state estese ad includere gas e beni petroliferi. Di conseguenza, abbiamo scritto ai Capi di Stato dei paesi membri dell’UE chiedendo che il regime di sanzioni si espanda ad includere anche la National Oil Company (NOC) (la compagnia petrolifera statale) di Libia. Notiamo che le sanzioni contro la NOC sono incluse nella risoluzione 1973 del Consiglio di sicurezza dell’ONU. Ci rivolgiamo a Lei in un momento in cui il governo italiano sta cercando di bloccare le iniziative dell’UE di ampliare il regime di sanzioni adesso in vigore. I suoi commenti, come Direttore Generale di ENI, che indicano la sua volontà di continuare a produrre petrolio mentre il conflitto continua, sono particolarmente preoccupanti. Siamo a conoscenza del fatto che Eni è per il 30 percento controllata dallo stato e che costituisce una voce influente all’ interno della politica estera Italiana. Dato che l’Italia riceve 32% degli esporti petroliferi dalla Libia, crediamo che un congelamento dei beni del NOC in Europa, inclusa l’Italia, sia cruciale. È con la speranza che Lei riconosca l’importanza di assicurare che altri ricavi petroliferi non contribuiscano alla violenza contro i civili in Libia. È cruciale che la sua compagnia mostri leadership nell’ assicurare che gli interessi commerciali non blocchino le importanti sanzioni dell’UE. Vi preghiamo di chiarire la posizione di ENI su questi argomenti non appena possibile. Distinti Saluti, Niccolo Milanese, Co-Director European Alternatives Gavin Hayman, Director of Campaigns Global Witness ?Alice Jay, Director Avaaz Antonella Napoli, President Italians for Darfur Stefano Corradino, Director Articolo 21 Tatjana Bassanese, Director Associazione di Cooperazione e Solidarietà Farshid Nourai, Coordinatore Nazionale Associazione per la Pace
Verso un’iniziativa europea sul pluralismo dell’informazione
Mentre l’indipendenza dell’informazione è sotto attacco in un numero crescente di paesi europei, il 31 marzo al Parlamento Europeo di Bruxelles si terrà una conferenza politica internazionale dal titolo Verso una Iniziativa Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media, co-organizzata da European Alternatives, Alliance Internationale de Journalistes, e i gruppi politici del Parlamento Europeo S&D, ALDE, Verdi Europei, e GUE. La conferenza riunirà una significativa rappresentanza di organizzazioni della società civile europea impegnate sul tema dell'indipendenza e pluralismo dell’informazione, provenienti da oltre 10 paesi membri dell'UE, per iniziare a costruire un programma di azione comune e di sostegno del pluralismo dell’informazione a livello europeo. Fare click qui per scaricare una presentazione e un'agenda della conferenza Fre click qui per scaricare un comunicato stampa della conferenza Le organizzazioni partecipanti sono: European Alternatives, transnational; Alliance Internationale de Journalistes, international; Council of Europe, international; OSCE, international; European Federation of Journalists, international; EAVI, international; S-COM, international; Open Society Institute, international; FNSI, Italy; Articolo 21, Italy; Libertà e Giustizia, Italy; Comitato per la libertà e il diritto all'informazione, Italy; Il Manifesto, Italy; Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, UK; Press Now, the Netherlands; Capital Newspaper, Bulgaria; Galeria Newspaper, Bulgaria, Danish Union of Journalists, Denmark; Hungarian Europe Society, Hungary; Hungarian Civil Liberties Association, Hungary; Élet és Irodalom, Hungary; Active Watch, Romania; Centre for Independent Journalism, Romania; Reporters Sans Frontières, France; Rue 89, France; Berria, Spain; Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales, Belgium; Pascal Decroos Fund, Belgium. REGISTRAZIONI CHIUSE
Partecipazione attiva e sostenibilità, percorsi da Bologna
Il 25 marzo 2011, European Alternatives ha organizzato un incontro all’Atelier Urban Center di Bologna per discutere di sostenibilità ambientale, incontrando i soggetti che in questa città lavorano per progettare e creare alternative nella produzione energetica, nella produzione agricola, nel consumo alimentare, nei mezzi di trasporti urbani e nel riutilizzo dei materiali. Anastasia Scotto collabora con Last Minute Market, una società nata all’interno della Facoltà di Agraria dell’Università di Bologna con l’intento di recuperare le derrate alimentari che nei supermercati vengono scartate o gettate. “Last Minute Market riesce ogni anno a raccogliere 170 tonnellate di cibo che può essere ancora consumato. Si parla di un valore di circa 650 000 Euro. Questi alimenti vengono poi donati a gruppi e associazioni che operano nel sociale.”. Anche a livello europeo la questione viene dibattuta; al Parlamento Europeo è stato infatti firmato un documento che dichiara il 2013 Anno Europeo contro lo Spreco. La sostenibilità ambientale può essere trattata e valorizzata anche da un punto di vista artistico. Secondo Ilenia Gamberini, rappresentante dell’associazione La Pillola, “l’arte è un ottimo mezzo per comunicare la lotta allo spreco. Attraverso l’utilizzo di materiali di recupero organizziamo esposizioni, come École del Rusco,una manifestazione artistica con una base espressamente rivolta alla sostenibilità e all’ottimizzazione delle risorse. Dal 2005 i suoi obiettivi principali sono la sensibilizzazione e l’educazione della cittadinanza rispetto a questi concetti. Lo strumento per ottenere questi risultati è da sempre l’arte, considerata come linguaggio universale in grado di raggiungere le più diverse soggettività”. In questo ambito lo sforzo è quello di coinvolgere anche attori istituzionali e commerciali, in modo da ottenere una proposta che, sotto la veste artistica, raccolga un impegno il più ampio possibile. La lotta allo spreco passa anche attraverso un miglior sfruttamento del territorio. In seguito al fenomeno di urbanizzazione, presente su scala globale, si assiste ad una forte riduzione del terreno coltivabile. Biodivercity è un’associazione che si pone l’obiettivo di fornire soluzioni ecocompatibili per quanto riguarda la produzione agricola. Secondo Stefano Draghetti “l’agricivismo rappresenta un’ottima risposta alle minacce che l’urbanismo esasperato arreca alla salute e alla sicurezza alimentare. Si tratta di un processo di riappropriazione di porzioni dello spazio urbano che vengono coltivate dalla cittadinanza. L’orticultura urbana, oltre ad avere una funzione sociale di riaggregazione degli individui, svolge anche un ruolo economico poiché rappresenta una soluzione produttiva efficiente.”. Biodivercity svolge molti progetti in Italia e all’estero, tra cui Orti senza Terra, un sistema di coltivazione idroponica, ideato per territori molto aridi e soggetti a siccità, che può essere costruito con materiali di scarto, o come l’installazione di orti verticali, concepiti per l’ambiente urbano, in cui è cronica l’assenza di spazio orizzontale. La manifestazione Orto in Piazza, che avrà luogo anche a Bologna nell’ambito del Transeuropa Festival nel mese di maggio, mira a diffondere la cultura dello sfruttamento ecologico dello spazio urbano; sempre Draghetti sostiene che “produrre frutta e verdura in città, oltre a garantire una migliore qualità del prodotto, elimina i costi di trasporto della merce e di conseguenza aiuta a ridurre le emissioni di anidride carbonica nell’atmosfera.”. La ricerca di soluzione autonome all’interno del sistema contemporaneo di produzione e consumo investe direttamente la questione energetica. “Entro il 2020, per ogni Stato Membro, l’UE ha fissato al 17% la soglia minima di produzione di energia derivante da fonti rinnovabili. Per cui soluzioni come quella del nucleare, argomento all’ordine del giorno, risultano totalmente paradossali.”. Lorenzo Cardinali rappresenta il Consorzio Sociale Solare, un’insieme di cooperative che hanno lo scopo di coniugare alla diffusione dell’energia solare azioni solidarietà. “Quando andiamo ad installare pannelli solari coinvolgiamo nella manodopera persone appartenenti alle fasce deboli della società, le quali sarebbero svantaggiate in ambienti di lavoro classici”. Il CSS opera sul mercato proponendo prezzi inferiori e garantisce allo stesso tempo alti standard di qualità. Inoltre, il ricavato dall’installazione degli impianti fotovoltaici, e dalle varie attività del consorzio, è completamente reinvestito nelle cooperative Onlus aderenti, per il finanziamento di attività di natura prettamente sociale e senza scopo di lucro. Infine Lorenzo Alberghini ha illustrato il Progetto Bi-Bo, ovvero un risciò che sfrutta un pannello solare posto sul suo tettuccio il quale a sua volta alimenta un motore elettrico che assiste la pedalata del conducente. Si tratta quindi di un mezzo urbano a impatto zero in grado di dimostrare che esistono soluzioni alternative, economiche, semplici, ecologiche e innovative al problema della mobilità. Dei volontari si offrono di fornire passaggi gratuiti nel centro storico di Bologna. Secondo Alberghini “Bi-Bo è la dimostrazione reale e pratica di come si possano risolvere semplicemente alcuni problemi della città: un mezzo di trasporto pubblico pulito, veloce e silenzioso, che potrebbe cambiare totalmente l’atmosfera, in tutti i sensi, della nostra città.”. Giulio Marseglia
Appello Maghreb
Crediamo l'Europa si trovi di fronte ad un'occasione unica di sanare le storiche ferite che la dividono dai paesi del Maghreb, sostenendo la transizione in atto. Ma assente come entità politica, in questi giorni cruciali l'Unione europea si mostra agli occhi del mondo divisa tra la diplomazia delle bombe di Sarkozy, la paranoia xenofoba del governo italiano e l'indifferenza tedesca. Per rispondere a questa situazione, assieme al Movimento Federalista Europeo, la Egyptian Democratic Academy, Migrant Rights Network, la CGIL, l'ARCI, FLARE, la Tavola della Pace e l'Associazione per la Pace, e il CIME, abbiamo diramato un Appello al Parlamento europeo, alla Commissione europea, e al Consiglio europeo, per una rinnovata politica europea a favore della transizione democratic in Maghreb e dei diritti dei migranti. Fai click qui per leggere e firmare l'appello!
In ricordo di Teo Varga (1988-2011)
European Alternatives e tutti i membri del Transeuropa Network desiderano trasmettere le loro sincere condoglianze a tutti coloro che sono in lutto per la perdita di Teo Varga, che ci ha lasciato troppo presto. Siamo rimasti scioccati e rattristati nell’apprendere il suo decesso. Alcuni membri del team video del Transeuropa Network hanno avuto la possibilità di incontrarlo e lavorare con lui sul progetto del film, “It gets better”. A lui vogliamo dedicare questo documentario. Grazie Teo per aver preso parte a questa grande avventura transeuropea. In questo momento doloroso, i nostri pensieri vanno a tutti i suoi parenti e amici.
Appello per un’Europa senza confini
Sostieni l'appello su facebook: http://www.facebook.com/europewithoutborders?ref=ts Il diritto alla libertà di movimento e il diritto a spostarsi attraverso l'area Schengen senza controlli alle frontiere sono due principi fondamentali della cittadinanza europea. Sono tra le realizzazioni europee più popolari e più ampiamente riconosciute. Rifiutiamo che questi diritti vengano messi in discussione. La decisione unilaterale della Danimarca di reintrodurre i controlli doganali, così come i recenti tentativi di bloccare al confine fra Italia e Francia i migranti provenienti dalla Tunisia, hanno fatto cadere l’Europa a un livello mai così basso dalle espulsioni dei Rom da Francia e Italia la scorsa estate. Non è più accettabile che il diritto alla libera circolazione sia minacciato dall'incapacità degli stati che hanno ratificato il Trattato di Schengen di arrivare a una comune politica estera, di sicurezza e sociale. E non è più accettabile che questa incapacità si traduca in una pericolosa retorica populista e xenofoba che cerca di scaricare sui più deboli le cause della crisi. La primavera araba non deve trasformarsi nella fine del sogno europeo. La reazione europea agli storici eventi dei Paesi del Nord Africa è stata quella di alzare nuovi muri e di chiudere le frontiere anche per gli stessi cittadini europei. L'Unione Europea dovrebbe invece essere un esempio di solidarietà e di cooperazione tra i popoli e lavorare per promuovere la pace, la democrazia e la libertà. L’ideale di un’Europa libera, unita e aperta al resto del mondo non deve essere lasciato cadere. Facciamo appello alle istituzioni nazionali ed europee, ai cittadini, ai movimenti della società civile e ai politici di tutto il continente affinché l’Europa rilanci il processo di unione politica e non torni ad essere un continente tragico e diviso.
CURRENTly Imbavagliati
Ci troviamo oggi davanti all’ennesimo colpo alla libertà di stampa in Europa: il canale televisivo Current verrà cancellato dal palinsesto Sky Italia. La motivazione ufficiale fornita dal gruppo di Rupert Murdoch è riconducibile ad un presunto calo di ascolti. Sky, in un suo comunicato, sottolinea come “la performance (di Current) non è purtroppo in crescita” e che l'ascolto medio giornaliero del 2011 si sia ridotto del 20 % rispetto ai dati dell'anno precedente. Di per se quest'arogmentazione non regge: dal momento della sua fondazione avvenuta tre anni or sono, Current Italia ha mantenuto standard positivi producendo programmi di alta qualità certificati non solo da diversi attestati di stima ma anche da premi ottenuti sia a livello nazionale che internazionale tra i quali figurano il Premio Rossellini, il Premio Libertà d'Informazione assegnato dall'Unione Nazionale Cronisti Italiani e Hot Bird Tv Award 2010 come Miglior Canale News Europeo. La vera motivazione che spinge Sky a non rinnovare il contratto a Current Italia è che quest’ultima sia un' “entità scomoda” alla costante ricerca della verità, una di quelle poche ed isolate voci critiche che hanno resistito al bavaglio all'informazione posto dal governo piduista guidato da Silvio Berlusconi. Current non ha mai esitato a criticare i poteri forti, da Rupert Murdoch stesso, alla Chiesa Cattolica. Al Gore, fondatore del canale televisivo, ha accusato senza mezzi termini News Corp di Rupert Murdoch per aver forzato Sky Italia a cancellare Current in quanto “hanno appena scritturato un giornalista indipendente (Keith Olbermann) molto critico nei confronti di Murdoch”. Gore ha altresì fornito un altro spunto interessante sul quale vale la pena riflettere: “Sky Italia sta trattando con l’esecutivo per entrare nel mercato del digitale terrestre e ha bisogno del via libera di Berlusconi”. Questo è un chiaro esempio di ciò che avviene in un mercato fortemente oligopolistico: le principali imprese anziché farsi concorrenza raggiungono accordi tesi ad accrescere i propri interessi e guadagni personali. Chi viene penalizzato da tutto questo sono i cittadini, vedendo pesantemente limitato,giorno dopo giorno, il loro diritto ad essere informati. Nel 2009 European Alternatives ha presentato al Parlamento Europeo un dossier sullo stato dei media in Italia. Nell'analisi sviluppata il problema della mancanza di libertà e di pluralismo d'informazione in Italia viene descritto come un virus che avrebbe potuto infettare diversi altri paesi europei. Il Parlamento Europeo, controllato a larga maggioranza da forze conservatrici, con una maggioranza di soli 3 voti, all’epoca dei fatti, rifiutò di procedere ad una risoluzione di condanna all'Italia. Oggi, a meno di due anni di distanza, stiamo assistendo a un processo di “Berlusconizzazione” in Europa sempre piu allarmante, con gravi attacchi alla libertà e al pluralismo dell'informazione: l'Ungheria ha promosso leggi così draconiane che l'OCSE non ha esitato a definire “totalitarie”. Non si sottraggono a tutto questo nemmeno Bulgaria con il suo tentativo di aggiudicarsi il primato d'illiberalità in Europa, e Francia, che grazie alle limitazioni alla rete promosse dal governo Sarkozy, è stata per la prima volta inserita da “Reporters Sans Frontieres” nella lista dei paesi sotto osservazione per divenire “nemici di internet”. Lo stesso Rupert Murdoch sta cercando di acquisire BSkyB: se dovesse riuscire nel suo intento si troverebbe ad occupare una posizione dominante nel mercato mediatico britannico. A tutto questo inoltre, non si può non aggiungere come altri eventi nell'attuale panorama europeo rientrino a pieno titolo in questa tematica: la “Spanish Revolution”, per esempio, è stata volutamente censurata dai media locali e non si puo' dimenticare come una delle principali rivendicazioni del movimento di protesta spagnolo (M-15), sia proprio quella di una maggiore libertà di stampa. E' assolutamente necessario che il tema della libertà e del pluralismo dell'informazione venga trattato a livello europeo. Questa esigenza è cio che ha spinto European Alterantives a lanciare una campagna denominata “European Initiative for Media Pluralism“. La mancanza di libertà d'informazione è un vero e proprio attacco ai diritti fondamentali dei cittadini. Current Italia è uno dei pochissimi mezzi d'informazione che ha il coraggio d'indagare, di raccontare e , soprattutto, cosa ormai molto rara nella televisione italiana ed europea, di INFORMARE. Per questo motivo European Alternatives sostiene la campagna per salavare Current Italia e si augura che il canale rimanga visibile su SKY. Invitiamo, inoltre, Al Gore a portare Current TV sul digitale terrestre, dove sarebbe visibile anche a coloro che non si possono permettere la televisione a pagamento. Perchè la libertà d'informazione è un diritto di tutti. Current TV ricorda che anche tu puoi fare la tua parte., scrivendo direttamente a SKY per chiedendo di non chiudere Current, all'indirizzo tom.mockridge@skytv.it, Amministratore Delegato di Sky Italia.
Una lettera aperta e un invito ai miei giovani amici tunisini ed egiziani
Dopo l’incontro di Niccolò Milanese con gli attivisti provenienti da Egitto e Tunisia, riportiamo sotto una sua lettera aperta loro indirizzata, in vista di future collaborazioni
Iscrizioni aperte per Transeuropa Network
Stiamo usando l'estate per riformare la nostra struttura e continuare a costruire un attore politico e culturale transnazionale e bottom-up. Siamo felici di annunciare finalmente la possibilità per tutti di unirsi al Transeuropa Network, una rete di attivisti di tutta Europa che lavorano insieme per far emergere nuove forme di politica, cultura e società che siano realmente transazionali Transeuropa Network è un esperimento innovativo di partecipazione e democrazia dal basso a livello transnazionale che riunisce tutti gli attivisti di Alternative Europee per modellare collettivamente l'organizzazione, le sue posizioni politiche e le loro rappresentazioni culturali e artistiche. Più informazioni sulla network qui Pronto ad aderire? Qui Cominciamo subito – con un voto online fra il 29 luglio e il 5 agosto per decidere sulle priorità tematiche della network e di Alternative Europee a settembre ed ottobre. Dovremmo concentrarci sulla primavera araba? O sulla crisi economica? Qualcos'altro? Tua la scelta!
Genova 2011 per l’altra Europa
Il testo seguente è stato scritto collettivamente da organizzazioni e movimenti, fra cui Alternative Europee, riuniti a Genova nel contesto del forum per il decennale del G8 del 2001 “People of Europe rise up – popolo d'Europa sollevati”: questo il grido delle proteste da Madrid ad Atene. “Loro la crisi, noi la speranza” è la consapevolezza emersa a Genova 2011; la speranza di un'altra Europa – pacifista, ecologista, democratica, federalista, aperta al resto del mondo, fondata sulla dignità di ogni persona nativa e non nativa; un'Europa che rifiuta ogni discriminazione e che prende a suo fondamento la differenza come valore; un'Europa che orienti sui valori pacifisti e di cooperazione con il Sud del mondo il suo impegno internazionale. Contro la mercificazione delle persone e dei beni comuni, immateriali e naturali, sono sorti reti, coalizioni, movimenti che convergono tutti nel progetto di un'Europa dei diritti fondamentali degli esseri umani e animali e della salvaguardia della natura. Occorre promuovere la gestione democratica dei beni comuni e un'economia fondata sulla eguaglianza e la giustizia sociale. Alla crisi si può rispondere solo scegliendo l'orizzonte delle lotte a livello europeo. Occorre disarmare i mercati e la finanza. Attraverso l'assalto speculativo all'Euro passa l'assalto al welfare state e alle condizioni di vita e di lavoro dei cittadini e delle cittadine. Le misure assunte nei vertici europei, lungi dal combattere la speculazione, la alimentano e ne soddisfano le aspettative. E' necessario indirizzare le lotte contro le politiche neoliberiste dell'Unione europea e i suoi centri decisionali che vedono come attori protagonisti i governi, la tecnocrazia e i poteri forti sovranazionali escludendo i cittadini e le stesse rappresentanze politiche. E' necessaria un'Europa democratica per porre fine ai poteri delle élites europee. Da Genova 2011 esce rafforzato l'impegno a una nuova dimensione dei conflitti, da portare avanti attraverso campagne europee utilizzando anche l'iniziativa dei cittadini europei, che permette di proporre un atto legislativo alla Commissione europea tramite la raccolta di un milione di firme in almeno sette paesi dell'Unione europea. Le campagne europee in cantiere sono su: il reddito minimo garantito; la cittadinanza europea di residenza e la mobilitazione per l'adesione alla Convenzione Onu del 1990 sui diritti dei lavoratori e delle lavoratrici migranti; l'acqua come diritti umano, primo nucleo di uno Statuto europeo dei beni comuni e per una direttiva europea che lo sancisca; l'uso sociale dei beni confiscati alle mafie e alla criminalità; un piano di riconversione ecologica e sociale delle produzioni e dei consumi da sostenere con una tassa sulle transazioni finanziarie e sulla carbon tax; il diritto all'informazione, il pluralismo e la libertà di stampa. Queste campagne europee, promosse da differenti reti e coalizioni, pur non affrontando tutto l'arco dei problemi posti dalla crisi, sono però componenti concrete e significative dell'altra Europa e vogliono essere di sprone per altre campagne in grado di offrire in ogni campo alternative all'Europa dei mercati e della finanza. Con queste campagne continua l'impegno per la costruzione democratica dell'altra Europa, per trovare modi e tempi per andare al di là del Trattato di Lisbona mediante reali percorsi di democrazia partecipativa. Genova, 22 luglio 2011
Stiamo per affrontare un inverno di malcontento che coinvolgerà tutta lEuropa?
Le riforme dell’istruzione e la protesta giovanile in Europa Nel corso delle ultime settimane, in un certo numero di paesi ha avuto luogo una consistente ondata di protesta giovanile. Alcuni hanno parlato di un ritorno del 1968, secondo altri stiamo entrando in un assoluto “inverno di malcontento”. Nel Regno Unito e in Italia un gran numero di giovani si è mobilitato contro le revisioni previste per i loro rispettivi sistemi di istruzione superiore. Se consideriamo la differenza tra l’istruzione superiore della generazione che attualmente tiene le redini del potere e il sistema che essi stanno cercando di imporre ai loro figli (o nipoti), una simile reazione risulta poco sorprendente. Nel Regno Unito la generazione che attualmente tiene le redini del potere non solo ha preso le lauree gratis, ma ha potuto anche chiedere il sussidio di disoccupazione durante l’estate e durante le vacanze di Natale e di Pasqua, e ricevere a casa i biglietti del treno al termine del periodo, tutto pagato dallo stato, proprio durante la recessione degli anni Ottanta, quando lo stato inglese ha dovuto far fronte a una serie di difficoltà fiscali e venne fatta terra bruciata nell’ambito dell’assistenza pubblica. Tutto ciò viene convenientemente tralasciato, e le riforme vengono presentate come se fossero dettate da necessità fiscali, come se non fosse concepibile un modo alternativo per trovare fondi per il sistema dell’istruzione superiore rispetto a quello di riversare sugli studenti la spesa di 9000 sterline all’anno. Se le riforme venissero approvate, un tale livello di tassazione renderebbe le università pubbliche inglesi quelle più costose del mondo (le politiche riguardanti l’istruzione spettano alle assemblee del Galles, della Scozia e dell’Irlanda del Nord, e sia il Parlamento del Galles che quello della Scozia hanno votato contro un aumento delle tasse nelle loro giurisdizioni). Il governo di coalizione afferma che queste proposte sono giuste, considerato il fatto che gli studenti possono ricevere un prestito per pagare le tasse con un tasso di interesse al di sotto del livello di mercato (nonostante l’inflazione più 3%), che non dovranno restituire il denaro finché non guadagneranno 21.000 sterline all’anno, e che la politica si impegnerà a proteggere la posizione degli studenti più poveri. La revisione della tassazione è il risultato di una revisione indipendente da parte di Lord Browne, che ha delineato due opzioni per far fronte alla mancanza di fondi del sistema dell’istruzione superiore : una tassa di laurea (che prevede che i laureati paghino una tassa aggiuntiva che invece i non laureati con lo stesso stipendio non pagherebbero), e un aumento delle tasse. Non è del tutto chiaro se ci sia la possibilità che questa politica ottenga un voto in Parlamento. Un importante consigliere liberal-democratico afferma che i membri del partito “si sentono profondamente traditi”, e che un certo numero di loro voterà contro. Attualmente il voto è previsto per giovedì 9 dicembre. Le proteste contro le riforme sono state numerose, la maggior parte delle quali pacifiche, con degli scoppi occasionali di violenza che hanno causato danni per più di un milione di sterline, specialmente nei casi in cui sono state occupate le sedi del Partito Conservatore. Nel frattempo, in Italia, un governo a corto di denaro sta tentando delle drastiche riforme nel settore dell’istruzione superiore, e le proposte potrebbero inevitabilmente causare la chiusura delle università che sono in deficit. Secondo il ministro dell’istruzione Mariastella Gelmini, le riforme aiuteranno a contrastare la proliferazione di lauree “inutili”, fenomeno che si è verificato negli ultimi anni, e renderà l’istruzione superiore italiana più meritocratica, trasparente e competitiva a livello internazionale. Il risultato di queste riforme porterebbe sicuramente alla diminuzione del numero di laureati in entrambi i paesi, soprattutto nel settore artistico e umanistico. L’UCU (Unione delle Università e dei College) ha appena pubblicato un sondaggio secondo cui oltre 40 Università inglesi rischierebbero di chiudere nel caso in cui il loro sistema di finanziamento dipendesse dagli studenti. In Francia, un paese con un’eredità di protesta politica più forte rispetto al Regno Unito, le proteste contro le riforme della pensione hanno suscitato un alto grado di interesse tra i minori di 18 anni. Sono in numerosi a sostenere che molte persone hanno partecipato alle proteste spinte da una frustrazione generale nei confronti del governo, piuttosto che motivati da qualche aspetto riguardante specificatamente la riforma delle pensioni. Conseguenze sul il Processo di Bologna È probabile che le proposte di riforma, in particolare nel Regno Unito, rappresentino una battuta d’arresto rispetto agli obiettivi del Processo di Bologna. Dei livelli di tassazione altamente variabili agiranno come una barriera alla mobilità degli studenti in Europa. Inoltre, è necessario chiederci ulteriormente se tutto ciò sia giusto. Quanto è giusto che in Inghilterra il sistema sia più o meno auto-finanziato, quando invece le lauree per tutti i cittadini europei negli altri paesi sono pagate interamente dal contribuente? Mentre il Governo del Regno Unito considera la laurea un “investimento”, di cui poter calcolare e prevedere in modo esatto il valore e la sicurezza, in realtà, non può esserci niente di sicuro in un qualcosa in cui un è un diciottenne a investire così tanti soldi. Vedere la laurea come un “investimento” in termini finanziari è fuorviante, come dimostrato dall’attuale “generazione della crisi” di laureati. Si è parlato abbondantemente di una “generazione persa” fino all’inizio della crisi finanziaria, con una disoccupazione giovanile (sia giovani laureati che non laureati) ai massimi livelli in tutta Europa. La realtà dell’attuale mercato del lavoro è che una laurea rappresenta un pre-requisito per inserirsi in un ambito professionale, mentre i livelli di disoccupazione dimostrano che in molti casi neanche questo tipo di titolo di studio serve ad assicurare un lavoro. Finora l’istruzione di terzo livello è stata un fatto di pari opportunità. Tali riforme dell’istruzione causeranno una situazione in cui l’opportunità di un individuo di conseguire un determinato titolo di studio dipenderà dalla sua possibilità di finanziarlo. Come può essere che i giovani della future generazioni vengano “dimenticati”? Se l’istruzione superiore dovesse completamente auto-finanziarsi, e i governi si decidessero a realizzare un vero e proprio “mercato” dell’istruzione, allora l’intero settore funzionerebbe come un mercato, e dovrebbe provvedere a fornire migliori informazioni su ciò che viene previsto dai suoi servizi. Se gli studenti fossero tenuti a pagare così tanto per la loro istruzione, dovrebbero essere fornite maggiori informazioni sulla redditività dei loro “investimenti”. Il dibattito sulla riforma dell’istruzione si colloca all’interno del più ampio dibattito sulle misure di austerità in Europa, o meglio in quello riguardante il tipo di…
Pour une convention social européenne
Traduit par Alexis Gratpenche Nous semblons à l'heure actuelle nous trouver à un moment de l'histoire qui pourrait s'avérer déterminant pour l'Europe, tant économiquement que politiquement. La crise économique qui, se propageant, entraîne de plus en plus d'états-membres à prendre des mesures d'austérité, les doutes qui entourent l'avenir de la monnaie unique et l'existence-même de l'Union européenne : tous ces événements nous indiquent que des actions décisives doivent être entreprises. Par qui ? Voilà la question qui nous brûle tous les lèvres. Depuis des semaines, voire des mois, de multiples solutions sont envisagées pour refonder la gouvernance économique européenne : des euro-obligations à la régulation supranationale des déficits. Aujourd'hui plus que jamais, les membres de l'Union européenne se doivent en effet d'adopter une position commune. On s'étonnera donc de ne voir que deux types d'interlocuteurs autour de la table des négociations : les ministres des états-membres et les figures du secteur financier. Les ministres cherchent à préserver des intérêts nationaux peu clairs et s'affrontent dans des luttes de pouvoir. Ils se préoccupent ainsi d'avantage de préserver leur souveraineté et leurs avantages nationaux que de proposer des solutions qui s'adressent à l'ensemble des européens. Les représentants du secteur financier font oublier à tous les dépenses publiques considérables qui ont été nécessaires à la survie de leur secteur et affirment qu'il n'existe pas d'alternative au capitalisme financier : l'Europe devrait continuer à réduire les dépenses sociales et à déréguler le capital et le travail. Elle suivrait alors cyniquement le même itinéraire désastreux que celui des nations en voie de développement dans les années 80. La chaise qui reste vide autour de cette table est celle des citoyens européens. Et aussi longtemps que les citoyens n'auront pas voix au chapitre concernant l'avenir de l'économie européenne, les réformes manqueront d'innovation et d'efficacité, elles ne représenteront pas l'expression citoyenne et, vraisemblablement, susciteront inégalités et injustices. C'est la raison pour laquelle Alternatives Européennes a lancé une pétition pour que les institutions européennes et les états-membres reconnaissent qu'il est indispensable d'inclure les citoyens européens dans le nouveau processus de construction économique de l'Europe. Nous demandons que soit convoqué d'urgence un Congrès social européen sur l'avenir de l'économie de l'Europe qui rassemblerait les bénévoles, les syndicats, la sphère associative et des citoyens des quatre coins du continent afin de décider dans quelle voie nous souhaitons voir se diriger une Europe sortie de la crise. Ce congrès devra dessiner les contours d'une politique économique plus équitable et durable pour l'après-crise : une politique fondée sur les principes de démocratie, de solidarité et du bien commun.
Manifestation contre la ghettoïsation des Roms à Cluj-Napoca
Article de Daniel Peslari, Traduction de Maiwenn Kernaleguen. Quelque part en Europe de l'Est, à la fin du mois d'août 2010, les dirigeants d'une ville ont reçu une leçon que leur a enseignée le président d'un grand pays situé quelque part en Europe de l'Ouest. Cette leçon s'intitule “Comment se débarrasser des personnes dont nous ne voulons pas”. Et aujourd’hui, au plus fort de l'hiver, la ville de l'Est met à profit les enseignements qu'elle en a tirés. Cette ville de l'Est dont nous parlons est Cluj-Napoca et le “grand pays” sur lequel elle a pris exemple est bien sûr la France. Voici ce qu'il s'est passé: des familles de Roms qui vivaient dans la ville avec des papiers en bonne et due forme et qui payaient chaque mois leurs factures et leur loyer ont été expulsées de force de leurs logements pour être envoyées dans un ghetto du nom de Pata Rât, où l'air est irrespirable en raison de la présence d'une décharge publique et d'une usine de médicaments à proximité. De plus, les enfants de ces familles étaient scolarisés dans leur quartier et les adultes se rendaient chaque jour à leur travail en ville. En décembre 2010, pendant deux jours et par -10°C, ces gens ont été chassés de leurs logements et se sont retrouvés à Pata Rât pour y commencer une nouvelle vie au milieu des rats et des ordures, souvent dans des conditions d'exiguïté extrême (12 personnes dans une pièce de 16 m²). Cette affaire est actuellement suivie par Amnesty International et par d'autres ONG roumaines et internationales qui défendent les droits de l'Homme et des Roms (parmi lesquelles European Alternatives), ainsi que par le Conseiller présidentiel pour les minorités. Après la tenue lundi dernier d'un débat public à l'Université Babes-Bolyai, auquel les représentants de la Mairie n'ont pas assisté – se contentant d'envoyer une lettre “objective” – les organisateurs ont décidé de protester publiquement contre ces expulsions forcées. Lors de cette manifestation, plusieurs organisations civiles telles que Amare Phrala, Grupul de Ac?iune Social? Cluj et European Alternatives, ont marché aux côtés des Roms. Tous criaient “Oui à la dignité, non au racisme!”, “Des écoles, pas des ghettos!”, “Nous sommes tous égaux!”, “Nous voulons justice!”, “Non à la discrimination!”… Également présents, des étudiants Roms et des citoyens roumains qui ont compris que défendre les droits des Roms revient à défendre leur propre droit à une vie normale, à la justice et à la liberté d'expression. Mais il est triste de voir que même si le maire s'est déclaré ouvert au dialogue, les perspectives de voir changer la situation sont minimes, car la loi roumaine est extrêmement permissive, les dirigeants pouvant faire tout ce qu'ils souhaitent ou presque, et parce que la société civile là-bas n'a quasiment pas de pouvoir. Merci donc au Président Sarkozy et au maire de Cluj-Napoca pour avoir été ces grands exemples de solidarité sociale et (si j'ose dire) européenne!
LUE est-elle un partenaire crédible pour la construction dun espace démocratique en Tunisie ?
Article par Alexandra Solom. Photo : Flickr/ rebelo Partenaire incontournable de la Tunisie sur le plan historique, l’Union Européenne a toujours nourri une relation privilégiée avec ce pays, portée par une coopération intensive dans le cadre du premier Accord d’association que l’UE ait signé avec un pays du Sud de la Méditerranée, et les négociations pour que la Tunisie devienne un « partenaire avancé » de l’Union. Faute de système politique pluraliste, cette Tunisie amie de l’Europe s’incarnait en la personne de M. Ben Ali, qui a donc constitué un partenaire reconnu pendant toutes ces années. Face à la destitution du régime en place, la réaction tardive et prudente de l’Union Européenne est pointée du doigt : La relation historique entretenue avec Ben Ali justifiait-elle une telle tiédeur à prendre position face à la Révolution du Jasmin, qui s’est imposée par la volonté populaire ? Peut-on considérer que dans un tel contexte, l’Union Européenne peut constituer un partenaire crédible pour aider la Tunisie à organiser des élections libres et pluralistes ? C’est le défi qui se pose aujourd’hui à l’UE, qui vient de décider de l’envoi d’une délégation de haut niveau en Tunisie pour « mieux s’informer » sur la situation sur place. Les récentes manifestations en Egypte et au Yémen confirment l’urgence pour l’UE de déterminer une position claire sur les aspirations démocratiques en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen Orient. Alternatives Européennes est allé à la rencontre des parlementaires européens membres de la Délégation pour les relations avec le Maghreb pour tenter de répondre à cette question. Malika BENARAB-ATTOU, plaide pour une Europe forte, qui n’hésite pas à soutenir les mouvements démocratiques clés dans la société tunisienne et qui ose enfin développer une politique étrangère courageuse et efficace. Hélène FLAUTRE, qui se rendra en Tunisie en fin de semaine, nous livre son analyse transversale de la crise tunisienne, à la fois sur les conditions que l’UE doit remplir pour aider la Tunisie, mais aussi sur la nécessité d’accentuer la coopération en matière de libertés civiles, pour favoriser une émergence rapide de la démocratie. D’autres contributions institutionnelles mais aussi militantes enrichiront progressivement ce dossier. C’est le cas de Lakhdar HOUAMEL, qui expose son opinion du rôle que peut tenir l’UE pour aider la Tunisie un espace démocratique. N’hésitez pas à nous contacter à paris@euroalter.com pour venir donner votre avis !
Public demonstration against the ghettoisation of Roma in Cluj-Napoca
Article by: Daniel Peslari Somewhere in Europe, more to the East, the rulers of a city have learnt a lesson, taught by the president of a great country, more to the West. The lesson is called ‘How to get rid of those who we don’t want’. The lesson was taught in late August 2010, and now the Eastern city is applying its learnings in the depths of winter. The city we are talking about is Cluj-Napoca and, of course, the ‘great’ example is France. The fact is some Roma families living in the town with legal papers and paying the bills and the rent every month were forcibly removed from their homes in the city, and sent to a notorious ghetto called Pata Rât, where the air is unbreathable due to its proximity to the city’s landfill and to a medicinal factory. Moreover, these families have children who used to go to school in their neighbourhood, and the adults used to go to work in the town. In December 2010, over two days at -10? Celsius they were moved from their homes and sent to Pata Rât to start a new life amidst the rats and rubbish, often in extremely cramped living quarters (12 people in a room of 16m²). The case is being monitored by Amnesty International and other Romanian and international NGO’s that defend human and Roma rights, including European Alternatives, and also by the Presidential Councilor for Minorities. After a public debate hosted by the University Babe?-Bolyai on Monday, which the representatives of the Town Hall didn’t attend, but sent an ‘objective’ letter, the organizers decided to protest in public against the forced removals. At the protest alongside the Roma were some civic organizations such as Amare Phrala, Grupul de Ac?iune Social? Cluj and European Alternatives. They all shouted “Dignity, not racism!”, “School, not ghetto!”, “We are all equals!”, “We want justice!”, “We don’t want discrimination!”… Also present were Roma students and Romanian citizens who understand that defending Roma rights means defending their own rights to a normal life, to justice and to free expression. But it’s sad that even though the mayor said he is willing to talk, the prospect of the situation changing is minimal, because the law in Romania is so permissive, the rulers can do almost everything they want, and because civil society here is almost powerless. Thank you President Sarkozy, thank you Mayor of Cluj-Napoca for being such great examples of social and (I dare to say) European solidarity!
Basta Berlusconi !
Photo : Giuliana Di Febo A la différence d’un dimanche ordinaire sur la colline du Sacré Cœur à Paris, ce ne sont pas tant les cloches de la basilique qui ont sonné le 13 février que les casseroles et autres ustensiles de cuisine, frappés par une centaine de manifestantes et manifestants. Ils réclamaient la démission du président du Conseil italien, Silvio Berlusconi, et appelaient à la « dignité de la femme », dans ce pays où moins de la moitié des Italiennes ont un emploi rémunéré et seul un enfant sur dix trouve une place en crèche. Dans de nombreuses villes en Europe et dans le monde, des défilés ont été organisés ce weekend, comme à Bruxelles, Madrid, Genève, Berlin, Londres ou Stockholm, pour soutenir les 230 manifestations qui ont eu lieu en Italie, notamment à Rome, Milan, Gênes ou encore Palerme, rassemblant des centaines de milliers d’hommes et de femmes. Ces manifestations spontanées à travers le monde font suite à l’affaire Ruby qui a défrayé la chronique ces derniers mois, ou comment « le Cavaliere » s’est offert les services sexuels de Karima « Ruby » El Mahroug (alors mineure) entre février et mai 2010. Mais plus globalement, aux divers scandales dans lesquels Berlusconi est impliqué s’ajoutent les affaires de corruption, de fraude fiscale, et surtout la manière dont Berlusconi traite les femmes et l’image qu’il véhicule d’elles dans les médias : réduites à leur apparence physique, sans légitimité intellectuelle, dépendantes pour réussir d’hommes riches et puissants. Les slogans scandés à travers le monde se répondent en écho : « Démission, démission, démission », « Basta Berlusconi ! »,« Si ce n’est pas aujourd’hui, c’est quand ? ». De nombreux artistes, intellectuels, syndicalistes, parlementaires étaient présents pour crier leur colère, dont la cinéaste Cristina Comencini, la dirigeante du plus grand syndicat italien (CGIL) Susanna Camusso et la rédactrice en chef d’un important journal de gauche, l’Unità, Concita De Gregorio, aux côtés d’associations luttant contre la discrimination des femmes comme Corrente Rosa. A Paris, la manifestation a rassemblé hommes, femmes et enfants, Italiens et Français ; Giuliana, Italienne, a aidé à diffuser l’information et a manifesté dimanche jusqu’à ce que la police disperse le rassemblement. Selon elle, « la dignité des femmes est un droit, une conquête très ancienne, pour laquelle il est triste de devoir encore combattre. Dans le système médiatique mis en place par Berlusconi, le message transmis est qu’il représente le seul espoir de la société et qu’il n’y a aucune alternative. Pour lui, les femmes ne sont même pas dignes d’un combat politique basé sur des arguments, comme l’illustrent ses propos contre son opposante politique Rosy Bindi [vice-Présidente de la chambre de députés, qu’il a déclarée fin 2009 être « plus belle qu’intelligente »]. Beaucoup de gens sont aveugles : il possède les médias, use de la rhétorique. Mais cette manifestation montre qu’une conscience sociale s’élève face à lui. L’image qu’ont montrée toutes les manifestations en Italie et dans le monde est forte et j’espère qu’elle permettra de dépasser le barrage médiatique qui risque de s’opposer à cette lutte pour la dignité des femmes. » Mardi 15 février, le parquet de Milan a demandé le procès de Berlusconi pour recours à la prostitution de mineure et abus de fonction. Le président du Conseil italien, passible de trois ans de prison et de douze ans de réclusion, n’a pas l’intention de se présenter au procès et a accusé les juges d’agir uniquement à but subversif. Les manifestations de ce weekend sont par ailleurs selon lui l’expression de femmes « puritaines ». Reste à voir ce que décideront les trois femmes du tribunal de Milan qui formeront le collège chargé de juger le Président du Conseil le 6 avril 2011, Carmen D'Elia, Orsolina De Cristofaro et Giulia Turri, alors qu’au printemps auront lieu en Italie les états généraux de la condition féminine. « On ne combat pas seulement Berlusconi, mais tout un système politique », a expliqué Giuliana. « L’affaire Ruby ne relève pas de sa vie privée et de la moralité comme il le prétend, mais de la loi ! S’il faut abandonner l’idée de justice, la quintessence de la démocratie, alors on tombe dans la dictature.» Elena Dalibot European Alternatives Paris / Cluj-Napoca
Appel à une politique européenne pour le Maghreb
Appel à une politique européenne renouvelée en faveur de la transition démocratique au Maghreb et des droits des migrants Signez l'appel L’Europe a aujourd’hui une occasion unique de remédier aux blessures historiques qui la séparent des pays du Maghreb en accompagnant la transition démocratique en cours. Mais, en cette période cruciale, l’Union Européenne, est absente en tant qu’entité politique et se montre divisée entre la ‘diplomatie de la bombe’ de Nicolas Sarkozy, la paranoïa xénophobe du gouvernement italien et l’indifférence allemande. La situation sur l’ile de Lampedusa, encore plus qu’une tragédie, représente l’incapacité des classes politiques nationales de comprendre et accompagner la volonté de changement dans les pays du Maghreb et de s’engager dans la redéfinition d’un rapport nord-sud qui aille au-delà de la logique cynique de l’urgence, vouée à l’échec, et annoncée uniquement à des fins électorales. Les politiques nationales censées répondre au phénomène migratoire se sont révélées non seulement inadéquates du point de vue de leur gestion (accueil, intégration), du point de vue du respect des droits des individus, civiques et sociaux, mais aussi en terme de coopération et d’aide au développement. Comme la récente querelle entre la France et l’Italie sur l’accueil des migrants tunisiens le démontre, l’absence d’une réelle politique européenne sur les migrations a donné place à une situation confuse, incertaine qui ne permet pas de garantir les droits civils, politiques, sociaux et économiques des migrants et des demandeurs d’asile. Conscients que la manière la plus efficace d’aider les citoyens nord-africains n’est pas d’en accueillir le plus grand nombre sur le continent européen mais de faire en sorte que le développement démocratique social et économique rende le Maghreb un lieu duquel il n’y ait plus de raison de s’enfuir ; Convaincus que seule la relance du projet d’union politique européenne serait à même de mettre en place une politique extérieure de sécurité au service de la paix, la démocratie et la justice au niveau international ; Nous déclarons qu’il est une priorité de mettre en place une nouvelle stratégie européenne de proximité avec les pays du Maghreb et des politiques de co-développement et de croissance de l’ensemble de la région, en commençant par les points suivants : Le lancement d’une directive européenne qui encadre la mise en place d’un permis de séjour pour la recherche de travail, dont les critères seront à définir en accord avec les pays du Maghreb, et qui crée une voie d’accès simple, légale et unique pour les citoyens nord africains qui souhaitent venir travailler ou étudier sur le territoire de l’Union Européenne, dans le respect du droit à la mobilité, et qui reconnaisse la contribution des migrants à la stabilité et durabilité des systèmes sociaux européens. Le développement de normes standard minimum et obligatoires pour tous les pays européens sur le traitement accordé aux demandeurs d’asile et aux migrants irrégulier, qui garantisse le respect de la dignité de tout être humain La ratification de la convention de l’ONU sur les droits des travailleurs migrants et des membres de leur famille, approuvée par l’assemblée des nations unies le 12/12/1990 et entrée en vigueur en 2003, qui n’a encore été ratifiée par aucun des pays de l’Union Le dépassement de la convention de Dublin, pour le développement d’une véritable politique européenne d’accueil des demandeurs d’asile, telle qu’elle a été souhaitée par les institutions européennes dans le programme de Stockholm Le dépassement du lien entre citoyenneté et nationalité – qui exclut les migrants des droits politiques – par la fondation de la citoyenneté européenne sur le lieu de résidence. La relance d’une politique européenne d’aide au développement qui rationalise l’utilisation des ressources naturelles nationales, et ceci en mettant en place un plan pour l’Afrique du Nord dont l’objectif sera le développement agricole, une gestion commune de l’eau et le développement des sources d’énergie alternative, qui s’appuie sur l’intégration économique et politique de la région, pour donner une impulsion unique aux projets de relance de l’économie des pays du Maghreb et apporter un soutien à la transition démocratique en cours. La création d’un instrument de financement direct pour les jeunes maghrébins qui souhaiteraient développer des nouvelles entreprises et des coopératives sur le territoire Finalement, la convocation d’une convention Euro-méditerranéenne, ouverte à la société civile, avec le mandat d’élaborer un projet d’accord qui recueille le consensus de tous les partis.
Human Social Art
Photo by Frank Boucher Article by: Elena Dalibot Translation by: Deirdre Brophy Franck Boucher, author-photographer, has questioned the true meaning of the French acronym “SDF”, which translates to English as “no fixed abode” and is commonly used to refer to the homeless. Along with the reality of homelessness, the use of this phrase is often accepted with indifference as part of our daily surroundings. At the International Festival of Photography in Sarcelles, Boucher met the local branch of the Paris Transeuropa network to present his work and discuss the possibility of undertaking projects with European Alternatives in the future. Franck Boucher has worked with the homeless for four years in Tours, where he lives, and he credits them with his success as a photographer. He began to photograph them in a mobile studio in Tours, giving the models an “existence permit”, a symbolic document for people who often have no papers. There is a confident atmosphere in the community café “La Barque”, where these unusual photographs are exhibited. The photographs remind the subjects to continue to fight their daily struggles, regain confidence and dignity, but also to have fun. As well as the creation of existence permits, Franck Boucher has followed different aspects of homeless life in Tours: key places, daily habits, and even special occasions, such as the deposit of 27 kilos of copper coins collected by Didier to the post office. Little by little, Franck Boucher’s projects have garnered the attention not only of the homeless community of Tours, the surrounding region and across the country, with one person travelling from Marseille to be photographed; but also of the media and institutions. Thanks to the prizes for his work, Bourcher has been able to buy more equipment, work in colour and to develop his activities. One project was recognized as being of public utility in 2005, another won the Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sports “Youth Challenge” prize in 2005, while another was awarded the Ministry of Education’s “Take action” prize in 2006. His work is a testament to the homeless. Through his work, they become their own ambassadors and tell their story, as in the “Homeless Top Models” series. Franck Boucher tackles prejudice through giving the homeless a role as “top models”, questioning whether they are really so different from the rest of us. In the “Storyboard of Life” series, the subjects are superimposed on cartoon-like backgrounds depicting with humour and tenderness the life, world and dreams of 26 homeless people “with real and poignant stories”. The models were involved in the design of the images, from the light in the drawing, to the pose and the visual style. With five years of artistic success behind him, Franck Boucher invites like-minded artists interested in the social impact of their art to create a movement for “Human Social Art”. Boucher has no shortage of projects into which to channel his many ideas and seemingly limitless energy. He is currently working in Sarcelles with a class of primary school children on a project of portraits and self-portraits as part of the International Festival of Social Photography. The social reality of life in the town will be presented through the children’s eyes to festival-goers. Franck Boucher’s next big project this year will not be on photography but will have a strong human element. He is preparing to travel around the world by train and cargo ship with his son, who has a rare genetic illness and is passionate about trains. All the support, especially via Facebook, brings them one step closer to achieving their dream. In partnership with European Alternatives, Boucher will organize an exhibition of his work in the Transeuropa festival in Paris, from May 6th to 15th. For more information on the project or if you would like to contribute, write to use at paris@euroalter.com. You will certainly hear more about Franck Boucher as he continues working, giving a platform of expression to voices that neven seem to be listened to. Elena Dalibot European Alternatives Paris-Cluj
À la mémoire de Teo Varga (1988-2011)
European Alternatives et tous les membres du Transeuropa Network souhaitent transmettre leurs sincères condoléances à tous ceux qui sont en deuil pour la perte de Teo Varga, qui nous a quitté trop tôt. Nous avons été choqués et attristés d'apprendre son décès. Certains membres de l'équipe vidéo du Transeuropa Network ont eu la chance de le rencontrer et travailler avec lui sur le projet du film, It gets better. Nous souhaitons lui dédier ce film. Merci Teo pour avoir pris part à cette grande aventure transeuropéenne. En cette période douloureuse, nos pensées vont à ses parents et amis.
Maghreb appeal
Appeal to the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Council CALL FOR A RENEWED EUROPEAN POLICY IN FAVOUR OF THE DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN THE MAGHREB AND THE RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS Sign the appeal here Europe is presented with a unique occasion to heal the historic wounds that divide it from the countries of the Maghreb, accompanying the democratic transition in course. But in these crucial days the European Union has been absent, and has appeared before the eyes of the world as divided between Sarkozy’s diplomacy of bombs, the xenophobia of the Italian government, and German indifference. The island of Lampedusa, even more than a tragedy, represents the incapacity of the national political classes to build on the desire for change in the countries of the Maghreb to launch a politics redefining the relations between the global north and the global south, going beyond the fallacious and cynical logic of permanent emergency merely serving electoral ends. National policies on migration have until now shown themselves to be inadequate for the management of the phenomenon (ensuring welcome, insertion etc), inadequate for the respect of individual rights, both civil and social, and inadequate for international cooperation and aiding development. As the recent quarrel between France and Italy over the management of the Tunisian migrants demonstrates, the lack of a unified European migration policy has led to a confused, uncertain and contradictory situation in which it has become difficult to guarantee the civil, political, social and economic rights of migrants and those requesting asylum. Fully conscious that welcoming those escaping from war and poverty is necessary but not sufficient, we support the request emerging from all north african social movements for democratic, social and economic development of the Maghreb, transforming the area into one where young generations can finally live their future. Convinced that only a relaunch of a united European politics will finally allow the expression of a foreign and security policy serving peace, democracy and justice at the international level, we declare the priority of the definition of a new European neighbourhood policy for the countries of the Maghreb and for the co-development and growth for the entire region of the Mediterranean starting from the following points: 1. Excercise of diplomatic and political pressure from the European Union to guarantee the full respect of the democratic demands and aspirations of the people of North. 2. Ratification of a European directive allowing for jobseeker resident permit, according to criteria to be established in agreement with the countries of the Maghreb, creating a single, legal and simple channel for North-Africans interested in working or studying inside the European Union. 3. Strict respect of the principle of non-refoulment, and development of binding minimum standards for all European countries for the treatment of demands for asylum and of irregular migrants in order to guarantee the full respect of the dignity of every human being. 4. Ratification of the United Nations Convention on the rights of migrant worker and of their families, approved by the assembly of the United Nations on the 18/12/1990 and in force since 2003, but not yet ratified by any member state of the European Union. 5. Substitution of the Dublin regulation, developing a real European policy of welcoming asylum seekers, as promised by the European institutions in the Stockholm Program. 6. Overcoming the equivalence between citizenship and nationality, which excludes millions of immigrants from their political rights, with the objective of establishing a European citizenship based on residency. 7. Relaunching a European policy of aid for development which would rationalise the investment of national resources and put in place a plan for North Africa promoting agricultural development, common management of water and alternative energies and the economic and political integration of the area, giving a unitary impulse to the relaunch of the economies of the Maghreb countries and supporting the democratic transition in course. 8. Creation of a direct instrument of finance for young people from the Maghreb to incentivise start-up businesses and cooperatives within the territory. 9. Finally, the calling of a Euro-Mediterranean convention, open to civil society, with the mandate to draft an agreement with the consensus of all parties.
Appel pour une Europe sans frontières
Rejoignez l'appel sur Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/europewithoutborders?ref=ts Traduction d'Adelina Ionescu Le droit de libre circulation sur tout le continent et dans l’espace Schengen sans contrôles frontaliers sont deux des fondements de la citoyenneté européenne. Ils comptent parmi les réussites européennes les plus populaires et les plus largement reconnues. Nous refusons la mise en question de ces droits par quelques-uns des politiques les plus influents de l’Europe et par les gouvernements nationaux. La décision unilatérale du Danemark de réintroduire les contrôles frontaliers a amené l’idée d’une Europe unifiée, qui respecte les droits fondamentaux, à un niveau comparable aux expulsions des Roms de la France et de l’Italie l’été dernier. La tentative de la France et de l’Italie de remettre en cause l’accord Schengen est un exemple d’alarmisme populiste qui menace la construction européenne. Iln’est pas acceptable que les droits de libre circulation dans l’espace Schengen soient mis en danger par l’incapacité des États participants d’avoir une politique étrangère, sociale et de sécurité commune ; la conséquence de cela est le gain de terrain et d’influence des tendances xénophobes de l’extrême droite, qui trouvent dans les membres les plus faibles de nos sociétés un bouc émissaire à leur incapacité. Il ne faut pas que le printemps arabe ne débouche sur l’été qui aura vu le rêve européen mourir. La réaction de l’Europe aux événements historiques des pays nord-africains a été de créer de nouvelles barrières et de fermer ses frontières, et maintenant de refuser des libertés à ses propres citoyens. Au lieu de cela, l’Europe devrait donner un exemple de solidarité et de coopération entre les peuples dans l’intérêt de la paix, de la démocratie et de la liberté. Nous ne pouvons pas permettre que l’idéal d’une Europe libre, unie et tournée vers l’extérieur disparaisse. Nous appelons les citoyens, la société civile et les politiques du continent entier à s’assurer que l’Europe relance le processus d’union politique et qu’elle ne sera pas de nouveau, par négligence, un continent divisé et tragique.
The EU wants You!
Original source: commissionefesta.altervista.org European Alternatives takes part in the Consultation of the European Commission on the Green Paper “Less bureaucracy for citizens: promoting free movement of public documents and recognition of the effects of civil status records“, to advocate for all types of exising civil unions and marriages between same-sex couples to be recognised across the EU.?? This is not a call for an imposition of same-sex marriages on all member states, but a first step in regulating and harmonizing the rights of existing same sex couples, who do not fully benefit from the fundamental rights guaranteed to them as EU citizens.?? In the EU, 17 out of 27 countries regulate unions between same-sex couples providing them with different rights, but the majority of these people are unable to claim their fundamental rights of movement, settlement or work when moving to the remaining ten countries. Even within these 17 countries, recognition of these different forms of union sis not automatic and communitarian, but based on a series of bi-lateral agreement, often in conflict one with the other. We are asking the Commission to enforce what already expressed by Commissioner Viviane Reading and by a vote of the European Parliament: each member of the EU must recognize all forms of unions and marriages recognised in any other member state.?? Our aim is to solicit improvements of the present discriminations that same-sex couples are facing, for example the right of establishment in another EU Member State and the freedom to seek employment in any Member State, which are at peril in those countries who are refusing to recognise couples in marriages and civil unions. This constitutes a violation of fundamental freedom and rights contained in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.?? European Alternatives believes that the mutual recognition of all types of unions is an unavoidable and necessary first step towards greater rights for LGBT citizens, particularly in this period of economic distress, which forces many people to move around Europe in search of employment.?? Send the Eu Commission a letter, it is just a click far from here
A very European Story
In 2005, Antonio, from Italy and Juan, from Argentina both win a scholarship to study in a university in the UK. The two get to know each other, like each other very much and start going out together. After the end of their university course, they both find work in London, move in together and live together for three years. Juan has a working permit paid by his employer. In 2009 Antonio and Juan celebrate their love through a civil partnership. In 2010 Antonio gets a job offer in Italy and would like to return with his husband, who could look for a job there once the couple has settled. Unfortunately, Italy does not recognise their union and Juan, a non-European, can only get a three-month tourist visa, after which he would have to leave Italy or become an illegal migrant, which in Italy is a crime. It would be almost impossible for him to get a job as a high-skilled non-European without a working permit. Juan and Antonio appeal to the European Union. Should Juan be allowed to move to Italy with his husband? If you think so, follow the discussion here…..
In memory of Teo Varga (1988-2011)
In memory of Teo Varga (1988-2011) European Alternatives and all members of the Transeuropa Network wish to pass on their deepest sympathies to all who are mourning the loss of Teo Varga, whose life was cut too shortly. We were both shocked and saddened to hear of his passing. Some members of the Transeuropa Network video team had the chance to meet him and work together with him on a film project, It Gets better. We wish to dedicate the film to him. Thank you Teo for having taken part in this great transeuropean adventure. Our thoughts are with all his relatives and friends at this sorrowful time.
Situation des Roms en Roumanie : “purification” de la rue Coastei à Cluj
Article de Diana Prisacariu Traduction d'Alexis Gratpenche Schizophrène, autiste, ou encore paranoïaque : c'est en ces termes que s'exprimèrent les intellectuels qui assistaient à l'office religieux inaugurant le début des travaux de la nouvelle Faculté de théologie sociale. La messe fut célébrée par Andrei Andreicut, grand chef orthodoxe à l'allure débonnaire. Un homme dont la voix est parfaite pour conter des histoires aux enfants et qui use d'un vocabulaire qui constitue un exemple extraordinaire si l'on désire se pencher sur l'influence slave dans la langue roumaine médiévale. Il célébra cet office magnifique par 35°C, une preuve de plus de son combat de résistance… contre le communisme. À moins qu'il ne luttât seulement contre le soleil. Le courage du métropolitain est d'autant plus admirable qu'il parvint, presque deux heures durant, à tourner le dos à une foule colorée constituée d'une centaine de Roms et de plusieurs dizaines de roumains et de hongrois : étudiants, universitaires, journalistes ou militants. Ils brandissaient des banderoles dans le calme et se demandaient s'ils étaient soudain devenus invisibles ; ou peut-être était-ce la magie de la cérémonie religieuse qui empêchait les autres de les regarder ? Les gardes du corps qui nous bloquaient le passage sont, d'après ce que révéla le vice-maire plus tard, une toute nouvelle acquisition de la municipalité destinée à protéger les autorités des menaces et des attaques des Roms. Au moins, leur attitude impassible était plus comique que celle des prêtres, eux-même de noir vêtus, qui constituaient ici la minorité à protéger. “C'est quoi, la théologie ?” me demanda une maligne petite Rom, ravissante, soignée, et joliment habillée. La fillette, qui tenait avec moi une banderole, avait 8 ans, alors il ne valait sûrement pas la peine que je me lance dans une critique de l'hypocrisie de l'Eglise orthodoxe. Elle n'avait plus de domicile car sa famille avait été expropriée en plein mois de décembre, par – 16°C. On les avait ensuite déplacés sur une colline juste à côté de la décharge municipale dans une “habitation modulaire” où 8 familles doivent se partager 4 pièces de 16 m2 et une salle de bain de 6 m2, sans chauffage, ni eau chaude : rien, hormis des chiens errants et des tonnes de boue à traverser pour atteindre l'autoroute. Ainsi, je décidai plutôt de lui parler de Dieu et de la supposée bonté de ceux qui l’'étudient, ces personnes à qui l'on devrait en principe pouvoir demander de l'aide. Des antisémites et des racistes devenus responsables religieux adorés de presque tous les intellectuels roumains. Ils sont une cible de choix pour ceux qui veulent faire des affaires, en particulier quand les autorités, le secteur public et les étudiants de Cluj peuvent en tirer un bon profit. Je m'arrêtai là et décidai de garder ces pensées pour moi. Je pensai notamment à un opérateur de téléphonie, que j'avais admiré pendant un temps pour sa politique de responsabilité sociale et pour qui on avait purifié un terrain afin qu'il y implante à Cluj son département de recherche et développement. Cette entreprise abandonna ensuite l'idée et choisit de produire en Roumanie plutôt que d'y valoriser l'innovation : une fois de plus, on remettait à plus tard un projet qui aurait fait venir des capitaux en Roumanie plutôt que de profiter simplement de la main d'œuvre bon marché. C'est alors que la municipalité décida de donner le terrain à la très respectée Eglise orthodoxe. Aussi incroyable que cela puisse paraître, nous n'osions ni crier, ni même parler, pendant que la messe suivait sa marche séculaire. C'est seulement à la fin de la cérémonie que les manifestants rompirent le bruissement silencieux des feuilles de papier et se firent entendre : certains parmi nous parlaient de la situation des Roms, d'autres de cette situation ubuesque, et nous étions tous d'accord pour trouver insensé le comportement des autorités, des spectateurs et des cléricaux, qui étaient parvenus à nous éviter du regard pendant toute la durée de la cérémonie. Nous poussâmes des cris de stupéfaction à la vue d'une voiture qui quittait les lieux en hâte, ne laissant qu'un nuage de poussière derrière elle. Il s'agissait du maire, qui avait fait preuve de beaucoup d'imagination pour nous éviter. Il avait sûrement demandé aux prêtres de prier pour le salut de son âme, puis, aidé de policiers très vigilants, il avait traversé la foule et s'était frayé un chemin à l'écart de nos remarques, alors que nous demandions plus d'humanité dans le traitement des Roms. Plusieurs ONG, des universitaires, des étudiants et des militants avaient essayé d'attirer l'attention sur la situation de ces citoyens qui, bien que vivant à Cluj-Napoca dans la légalité, avaient été relogés par la force sur le site de la décharge municipale. En dépit du mécontentement des militants, les autorités ne les laissèrent ni s'exprimer aux réunions du Conseil municipal, que le maire présidait, ni ne répondirent à leur invitation quand ils leur proposèrent de visiter les nouveaux logements sociaux construits à proximité de la décharge municipale. Les responsables de l'Eglise orthodoxe, pour leur part, ont adopté une attitude encore plus habile. Ils nous offrirent en effet le spectacle de ce vieil homme qui déclarait ne pas savoir que le terrain était habité auparavant, qui prononçait un discours calme, bien que parfois incohérent. De telle sorte que l'adoration de son auditoire atteignit alors des sommets. Voilà le problème. Reste à trouver la solution.
Non-discrimination à raison de lorientation sexuelle: Les couples mariés et les partenaires enregistrés sont dans une situation comparable.
Interview : Maëva Kokodoko image: freehindou.com Un mois après la décision de la Cour de Justice de l’Union Européenne (CJUE) du 11 mai 2011, de nombreuses questions se posent quant à l’impact de la jurisprudence Maruko/Römer (Voir résumé des affaires) et de la Directive 2000/78/CE portant création d'un cadre général en faveur de l'égalité de traitement en matière d'emploi et de travail. Dans les deux affaires la législation nationale accordait un traitement moins favorable aux personnes ayant conclu un partenariat enregistré par rapport à celui accordé aux personnes mariées. La CJUE a affirmé dans les deux affaires que la situation des couples mariés et en partenariat enregistré est comparable. Une règlementation qui défavoriserait un couple en partenariat enregistré, dans les affaires en question, constituerait une discrimination directe[1]. Nous avons demandé au Professeur Jean-Philippe Lhernould,Professeur de droit privé et membre de l'Institut de droit social et sanitaire de l'Université de Poitiers, expert auprès de la Commission Européenne et auteur de nombreuses publications dont “Droit sociaux des couples homosexuels“, de répondre à quelques questions. Maëva : La CJUE laisse au juge nationale une large marge de manœuvre pour déterminer la comparabilité des situations. Cette situation n’est-elle pas aujourd’hui insatisfaisante ou hypocrite de la part de la CJUE ? Jean-Philippe Lhernould : Vous avez raison si on considère que la comparaison est l’élément clé du processus d’évaluation d’existence d’une discrimination. Ceci dit, le processus de renvoi préjudiciel repose sur une coopération entre CJUE et juge national, impliquant que celui-ci conserve une marge d’appréciation. M. : La CJUE assume-t-elle assez son rôle de protectrice du droit à la non-discrimination en raison de l’orientation sexuelle ? JP L. : Question très générale. Disons qu’elle choisit une voie qui lui paraît juridiquement la plus juste. Le fait qu’elle qualifie de « discrimination directe » les situations des arrêts Römer et Maruko peut néanmoins être analysé comme objectivement protecteur. M. :Devrait-elle apporter plus de précisions sur la notion de situation comparable ? JP L. : Des arrêts ultérieurs portant sur des situations de fait différents pourraient lui en donner l’occasion. Ne pas oublier que le rôle du juge est de trancher un litige, pas de légiférer. M. : Du côté inverse la CJUE, en indiquant que la discrimination dans les affaires Maruko et Römer était directe, est peut-être bien plus protectrice que le juge national allemand qui a affirmé dans l’affaire Maruko que la discrimination était indirecte, laissant ainsi la porte ouverte à des possibles justifications. JP L : En effet. Le juge allemand aurait pourtant dû suivre la qualification retenue par la CJUE. M. : Les couples homosexuels(en partenariat) ont les mêmes devoirs mais pas les mêmes droits sociaux que les couples hétérosexuels (mariés). Que pensez-vous de cette affirmation ? JP L : C’est une question qui dépend de l’analyse que l’on peut faire de chaque législation nationale concernée. En France, les deux status sont presque identiques, sauf pour l’adoption. En tant que juriste, je n’ai pas de commentaire à faire sur cette restriction, qui renvoie à une question très délicate. M. : Pensez-vous que les législations nationales font trop souvent référence à l’idée traditionnelle du mariage quand il s’agit de droit (avantages), et omettent cette référence quand il s’agit de devoir (cotisations)? Question intéressante. Une étude plus poussée pourrait en effet révéler que c’est essentiellement au stade des droits que le régime matrimonial apparaît. Un régime contributif (fondé sur cotisations) soutient d’autant moins les différences liées au régime matrimonial que la cause de la prestation réside dans les cotisations versées M. : Dans l’arrêt Römer la Cour indique que le partenaire de vie doit se trouver « dans une situation juridique et factuelle comparable à celle d’une personne mariée en ce qui concerne ladite pension ». L’élément « factuel » indique-t-il que le juge national va réexaminer la question au cas par cas ? JP L. : C’est une question que j’ai soulevée dans mon commentaire de l’arrêt Römer. Il est difficile de savoir ce que la CJUE a voulu dire, ou même si elle a voulu attacher à ces mots une portée particulière. Si on compare avec la jurisprudence hommes/femmes, la comparaison se fait en fonction de l’avantage demandé, pas de la situation factuelle. M. : Dans le cas où l’affaire d’une personne entre dans le champ d’application de la directive 2000/78, est-il préférable d’invoquer la directive ou la Convention Européenne des droits de l’Homme (CEDH) ? Pour quelle raison ? JP L. : Question très intéressante. Devant le juge national, en principe, on ne peut pas invoquer la directive car elle n’a pas d’effet direct horizontal (il faudrait donc recourir à l’interprétation conforme du droit interne). L’avantage de la CEDH est d’être invocable directement…mais il faudra convaincre le juge, en l’absence d’arrêt de la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme sur les discriminations liées à l’orientation sexuelle, d’appliquer une disposition générale (art. 14) à un cas concret. Par ailleurs, le régime de justification n’est pas le même. M. : La notion de situation comparable pourrait-elle, dans le futur, être généralisée et utilisée (comme par exemple la notion de bon père de famille) pour accorder ainsi plus de droit aux couples homosexuels (en partenariat) ? JP L. : La Halde (Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l'Egalité) l’a déjà utilisée. La comparabilité est la clé de toute action en discrimination : c’est donc le point de départ pour fonder une demande de droits émanant d’un couple homosexuel. La question n’est pas « d’accorder plus de droits », mais de rétablir l’égalité de traitement Plus d’info: Krzysztof Smiszer, Sexual orientation discrimination and the Maruko and Römer ECJ cases (Slides, engl.) Arrêt de la CJUE Römer du 11 mai 2011 Directive 2000/78/CE du Conseil du 27 novembre 2000 portant création d'un cadre général en faveur de l'égalité de traitement en matière d'emploi et de travail [1] La juridiction allemande à laquelle l'affaire Maruko avait été renvoyée, a jugé que la discrimination était indirecte.
Appeal for a Europe without borders
Join the appeal on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/europewithoutborders?ref=ts The right to free movement across the continent and to move across the Schengen area without border controls are two of the foundations of European citizenship. They are amongst the most popular European achievements and the most widely recognised. We refuse that these rights should be put in question by some of the most influential politicians in Europe and by the national governments. The unilateral decision of Denmark to reintroduce controls at the border has brought the idea of a unified Europe respecting fundamental rights to a low which matches the expulsions of the Roma from France and Italy last summer. The attempt to put the Schengen agreeement in question by Italy and France is an example of populist scaremongering being allowed to threaten the European construction. It is not acceptable that the rights to freely circulate within the Schengen area are jeopardized by the incapacity of participating states to have a common foreign, security and social policy, and not acceptable that as a consequence the xenophobic tendencies of the far-right are winning ground and winning influence, finding in the weakest members of our societies a scapegoat for their incapacity. The Arab spring must not turn into the summer the European dream died. The European reaction to the historic events in the North African countries has been one of building new barriers and closing its frontiers, and now denying freedoms to its own citizens. Instead, Europe should be setting an example of solidarity and cooperation between peoples in the interests of peace, democracy and liberty. The ideal of a free, united and outward-looking Europe must not be allowed to sink any lower. We call on citizens, civil society and politicians from throughout the continent to ensure Europe relaunches the process of political union and does not carelessly slip back to being a divided and tragic continent.
Lettre ouverte et invitation à mes jeunes amis tunisiens et égyptiens
Flashmob pendant la réception de la Caravane du Sud pour la Dignité et la Liberté, Tunis, le 23 juin (voir la journée transnationale de mobilisation d'AE menée le 23 juin) Traduction de Camille Nore La semaine dernière le co-Directeur d'Alternatives Européennes, Niccolò Milanese, a participé à la Conférence “Croire dans le dialogue, Agir pour la Citoyenneté” organisée par la Fondation Anna Lindh -une fondation euro-méditerranéenne pour le dialogue entre les cultures- qui a eu lieu à Tunis, la capitale tunisienne. 200 représentants et associations de la société civile oeuvrant pour la démocratie et la liberté dans une perspective interculturelle étaient également présents. Ce rassemblement était l'occasion d'échanger sur les défis qui attendent les sociétés euro-méditerranéennes notamment en termes de citoyenneté, dans le contexte actuel marqué par la transition démocratique et un climat de changement social. Suite à la rencontre du co-Directeur d'Alternatives Européennes, Niccolò Milanese, avec des militants tunisiens et égyptiens, voici une lettre ouverte qu'il leur a écrit, appelant à une collaboration future. Très chers amis, Ce fut un plaisir et un honneur de vous rencontrer à Tunis le weekend dernier durant la conférence “Croire dans le dialogue, Agir pour la Citoyenneté ». J’ai été inspiré par vos récits d’engagement et de passion pour le changement, et ému par vos sacrifices et votre courage. Les jeunes égyptiens et tunisiens ont réalisé une avancée majeure dans l’histoire de vos nations et cependant il est clair que la lutte pour la démocratie n’est pas encore gagnée, et que du courage et de la résistance seront nécessaires pour surmonter totalement les horreurs commises par les anciens régimes, sans pour autant tomber dans de nouvelles dictatures. Cependant, en vous écoutant et en discutant avec vous, deux pensées n’ont cessé de me perturber et c’est à ce sujet que je prends la liberté de vous écrire. La première met l’accent sur tout l’espoir et l’inspiration que vous avez donné aux jeunes à travers l’Europe. Je suis certain que vous avez vu les affiches à Madrid et Athènes disant ‘C’est notre Place Tahrir’ ou les slogans ‘Tunis, Le Caire, Bruxelles’ écris sur les murs des capitales européennes, mais peut-être n’avez-vous pas pleinement intériorisé leurs significations. Bien que presque toute l’Europe, sauf la Béliorussie, n’ait plus de dictatures meurtrières, les jeunes de notre continent voient dans votre soulèvement un signal d’espoir pour leurs propres situations : Les personnes s’insurgeant ensemble peuvent surmonter les forces qui les oppressent, en particulier les jeunes faisant face au chômage, au manque de perspectives, ou à la perte de fonds cumulés jusqu’à présent.. La jeunesse européenne vous regarde avec admiration, les manifestations et sit-ins à travers l’Europe ont créé une émulation et ont été une tentative d’adapter le succès de vos actions à notre propre situation. Cela me mène à ma deuxième inquiétude, plus profonde. Je comprends que le prix de la construction d’une vraie démocratie parlementaire dans vos pays est tellement important et les risques si fragiles, que vous vous concentrez intensément sur sa réalisation. Mais je vous encourage à voir plus loin et à vous demander si une démocratie parlementaire telle que vous la voyez en Europe et en Amérique est ce que vous voulez vraiment. La démocratie parlementaire ne fonctionne pas correctement en Europe et les jeunes subissent particulièrement cet échec. 20 ou 30 ans d’apathie créée par notre système ont conduit à l’incapacité électorale d’une génération qui réalise maintenant qu’aucun leader politique ou parti politique ne représenteleurs intérêts. Dans tous les pays européens, l’oligarchie domine et le choix entre les partis politiques existants devient de moins en moins significatif. Finalement, les décisions les plus cruciales pour l’avenir de nos économies ne sont quasiment plus contrôlées par les parlements mais plutôt imposées par la logique néolibérale d’un système représenté par le Fond Monétaire International et l’Union Européenne dans sa forme actuelle. Cela a amené les jeunes à protester dans les rues sans appeler à un système alternatif clair. C’est avec ces constats en tête que les jeunes Européens vous regardent avec espoir. L’espoir qu’une forme alternative de démocratie, basée sur la participation des citoyens, peut être inventée par vous, qui par vos propres efforts avez saisi l’opportunité de participer à la création d’un nouveau système, et par vous jeunes tunisiens et égyptiens qui avaient apporté le changement dans vos propres pays avec les technologies 2.0 du web et la mobilisation populaire, et qui avaient insufflé le changement et l’insurrection au-delà de vos frontières. Mettre en place une démocratie parlementaire sera une première avancée majeure pour vos pays. Mais au-delà de cela, vous devez chercher à éviter toutes les erreurs commises en Europe et qui ont conduit à notre situation actuelle. Nous devons œuvrer ensemble afin de s’assurer que la démocratie se construise autour de la Méditerranée, ainsi que dans chaque pays méditerranéen, car notre monde globalisé ne nous permet pas de raisonner en termes de souveraineté distincte. C’est dans cette perspective que je termine ma lettre en vous invitant à ouvrir le dialogue avec vos pairs à travers l’Europe sur cette question précise :comment pouvons-nous œuvrer ensemble à la construction d’une meilleure démocratie pour le futur, pour nous tous ? Je comprends que dans les mois qui viennent des affaires urgentes vous attendent, et nous faisons également face en Europe à des situations historiques, mais nous devons trouver le temps de penser au futur, un futur démocratique commun. Ma propre organisation, Alternatives Européennes, fera tout ce qu’elle peut pour rendre cela possible, et je sais que les jeunes et les organisations à travers l’Europe s’investiront avec enthousiasme à nos côtés. Avec tout mon respect Niccolò Milanese Alternatives Européennes Niccolò Milanese à Tunis, le 23 Juin dernier
It Gets Better: Stories from Europe
Many LGBT young people are afraid by their sexual orientation and can’t imagine what their lives, their future will be as openly gay adults. Eleven young filmmakers from throughout Europe interviewed LGBT from different European countries about their youth. This project wants to provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans, by letting them know that “It Gets Better”.
Ouverture des inscriptions au Transeuropa Network
Chez Alternatives Européennes nous profitons de l’été pour revoir notre structure de gouvernance afin de continuer à bâtir le rôle d’Alternatives Européennes en tant qu’acteur politique et culturel transnational. Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer l’ouverture des inscriptions au Transeuropa Network, un réseau d’activistes provenant de toute l’Europe, travaillant ensemble pour l’émergence d’une nouvelle politique, culture et société européenne transnational. Le Transeuropa Network est une expérience novatrice favorisant la démocratie participative, en rassemblant tous les activistes membres d’Alternatives Européennes afin de modeler l’organisation ainsi que son discours politique et social. Le réseau intervient également dans l’organisation d’activités locales, de campagnes de sensibilisation et lors du Festival annuel TRANSEUROPA. Pour plus de renseignements concernant le réseau : voir ici. (bientôt disponible en français) Etes-vous prêts à nous rejoindre? (bientôt disponible en français) Nous allons commencer directement avec deux votes en ligne prévus le 29 juillet et le 5 août dans le but de déterminer quelles seront les thématiques traitées en priorité par les membres du réseau et Alternatives Européennes en Septembre et en Octobre. Devrions-nous nous concentrer sur la question du Printemps Arabe ? Sur la crise économique ? Sur quelque chose d’autre ? A vous de décider.
Gênes 2011 pour une autre Europe
Ce communiqué a été rédigé conjointement par des organisations et mouvements, dont Alternatives Européennes, qui se sont retrouvés à Gênes à l'occasion du dixième anniversaire du sommet du G8 de 2001. Traduction par Elisa Sance « Peuples d'Europe soulevez-vous » : C'est le refrain des protestations de Madrid et Athènes. « Ils sont la crise, nous sommes l'espoir », c'est la prise de conscience qui a émergé à Gênes en 2011. L'espoir d'une autre Europe – pacifiste, écologique, démocratique, fédéraliste, ouverte au reste du monde et basée sur la dignité de chaque personne, originaire d'Europe ou non. Une Europe refusant toute discrimination et fondée sur la reconnaissance de la différence. Une Europe désireuse de construire son rôle international sur les valeurs de pacifisme et de coopération avec le « Sud » planétaire. Des réseaux, des coalitions et des mouvements ont émergé contre la marchandisation des peuples et des biens communs naturels ou immatériels, définissant le projet d'une Europe basée sur les droits fondamentaux des peuples et des animaux et sur la préservation de la nature, où la gestion démocratique des biens communs et une économie basée sur l'égalité et la justice sociale doit être promue. Seule une lutte au niveau européen nous permettra réellement de faire face à la crise et de répondre au chantage des marchés financiers. L'attaque spéculative contre l'euro est avant tout une attaque contre l'Etat providence et contre les conditions de vie et de travail des citoyens européens. Loin de combattre efficacement la spéculation, les mesures prises par les élites européennes l'encouragent et satisfont ses attentes. Nos luttes doivent se diriger contre les politiques néolibérales de l'Union Européenne et de ses principaux acteurs – gouvernements, technocratie, et élites supranationales – toutes excluant activement les citoyens et les représentants politiques des prises de décision. Seule une Europe démocratique rétablira l'équilibre avec le pouvoir excessif des élites européennes. Gênes 2011 renforce l'engagement pour une nouvelle dimension de conflits, pilotés à travers des campagnes européennes capables de faire plein usage de l'initiative citoyenne européenne , un nouvel outil de démocratie participative permettant de soumettre une proposition de loi directement à la Commission Européenne en collectant un million de signatures dans au minimum sept Etats membres. Les campagnes européennes actuellement mises sur pied sont sur : Le salaire minimum garanti Une citoyenneté européenne basée sur la résidence, et une mobilisation pour que l'UE ratifie la Convention internationale de l'ONU sur la protection des droits des travailleurs migrants de 1990 L'eau comme droit fondamental, en tant que premier pas vers un statut européen de bien commun soutenu par une directive européenne L'utilisation à but social des biens saisis au crime organisé Un plan de reconversion sociale et écologique, à financer par des taxes sur les transactions et une taxe carbone Le droit à l'information, et la liberté et le pluralisme des médias Naturellement, ces campagnes, soutenues par différents réseaux et alliances, n'englobent pas tous les problèmes soulevés par la crise économique. Mais elles sont des éléments concrets et significatifs pour une autre Europe, et servent à encourager de nouvelles campagnes capables de proposer dans chaque domaine d'action de véritables alternatives à l'Europe des marchés financiers. Avec ces campagnes continue l'engagement à construire une Europe démocratique et à trouver un moyen d'aller au-delà du Traité de Lisbonne à travers une renaissance de la démocratie participative. Gênes, 22 juillet 2011
Catalogue du Festival Transeuropa désormais disponible!
Nous sommes très heureux d'annoncer la publication du catalogue du Festival Transeuropa 2011, ou vous trouverez des interviews, des articles de fond, et pourrez redécouvrir le programme des 12 villes du Festival! Le catalogue est disponible en anglais uniquement. Les sections principales sont: A propos du Festival – présentation et interviews Rapport des villes du Festival – Redécouvrez les activités menées dans les 12 villes! Dossier: L'Europe au delà de la crise' avec des articles de Franco Berardi Bifo, Niccolo Milanese, et des Economists Atterrés sur les possibles alternatives économiques Conférence clé de Sofia: “Un Adieu à l'Europe: la nécessité impossible de la politique dans les balkans”, par la philosophe serbe Jelisaveta Blagojevic Programme artistique transnational: avec un dialogue entre le philosophe Stephen Wright et l'artiste architecte Can Altay, et un retour sur l'installation de la “Maison du Festival” et sur le programme artistiqye de Transeuropa Programme de Video-art : 20-pages sur le programme curatorual des projections vidéos présentées dans le cadre de Transeuropa Commandez en un exemplaire. 134 pages, relié, imprimé en Juillet 2011 Graphic design par lldesign Vous pouvez voir le catalogue en ligne en cliquant sur le flash ci dessous. Mais pourquoi ne pas commander un exemplaire? Des articles intéressants, un beau livre, et un très bon moyen de soutenir le Festival Transeuropa! Seulement 10€. Average delivery times are 2 working days for UK, 3-7 for EU countries, and 7+ for outside of EU. Pour commandez, cliquez sur le bouton “buy now” ci dessous
For a European Social Convention
The present moment appears as a possible turning point in European economic and political history: the propagation of the economic crisis and ensuing austerity measures to more and more member states, doubts about the future of the common currency and of the European Union itself all suggest that decisive action must be taken. The question everyone is posing is: by whom? From Eurobonds to supranational deficit controls, over these weeks and months several options for a renewed European economic government are being discussed. And indeed, today the necessity of a common European stance is felt as never before. But, strikingly, only two kinds of figures sit at the negotiating table: ministers of member states, and representatives of the financial sector. Ministers pursue a blurry notion of national interest and play games of power-struggle against each other, caring more of guarding their sovereignty or national advantages than tabling solutions that will work for all Europeans. Representatives of the financial sector, making everyone forget the huge public expenditure to sustain the sector, claim there is no alternative to financial capital; Europe should continue cutting welfare expenditure and deregulating the capital and labour markets, ironically following the same failing recipe forced on developing nations in the 1980s. There is one great absent at this table: it is European citizens. And for as long as the future of Europe’s economy is negotiated without participation of the citizens, these changes will be ineffectual, uninspired, and unrepresentative, and most likely unequal and unjust. For this reason European Alternatives has launched a petition demanding European institutions and members states recognise the necessity of engaging European citizens in the definition of a new European economic architecture. We demand a European Social Convention on the Future of Europe's Economy be called as a matter of urgency, bringing together the third sector, trade unions, the world of associationism, and citizens themselves from throughout Europe to deliberate on the desired direction for a post-crisis Europe. Such Convention should set the outlines fo a more just and sustainable economy for after the crisis, one based on the principles of democracy, solidarity, and the common good. Sign the petition here!
First issue of Transeuropa Magazine
Transeuropa Magazine is our new multilingual free press magazine, published in English, French, and Italian editions and distributed throughout Europe in cafes, bookshops, and galleries. Distribution information coming soon! The magazine is edited by Transeuropa Network, a network of activists and artists from throughout Europe working for a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture, and society. If you would like to help us stock the magazine in a place near where you live, get in touch! We are delighted to present the first issue!
Open letter and an invitation to my young Tunisian and Egyptian friends
Flashmob along with the reception of the Caravan of the South for Dignity and Freedom, Tunis, June 23rd (see EA transnational flashmob day on June 23rd) Last week European Alternatives' co-director, Niccolò Milanese, attended the Believe in Dialogue, Act for Citizenship conference organised by the Anna Lindh Foundation– a Euro-mediterranean foundation for dialogue between cultures- in Tunis (Tunisia). 200 agents and associations from the civil society promoting democracy and freedom from an intercultural perspective were present. This meeting was the occasion to exchange on the challenges euromediteranean societies are facing in terms of citizenship in today’s context of democratic transition and social change. Following Niccolò Milanese’s meeting with activists from Tunisia and Egypt, below is an open letter he wrote to them, calling for future collaboration. Read Ahmad Badawy's response here from Egyptian Democratic Academy ! Dear all It was a pleasure and an honour to meet you at in Tunis last weekend during the conference Believe in Dialogue, Act for Citizenship. I was inspired by your stories of commitment and passion for change, and moved by your sacrifices and courage. The young people of Egypt and Tunisia have taken a major step in your nations’ histories, and yet it is clear that the fight for democracy is still not won, and courage and endurance will be required to fully overcome the horrors of the old regimes without falling into new dictatorships. In listening to you and speaking with you, however, two thoughts continued to disquiet me, and it is of these that I take the liberty of writing to you. The first is to emphasise how much hope and inspiration you have given to young people throughout Europe. I am sure you have seen the placards in Madrid and Athens saying ‘This is our Tahrir square’ or the slogans ‘Tunis, Cairo, Brussels’ written on the walls of the European capital, but perhaps you have not fully internalised their meanings. Although almost all of Europe with the exception of Belarus no longer has murderous dictatorships, the young people of our continent see in your uprisings a signal of hope for their own situations: that the people rising up together can overcome the forces that oppress them, young people in particular, who face joblessness, lack of prospects, or the loss of previous securities. The youth of Europe looks to you in admiration, and the protests and sit-ins throughout Europe have been an emulation and an attempt to adapt your successful actions to our own situation. This leads me to my second disquiet, which is more profound. I understand that the prize of achieving true parliamentary democracies in your countries is so important, and risks being so fragile, that you are intensely focused on realising it. But I would urge you to think further, and to ask whether parliamentary democracy such as you see in Europe or America is all that you want. Parliamentary democracy is not working properly in Europe, and in particular it is failing young people. 20 or 30 years of apathy created by our system have led to the disenfranchisement of a generation who now realise that there are no political leaders or political parties who represent them or their interests. In all European countries there is an oligarchy which rules, and the choice between the existing political parties is becoming less and less significant. Finally, the most crucial decisions over the future of our economies are now barely in the control of the parliaments at all, but are rather dictated by the neoliberal logic of a system represented by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union in its current form. This has led the young people to the street, without any clear alternative system to call for. It is with these thoughts in mind that the young people of Europe are looking to you with hope. Hope that an alternative form of democracy, based on citizen participation, can be invented by you who by your own efforts to have the chance to take part in the design of a new system, and by you young Tunisians and Egyptians who have brought change in your own countries with web 2.0 technologies and popular mobilisation, and who have inspired change and uprisings beyond your own frontiers. Achieving parliamentary democracy will be a first, and major, step for your countries. But beyond that you must seek to avoid the mistakes we have committed in Europe and which have led to our current situation. We must work together to ensure that democracy is built across the Mediterranean, as well as within each Mediterranean country, because our globalised world is no longer one of distinct sovereignties. In this perspective I finish this letter with an invitation to you to enter into dialogue with your peers throughout Europe on precisely this question: how can we work together to make a better democracy for the future, for all of us? I understand you have pressing tasks ahead of you all in the months that come, and in Europe we as well are facing historic circumstances, but we must find the time to think to the future, a common democratic future. My own organisation, European Alternatives, will do all it can to make this possible, and I know that young people and organisations from throughout Europe will eagerly take part alongside us. Yours with all my respect Niccolò Milanese European Alternatives Niccolò Milanese in Tunis, June 23rd
Transeuropa Network opens membership
At European Alternatives we are using the summer to reform our structure and continue constructing a transnational bottom-up cultural and political actor. We are delighted to announce the birth of an open-membership Transeuropa Network, a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society Transeuropa Network is an innovative experiment in transnational, bottom-up democracy and participation, bringing together all activist members of European Alternatives to collectively shape the organisation and its political and cultural positions, as well as run local activities and campaigns and the annual TRANSEUROPA Festival. Find out more about the network here Ready to join? Here We'll start straight away – with an online vote scheduled between July 29 and August 5th for all existing and new members to decide on thematic priorities of the network and European Alternatives in September and October. Should we focus on the Arab spring? Or the economic crisis? Something else? For you to decide.
Genoa 2011 for another Europe
The following statement was jointly written by organisations and movements, including European Alternatives, meeting in Genoa in the context of the 10th anniversary of the 2001 G8 meeting “People of Europe rise up”: this has been the refrain of protests from Madrid to Athens. “They are the crisis, we are the hope”, is the awareness emerged in Genoa in 2011. The hope for another Europe – pacifist, ecological, democratic, federalist, open to the rest of the world and based on the dignity of every person, native or not. A Europe refusing all discrimination and founded on the recognition of difference. A Europe willing to ground its international role on the values of pacifism and cooperation with the global South. Networks, coalitions, and movements have emerged against the commodification of people and natural or immaterial common goods, defining a project of a Europe based on the fundamental rights of people and animals and on the preservation of nature. We must promote the democratic management of common goods and an economy of equality and social justice. Only a European-level struggle will enable us to seriously address the crisis and respond to the blackmail of financial markets. The speculative attack on the euro is first and foremost an attack on the welfare state and on the living and working conditions of European citienzs. Far from effectively combating speculation, the measures taken by the European elites incentivate it and satifisty its expectations. Our struggles must be addressed against the neoliberal policies of the European Union and of its main actors – governments, technocracy, and supranational elites, all of which actively exclude citizens and political representatives from decision-making. Only a democratic Europe will redress the excessive power of European elites. Genoa 2011 strengthens the commitment for a new dimension of conflicts, conducted through European campaigns able to make full use of the European Citizens’ Initiative, a new tool of participative democracy allowing to bring a legislative proposal directly to the European commission by collecting one million signatures in at least seven member states. The European campaigns currently being programmed are: Guaranteed basic income European citizenship based on residency, and a mobilisation for the EU to sign up to the 1990 UN Convention on the rights of migrant workers Water as a fundamental right, as a first step towards a European statute of common goods backed up by a European directive The social use of goods seized from organised crime A plan of social and ecological reconversion, to be supported by the transaction tax and a carbon tax. The right to information, and the freedom and pluralism of the media These campaigns, promoted by different networks and coalitions, naturally do not encompass all the problems raised by the economic crisis. But they are concrete and significant components of another possible Europe, and serve to incentivate new campaigns able to propose in every field of action real alternatives to the Europe of financial markets. With these campaigns continues the commitment to build a democratic Europe and to find the way to surpass the Treaty of Lisbon through a rebirth of participatory democracy. Genoa, 22 July 2011
Festival catalogue now available!
We are delighted to announce publication of the catalogue of Transeuropa Festival 2011, with featured interviews, in-depth articles, and reports from all 12 festival cities! Main sections include About the festival – presentation and interviews Reports from the cities – find out all that happened in the 12 cities! Dossier: Europe beyond the crisis: articles by Franco Berardi Bifo, Niccolo Milanese, and Economists Atterrés on economic alternatives Keynote lecture: “An adieu to Europe, the impossible necessity of Balkan politics”, by Serbian philosopher Jelisaveta Blagojevic Transnational art programme: with a dialogue between philosopher Stephen Wright and artist-architect Can Altay, reports from the “Home of the Festival” installation and all of Transeuropa's artistic programme Video-art programme: a 20-page curatorial programme for all the artistic video-screenings part of Transeuropa Order a copy! 134 pages, perfect-bound, printed in July 2011 Lovely graphic design by lldesign You can view the catalogue online by clicking on the visualiser above. Then why not order a hard copy? Great articles, a beatiful book to keep, and a way to support Transeuropa Festival! Only €10. Average delivery times are 2 working days for UK, 3-7 for EU countries, and 7+ for outside of EU. To order your copy, click the “buy now” button below
European Alternatives votes on new constitution
On the 24th September European Alternatives will vote on a new constitution. The constitution will give a structure to an entirely innovative organisation which is transnational in its reach, staff, decision making and operations. It will give members a full say in the running of European Alternatives, and ensure that European Alternatives remains a robust, dynamic and highly active organisation for the future, promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. Here you can find: The text of the constitution A guide to the constitution A pdf of a powerpoint presentation which explains the constitution. Answers to frequently asked questions will appear on this page. You can ask a question about the draft of the constitution by emailing Niccolo: n.milanese@euroalter.com The constitution will be voted on by the local group coordinators of European Alternatives and the provisional Transnational board. Below you can see the names and contacts of the local group coordinators: UK: Federico & Noel london@euroalter.com FRANCE: Segolene paris@euroalter.com ITALY: Lorenzo & Sara bologna@euroalter.com ROMANIA: Daniel cluj@euroalter.com BULGARIA: Stefan sofia@euroalter.com GERMANY: Daphne & Emanuele berlin@euroalter.com CZECH REPUBLIC: Rachel prague@euroalter.com SLOVAKIA: Monika & Gabriela bratislava@euroalter.com POLAND: Tomek lublin@euroalter.com SPAIN: Lia madrid@euroalter.com
L’Europe est-elle à l’aube d’un ‘hiver contestataire’ ?
Photo: syhs/Flickr article par Sam Logan et Dominique Tuohy traduction par Alexis Gratpenche Les réformes de l'enseignement et le mécontentement de la jeunesse en Europe Au cours des toutes dernières semaines, on a vu naître et s'amplifier un large mouvement de contestation chez les jeunes dans un certain nombre d'états européens. Beaucoup parlent à mots couverts d'un nouveau mai 68 ou disent que nous sommes à l'aube d'un 'hiver contestataire'. Au Royaume-Uni et en Italie, une part importante de la jeunesse se mobilise contre les propositions de refonte de leur enseignement supérieur respectif. Cette réaction n'est guère surprenante quand on compare l'enseignement supérieur qu'ont connu les dirigeants d'aujourd'hui et le système qu'ils veulent imposer à leur enfants et petits-enfants. Au Royaume-Uni, ceux qui sont aujourd'hui aux commandes n'ont non seulement pas eu à payer pour leurs diplômes mais ils pouvaient aussi demander à toucher les indemnités de chômage pendant les vacances d'été, de Noël ou de Pâques, ou se faire rembourser leur billet de train à la fin du semestre. Et ce, au cœur de la récession des années 80 alors que l'état britannique souffraient de lourds problèmes de financement et qu'une grande partie des avantages sociaux avait été réduite à néant. On prend bien soin de ne pas s'attarder sur cette époque et on explique que ces réformes sont indispensables pour la bonne santé financière de l'état et que le seul et unique moyen possible pour financer l'enseignement supérieur est de facturer l'année 9 000 £ pour les étudiants de premier cycle. Si les lois sont votées et que les frais d'inscriptions sont aussi élevés, l'Angleterre aura les universités publiques les plus chères du monde – en Ecosse, au Pays de Galles et en Irlande du Nord, les politiques d'éducation sont de la responsabilité des parlements régionaux et l'Assemblée galloise et le Parlement écossais ont chacun décidé de ne pas augmenter les frais d'inscription de leur universités. Le gouvernement de coalition affirment que ces propositions de loi sont justes étant donné que les étudiants peuvent financer leurs études en contractant un emprunt avec un taux d'intérêt plus bas que celui du marché : ce taux est tout de même de 3% et tient compte de l'inflation, les étudiants ne commenceront ensuite à le rembourser qu'à partir du moment où ils gagneront plus de 21 000 £ par an. La réforme est aussi censée protéger les plus démunis parmi la population estudiantine. L'étude des frais d'inscription est le fruit d'une étude indépendante menée par M. Browne, député à la Chambre des Lords, qui définit deux solutions pour combler le déficit du système d'études supérieures : d'une part, un impôt sur les diplômes (à revenu égal, les diplômés paieraient alors un impôt supplémentaire que les non-diplômés n'auraient pas à payer) et d'autre part, une augmentation des frais d'inscription. Il n'est pas tout à fait certain que la réforme soit adoptée par le Parlement. Un conseiller local libéral-démocrate affirme en effet qu'il a le sentiment que l'accord de coalition a été “bafoué sans commune mesure” et qu'on peut s'attendre à ce qu'un certain nombre de députés libéraux-démocrates s'opposent à la proposition de loi. Le vote est pour l'instant prévu le jeudi 9 décembre. De nombreuses manifestations ont eu lieu pour protester contre ces réformes. Elles se sont, dans l'ensemble, déroulées dans le calme, hormis quelques débordements violents dont l'occupation remarquée du siège du Parti conservateur qui a occasionné plus d'un million de livres de dégâts matériels. Au même moment en Italie, un gouvernement profondément endetté cherche à réformer de manière drastique le secteur national de l'enseignement supérieur. Selon ses propositions, les universités déficitaires n'auraient alors d'autre choix que de fermer. Mariastella Gelmini, ministre de l'Enseignement, affirme que ces réformes permettraient de lutter contre les diplômes 'inutiles' qui ont proliféré ces dernières années et qu'elles promouvraient la méritocratie, la transparence et la compétitivité internationale au sein de l'enseignement supérieur italien. Au Royaume-Uni comme en Italie, si de telles réformes étaient votées, le nombre d'étudiants reculerait sans doute, notamment dans les filières d'arts et de sciences humaines. Le syndicat universitaire UCU (Union of Colleges and Universities) vient de rendre publique une étude selon laquelle plus de quarante universités risqueraient la fermeture si leur financement dépendait de leurs étudiants. La France, qui a un héritage de mouvements sociaux beaucoup plus important que le Royaume-Uni, a connu des manifestations contre la réforme des retraites qui ont attiré de nombreux jeunes de moins de 18 ans. Beaucoup d'observateurs affirment qu'une grande partie des manifestants exprimaient en réalité un sentiment général de frustration face au gouvernement, plutôt qu'une inquiétude spécifique sur la réforme des retraites. Les conséquences du Processus de Bologne Les propositions de loi, tout particulièrement au Royaume-Uni, sont susceptibles de faire reculer les avancées obtenues avec le Processus de Bologne. Une forte variabilité des frais d'inscription risque de freiner la mobilité des étudiants en Europe. En outre, on peut également s'interroger sur l'équité de ces réformes. Est-il juste que le système britannique d'enseignement fonctionne en partie sur l'autofinancement alors que les diplômes de tous les citoyens européens sont payés en intégralité par les contribuables ? Le gouvernement britannique compare le diplôme à un 'investissement' dont la valeur et la fiabilité sont quantifiables et prévisibles avec précision mais, en réalité, rien n'est sûr quand un jeune de 18 ans dépense autant d'argent, quelque soit l'investissement. C'est une erreur de considérer un diplôme comme un 'investissement' rentable financièrement, comme peuvent aujourd'hui en témoigner beaucoup de diplômés issus de la 'génération sacrifiée'. Depuis le début de la crise et le taux du chômage record des jeunes européens (diplômés ou non), on entend beaucoup parler d'une 'génération perdue'. En réalité, être diplômé de premier cycle est aujourd'hui un pré-requis minimum pour se faire une place sur le marché du travail, et les taux de chômage montrent que, dans bien des cas, cela ne suffit encore pas à garder son emploi. L'accès à l'enseignement supérieur est donc une question d'égalité…
Niccolo Milanese’s article on Eurobonds published in Slovak
Co-director of EA, Niccolo Milanese, had his article on Eurobonds (originally published on EU Observer) published in Slovak on the Jetotak blog, under Critiques / Economy. To read the article click here. For the article in English click here.
Conclusioni del congresso europeo sul pluralismo dell’informazione, Bologna, 13 maggio
Il Congresso Europeo sul Pluralismo dei Media, terzo appuntamento dell’Iniziativa Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media, si è tenuto venerdì 13 maggio 2011 presso l’auditorium Enzo Biagi di Bologna. Il congresso, cui hanno partecipato i membri dei gruppi di lavoro prefigurati durante la conferenza tenutasi al Parlamento Europeo di Bruxelles il 31 marzo 2011, è iniziato con una panoramica sulle patologie dei sistemi mediatici di alcuni paesi dell’Unione Europea: Ungheria, Romania, Bulgaria, Francia, Regno Unito e Italia. La diagnosi ha evidenziato virus in comune, seppur con gradi di attecchimento diversi secondo i paesi: ingerenze del potere politico nel servizio pubblico, e nei media in generale; conflitti d’interesse tra attività economiche e attività editoriali; conflitti d’interesse tra attività politiche e proprietà, o controllo, di media; concentrazioni mediatiche; poca indipendenza delle redazioni dalla proprietà; svilimento della professione giornalistica. Sintetizzando: a problemi europei serve una soluzione Europea. La sessione del mattino si è conclusa con un dibattito sull’opportunità di un regolamento antitrust, competenza dell’Unione Europea, specifico per le società media. Un regolamento che, secondo gli orientamenti del Consiglio d’Europa, tenga in considerazione il fondamentale ruolo dei media nella tenuta democratica di uno stato di diritto, e rispetti dunque la Carta dei Diritti Fondamentali dell’UE. Tutti i partecipanti hanno concordato che tale regolamento potrebbe essere oggetto di un’Iniziativa dei Cittadini, cioè di una proposta legislativa alla Commissione Europea attraverso la raccolta di un milione di firme di cittadini europei. A tal fine il Prof. Roberto Mastroianni (esperto di media e diritto dell’Unione) ha dichiarato la sua disponibilità a coordinare un gruppo internazionale di esperti che nei prossimi mesi dovrà redarre una proposta di regolamento ricevibile dalla Commissione Europea. Tony Venables, direttore di ECAS, una delle associazioni che più hanno premuto per la nuova Citizens’ Initiative, si è altresì detto disponibile di mettere a disposizione dell’Iniziative un team di esperti legali per sondare le competenze europee in materia di media. Giovanni Melogli ha espresso interesse nel partecipare da Bruxelles a questo gruppo, facilitando i contatti con gli esperti del Parlamento europeo. I lavori del pomeriggio hanno sancito la necessità di raggiungere due importanti obiettivi: 1 – Invitare la Commissione Europea a portare a termine la sua strategia per la difesa del Pluralismo dei Media nell’UE, definita “approccio a tre passi”, che prevede il monitoraggio del rischio di mancanza di pluralismo in tutti i paesi membri dell’UE. Per fare ciò si sottolinea la necessità di un’alleanza tra Parlamento Europeo, società civile e media (in particolare quelli penalizzati dalle attuali posizioni dominanti), strutturando una campagna unitaria a livello europeo per mettere pressione sulla Commissione europea. 2 – Formalizzare la nascita dell’Iniziativa Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media, cui si sono dette pronte ad aderire tutte le organizzazioni presenti a Bologna, con il preciso scopo di perseguire uniti i suddetti obiettivi, in rappresentanza del maggior numero di cittadini europei. Prossimi passi: Maggio – Adesione all’Iniziativa Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media, attraverso la sottoscrizione formale di una lettera d’intenti che vi giungerà entro fine maggio 2011. – Creazione di un sito web per strutturare i contenuti del’Iniziativa e iniziare a darle visibilità. – Ricerca di finanziamenti per creare un segretariato permanente di coordinamento delle attività dell’Iniziativa. Giugno Creazione di un gruppo di lavoro per arrivare entro settembre 2011 con una proposta chiara sulle possibilie competenze UE su cui fare leva per una iniziativa cittadina Pubblicazione di una lettera aperta co-firmata da tutti i partecipanti all’iniziativa in diversi giornali europeo, con l’intento di lanciare l’iniziativa e cominciare lanciare una campagna per mettere pressione sulla Commissione europea per l’applicazione del media pluralism monitor.
Conclusions du Congrès européen sur le Pluralisme des Médias
Traduction de Maïwenn Kernaleguen Le Congrès européen sur le Pluralisme des Médias, troisième rendez-vous de l’Initiative européenne pour le Pluralisme des Médias, s’est tenu vendredi 13 mai 2011 dans l’amphithéâtre Enzo Biagi à Bologne, en Italie. Le Congrès, auquel ont assisté les membres des groupes de travail formés durant la dernière conférence qui s’est tenue au Parlement européen le 31 mars dernier, a commencé par présenter une vue d’ensemble des maux dont souffrent les médias au sein de différents pays membres de l’UE : la Hongrie, la Roumanie, la Bulgarie, la France, le Royaume-Uni et l’Italie. Le diagnostic fait état d’un « virus » présent – à différents degrés de gravité – dans plusieurs pays : l’influence du pouvoir politique dans les émissions du service public et dans les médias en général, le conflit d’intérêts entre les activités économiques et médiatiques, la concentration des médias, et l’indépendance limitée des bureaux de rédaction vis-à-vis de leur propriétaire. Pour résumer le message émis lors de la conférence : nous devons trouver des solutions européennes communes aux problèmes européens communs. La session de la matinée s'est conclue par un débat sur les opportunités d’une éventuelle loi antitrust spécifique au secteur médiatique, étant donné que le droit antitrust fait partie des compétences de l'Union européenne. Cette loi, si l’on considère les orientations du Conseil de l’Europe, devrait prendre en compte le rôle fondamental que jouent les médias dans une démocratie où règne l’État de droit, et devrait par conséquent respecter la Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’UE. Tous les participants sont convaincus que cet acte législatif pourrait constituer l’objectif d’une Initiative citoyenne, c'est-à-dire une proposition législative soumise à la Commission européenne, en recueillant un million de signatures de citoyens européens. À cette fin, le Professeur Roberto Mastroianni (expert desmédias et du droit communautaire) s’est proposé de constituer un groupe international d’experts au cours des prochains mois et de rédiger une proposition législative qui puisse être soumise à la Commission européenne. Les participants à la conférence ont insisté sur la nécessité d’avoir recours à des experts juridiques dans le cadre de cette Initiative et ont décidé de faire appel au soutien de l’ECAS. Giovanni Melogli a exprimé sa volonté d’être intégré au groupe d’experts afin de faciliter les contacts avec les experts du Parlement européen à Bruxelles. L’après-midi, la conférence a mis l’accent sur l'importance de remplir deux objectifs importants : 1) Inviter la Commission européenne à poursuivre sa stratégie de défense du pluralisme des médias au sein de l'UE, une stratégie qui se présente comme une « approche en trois étapes » et qui prévoit la mise en place d’un système de surveillance des risques pour le pluralisme des médias dans tous les États membres de l'UE. Dans cette optique, la conférence a souligné l’importance d’une alliance entre le Parlement européen, la société civile et les médias (en particulier ceux qui sont pénalisés par la situation actuelle) afin de mener une campagne unitaire au niveau européen et de faire pression sur la Commission européenne. 2) Officialiser la création de l’Initiative européenne pour le Pluralisme des Médias, à laquelle toutes les organisations qui étaient présentes à Bologne souhaitent adhérer, dans le but de mener à bien l’objectif formulé ci-dessus dans l’intérêt des citoyens européens. Prochaines étapes Mai Adhésion à l’Initiative européenne pour le Pluralisme des Médias par le biais d’une lettre d’intention officielle. Création d’un site web pour organiser le contenu de l'Initiative et lui donner une visibilité. Recueillir des fonds pour créer un secrétariat permanent pour la coordination des activités de l’Initiative. Juin Création d’un groupe de travail pour rédiger avant septembre une proposition claire portant sur les compétences de l’UE qui peuvent être ciblées dans le cadre d’une Initiative citoyenne. Publication dans divers journaux européens d’une lettre ouverte co-signée par tous les participants dans le but de lancer l’Initiative et de commencer à faire pression sur la Commission européenne pour qu’elle mette en place le système de surveillance du pluralisme des médias.
Conclusions from European Congress on Media Pluralism
This article is part of the European Initiative on Media Pluralism The European Congress on Media Pluralism, third appointment of the European Initiative for Media Pluralism, took place on Friday 13th may 2011 in the auditorium Enzo Biagi in Bologna, Italy. The congress, attended by the members of the workgroups created during the last conference held at the European Parliament on 31st march 2011, began with an overview of the pathologies of the media in different EU member states: Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, France, UK, and Italy. The diagnosis has identified a common virus, even if with different degrees of severity in different countries: influence of political power in public broadcasting and generally in the media; conflict of interest between economic and media activities; media concentrations; limited independence of editorial offices from owner. To synthesise the message of the conference: we need common European solutions to common European problems. The morning session concluded with a debate on the opportunities for antitrust legislation which would be specific for the media sector, given that antitrust is within the competences of the European Union. This legislation, taking into account the orientations of the Council of Europe, should take into consideration the fundamental role of the media in a functioning democracy in a state of law, which should therefore respect the Charter of Fundamental Rights for the EU. All participants agreed that such a legislative act could be the objective of a Citizens’ Initiative, that is, a legislative proposal to the European Commission by collecting one million signatures of European citizens. For this end Prof, Roberto Mastroianni (expert on media and law of the Union) expressed his availability to coordinate an international group of experts in the coming months in order to draft a legislative proposal which would be admissible for submitting to the European Commission. Participants at the conference expressed the opinion that legal experts would be required for the initiative, and in particular it was decided to ask ECAS if it would be able to help. Giovanni Melogli expressed his willingness to take part in the group of experts in Brussels in order to facilitate contacts with experts in the European Parliament. The afternoon of the conference emphasized the importance of achieving two important objectives: Invite the European Commission to move ahead with its strategy for the defence of Pluralism of the media in the EU, defined as a ‘three stage approach’ and which foresees the monitoring of risks to media pluralism in all member states of the EU. In order to do this the conference underlined the importance of an alliance between the European Parliament, civil society and media (in particular those which are penalized by the current state of affairs) carrying forwards a unitary campaign at the European level in order to put pressure on the European Commission. Formalize the creation of the European Initiative for Media Pluralism, to which all organisations present in Bologna said they would be willing to adhere, with the objective of carrying forwards the above objective in the interests of European citizens. Next steps May Adhesion to the European Initiative for Media Pluralism on the basis of a formal letter of intent. Creation of a website to structure the contents of the initiative and begin to give it visibility Search for funding to create a permanent secretariat for the coordination of the activities of the initiative. June Creation of a working group to draft before September a clear proposal on the competences of the EU which can be targeted in a citizens initiative Publication of an open letter co-signed by all participants of the initiative in diverse European newspapers with the objective of launching the initiative and starting to put pressure on the European commission to apply the media pluralism monitor.
Verso un’iniziativa europea sul pluralismo dell’informazione: conclusioni e follow up
La Conferenza di lavoro tenutasi al Parlamento Europeo (Bruxelles), giovedì 31 marzo 2011, Verso un' Iniziativa Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media, ha sancito la volontà, da parte dei quattro gruppi parlamentari che l'hanno sostenuta, S&D, ALDE, Verdi/EFA e GUE/NGL, di adoperarsi affinché l'Unione Europea si doti degli strumenti necessari per tutelare l'indipendenza e il pluralismo dei media nei propri Stati Membri. I 39 partecipanti, in rappresentanza di altrettante organizzazioni nazionali e internazionali, hanno espresso la necessità di un intervento dell'Unione Europea in questa materia per poter sanzionare evidenti violazioni del diritto fondamentale ad una informazione indipendente e pluralista, in diversi paesi membri dell'UE. Fare click qui per scaricare le conclusioni complete e il follow-up previsto
Towards a European Initiative for media pluralism: conclusions and follow up
For more information, visit the new website of the European Initiative for Media Pluralism The work conference “Towards a European Initiative on Media Pluralism”, held on March 31st at the European Parliament, has shown the will of the four European parliament ary groups that supported the event (S&D, ALDE, Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL) to work to develop the capacity of the European Union to develop the necessary instruments to protect the independence and pluralism of the media in all member states. The 39 invited participants, representing an equal number of national and international organisations, have expressed the necessity of an intervention of the European Union in this area with the capacity of sanctioning evident violations of the fundamental right to a free and pluralistic information. Click here to download full conference conclusions, and initial plan for follow-up
Roma rights in Europe: report of PPP forum in Seville by Spanish TV
European Alternatives' People, Power, Participation forum on Roma rights in Seville was filmed by Lebrija TV, a local TV station from Andalusia. You can watch the piece they have shown on air several times over the weekend by clicking the image below.
Simonetta Gorga
Simonetta is one of the candidates standing for elections as member representatives of the Transeuropa Network. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from October 7th to 14th: sign up to vote! Hello, I cannot say I would be a good representative, but some motivations have pushed me to do this step. I am a student in a doctoral program in Visual Arts and Education in the line of research in art, education and social intervention. I am currently interested in researching the field of artistic practice and collaborative community and its ways of constructing knowledge in new forms of contemporary cultural production over cultural workers are involved (artists, researchers, theorists, educators …) and social agents. I care about your political and subversive potential to allow some spaces to transgress others investigate different methodologies communities through artistic, collaborative, and networking on topics as attitudes, beliefs and values ??that shape our local and global realities and initiate research from it. I think the Transeuropa Network is an ideal platform to begin a collaborative process with people who share my concerns and initiate processes of artistic and educational work-research to actively influence the culture from a critical perspective and reflective. Hola, no se si seré capaz de decir porque sería un muy buen candidado pero si las motivaciones que me han empujado a hacer este paso. Yo soy estudiante de un programa de doctorado en Artes Visuales y Educación en la linea de investigación en Arte, Educación e intervención social. Actualmente me interesa investigar el campo de las prácticas artisticas colaborativas y comunitarias y sus maneras de construir conocimiento en las nuevas formas de producción cultural contemporánea que ven implicados más trabajadores culturales (artistas, investigadores, teoricos, educadores…) y agentes sociales. De ellas me interesa su potencial político y subversivo para posibilitar algunos espacios y transgredir otros; investigar con distintas comunidades a través de metodologías artisticas, colaborativas y en red sobre temas conformadores de actitudes, creencias y valores que forman nuestras realidades locales y globales e iniciar procesos de investigación a partir de ello. Transeuropa Network me parece una plataforma ideal para poder iniciar un proceso de colaboración con gente que comparte mis inquietudes e iniciar procesos de trabajos artisticos-educativos-investigativos para incidir activamente en la cultura desde una perspectiva critica y reflexiva.
Carolynn Most
Carolynn is one of the candidates standing for elections as member representatives of the Transeuropa Network. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from October 7th to 14th: sign up to vote! Name: Carolynn Most (C.Most) Prague, CZECH REPUBLIC Founder of The Cultural Compass Institute Dedicated to Good Works & Good Neighborly Relations Published author of ‘The Cultural Compass Guide to Navigating a Life You Love’ , 2010 Coordinator for 2011 TransEuro Fest – Prague Events Moderator & content coordinator for Prague’s Sustainable Communities panel discussion Helped to organize & publicize TransEuropa 2011 I have long considered myself a global citizen and my work has reflected an effort to close cultural, economic & social gaps thru proprietary training programs The CCI offers as well as the many Arts & Music events we have organized and/or hosted. When I was asked to come onboard with the TransEuropa Festival in February I found an immediate alliance with their mission and compliment with the work I have been doing for the past 20 years. The platform of a simultaneous festival in 12 cities focused on effecting positive change for citizens across Europe is an opportunity like none I have seen since the LIVE EARTH concerts. The strength for this type of work today is in the partnerships. The Citizen Wish List Project was launched during the Festival as a tool for engagement. It is a social experiment to engage the citizen body of each country, not just across Europe, but globally, in a single conversation about what we want, what’s working and for sharing good ideas about improving quality of life issues. CWL will continue thru 2015. I hope with a successful candidacy to represent EA Network it will prove a valuable tool. The conversation begins HERE: http://tinyurl.com/CitizenWishList We in Prague, are already planning very exciting events for the next festival. My personal hope is to realize a large scale video projection project in all festival cities centered on the festival themes. I have been cooperating with some extremely talented video mappers from all over Europe for the past several months to make this happen. Keep posted. As representative, this would happen much faster. I bring not only vast experience working across cultures, but also marketing and economic development expertise to lend to TransEuropa Netowrk. Please check me out online – Twitter, FB, Myspace or Linkedin according to my name C.Most (Carolynn) or Cultural Compass. Thank you. We are can do more great work together!
Claudia De Martino
Claudia is one of the candidates standing for elections as member representatives of the Transeuropa Network. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from October 7th to 14th: sign up to vote! Born in Rome in September 1981, I studied History and Politics at the University of Roma Tre and at Nijmegen Katholieke Universiteit in the Netherlands. I graduated my M.A. in 2006 and I worked in Brussels at the Centre of European Policy Studies in the area of EU Justice&Home Affairs in 2007, although I specialized in Middle Eastern affairs. In 2008 I set off for a semester in Israel, to pick up some Hebrew and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in 2009 I started my PhD in Social History of Israel at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In the meantime, I started teaching History of the Mediterranean at Roma Tre University and worked part-time for Unimed, an association of Universities of the Mediterranean which promotes students’ and researchers’ exchanges and thematic workshops throughout the MEDA countries and the Southern European ones. I have always been a pro-European activist and I have been a member of JEF (Young European Federalists) since 2003, and got elected in the organization’s International Board in 2007. I speak French, English, Hebrew, little bit of German and a bit of Arabic, and I consider myself a 100% committed European citizen, but devoted to change the EU as it is right now. In the last year, I came to know EA as the only opportunity accessible for people to make politics at European level in a non-partisan way. I have already realized many years ago that most of the problems affecting my country, besides the endemic corruption of its ruling class, could not be addressed anymore on a national scale and were regarding us all as European citizens. When I am thinking of those common problems, it came up first to my mind the youth unemployment, which reached a threatening level in Spain but it is not less consistent in Italy, Greece, Romania and other countries. The same goes for the challenges posed to the right of freedom of expression, where Hungary stands out as the worst practice, and with the issue of welcoming or rejecting refugees fleeing their country, and specifically, since February last year, the Arab countries just on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. I also share the frustration and the disappointment people my age and younger feel about not being considered in politics, not being consulted on decisions affecting their lives (think of retirement wages and so on) and forced, in many cases, to choose, in nineteenth century-way, between work and family. I share their anger of being unemployed and, thus, feel even less empowered to take a stance and stand out for the rights, because they are accused of not contributing to society but posing a problem. So, when i decided to run, quite in a rush, for this EA election campaigns, i figured out that i might not display a full-fledged, already-made program, but just set the cat among the pigeons, in order to see if i could contribute to change, even slightly, this country (Europe) i so much love, but that lately seems to tell the younger generations that there is only one single path to tackle the economic crisis: bow down to the banks, accept economic diktat to pay back debts and get rid of any expectation of improving their conditions in the near future. However, I don't think this is reasonable and I stay with Iceland when its people stand up and claim they don't want to pay for a crisis they had not been consulted on nor they contributed to. I still consider making citizens' voice heard a major tool of democracy and democracy something we should not get rid of even in those difficult times of crisis. Thus, I am trying to make my part by supporting EA – the best idea of reaction and reflection on Europe i ever bumped in lately and in years- and standing as a representative for it.
Appel pour l’accès de la société civile aux centres d’enfermement
(Photo Flickr: noborder network) Le 22 octobre à Paris, Alternatives Européennes et Migreurop organisent un forum transnational “Pour un accès ouvert aux centres d'enfermement des migrants en Europe”. Découvrez à cette occasion notre appel pour l'accès citoyen aux centres d'enfermement. Ce texte est un texte de travail proposé à nos partenaires pour la campagne, il sera retravaillé et amendé en accord avec les associations impliquées d'ici le 22 octobre. Une version finale remplacera ce texte une fois un accord obtenu entre tous les participants. Aujourd’hui la situation des migrants arrivés par mer sur le territoire européen est fortement médiatisée. Elle s’articule autour de la peur des arrivées massives, du choc face aux conditions de voyage et aux nombreux décès, et autour de la condition d’octroi de permis de résidence ou du renvoi des migrants. Une étape presque obligatoire de la vie des migrants est souvent oubliée de l’attention publique : celle du passage presque obligé dans les centres de rétention administrative où les migrants dans l’attente de leur identification et expulsion sont enfermés. Les personnes peuvent être enfermées dans ces centres de rétention jusqu’à 18 mois, afin de pouvoir les expulser. Les conditions de rétention varient mais elles se caractérisent toutes par la privation de liberté et par des traitements, souvent, inhumains et dégradants. En vertu des textes européens (cf. l’article 11 de la Charte des Droits fondamentaux, relatif à la ‘liberté de recevoir ou de communiquer des informations ou des idées sans qu'il puisse y avoir ingérence d'autorités publiques’), l’accès à l’information est un droit inaliénable des citoyens européens, défendu par l’ensemble des institutions européennes. Dans de nombreux pays européens l’accès des journalistes et des membres de la société civile à même de documenter et apporter une information indépendante aux migrants enfermés dans les centres de rétention reste extrêmement limité et encadré. Seuls les parlementaires nationaux et européens disposent d’un accès à tout moment à ces centres. Nous appelons à étendre et permettre l’accès aux centres de rétention aux journalistes et membres de la société civile organisée (associations) dans l’ensemble des pays de l’Union européenne, et au-delà. Par ailleurs, nous appelons à la mobilisation des personnes dont l’accès est assuré pour encourager l’évolution de la législation nationale et européenne dans ce domaine. Les migrations et le mode d’accueil des migrants sont des sujets très discutés actuellement en Europe, et les choix qui y sont liés sont des choix politiques. Il est donc essentiel que les citoyens européens puissent avoir accès à l’information pour être en mesure de construire une opinion réfléchie sur les conditions de rétention des migrants et leur condition d’accueil. Alternatives Européennes et Migreurop
Call for civil society access to detention centers
(Photo Flickr: noborder network) This text is a first version of a call for citizen's access to detention centers, proposed to partner organisation in the campaign. The text will be circulated, reworked and finalized before the meeting. Today the situation of migrants who arrive by sea on European soil is given much publicity in the media. The representation is predominantly based on the fear of a large-scale influx of arrivals, the shocking travelling conditions along with the many related deaths. What is often forgotten is an almost obligatory step in their lives: migrants are almost compelled to go through administrative detention centres where they stay locked away while pending their identification and expulsion. People can be held up in these detention centres for up to 18 months before being expelled. The conditions of detention vary but they are often characterized by deprivation of freedoms and inhuman and degrading treatments in many cases. Under European legislation (see Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, about the 'freedom to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority”), the access to information is an inalienable right of European citizens, defended by all European institutions. In many European countries the access of journalists and civil society members who are able to provide independent information to migrants in detention centers is still extremely limited and controlled. Only national and European members of parliament have access to these centres at any time. We call for extending and providing access for journalists and members of civil society organizations to detention centers in all countries of the European Union and beyond. Furthermore, we call for the mobilization of people whose access is already provided in order to encourage the development of national and European legislation in this area. It is for this reason that European Alternatives and Migreurop will jointly organise a transnational forum titled “Open access to detention centres for migrants in Europe” in Paris on October, 22nd, 2011. Today migrations and conditions of access are much discussed topics in Europe, and the associated decisions in these issues are political ones. Therefore it is essential that European citizens have access to information to be able to build a structured opinion about migrants’conditions of detention and their living conditions. European Alternatives and Migreurop
Pour un accès ouvert aux centres d’enfermement des migrants en Europe: Conférence le 22 octobre à Paris
Alternatives Européennes et Migreurop organisent le Forum Transnational “Pour un accès ouvert aux centres d'enfermement des migrants en Europe” qui se tiendra à Paris le samedi 22 octobre au Centre International de Culture Populaire. Cette conférence constitue le Forum Transnational des précédentes rencontres régionales menées sur le thème “Migration et Asile” dans le cadre du projet People, Power and Participation. Contexte Afin de gérer leurs flux migratoires, la plupart des États membres de l’UE ont recours aux centres de rétention de migrants. Des cas de violation de droits de l’homme ont été signalés dans bon nombre de ces pays, avec des détenus de facto qui, bien que n’ayant commis aucun crime, se retrouvent dans une situation où l’assistance juridique, la communication avec l’extérieur et la liberté de mouvements leur sont refusées. Des organisations de défense des droits de l’homme ont condamné les conditions de vie épouvantables à l’intérieur de ces camps. Bien que le drame de ces personnes tentant de traverser la mer pour atteindre les côtes européennes ait quelque peu attiré l’attention des médias, le grand public en sait très peu sur les conditions de rétention pratiquées dans ces centres. La focalisation des médias sur le centre de Lampedusa est peu représentative de la situation, dans la mesure où de nombreux migrants sont retenus dans d’autres centres disséminés partout en Europe. Dans la plupart des pays, l’accès aux centres de rétention est en effet limité voire refusé aux journalistes, aux groupes de défense des droits de l’homme, à la société civile et parfois même aux autorités locales. Une telle situation pose un double problème : ce sont à la fois les droits des migrants et la liberté d’expression et d’information qui sont ainsi bafoués. La Commission et le Parlement européens sont en train d’étudier de nouvelles directives sur les demandeurs d’asile et les migrants en Europe dans le cadre du papier blanc sur la détention et du programme de Stockholm en cours. Grâce au forum de Paris, nous souhaitons réunir des organisations défendant la liberté d’information et les droits des migrants et luttant contre la rétention, afin de discuter ensemble des méthodes et stratégies à adopter pour mettre sur pied une campagne européenne de défense des droits de l’homme dans le but d’obtenir le libre accès des journalistes et de la société civile aux camps de rétention. Il va sans dire que tant que les journalistes, les avocats et les activistes n’acquerront pas droit de cité dans les camps de rétention, le public restera dans l’ignorance et les citoyens européens ne seront pas à même de se forger librement une opinion sur les centres de rétention. Découvrez à cette occasion l’Appel pour l’accès de la société civile aux centres d’enfermement lancé par Alternatives Européennes et Migreurop. Programme de la journée Le but de cette journée est d’instaurer une coalition entre les organisations, afin qu’elles collaborent et entreprennent des actions coordonnées visant à réclamer l’accès de la société civile (journalistes, organisations) à tous les centres de rétention d’Europe. Le forum aura lieu au Centre International de Culture Populaire, 21 ter rue Voltaire, 75011 Paris – Métro : Alexandre Dumas (L2) ou Rue des boulets ( L9). De 9.30 à 15.30 : Séance de travail De 15.30 à 17.30 : Débat public – Droit à l’information et doits de l’homme en Europe Présentation de la campagne ‘ Pour Un accès ouvert aux centres d’enfermement des migrants en Europe' par Sara Prestianni, Migreurop et Ségolène Pruvot, Alternatives Européennes. Discussion avec des personnalités politiques, académiques, associatives et journalistiques Intervenants: Rokhaya Diallo, journaliste, Alain Morice, Directeur de recherches au CNRS, membres du Parlement Européen. Participants confirmés :Sara Prestiani (Migreurop), Ségolène Pruvot, Lorenzo Marsili, Alessandro Valera, Niccolo Milanese (Alternatives Européennes), Daphne Bullesbach (Transeuropa), Elisabeth Frantz (Open Society, Migration Initiative) , Kashetu Kyenge (Rete Primo Marzo, Italie), ARCI (Italie), Apostolos Veizis (MSF, Grèce), Chiara Tamburini (Parlement Européen), Stefano Gallieni (journaliste, Liberazione, Rifondazione, Italie) , FASTI Pour toutes vos questions sur le programme et pour confirmer votre présence, merci de vous adresser à Ségolène Pruvot, s.pruvot@euroalter.com Pour les questions ayant trait à l’organisation, merci de vous adresser à Alexandra Solom, paris@euroalter.com
Jonmar Van Vlijmen
Jonmar was elected as one of the two member representatives of the Transeuropa Network for a year, during elections that took place from October 7th to 14th 2011. Find out more about who he is and why he wanted to become member representatives. Sign up to become a member of the Netwok! Maybe some of you know me already, but for the newcomers: my name is Jonmar van Vlijmen, from Amsterdam, where I live together with my boyfriend and yellow canary in a commune of 9 people. My current activities are dealing with issues evolving around European culture through my work as a social designer. After finishing my post master degree ‘Multiplicity & Visual Identity’ in Switzerland, I became more and more interested in the dynamics of communities and the process of building up new structures from scratch in a democratic way. I’m fascinated by the way people think of their european identity and work on the project ‘Hello Herman’ to provide platform for expressing it. I’ve been involved in European Alternatives for over a year now and have co-organized the Transeuropa festival in Amsterdam in May this year. As a representative of the members of the European Alternatives, I see it as my task to create a mechanism to canalize all your ideas, comments, critique and compliments to the organization. I’ll use four perspectives to represent you. new members New members need to be warmly embraced, their opinion becomes important right after getting involved. As a bottom up organization it’s of importance that new members can have the freedom to give input in such a way that they do not feel excluded in any way. I see it as a great opportunity to provide an clear and open contact between members and the organization. identity of European Alternatives The organization may, over time, be overly identified with the person or personality of the founders. In setting up a legal structure for an NGO, the organization can only stay alive, when it’s a mirror of the members. For the organization to develop in a healthy and sustainable way, from my opinion it is important when it would mirror the members. With this position I hope to ensure this democratic aspect. decision making The founders are at the center of all decision-making. In order to make a truly bottom up and transnational development, they need your input to make good decisions! As a member on the board, my goal would be to aim for balanced decision making, taking all different views and perspectives from different regions in Europe into account. we like eachother of course… but that is not an argument to agree or disagree to developments within the local groups or in the organization itself. Communication and transparency are key for the development of European Alternatives, that’s why your opinion is of great value. On behalf of the members I would like become a trustworthy representative for the members, on creating a platform to make sure your initiatives, concerns, questions or interests are taken into account.
Angela Anton
Angela was elected as one of the two member representatives of the Transeuropa Network for a year, during elections that took place from October 7th to 14th 2011. Find out more about who she is and why she wanted to become member representative. Sign up to become a member of the Netwok! Dear members of Transeuropa Network, my name is Angela ANTON. If you’ll ask my friends to describe me, they will say that I’m a little, happy, full of energy and charismatic girl from Romania. Five years ago I left my hometown to study at university. In 2009 I’ve graduated the Faculty of Economic Management within The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. Today, I am studying the master program Management of Non-Governmental Organisations, within the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. Regarding my experience in NGO’s field, I can say that I am practicing volunteering for 4 years. Last year, I discovered non-formal education and I’ve been realized how important it is nowadays for the future of our youth. Therefore, I am vice-president in a local youth NGO (“Support for Youth Development” Association) from Cluj-Napoca. I am writing and coordinating European projects. First time when I heard about European Alternatives was in March this year, when my colleague Diana called me and asked me if I want to be part of Transeuropa Festival. After I read the motto “Democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state” my answer was yes, because one of my dreams is to live in a world where the discrimination is missing and the respect for the others exists and European Alternatives is a way for doing a better one. Since July this year, I was democratically elected to be the city coordinator of Cluj local group. I have chosen to candidate because I know that I have the time, skills, capacities and competences, the minimum experience to represent the members on the board, in the proper way. I am very sociable and communicative, and I expect from the persons I work and not only, to be characterized by correctness. Ambition, integrity and professionalism are some of my strengths. Thank you!
Résulats des élections du Réseau Transeuropa!
Du 7 au 14 octobre, les membres du Réseau Transeuropa ont voté en ligne pour élire leurs deux représentants au sein du Board (en savoir plus sur la nouvelle structure d’Alternatives Européennes) Jonmar Van Vlijmen et Angela Anton ont été élus pour un an, avec respectivement 34% et 25% des votes. Les nouveaux représentants des membres, Angela et Jonmar Leur rôle est d'assurer une réelle participation des membres dans le processus décisionnel au sein d'Alternatives Européennes, et de garantir que l'organisation fonctionne réellement dans une approche bottom-up, de la base vers le haut. Ils communiqueront avec tous les membres du Réseau Transeuropa, au sein des groupes locaux ou non, sur les projets actuels et les décisions prises par le Board, et ils communiqueront également au Board tout type d'attente, de proposition, d'interrogation etc. que les membres du Réseau pourraient émettre. “Le 15 octobre, le groupe local de Transeuropa Amsterdam était présent au “Occupy Amsterdam” qui est le meilleur endroit où l'on puisse célébrer les résultats de ces élections, entourés de tant de personnes aspirant, ayant besoin et portant un changement. Afin de ressentir cette magnifique énergie et cette incroyable inspiration, bâtir une voix commune nous permettrait de nous écouter les uns les autres et mettre en place ensemble des changements pour notre futur. Tous ensemble nous nous sommes mobilisés pour la démocratie réelle et l'égalité. Merci à tous pour vos votes, j'ai hâte de développer plus en profondeur et de construire une vraie communication ouverte et transparente dans deux directions, celle du Board et la vôtre. Dans la prochains jours je m'appuierai sur la confiance que vous m'avez donné pour vous représenter de la meilleure manière que je puisse. En tant que votre représentant, j'ai hâte de collaborer avec vous tous. Je voudrais vous inviter à me poser des questions, me suggérer vos brillantes idées, me donner vos commentaires, afin que nous puissions tous faire fonctionner la démocratie. Je félicite Angela, c'est une plaisir d'avoir l'opportunité de travailler avec toi! Groetjes, Jonmar”
Transeuropa Network elections: the results!
From October 7th to 14th, members of the Transeuropa Network have voted online for their two representatives on the Board (learn more about European Alternatives' new structure). Jonmar Van Vlijmen and Angela Anton were elected for a year, with respectively 34% and 25% of the votes. The new member representatives, Angela and Jonmar Their role is to ensure a real participation of members in the decision-making process in European Alternatives and to guarantee that the organisation genuinely works bottom-up. They will communicate with all members of the Transeuropa Network, in local groups or not, on current projects and decisions taken by the Board, and they will likewise communicate to the Board any concern, proposal, question, etc. that members may rise. Here is Jonmar Van Vlijmen's first message to all members: “On October 15th, the local team of Transeuropa Amsterdam was present at 'Occupy Amsterdam' and the best place celebrating the results of the elections, with so many like minded people wanting, needing and feeling change. To actually feel this tremendous energy and incredible inspiration shaping a common voice enabling ourselves to listen to eachother and make changes together for our future. Together we were standing for real democracy and equality. Thanks everyone for your votes, I look forward to further develop and shape a truly open and transparent communication in both directions between you and the board. In the upcoming time I will build upon the trust you have given me to represent you in the best way I can. As your representative I'm looking forward to collaborate with you all. I would like to invite you to ask me questions, suggest me your brilliant ideas, give your comments, so we can all together make democracy work. My congratulations to Angela and it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with you! groetjes, Jonmar”
Being European
Les droits des Roms
Article et photo par Elena Dalibot Traduction par Adelina Ionescu « Toute forme de discrimination est inacceptable. L’Union et les États Membres doivent faire un effort soutenu pour intégrer les groupes vulnérables dans la société, particulièrement la communauté rom, en promouvant leur intégration dans le système éducatif et le marché du travail, et en agissant afin de prévenir les actes de violence à leur égard. Pour atteindre cet objectif, les États membres devraient s’assurer que la législation en vigueur est correctement appliquée, en vue d’aborder les possibles discriminations. L’Union offrira de l’assistance pratique et promouvra les meilleures pratiques afin d’aider les États membres à réaliser cet objectif. La société civile jouera un rôle très spécifique à cet égard. » (Le programme de Stockholm, section 2.3.3) Contexte La population rom (incluant une variété de groupes comme les Sintis, les Ashkalis, les gens du voyage, les Manouches, etc.) vivant en Europe est estimée entre 8 et 12 millions de personnes. Ils font partie intégrante de l’Europe depuis plus de cinq cent ans. Toutefois, ils se confrontent à l’exclusion sociale et à la discrimination dans beaucoup delieux sur tout le continent, surtout en ce qui concerne leur logement, leur santé, leur éducation ou leur emploi. Pourquoi les politiques concernant « l’intégration » des Roms ont-elles échoué et comment peut-on en désigner des politiques efficaces, ensemble avec les Roms eux-mêmes ? Comment l’Union Européenne devrait-elle agir afin que les Roms ne soient plus considérés comme « un problème pour l’intégration européenne », mais comme un de ses vecteurs? Qu’est-ce que l’UE fait – et qu’est-ce qu’elle pourrait faire de plus – afin d’assurer des droits égaux pour tous ses citoyens ? Sur un plan local, comment les conditions de vie des Roms pourraient être concrètement améliorées ? Pour répondre à ces défis, European Alternatives organisera une rencontre-débat decitoyens, en réunissant une diversité de citoyens européens et de représentants de la société civile pour discuter des droits des Roms. On abordera les sujets suivants : – Le logement : comment pourrait-on assurer une alternative à la construction des logements de mauvais qualité ? Dans le contexte d’une uniformisation socio-économique accrue des quartiers, comment peut-on arrêter les expulsions forcées des Roms ? Quelles mesures pourraient éviter la formation ou le démantèlement des quartiers de Roms déjà existants et victimes de ségrégation ? Comment pourrait-on améliorer les conditions de vie (concernant les routes, l’eau, les services d’assainissement, etc.) de la communauté rom ? – L’éducation : comment l’Union Européenne et les États européens pourraient assurer un accès équitable à l’éducation de base ? Quelles incitations pourraient être mises en place pour stimuler la fréquentation des cours et continuer la formation ? Comment le système éducatif peut-il intégrer les Roms, en leur permettant de participer de manière efficace aux cours, en gardant dans le même temps leur(s) identité(s) culturelle(s), en valorisant le multiculturalisme et le plurilinguisme ? – La santé : quelles mesures pourraient-on prendre pour assurer de meilleurs soins de santé pour tous ? Quels sont les résultats du Programme Opérationnel de Médiation Sanitaire des Roms ? Comment pourrait-on améliorer les services médicaux et former le personnel médical afin de lutter contre la discrimination des Roms ? – L’emploi : comment pourrait-on faire face et lutter contre la discrimination pendant les entretiens d’embauche ? Quel impact aurait un meilleur accès au marché du travail dans d’autres domaines de la vie des Roms, comme la santé, les conditions d’hébergement ou l’éducation ? comment pourrait-on évaluer les bénéfices économiques et de production des activités souvent sous-estimées ? – Les droits et la justice : ce dernier sujet concernant les droits et la justice a un double sens. En fonction de l’importancedes questions suivantes selon les situations locales, une question seulement peut être discutée. La libre circulation et ses limites : les « désavantages » du principe de la libre circulation, sont-ils justifiés ? Comment devrait-on réagir quand des citoyens européens sont renvoyés dans leurs pays d’origine ? L’exemple de la France qui a expulsé de nombreux Roms pendant l’été 2010 peut être le point de départ de ce débat. L’État de droit, l’exploitation et le crime organisé : comment pourrait-on dissocier les Roms de la criminalité, surtout dans les médias de masse? Quel rôle joue l’Europe dans le cas où un ou plusieurs États ne respectent pas la loi ? Comment pourrait-on insister auprès des autorités locales, nationales et/ou européennes afin de s ‘assurer que la législation anti discrimination et les politiques d’intégration des Roms ne sont pas que des bonnes intentions, mais qu’elles sont aussi appliquées, de manière efficace? Le cadre politique et institutionnel La législation anti-discrimination La protection contre la discrimination est reconnue en tant que droit universel par la loi internationale des droits de l’homme par l’intermédiaire d’un grand nombre d’instruments, comme la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Homme (1948), la Convention Internationale sur l’Élimination de Toute Forme de Discrimination Raciale (CERD, 1965), ou la Convention Cadre pour la Protection des Minorités Nationales (FCNM), adoptée par le Conseil de l’Europe en 1944. Certains de ces articles demandent aux États non seulement de ne pas discriminer, mais aussi de mettre en oeuvre des mesures positives pour la combattre. Dans le cadre de la législation de l’Union Européenne, la non-discrimination est un des plus importants principes directeurs de l’initiative juridique et politique. Les principaux textes qui condamnent la discrimination incluent l’article 13 du Traité d‘Amsterdam, la Directive sur l’Égalité Raciale (2000/43/EC), la Directive sur l’Égalité de Traitement en matière d’Emploi et de Travail (2000/78/EC) et la Convention européenne de sauvegarde des Droits de l'Homme et des Libertés fondamentales. L’article 13 du Traité de l’Union Européenne prévoit que toute discrimination fondée sur le sexe, la race ou l’origine ethnique, sur la religion ou la croyance, sur l’handicap, sur l’âge ou l’orientation sexuelle est interdite. La Directive (2000/43/EC) sur l’Égalité Raciale implémente le principe du traitement égal des personnes, indépendamment de leur race ou leur origine. Tous les États membres sont obligés de le transposer dans des lois nationales. La Directive les conseille vivement de créer un organe spécialisé afin de promouvoir le traitement égal pour toutes les personnes, sans discrimination fondée sur la race ou les origines et leur…
Roma rights
« All forms of discrimination remain unacceptable. The Union and the Member States must make a concerted effort to fully integrate vulnerable groups, in particular the Roma community, into society by promoting their inclusion in the education system and labour market and by taking action to prevent violence against them. For this purpose, Member States should ensure that the existing legislation is properly applied to tackle potential discrimination. The Union will offer practical support and promote best practice to help Member States achieve this. Civil society will have a special role to play.” Stockholm programme, section 2.3.3 Context The Roma population (encompassing a variety of groups like the Sinti, Ashkali, Travellers, Manouches, etc.) living in Europe ranges from an estimated 8 to 12 million. They have been an integral part of Europe for more than five hundred years. However, all over the continent, they face social exclusion and discrimination in many areas, notably housing, health, education or employment. Roma are often victims of forced evictions, racist attacks and police ill-treatment, be it in Central and Eastern Europe or in Western Europe.Many communities are marginalized through poverty, social ills and physical isolation. Why have policies concerning Roma “integration” failed and how can efficient policies be designed with imput from the Roma people themselves? How can the European Union act so that the Romas are not considered anymore as „a problem for European integration”, but as a vector of integration? What does the EU do –and what could it do more– to ensure equal rights for all of its citizens? On a local level, how can the living conditions of the Romas concretely be improved? To respond to these challenges, European Alternatives will be holding a series of citizens’ panel discussions, bringing together a diverse mix of European citizens and representatives of civil society to discuss Roma rights. The following themes will be approached : – Housing : How could an alternative to the construction of low-quality housing be ensured? In a context of increased gentrification, how can we oppose forced evictions of Roma? What measures could prevent the formation or dismantle already existing segregated Roma neighbourhoods? How can the living conditions (regarding roads, water, sewage services, etc.) of the Roma community be improved? – Education : How can the EU and the European states act to ensure equitable access to basic education? What incentives can be put in place for attending school and pursuing education? How can the education system integrate the Roma, enabling them to participate effectively at school, while preserving their cultural identity/ies and giving value to multiculturalism and multilinguism? – Health : Is there any measure that can be taken to ensure better health provision for all? What are the results of the Roma Health Mediators Programs? How can the medical settings be improved and the medical staff be formed so as to fight discrimination of the Roma? – Employment : How can we face it and fight against discrimination during job interviews? What impact could have a better access of Roma to the labour market in other spheres of their life, such as health, housing conditions or education? How can one assess the productive and economic benefits of activities that are often under-appreciated? – Rights and justice : This last topic on rights and justice is twofold. Depending on how relevant the following questions are regarding to local situations, only one of the two questions can be discussed. Freedom of movement and its limits: Are the « drawbacks » of the principle of freedom of movement justified? How should we act when European citizens are sent back to their countries of origin? The example of France with the mass expulsions of Roma during the summer 2010 can be used as a starting point for this discussion. State subject to the rule of law, exploitation and organised crime: How to deconstruct the association of Roma with criminality, notably in the mass media? What is the role of Europe in the case that one or several states lack the rule of law? How can we press local, national and / or European authorities so as to ensure anti-discrimination legislation and policies for Roma inclusion are not just wishful thinking but are effectively implemented? Political and institutional framework Anti discrimination legislation Protection against discrimination is recognized as universal right by international human rights law through a wide number of instruments, such as the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, 1965) or the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) adopted by the Council of Europe in 1994. Some of them require from the States not only to abstain from discrimination but to implement positive measures against it. In the European Union law, non-discrimination is one of the main guiding principle in legal and policy initiative. The main texts against discrimination include the article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty, the Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC), the Employment Equality Directive (2000/78/EC), and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Article 13 of the EC Treaty provides that any discrimination on the grounds of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation is prohibited. The Directive 2000/43/EC on Racial Equality implements the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin. All member states are obliged to transpose it in national laws. It urges Member States to create a specialised body to promote equal treatment for all persons without discrimination on grounds of racial or ethnic origins and allows them to launch positive action programmes in favour of ethnic minorities. The Employment Equality Directive (2000/78/EC) prohibit direct and indirect discrimination, as well as harassment on grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or beliefs, disability, age or sexual orientation. It covers the fields of employment and occupation , vocational training and membership of employer and employee organisations. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, proclaimed in 2000, gained legal status in 2007 with the Lisbon Treaty…
Alternatives Européennes lance un think-tank sino-européen
Fidèle à sa vocation transnationale, Alternatives Européennes travaille au lancement d’un think-tank sino-européen pour le mois de novembre. Traduction de Sara Petrucci Dialogues transnationaux Un think-tank et un magazine culturels sino-européens (Le site Internet du projet est prévu pour début novembre – pour être tenu informé veuillez vous inscrire à la liste de diffusion d’Alternatives Européennes) Aperçu et structure Allant au-delà de collaborations ou d’ échanges brefs et ponctuels, le think-tank et le magazine en ligne rassembleront un groupe de participants divers (“fellows”) issus d’Europe et de Chine, sur une durée d’au moins un an, afin de poursuivre une réflexion et une production de contenus transnationaux et transculturels autour d’une série clé de thèmes d’actualité. Les fellows seront issus de milieux différents: artistique, académique ou professionnel, tous faisant preuve d’un intérêt profond pour la réflexion culturelle, artistique ou sociale. Ils seront répartis en 3 groupes de travail transnationaux à thème – chacun d’entre eux constitué d’un nombre approximativement égal de fellows originaires de Chine et d’Europe – afin de travailler tout au long de l’année. Le travail des groupes sera divisé en deux points principaux: Le magazine bilingue Sur un rythme continu, les groupes produiront un contenu rédactionnel original, ils mèneront des interviews et rassembleront des articles récemment publiés ou de courts essais en rapport avec leurs sujets, qui seront ensuite traduits entre le chinois et les langues européennes, puis mis en ligne sur la page internet du projet. Ceci permettra la création d’un magazine en ligne utile et original présentant les discours chinois et européens de manière régulière et traduits, en relation avec les sujets traités par le projet. Le portail en ligne servira à recueillir des propositions originales sur des questions clés affectant les sociétés européennes et chinoises, et il servira également à traduire conceptuellement certaines des propositions les plus originales découlant de la réflexion sociale européenne et chinoise. Les articles seront sélectionnés et mis en contexte par les fellows, et offriront un espace de discussion structurée où tous les lecteurs auront la possibilité de poser leurs questions, de publier leurs commentaires et d’engager des discussions bilingues autour des sujets traités par les articles. Les fellows joueront un rôle actif en stimulant l’interaction et la discussion autour des textes publiés, assurant ainsi que le portail devienne un réel espace consacré au dialogue transnational ouvert et informé. Production Au cours de l’année, les fellows travailleront ensemble dans leur groupe pour la production d’une recherche spécifique et originale qui devra être préparée pour la fin du printemps 2012 et présentée lors de séminaires publics à Londres, Paris, et Rome (dans le cadre du Festival Transeuropa) ainsi que dans des ateliers tenus à Pékin, Chongqing et Shanghai. * Cette recherche pourrait inclure diverses activités/medias, selon ce qui aura été décidé avec le groupe de travail. Ces groupes de travail pourraient ensuite décider de travailler pour une production unique réalisée à plusieurs, ou de répartir leur travail en sous-projets. Par exemples, il pourrait s’agir de: – Projets basés sur la recherche: mener une réflexion conjointe et publier les textes/échanges qui en découlent dans un une brochure. – Archivage: mener des interviews structurées, rassembler des coupures de presse, etc… – Vidéo: travailler en vue d’un documentaire-vidéo ou d’autres productions vidéo Projet de calendrier des réunions/activités principales Fin octobre 2011: Organisation du premier “Camp transnational”. Tous les participants européens et environ 10 participants chinois se retrouveront à Londres ou Rome pour un atelier de 4 jours afin de mieux définir l’objectif, les méthodes et les caractéristiques du projet ainsi que ses groupes de travail. Janvier 2012 (?): Visite de développement en Chine. Ces visites ont pour objectif de développer un contact continu entre les personnes, en offrant des plateformes pour avancer le travail commun en face à face, discuter et pacifier tout sujet qui pourrit surgir dans la discussion.Environ 3 participants européens, représentant les groupes de travail, voyageront pour travailler avec les participants basés en Chine. Avril 2012: Approximativement 10 participants européens seront présents au deuxième Camp transnational se déroulant à Pékin avec tous les participants chinois. Mai 2012: Visite de développement en Europe par environ 5 participants chinois, ainsi que plusieurs présentations de Transeuropa. Cette visite aura lieu dans le cadre de l’annuel “Festival Transeuropa ”, se déroulant simultanément dans 12 villes (www.transeuropafestival.eu). Ceci permettra aux groupes d’organiser une présentation publique de leur travail, tout en constituant une date butoir afin de présenter leurs conclusions provisoires. Juin 2012: Présentation des expériences de projets, conclusions et productions lors d’ateliers à Pékin, Shanghai et Chongqing, en présence d’environ 5 participants basés en Europe. Initiateurs du projet Alternatives Européennes est une organisation de la société civile qui promeut les valeurs telles que la démocratie, l’égalité et la culture au-delà de l’Etat-nation via des campagnes, des conférences, des publications et des festivals. Il s’agit d’une organisation de membres issus des quatre coins de l’Europe et ses bureaux sont basés à Londres, Paris, Rome et Cluj-Napoca. You Mi est une écrivaine et artiste/réalisatrice dans le domaine des nouveaux médias. Elle contribue à la version chinoise de Abitare, un magazine d’art et d’architecture qui se focalise se les questions sociales et d’humanité. En tant qu’artiste, elle a exposé le fruit de son travail en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, ce qui l’encourage à approfondir le dialogue entre les cultures. L’Art Lab de Pékin est une plateforme culturelle consacrée à la production vidéo. MovingCities est un think-tank basé à Shanghai qui étudie le rôle que jouent l’architecture et l’urbanisme dans l’agencement des villes contemporaines. OrganHaus est une plateforme culturelle et une galerie d’art basée à Chongqing. Etant membre du réseau de résidence Triangle Arts Trust, Organhaus gère de nombreux échanges internationaux et des expositions novatrices en Chine.
European Alternatives starts Chinese think tank
Faithful to its transnational vocation, European Alternatives is setting up a Euro-Chinese journal and laboratory starting November (project website coming in early November – to be updated join EA mailing list) overview & structure Going beyond short, one-off exchanges or collaborations, Transnational Dialogues will bring together a diverse group of fellows from Europe and China over the course of at least one year to conduct transnational and transcultural reflection and content production around a key set of topical issues rated to labour precarity, urban space, and alternative economic models. Fellows come from mixed academic, artistic, and professional backgrounds, demonstrating a strong interest in cultural, artistic, and social reflection. bilingual journal The bilingual (English & Chinese) online portal will serve as a depository of original proposals on key issues touching European and Chinese societies, serving to conceptually translate some of the most original suggestions arising out of European and Chinese intellectual and social reflection. Articles will be selected and contextualised by fellows, and will allow for a structured discussion space where all readers will have a chance to ask further questions, comment, and start bilingual discussions around the issues treated by the articles. Fellows will play an active role in stimulating interaction and discussion around the texts published, ensuring the online portal becomes a veritable space for open and informed tansnational dialogue. production laboratory During the year Transnational Dialogues will additionally conduct the production of specific, original research products (book, pamphlets, archive, documentary…) to be presented in public seminars in London, Paris, and Rome (as part of Transeuropa Festival) and in workshops in Beijing, Chongqing, and Shanghai. methods The journal will produce content and stimulate responses from European and Chinese intellectuals around three “open questions” phrased by the project fellows. The resposes will create regular interaction between journal contributors, attemping to outline potential solutions or present critical analyses with perspectives coming both from Europe and from China. Specific research production will arrise out of this process, with the specific requirement of investigating a specific issue with a clear transnational european/chinese approach and object of study. A series of study-visits will be organied, with fellows travelling to conduct research trips and to work together with other participants and advisors to the project. initiators European Alternatives is a civil society organisation promoting the values of democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state by means of campaigns, conferences, publications and festivals. It is a membership organisation with individual members from throughout Europe and offices in London, Paris, Rome, and Cluj-Napoca. You Mi is a writer and new media artist/filmmaker. She contributes to the Chinese version of Abitare, an art and architecture magazine with a strong focus on social and humanity issues. As an artist, she has exhibited in Europe and the States, the experience of which encourages her to further the dialogue between cultures. Beijing Art Lab is a Beijing-based cultural platoform focussing on video production. MovingCities is a Shanghai-based think-thank investigating the role that architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city.
Press release for our event ‘Legality and struggle against mafias in Europe’
The press release for our event 'Legality and struggle against mafias in Europe' is available here. Click on the image below for the PDF format of the press release.
European Alternatives has a new constitution!
5 years after its establishment in the UK in 2007, and one year to the day after the creation of Transeuropa Network, European Alternatives has adopted a new constitution. The new constitution was adopted at a meeting in Amsterdam of local group coordinators and the board, both of which adopted the constitution by unanimity. The constitution introduces a new structure for the organisation, introducing an elected Transnational board and the Cooperative of local groups to jointly decide on common actions across Europe. The constitution reforms the status of members of European Alternatives, and gives them direct representation in the Transnational board that governs the organisation. Acting co-president of European Alternatives, Niccolo Milanese, said after the approval of the constitution: ‘This constitution marks a major step in the growth of our transnational organisation, inventing genuinely innovative forms of collaboration between people across borders. It will democratise and dynamise our organisation. At a time when Europe is lacking in both solidarity and imagination, European Alternatives is proving that the new generation is determined to fight for both of these virtues.’ Read the newly adopted constitution here Join European Alternatives here
Etre Européen
Durant le Festival Transeuropa qui s’est déroulé simultanément dans douze villes européennes en mai 2011, dix jeunes réalisateurs venus de toute l’Europe ont interrogé des participants du festival pour savoir s’ils se sentaient Européens, et ce que cela signifiait pour eux. Vous sentez-vous Européen ?
Being European
During the Transeuropa Festival which simultaneously occured in twelve European cities in May 2011, ten young film-makers from all over Europe asked participants of the Festival if they feel European, and what does that mean to them. Do you feel European?
Alternatives Européennes à la Conférence du Conseil de l’Europe
Le co-directeur d’Alternatives Européennes Niccolo Milanese est intervenu à la conférence sur la Cohésion Sociale et la Démocratie du Conseil de l’Europe, à Limassol (Chypre) le 14 octobre. Niccolo a utilisé ce discours pour attirer l’attention sur les nouvelles formes de collaboration transnationale et démocratique développées par Alternatives Européennes qui organise des évènements tels que le Festival TRANSEUROPA et des campagnes politiques. Répondant aux remarques ouvertes de l’économiste Guy Standing à propos de l’émergence d’une classe précaire en Europe, qui inclut les migrants et les Roms confrontés au déni de plusieurs de leurs droits, ainsi que des jeunes trop ou peu qualifiés vivant dans des conditions de travail précaires, Niccolo a insisté sur le fait que la construction de la solidarité entre ces différents groupes au sein de cette classe précaire était une des activités principales d’Alternatives Européennes. A propos du thème de la conférence « cohésion sociale et démocratie », Niccolo a dit combien il appréciait le travail effectué par le Conseil de l’Europe, mais il a insisté sur ce point: «Surtout n’oublions pas que la justice est un prérequis de la cohésion sociale. L’intérêt pour la cohésion sociale est peut-être trop souvent assimilé à la maintenance de l’ordre social, et pour beaucoup le mot « ordre » ne s’apparente que trop au concept de « statu quo ». Il y a un groupe croissant de personnes en Europe qui se sentent indignées par les injustices de l’Europe qu’elles constatent autour d’elles, et ceci demande un changement majeur dans la démocratie de l’Europe, et plus de « business as usual ». Ces injustices, qu’elles concernent des jeunes qui ne trouvent pas de travail, qu’elles représentent les difficultés de trouver un logement décent, les effets injustes de la crise financière et de l’austérité, et toutes celles encore que l’on pourrait citer, ne sont pas moins vivement ressenties comme des contrats rompus ou des promesses non tenues. A moins que nous admettions ce sentiment généralisé d’injustice et travaillons pour créer de nouvelles formes de démocratie et de citoyenneté active qui permettent de résoudre ces injustices, la cohésion sociale restera quelque chose d’inaccessible ». Alternatives Européennes a profité de ce séjour à Chypre pour se mobiliser avec nos amis de Génération Précaire, également lors de la conférence, en faveur de plus de droits pour les stagiaires et des stages de qualité.
European Alternatives at Council of Europe Conference
European Alternatives co-director Niccolo Milanese spoke at the Council of Europe conference on Social Cohesion and Democracy in Limassol, Cyprus on 14th October. Niccolo used his speech to draw attention to the new forms of transnational and democratic collaboration exercised by European Alternatives in organising events such as TRANSEUROPA Festival and its political campaigns. Responding to opening remarks from economist Guy Standing about the emergence of a precarious class in Europe, including migrants and Roma who are denied various rights, and over and under- qualified young people in precarious working situations, Niccolo emphasised that the building of solidarity between these groups within the precarious class was one of the main activities of European Alternatives. Reflecting on the theme of ‘social cohesion and democracy’, Niccolo said that he appreciated very much the work done by the Council of Europe, but emphasised ‘above all in this divided island, let us not forget that justice is a prerequisite for social cohesion. The appeal to social cohesion is perhaps too easily assimilated to the maintenance of social order, and to many ‘order’ sounds too much like the ‘status quo’. There is a growing group of people today in Europe who feel outraged by the injustices of the Europe they see around them, and that demand a major shift in Europe’s democracy, no more ‘business as usual’. These injustices, whether they be the impossibility of young people finding work, the difficulties of finding decent housing, the unfair effects of the financial crisis and austerity, or the many others that could be listed, are felt no less keenly than the injustices of invasions, broken contracts and broken promises. Unless we acknowledge the widespread feelings of injustice and work to create new forms of democracy and active citizenship able to deal with them, social cohesion will remain unreachable.’ European Alternatives profited from the stay in Cyprus to mobilise with our friends from Generation Precaire, also at the conference, in support of more rights for interns and quality internships. Pictures below.
European Alternatives runs transnational forum on ‘Legality and struggle against mafias in Europe’ in Sofia
November 19, 2011 The Red House, Sofia (Bulgaria) Transnational forum Legality and struggle against mafias in Europe! A transnational response to the transnational phenomenon of organised crime Many Europeans are aware that the threat of organised crime on society today is as devastating as terrorism. Organised crime gets entangled with local and national politics and it hinders the economic and social development of several member states. Several mafia groups are increasingly becoming transeuropean, and we are more than ever needed to coordinate actions to fight mafias locally and globally and (re)establish the rule of law at every level of social, economic and political life. This forum introduces the case of the transnationality of Italian mafias talking about the trafficking of waste across Europe, which is hereby presented as a paradigmatic example of the process of Europeanisation of the mafia and its effects on society. The documentary “Toxic Europe”, the winner of the “Best international Organised Crime Report (BIOCR)” award 2011, a section of Premio Ilaria Alpi ,will be broadcasted as an introduction to the topic. Environmental crimes will also be addressed from a different point of view – that of urban speculation linked to mafia power – posing the case study of Spain. The transnationality of European mafias will be then addressed in a second topic, which is that of financial crimes: where do the money raised by the organised crime end up? The Balkans and Italy will be taken as case studies by a number of experts. Moreover the forum will address some possible solutions that could be adopted around Europe to fight the mafias in a more effective way. Confiscation of goods and properties illicitly acquired by organised crime groups is a tool used by several countries, but not everywhere in Europe. Furthermore, making these goods become “public property” to be used for social purposes, as the Italian law legislates, could be proposed as a model for other EU member-states. The conclusions reached in the forum will be then presented in the final round of the program “People, power and participation” which will take place on 30 November 2011 in Brussels at the European Parliament, so to raise an interest in national and European MPEs and try and develop a common strategy to fight mafia at a European, if not global, level. For pdf format of press release, click here. PROGRAM 12:00 Registration, welcoming and networking Light refreshment available * 13:00 Introduction People, Power, Participation: the Journey to Sofia Alessandro Valera, European Alternatives Italy * Why a final forum in Bulgaria? Rosen Dimov, Flare Network * Environmental crimes, financial crimes and confiscation: overview of the day Cecilia Anesi, Toxic Europe * 13.30 > Part 1 Environmental Crimes in Europe: the new frontier of transnational organised crime Discussion moderated by Cecilia Anesi 13.30 Environmental crimes are a business: waste trafficking from Italy to Europe Cecilia Anesi, freelance investigative journalist co-author of “Toxic Europe” 13. 45 Screening of the documentary “Toxic Europe” How toxic waste is trafficked across Europe by Italian mafias 14. 15 How corruption in small municipalities affect democracy and the environment: the case of Spain Nacho González, lawyer of De Amicizia (Law firm specialised in the environment). 14.30 Open discussion * 15:00 Coffee Break * 15:15 > Part 2 From environmental crimes to financial crimes: what happens to the money illegally raised by mafia groups? Discussion moderated by Rosen Dimov 15:15 Financial crimes in Europe: the role of mafias Marjola Rukaj, journalist of Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project 15:30 Political corruption, organised crime and money-laundering: the case of Bulgaria Iva Pushkarova, international criminal law researcher specialised in organised crime, Justice and Development Fundation 15:45 Money laundering: the case of Cosa Nostra’s investment in real estates Febo Ulderico della Torre di Valsassina, Universiy of Camerino 15:55 Open discussion * 16:15 >Part 3 What can civil society do? Confiscation as a powerful tool to fight the organised crime in Europe. Discussion moderated by Luigi Cornaglia 16:15 Overview of confiscation laws in the EU Lorenzo Bodrero, FLARE Network – Fabrice Rizzoli, FLARE Network France 16:30 The experience of Serbia Vladimir Ceklic, Head of Department Directorate for Management of Confiscated Assets, Ministry of Justice Serbia 16:45 The experience of Bulgaria Ivanka Ivanova, Open Society Institute Iva Pushkarova, Justice Development Foundation 17:05 The experience of Germany Luigi Cornaglia, Mafia Nein Danke 17:15 Open Discussion * 17:30 Coffee break * 17:45 > Part 4 Take Action: can coordinated action on these themes be developed across Europe? Moderated by Alessandro Valera 17:45 Discussion on themes 19:00 Working groups Participants split in working groups according to interest to plan the first step of a European campaign 20:00 Conclusions
Elezioni Transnazionali!
Vota online dal 7 al 14 Ottobre Alternative Europee inizia a mettere in pratica il suo impegno per una democrazia transazionale dal basso. Due rappresentanti del Transeuropa Network verranno eletti alla Consiglio Transnazionale di Europea Alternatives dagli iscritti di tutta Europa dal 7 and 14 OttobreNon ancora iscritto? Iscriviti prima del 13 ottobre per votare nelle elezioni! Candidati Angela Anton Learn more about her! Carolynn Most Learn more about her! Claudia de Martino Learn more about her! Eleonora Nestola Learn more about her! Jonmar Van Vlijmen Learn more about him! Che ruolo hanno i rappresentanti degli iscritti ad Alternative Europee? I rappresentanti degli iscritti alla Transeuropa Network sono un elelmento essenziale della nuova struttura di Alternative Europee, che garantisce che l'organizzazione rappresenti veramente la propria “base”. Come membri del Consiglio Transnazionale (maggiori informazioi qui), hanno accesso e vero potere decisionale riguardo a tutto ciò che accade dentro Alternative Europee, avendo il diritto e dovere di sedere negli incontri mensili del Consiglio Transnazionale. I rappresentanti consulteranno gli iscritti su varie questioni e temi, si assicureranno che le loro idee, perplessità, proposte o interessi politici vengano presi in considerazione quando dovranno votare al Consiglio. Inoltre, informeranno gli iscritti sulle decisioni prese e sui temi che sono stati discussi. Per saperne di più – Leggi la Costituzione di European Alternatives, approvata di recente – Scopri che cos'è la Transeuropa Network Come funziona il voto? Tutti gli iscritti al Transeuropa Network possono votare i loro rappresentanti e riceveranno via mail un link e un codice per votare in maniera segreta online. Non è necessario far parte di un gruppo locale o aver già partecipato agli incontri Transeuropa meeting in passato. Un solo requisito: essere un membro ufficiale della Network. Se non l'hai ancora fatto iscriviti qui!
Elections transnationales!
Votez en ligne du 7 au 14 octobre Alternatives Européennes met en pratique son engagement en faveur d'une démocratie transnationale nourrie par la base. Les deux premiers membres représentants du Réseau Transeuropa seront élus par les autres membres du réseau partout en Europe, du 7 au 14 octobre. Tous les membres recevront un mail avec toutes les informations concernant ce vote. Quel rôle ont les membres réprésentants chez Alternatives Européennes? Les réprésentants des membres du Réseau Transeuropa sont un élément essentiel de la nouvelle structure d'Alternatives Européennes, ils garantissent que l'organisation fonctionne réellement dans une approche “bottom-up”. Tout comme les membres du Board Transnational (en savoir plus ici), ils ont une vue d'ensemble et une vraie capacité de prise de décision dans toutes les activités d'Alternatives Européennes, en siégant chaque mois aux réunions du Board Transnational. Les représentants consultent les autres membres sur différents sujets, veillent à ce que leurs initiatives, attentes, questions ou problématiques politiques soient pris en compte lors des votes du Board, et ils les tiennent informés sur les décisions qui ont été prises et sur les sujets soulevés. Pour en savoir plus : – Lisez la Constitution d'Alternatives Européennes récemment approuvée – En savoir plus sur le Réseau Transeuropa Comment puis-je voter? Tous les membres du Réseau Transeuropa peuvent voter pour leurs représentants et ils recevront par mail un lien contenant un mot de passe pour sécuriser leur vote en ligne. Vous n'avez pas besoin de faire partie d'un groupe local ou d'avoir participé à une réunion du Réseau Transeuropa par le passé. Une seule condition: devenir un membre officiel du Réseau: rejoignez-nous ici! Candidats Les candidats publieront bientôt de nouvelles informations sur leur page, veillez à les consulter! Angela Anton Learn more about her! Carolynn Most Learn more about her! Claudia de Martino Learn more about her! Eleonora Nestola Learn more about her! Jonmar Van Vlijmen Learn more about him!
Transnational Elections!
Vote online from October 7th to 14th European Alternatives begins to put in practice its commitment to bottom-up, transnational democracy. The first two member representatives of the Transeuropa Network were elected by members voting from all over Europe from October 7th to 14th. Not yet a member? Sign up before October 13th to take part in the vote! Elections are now closed. Find out what the results of the elections are! Candidates Angela Anton Learn more about her! Carolynn Most Learn more about her! Claudia de Martino Learn more about her! Eleonora Nestola Learn more about her! Jonmar Van Vlijmen Learn more about him! What role do member representatives play in European Alternatives? Representatives of members of the Transeuropa Network are an essential element in the new structure of European Alternatives, guaranteeing that the organisation works genuinely bottom up. As members of the Transnational Board (learn more here), they have an overall view and real decision-making power on all that goes on in European Alternatives, sitting in transnational board meetings every month. They consult members on different topics, make sure their initiatives, concerns, questions or political interests are taken into account when voting on the Board, and keep them informed on decisions that have been made and on topics that have been raised. To find out more: – Read the newly approved Constitution of European Alternatives – Find out more about Transeuropa Network How can I vote? All members of the Transeuropa Network can vote for their representatives and will receive via email a link and a password to securly vote online. You don’t need to be part of a local group or to have joined a Transeuropa meeting in the past. One requirement only: to be an official member of the Network: join here!
15 ottobre per un’altra Europa: unisciti alle manifestazioni
La giornata del 15 ottobre vedeà mobilitazioni in tutta Europa, nel Mediterraneo e in altre regioni del mondo, contro la distruzione dei diritti, dei beni comuni, del lavoro e della democrazia compiuta, con le politiche anticrisi, a difesa dei profitti e della speculazione finanziaria. Le persone non sono un debito. Alternative Europee partecipa al coordinamento della manifestazione europea del 15 ottobre, prendendo parte attiva anche a Roma. CAMBIAMO L'EUROPA, CAMBIAMO L'ITALIA PEOPLE OF EUROPE, RISE UP! Unitevi all'evento su facebook qui, e spargete la voce! Se volete unirvi al nostro gruppo il 15, scrivete a info@euroalter.com per informazioni sul nostro punto di incontro! Vi aspettiamo alla: MANIFESTAZIONE NAZIONALE sabato 15 ottobre ROMA – ore 14 Non vogliamo fare un passo di più verso il baratro in cui l'Europa e l'Italia si stanno dirigendo e che la manovra del Governo continua ad avvicinare. Vogliamo un'altra economia, un'altra società e una democrazia vera. Ci impegniamo insieme a costruire una manifestazione partecipata, pacifica, inclusiva, plurale e di massa, il cui obiettivo è raccogliere e dare massimo spazio alla opposizione popolare, alle lotte e alle pratiche alternative diffuse nel nostro paese. La manifestazione partirà alle ore 14.00 da Piazza della Repubblica e arriverà a Piazza San Giovanni. Sarà una tappa della ripresa di spazio pubblico di mobilitazione permanente, come si sta realizzando in tutta Europa e nel Mediterraneo, che è necessario mettere in campo per cambiare l'Italia e il nostro continente. Invitiamo i cittadini e le cittadine, nativi e migranti, le lavoratrici e i lavoratori, i soggetti organizzati, i gruppi, le reti formali e informali a partecipare attivamente al 15 ottobre, a coinvolgere le proprie comunità, a organizzare la partecipazione al corteo di Roma.
Protestation dAlternatives Européennes contre les évacuations forcées à Cluj-Napoca, Roumanie
Traduction par Andreea Cristinar « Stop aux évacuations forcées ! », « Nous voulons des logements décents ! » et « Logement pour tous ! »ont crié plusieurs Roms réunis au cours d’une action organisée dans le centre de la ville de Cluj, en Roumanie. Leur démarche a été initiée et soutenue par les militants de l’organisation Amnesty International, en partenariat avec Amare Phrala, Alternatives Européennes, la Desire Foundation et le Group for Social Action, à l’occasion de la « Journée mondiale de l’habitat » Cette action publique portait sur les Roms évacués l’hiver dernier puis ensuite déplacés à la périphérie de la ville, tout près de la déchetterie, où la Mairie leur a alloué des logements modulaires. Les représentants de la Mairie ont constamment déclaré que le processus d’évacuation de la population Rom a été réalisé en conformité avec la législation roumaine et que ces personnes ont bénéficié de « logements ». Vêtus de T-shirts avec le message « Stop aux évacuations forcées ! » les Roms et les autres participants ont protesté contre la législation roumaine discriminatoire, convaincus que ces évictions sont illégales et immorales car elles sont en totale contradiction avec les droits de l’homme fondamentaux, et parce qu’elles stimulent la stimulation de la ségrégation raciale. Les représentants des associations organisateurs de ayant organisé la manifestation demandent l’amendement des lois roumaines en vigueur pour que les évacuations forcées soient interdites. Les militants ont encouragé tous ceux en faveur de la cause à signer une pétition qu’ils ont fait circuler pendant l’action. La pétition s’adresse au ministre du Développement régional, Mme Elena UDREA et promeut le changement de la législation en vigueur concernant les logements en Roumanie, qui prévoit que les autorités locales peuvent évacuer les familles et communautés entières, sans avoir le droit de se défendre. Daniel Peslari, Alternatives Européennes, Cluj-Napoca, Roumanie
EA organises protest against forced evictions in Cluj-Napoca
“We want decent houses!”, “Houses for everybody!” and “Stop the forced evictions!” shouted the Roma gathered to protest in the centre of Cluj-Napoca. The protest was initiated and supported by the activists from Amnesty International in partnership with Amare Phrala, European Alternatives, Desire Foundation and The Group for Social Action with the occasion of “World Habitat Day”. The protest had in its centre the Roma evicted during last winter and moved to the city's outskirts, close to a dumping ground, where they received some modular houses from the City Hall. The representatives of the City Hall always said that the eviction of Roma respected the Romanian legislation and the Roma received “proper” houses. Wearing shirts with the message “Stop the forced evictions!” the Roma and the other participants protested against the discriminatory Romanian legislation, convinced that evictions are illegal and immoral because they go against fundamental human rights and stimulate racial segregation. The representatives of the associations that organised the protest demand the introduction in the Romanian laws of articles that should go against forced evictions. During the protest the activists were circulating a petition and everybody was invited to sign it. The petition was addressed to the Ministry of Regional Development, Elena Udrea, and promotes the modification of the actual housing legislation in Romania as the local authorities are free to evict families and communities, without the right to defence. Daniel Peslari, European Alternatives Cluj Napoca
Des membres du Réseau Transeuropa remportent le Concours Jeunesse en Action
Le programme Jeunesse en Action et le British Council animaient le Concours ” Elargir l'Horizon-Mon Expérience Jeunesse en Action” (ici), pour lequel les participants devaient soumettre des photos, une vidéo ou un essai qui décrivent lemieux leur expérience au sein de projets Jeunesse en Action. Mauro (Londres) a remporté la première place dans la Catégorie Ecrit. Vous pouvez lire son essai ici. Sanziana (Cluj) a remporté la première place dans la Catégorie Photo. Ci-dessous voici ses photos et légendes : Brick Lane, Londres Etant un mix de différentes cultures, nourritures, goûts et visages, ce marché représente à quoi la ville européenne idéale devrait ressembler : un lieu de rencontres pour tous afin de célébrer la diversité. L'Europe doit garder ses couleurs et être fière de chaque nuance qui compose son arc-en-ciel. Graffiti, Londres, Cluj La liberté d'expression est un droit fondamental pour tous, indépendamment de l'endroit où nous vivons. L'expression a différentes traductions : la jeunesse créative de quartiers vivants de Londres et Cluj-Napoca exprime leurs sentiments les plus profonds par des graffitis. Ensemble, ces jeunes créent un dialogue transnational. Millenium Bridge, Londres ” De tout ce que l'homme a érigé dans son envie de vivre, rien n'a de plus grande valeur à mes yeux que les ponts” Ivo Andric. Collaborer avec Alternatives Européennes a signifié traverser de nombreux ponts à travers l'Europe, unissant les cultures, les religions et les passions; unissant Londres et Cluj, unissant l'Europe. Fusion, Cluj-Londres Pour beaucoup le Cluj pittoresque aux collines en toile de fond est l'image totalement contraire du Londres moderne et animé. Cependant après mon expérience avec Jeunesse en Action, j'ai réalisé que, malgré le fait que ces deux villes soient différentes en apparence, toutes deux sont des foyers pour les Européens qui portent l'espoir d'un avenir meilleur. Bravo à tous les deux!
Transeuropa Network members win Youth in Action Competition
Youth in Action and the British Council hosted a “Broadening Horizons – My Youth in Action Experience” Competition (here) where participants were asked to submit either photographs, a video or an essay which best described their experience with Youth in Action projects. Mauro (London) won first place in the Written Category. You can access his winning essay here. Sanziana (Cluj) won first place in the photography category. Below are her winning photos and captions: Brick Lane, London A mix of different cultures, of foods, tastes, and faces, this market portrays what the ideal European city should resemble: a meeting place for all to celebrate diversity. Europe should keep its colours and be proud of every hue that composes its rainbow. Graffiti, London, Cluj Freedom of expression is a fundamental right of all regardless of their location. Expressions have different outcomes; creative youth in vibrant neighbourhoods of London and Cluj-Napoca express their innermost feelings with graffiti. Together, they create transnational dialogue. Millenium Bridge, London “Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living, nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges.” Ivo Andric Collaborating with European Alternatives, has meant crossing many bridges throughout Europe, uniting cultures, religions, and passions; uniting Cluj and London, uniting Europe. Fusion, Cluj-London Quaint Cluj with a backdrop of rolling hills, is for many the direct opposite of modern, bustling London. After my experience with Youth in Action however, I realised that though on the surface they may be different, both cities are home to Europeans hopeful for a better future. Congratulations to the both of you!
La crisi dellEuro: per una politica al passo coi tempi
Negli ultimi due anni, i leader degli stati membri dell’Unione europea si sono riuniti sempre più di frequente per guadagnare tempo utile per rapportarsi in modo più deciso con la crisi economica che sta inghiottendo la zona euro e più in generale tutta l’economia europea.
La crise de lEuro appelle à une nouvelle politique plus adaptée à notre époque
Traduction de Jérémy Labbetoul Au cours de ces deux dernières années, les dirigeants nationaux d’États membres européens se sont réunis de plus en plus souvent afin de s’accorder encore plus de temps pour remédier efficacement à la crise économique qui s’empare de la Zone euro et de l’économie européenne tout entière. Des réunions trimestrielles devenues mensuelles aux conférences téléphoniques hebdomadaires, une réunion des chefs des États européens s’étend désormais sur pas moins de trois jours, dont un week-end. Il s’agit là d’une preuve tangible que notre système politique est en proie à un échec imminent. Lundi dernier, George Papandreou a décidé d’organiser un référendum sur le dernier plan de « sauvetage » de la Grèce adopté par les dirigeants européens le jeudi de la semaine précédente, ce qui a replongé les marchés financiers dans l’incertitude la plus complète et révélé le peu de capital politique qu’il reste aux dirigeants européens. Les solutions techniques appliquées à l’économie européenne ne suffisent plus, et le temps est écoulé : seule une réforme radicale du processus politique actuel peut changer le cours des événements qui risque d’endommager le tissu social à tel point qu’il faudrait plusieurs générations pour le réparer. D’une certaine manière, la démocratie a rattrapé les dirigeants européens. Au cours de ces deux derniers mois, les signes ont été multiples : de la décision de la Cour constitutionnelle allemande qui impose qu’Angela Merkel dispose de l’approbation du Parlement allemand avant d’impliquer d’avantage l’Allemagne, notamment financièrement, dans les relations européennes, à la débâcle du vote slovaque sur le plan de sauvetage de la Zone euro, entre autres, sans parler du nombre grandissant de manifestations publiques pacifiques, de camps et d’occupations. La décision d’organiser un plébiscite public en Grèce peut être perçue comme une tentative désespérée de réinstaurer un semblant de démocratie dans un processus décisionnel qui a perdu à la fois le soutien du public et la confiance des marchés. Les pressions exercées par les dirigeants français et allemands sur le Premier Ministre grec afin qu’il annule son référendum ne vont faire qu’accroître l’animosité du public envers le plan de la Zone euro. Quels que soient les résultats de ce référendum – s’il a lieu – seule une reconsidération des fondements de la démocratie en Europe pourra apporter une solution durable à la crise. Ci-dessous, nous énumérons quelques actions immédiates et à moyen terme. La BCE comme prêteuse en dernier ressort Dans l’immédiat, pour endiguer la contamination émanant de la crise de la dette souveraine grecque, il sera très certainement nécessaire que la Banque Centrale Européenne (BCE) garantisse qu’elle jouera le rôle de prêteuse en dernier ressort auprès des gouvernements de la Zone euro, et qu’elle établira par là même une certitude en matière de prix au sein des marchés des obligations d’État. En agissant sur les marchés secondaires, cet objectif pourrait être atteint dès maintenant sans aucune modification des traités. En outre, cela permettrait de mettre un terme à la situation scandaleuse qui veut que la BCE prête de l’argent aux banques à des taux d’intérêt minimum, pour que les banques prêtent à leur tour de l’argent aux gouvernements en pratiquant des taux d’intérêts extrêmement élevés. L’objection selon laquelle la BCE créerait de l’inflation en agissant ainsi n’est pas fondée, dans la mesure où la BCE a déjà prêté de l’argent aux banques dans les marchés secondaires, sur la base de garanties pour le moins douteuses, sans que cela n’ait d’effets notables sur l’inflation. De plus, l’aléa moral qu’implique le prêt aux gouvernements serait, sans aucun doute, un risque moindre que celui de prêter de l’argent aux banques, au vu de leur exposition et de leurs récents résultats. Euro-obligations et contrôle démocratique européen sur l’économie À moyen terme, l’émission d’euro-obligations communes et une série de modifications des traités en Europe semblent à la fois inévitables et souhaitables : les euro-obligations symboliseraient la solidarité européenne et relanceraient l’économie, tandis que des modifications apportées aux traités assureraient un contrôle démocratique sur l’économie. Si l’Allemagne a émis des réserves légitimes quant aux plans de sauvetage de la Zone euro au cours des derniers mois, elles reposaient sur l’allégation selon laquelle il était injuste que des personnes (à savoir les contribuables allemands), n’ayant pas eu voix au chapitre dans les décisions portant sur l’économie d’un pays (en l’occurrence la Grèce), doivent assumer les conséquences desdites décisions. Une allégation très similaire est formulée par ceux qui protestent contre le fait que les fonds publics soient déployés pour venir en aide aux banques : on leur demande de payer le prix d’une crise qu’ils n’ont en aucun cas créée. Ces deux problèmes doivent être traités ensemble, et tant qu’aucune solution ne sera trouvée, tout accord « international » sera tributaire d’une modification des situations politiques nationales, et n’offrira pas la garantie d’une économie européenne intégrée. La démocratie est, plus qu’autre chose, le meilleur moyen d’assurer une confiance et une transparence. Un plus grand contrôle démocratique doit s’exercer sur la structure de l’économie, et le dogme néolibéral selon lequel l’économie doit demeurer indépendante de toute forme de contrôle ou de réglementation politique doit être abrogé. De la même manière, le contrôle démocratique sur l’économie européenne doit être véritablement européen : il n’est désormais plus politiquement et socialement viable que les décideurs élus à l’échelle nationale et les publics nationaux prennent des décisions ayant des répercussions considérables dans d’autres pays de l’Union Européenne. Le contrôle économique européen doit s’exercer à l’échelle européenne, et ne plus être fragmenté entre diverses institutions, créant un écran de fumée institutionnel rendant impossible une délibération efficace fondée sur l’intérêt général européen. La seule alternative à un contrôle démocratique renforcé sur l’économie, au sein d’une économie comme celle de l’Europe, serait d’imposer un carcan institutionnel visant à restreindre les choix nationaux, ce qui serait très probablement favorable aux riches « créanciers » de la Zone euro au détriment des faibles « débiteurs ». Le renforcement de ce qui était en principe un carcan inflexible comme le Pacte de stabilité et de croissance représenterait non seulement une…
Eurocrisis calls for a new politics fit for the age
For the past two years, the national leaders of European member states have been meeting more and more frequently to buy themselves ever more time to deal decisively with the economic crisis engulfing the Eurozone and the wider European economy. From quarterly meetings to monthly meetings, to weekly conference calls … now the amount of time ‘bought’ by a meeting of heads of European states is no longer than 3 days, including a weekend. There is no clearer indication of the risk of impending failure of a political system. The decision of George Papandreou to call a referendum on the latest ‘rescue’ package for Greece on Monday, following its agreement by European leaders on the previous Thursday, has thrown financial markets back into total uncertainty and revealed just how little political capital the current leaders of Europe have left. Technical fixes for the European economy are no longer sufficient, the time has run out: only a paradigm shift in the way politics is done will change the current course of events which risks cutting deeply into the social fabric of Europe in ways that will take generations to heal. Democracy has, in a sense, caught up with the European leaders. The signs over the last couple of months have been several, from the German constitutional court ruling that Angela Merkel must have a mandate from the German parliament before committing Germany to more exposure or expense at a European level, to the debacle of the Slovakian vote on the Eurozone rescue plan … not to mention an increased number of peaceful public protests, camps and occupations. The decision to call a public plebiscite in Greece can be seen as a last desperate effort to reinstate some democracy into a decision-making processes which has lost both the support of the public and the confidence of financial markets. The bullying attempts of French and German leaders to force the Greek prime minister to retract his call for a referendum will only increase Greek public resentment towards the Eurozone package. Whatever the results of such a plebiscite – should it be held – a durable resolution to the crisis will only come with a rethinking of the bases of democracy in Europe. Here below we outline both some immediate and medium term actions. ECB as lender of last resort In the immediate term, the stemming of contagion from the Greek sovereign debt crisis almost certainly requires the European Central Bank to assert that it will act as the lender of last resort to Eurozone governments and thereby establishing price certainty in the government bond markets. Through acting in the secondary markets, this could be achieved now without a treaty change, and it would end the scandalous situation where the ECB is lending to banks at a minimal interest rate for the banks then to lend to governments at extremely high rates. The objection that in so doing the ECB would create inflation is unfounded, given that the ECB has already been lending to banks in the secondary markets on the basis of highly dubitable securities, without any noticeable impact on inflation. The moral risk of lending to governments is also, surely, less of a risk than lending to banks, given their exposure and recent track-record. Eurobonds and European democratic control over the economy In the medium term, the issuing of joint Eurobonds and a series of treaty changes in Europe seem both unavoidable and desirable. Eurobonds to symbolise European solidarity and relaunch the European economy, and treaty change to ensure democratic control over the economy. If Germany has had legitimate objections to the plans for Eurozone rescues over the past months, they have been based on the claim that it is unfair for people (ie. German tax payers) who have had no say in making decisions about the economy of a country (eg. Greece) to have to pay for the consequences of those decisions. A very similar claim is being made by those protesting about public money being used to rescue the banks: they are being asked to pay for a crisis they had no role in creating. The two problems must be dealt with together, and for as long as there is no resolution to them, any ‘international’ agreement will be contingent on changing national political situations, thereby offering no security in an integrated European economy. Democracy is, amongst other things, the best way of ensuring accountability and transparency. There must be more democratic control over the shape of the economy, and the end of the neoliberal dogma that the economy must be left independent of all political control or regulation. At the same time, the democratic control over the European economy must be genuinely European: it is no longer politically or socially sustainable for nationally elected decision-makers or national publics to make decisions that have enormous impacts for others in the European Union. European economic governance must be directly European for European citizens, and no longer fragmented through national institutions which create an institutional smoke screen that prevents effective deliberation on the European common good. The only alternative to increasing democratic control over the economy, in an economy like Europe’s, is to impose an institutional straitjacket restricting national political choices, and most likely favour the rich ‘creditor’ Eurozone economies over the weak ‘debtor’ countries. The reinforcement of what in principle was an inflexible straitjacket like the Stability and Growth Pact not only represents a misguided approach to learning from a crisis (where flexibility is exactly what is required), but will feel like a dictatorship to citizens, and there will be no guarantee for how long it will be tolerated. A citizens’ agora for a new social pact To achieve the necessary paradigm shift in European democracy, the process of treaty change will have to be considerably different from the experience of the Nice and Lisbon treaties. No longer can the European elites design a new treaty on their own and expect the public to go along with it. We have already…
We are more ! Signez le manifeste pour soutenir la culture en Europe
Tandis que les gouvernements nationaux opèrent des coupes dans les financements pour la culture, la Commission Européenne a décidé d’investir dans ce domaine. Pour le nouveau budget de la période 2014-2020, la Commission propose une augmentation significative des subventions disponibles. La proposition est maintenant entre les mains du Conseil et du Parlement, qui risquent malheureusement de décider de la réduction du budget proposé. Alternatives Européennes soutient la demande de la Commission Européenne d’allouer davantage de financements à la culture. L'association Act for Culture et la Fondation Européenne pour la Culture ont initié la campagne « We are more ». Nous sommes plus que de simples consommateurs. Nous sommes des citoyens, créatifs, intellectuels ou tout simplement des individus qui recherchent le bonheur. Soutenir la culture démontre que les peuples ne partagent pas uniquement des intérêts économiques entre eux. Tout comme Alternatives Européennes l’a fait, signez s’il-vous-plait le manifeste pour soutenir la campagne Que puis-je faire de plus ? Faîtes passer l’information via Twitter, Facebook et par mail ! Vous pouvez télécharger des supports de communication sur le site web de la campagne. Vous pouvez ajouter une signature à votre mail ou accrocher une affiche sur votre fenêtre.
We are more! Sign the manifesto to support culture in Europe.
While national governments are cutting back on funding for culture, the European Commission has decided to invest in it. For the new budget of 2014 – 2020, the EC proposed a significant increase in the available subsidies. The proposal is now with the Council and the Parliament and it is quite likely that they will decide to lower the proposed budget. European Alternatives supports the demand of the European Commission to allocate more funding to culture. Act for Culture and the European Cultural Foundation have started the We are more campaign. With this daring proposal the European Commission shows us that We are more. We are more than consumers. We are citizens, creatives, intellectuals or looking for happiness. Support for culture shows that people share more than just economic interests. Like European Alternatives, please sign the manifesto to support the campaign. What else can you do? Tweet, facebook and email all your friends! On the website of the campaign you can download communication materials. You can add a signature to your email or hang up a poster in your window.
Forum europeo a Roma: Reddito, Beni Comuni, Democrazia
Roma, 10-12 febbraio – Teatro Valle In tutta Europa stiamo assistendo a un enorme trasferimento di risorse dalla sfera pubblica a quella privata. Le politiche di risposta alla crisi sono contrassegnate da misure di austerity e da tagli alla spesa sociale. Le proposte per il nuovo trattato europeo e la “nuova via” europea del governo Monti non fanno altro che sposare in pieno queste tesi. Dalla Grecia alla Spagna, da Londra a Roma, i cittadini europei sono sempre più coscienti della necessità di un modello alternativo di globalizzazione. Da quanti resistono alle privatizzazioni delle risorse (per esempio il referendum sull’acqua in Italia o le recenti proteste in Romania) alle recenti occupazioni di spazio pubblico (ad esempio in Inghilterra o Spagna), questo è il momento di costruire un’Europa alternativa, non semplice prodotto delle politiche neoliberali ma espressione della volontà politica dei cittadini europei. In questo contesto oltre quaranta associazioni, reti e movimenti sociali da otto Paesi europei si sono dati appuntamento al Teatro Valle a Roma per organizzare un fronte comune che miri alla costruzione di un modello alternativo di Europa. La tre giorni del forum porrà l'enfasi nella costruzione di campagne comuni transnazionali sui temi dei beni comuni e del reddito minimo garantito e la lotta alla precarietà, utilizzando anche il nuovo strumento dell’Iniziativa dei cittadini europei. L’evento sarà un'opportunità concreta per lavorare alla costruzione di reti e campagne europee, e vedrà un importante follow-up in incontri in Spagna, Regno Unito, Romania, Bulgaria, e Francia nei prossimi tre mesi per continuare il percorso iniziato a Roma. L’enfasi su campagne concrete vuole essere punto di partenza per un discorso più ampio sulla revisione dei trattati e la costruzione di un’altra idea d’Europa (un modello alternativo di Europa) Il percorso, che prevede l’avvio di un’Iniziativa dei cittadini europei che porti come risultato alla stesura di una carta europea dei beni comuni, è stato iniziato dall’Assessorato ai Beni Comuni del Comune di Napoli. Proprio il capoluogo partenopeo sarà sede, il 28 gennaio, del “Forum dei Comuni sui Beni Comuni”. L’idea della tre giorni romana è di cercare di raccogliere questa e le altre discussioni sul tema, inscrivendole nel contesto europeo. Diverse realtà, fra cui il Basic Income Network, hanno invece già elaborato proposte condivise di iniziativa cittadina sul tema del reddito minimo, seguendo le proposte avanzate in merito dal Parlamento europeo nell’ottobre 2010. L’Italia è tra i pochissimi paesi europei a non aver mai legiferato in merito. In un momento di crisi, con una riforma del lavoro in preparazione, la necessità di un’iniziativa del genere appare quanto mai impellente. Le tre giornate vedranno la partecipazione, tra gli altri, di Maurizio Landini della FIOM, degli assessori Massimiliano Smeriglio (Provincia di Roma) e Alberto Lucarelli (Comune di Napoli), Ugo Mattei, professore all’International University College of Turin e tra i promotori del referendum sull’acqua, e organizzazioni e reti da Gran Bretagna, Spagna, Francia, Germania, Polonia, Romania, Bulgaria. Il forum di Roma è organizzato da European Alternatives – Alternative Europee, l’International University College Turin. il Centro Studi per l’Alternativa Comune, l’Assessorato ai Beni Comuni del Comune di Napoli, l’ARCI, Il Manifesto, il BIN, Tilt, la Rete della Conoscenza, il Cilap-eapn, AltraMente, l’Osservatorio Europa, l'MFE. Per informazioni e agenda https://euroalter.com/ppp/events/474/ http://www.facebook.com/events/327663140601532/
Forum Européen à Rome: Revenu Minimum, Biens Communs et Démocratie
Du 10 au 12 Février à Rome, Teatro Valle Dans toute l’Europe, nous sommes témoins de transferts importants de ressources passant de la sphère publique à la sphère privée. Les réponses politiques aux crises se caractérisent par des mesures d’austérité et des coupes dans les dépenses sociales, et précipitent par conséquent un peu plus l’Europe dans la récession. De la Grèce à l’Espagne, de Londres à Rome, le peuple européen prend progressivement conscience du besoin de développer un modèle différent de mondialisation. Des citoyens qui résistent à la privatisation des ressources (par exemple en Italie, avec le referendum sur l’eau et en ce moment en Romanie) aux récentes occupations collectives des places publiques contre le néolibéralisme (par exemple au Royaume-Uni et en Espagne), c’est le moment de construire une Europe alternative qui ne soit pas un produit des politiques néolibérales mais bien l’expression politique des citoyens européens. Dans ce contexte, plus de 40 organisations, réseaux et mouvements sociaux de 8 pays européens se rassembleront dans le théâtre Valle de 600 places à Rome, afin d’organiser un front commun pour construire un modèle européen alternatif. Ce forum de trois jours se concentrera sur la construction de campagnes communes transnationales sur les thématiques des Biens Communs et d’un Revenu minimum garanti, ainsi que sur la lutte contre la précarité, en utilisant la nouvelle méthode de l’Initiative citoyenne européenne. Cet évènement sera une réelle opportunité de créer des réseaux et des campagnes européennes qui se concrétiseront lors des prochaines rencontres en Espagne, au Royaume-Uni, en Roumanie, en Bulgarie et en France dans les mois qui viennent, afin de poursuivre le travail commencé à Rome. L’accent mis sur des campagnes concrètes à mettre en œuvre permettra d’engager une réflexion sur la révision des traités de l’Union Européenne, afin de proposer une vision alternative de l’Europe. Une Initiative citoyenne européenne en faveur d’une Charte Européenne des biens communs a été engagée par l’Autorité Locale des Biens Communs au sein de la municipalité de Naples. Des propositions pour initier une Initiative sur le Revenu minimum ont été présentées, parmi d’autres, par le réseau Basic Income, suite aux propositions avancées par le Parlement Européen en Octobre 2010. Le forum de Rome est organisé par Alternatives Européennes, l’Université Internationale de Turin, le Théâtre Valle, le Centro Studi per l'Alternativa Comune, la Municipalité de Naples, ARCI, Il Manifesto, le réseau Basic Income, Tilt, Rete della Conoscenza, Cilap-eapn, Altramente, Osservatorio Europa, MFE. Pour plus d’informations et pour consulter l’agenda: https://euroalter.com/ppp/events/474/ https://www.facebook.com/events/327663140601532/
European Forum in Rome: Minimum Income, Common Goods and Democracy
Rome 10-12 February, Teatro Valle Throughout Europe, we are witnessing massive transfers of resources from the public to the private sphere. The political responses to the crises are defined by austerity measures and by cuts to social spending, driving Europe further into recession. From Greece to Spain, from London to Rome, European people are increasingly aware of the need for a different model of globalisation. From those resisting the privatisation of resources (for example in Italy with the water referendum, and currently in Romania) to the recent occupations of public spaces against neoliberalism (for example in the UK and Spain), this is the moment to construct and alternative Europe which is not a product of neoliberal politics, but the political expression of European citizens. Within this context, over forty organisations, networks and social movements from eight European countries will meet in the 600-seat Valle Theatre in Rome to organise a common front to construct an alternative European model. This three-day forum will focus on the construction of common transnational campaigns on the thematics of the commons and guaranteed minimum income as well as the battle against precarity, also utilising the new method provided with the European citizens’ initiative. The event will be a true opportunity to build European networks and campaigns that will take concrete forms in follow-up meetings in Spain, the UK, Romania, Bulgaria and France in the following months to continue the work begun in Rome. The emphasis on concrete campaigns will be the starting point to engage in a reflection on the revision of the EU Treaties, to propose an alternative vision of Europe. A European Citizens’ Initiative for a European Charter of the Commons was initiated by the Local Authority for Common Goods within the Municipality of Naples. Proposals for an Initiative on minimum income have been taken forwards, amongst others, by the Basic Income Network, following the proposals advanced by the European Parliament in October 2010. The Rome forum is organised by European Alternatives, the International University College Turin, Teatro Valle, Centro Studi per l’Alternativa Comune, Municipality of Naples, ARCI, Il Manifesto, Basic Income Network, Tilt, Rete della Conoscenza, Cilap-eapn, Altramente, Osservatorio Europa, MFE. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND THE AGENDA: https://euroalter.com/ppp/events/474/ https://www.facebook.com/events/327663140601532/
European alternatives, il Congresso per il Cambiamento: interviste ai protagonisti
Rilanciare proposte di alternative direttamente ad un livello europeo è necessario per restituire ai cittadini il potere di decidere sul proprio futuro, contro ogni tentativo di delega del potere ai mercati finanziari.
Launch of the first European Citizens Initiative on Media Pluralism
On February 7th, a pan-European coalition of citizens and nearly one hundred media groups, professional bodies, Independent Journalists and Civil Society Organisations from across the continent will launch the online collection of signatures for the first European Citizens’ Initiative targeting media freedom and pluralism. The European Citizens’ Initiative is a new tool of participatory democracy allowing citizens to collect at least one million signatures online or offline to present a legislative proposal directly to the European Commission, thereby changing EU law. The situation of media freedom and pluralism in the European Union is worsening. Some countries, notably Hungary, suffer from a significant interference of political power seeking to control and direct the media. Some, notably the UK, suffer from problems of excessive concentration leading to undue influence of certain economic groups over political processes, notably Murdoch’s media empire. Others, particularly in the case of Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania, experience a dangerous overlap of economical, media, and political interests in the hands of the same people. European institutions have, so far, refrained from taking a strong stance against individual Member States for such deterioration. “This hands-off approach has contributed to a negative domino effect, with worsening conditions and more permissive rules in one country leading to even lower standards in others,” says Lorenzo Marsili, Spokesperson of the Initiative and director of European Alternatives, “”the erosion of the democratic structures of the mass media has proceeded with virtual impunity – the European initiative for media pluralism calls on European institutions to stop this trend”. “It is time for the EU to actively defend and respect the values on which it is built” says Giovanni Melogli, Spokesperson of the Initiative, “European Citizens can’t anymore tolerate hypocrisy and incoherence in EU policies”. The proposed ECI calls on the Commission to pass a Directive defending Media Pluralism in EU, containing: – effective legislation to avoid concentration of ownership in the media and advertisement sectors; guaranteed independence of supervisory bodies, with a politically and culturally balanced and socially diverse membership; – definition of conflict of interests with media ownership; – broadcast, print and online media should be required to submit to a national media authority sufficient ownership information to allow identification of the beneficial and ultimate owners of media outlets. Countries participating in the launch of the ECI are: France, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom, Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Be amongst the first to sign up to the Citizens Initiative. SIGN ONLINE HERE Information The website of the initiative is: www.mediainitiative.eu For press information, please contact Anna Lodeserto – e-mail: info@mediainitiative.eu
Débat participatif à Paris : Europe, les citoyens ont leur mot à dire !
Couverture de l'ouvrage de Baptiste Mylondo, “Un revenu pour tous”, éditions Utopia. Le Jeudi 9 Février, Alternatives Européennes organise en partenariat avec Europanova, le Goethe-Institut et Citizens for Europe un débat participatif, Europe : les citoyens ont leur mot à dire ! Ce débat fait partie du cycle de conférences préparatoires des Etats Généraux de l’Europe (EGE) lancés en 2007 par Europanova, qui se tiendront à Paris les 10 et 11 mars prochains. Les Etats Généraux de l’Europe rassemblent une trentaine d’associations de la société civile européenne. L’objectif est de permettre l’échange et le dialogue entre citoyens européens et décideurs politiques européens et nationaux. Au cours de cette série de débats préparatoires, dix questions sur les enjeux européens seront traitées afin d’être débattues lors des Etats Généraux de l’Europe des 10 et 11 mars (découvrez l’agenda de cette journée-évènement ici) ! Rejoignez-nous ce Jeudi 9 Février à 19h au Goethe Institut (17, avenue de Iena, 75116 Paris) pour débattre avec des spécialistes de deux problématiques majeures pour l’Europe : l’instauration ou non d’un revenu minimum garanti en Europe, et le vote des résidents non nationaux dans les élections locales, nationales et européennes. Ces deux thématiques feront l’objet de futures initiatives citoyennes européennes. Pour en débattre avec le public, Tony Venables (ECAS, European Citizens Action Service), Baptiste Mylondo (Economiste, Auteur de «Un revenu pour tous»), Mariella Palmieri (TILT !) et Bernard Delemottte (Editeur des Lettres de la Citoyenneté, membre du collectif ‘Votation citoyenne’). Le débat entre le public et les intervenants sera modéré par Sébastien Maillard (Journaliste, La Croix) et Ségolène Pruvot (Alternatives Européennes) Venez donner votre avis et débattre de l’instauration d’un revenu minimum et du vote des résidents non nationaux en Europe ! Le débat sera suivi d’un pot sera offert par le Goethe-Institut. Découvrez en détail l’agenda du débat sur la page de l’évènement. Pour vous inscrire par téléphone, veuillez appeler au 01 44 43 92 30 ; par mail, écrivez à info@paris.goethe.org Et retrouvez l’évènement sur Facebook ici !
Débat participatif à Paris : Europe, les citoyens ont leur mot à dire !
Couverture de l'ouvrage “Un revenu pour tous” de Baptiste Mylondo, Editions Utopia Le Jeudi 9 Février, Alternatives Européennes organise en partenariat avec Europanova, le Goethe-Institut et Citizens for Europe un débat participatif, Europe : les citoyens ont leur mot à dire ! Ce débat fait partie du cycle de conférences préparatoires des Etats Généraux de l’Europe (EGE) lancés en 2007 par Europanova, qui se tiendront à Paris les 10 et 11 mars prochains. Les Etats Généraux de l’Europe rassemblent une trentaine d’associations de la société civile européenne. L’objectif est de permettre l’échange et le dialogue entre citoyens européens et décideurs politiques européens et nationaux. Au cours de cette série de débats préparatoires, dix questions sur les enjeux européens seront traitées afin d’être débattues lors des Etats Généraux de l’Europe des 10 et 11 mars (découvrez l’agenda de cette journée-évènement) ! Rejoignez-nous ce Jeudi 9 Février à 19h au Goethe Institut (17, avenue de Iena, 75116 Paris) pour débattre avec des spécialistes de deux problématiques majeures pour l’Europe : l’instauration d’un revenu minimum garanti en Europe, et le vote des résidents non nationaux dans les élections locales, nationales et européennes. Ces deux thématiques feront l’objet de futures initiatives citoyennes européennes. Pour en débattre avec le public, Tony Venables (ECAS, European Citizens Action Service), Baptiste Mylondo (économiste, auteur de « Un revenu pour tous »), Mariella Palmieri (TILT !) et Bernard Delemottte (editeur des Lettres de la Citoyenneté, membre du collectif ‘Votation citoyenne’). Le débat entre le public et les intervenants sera modéré par Sébastien Maillard (journaliste, La Croix) et Ségolène Pruvot (Alternatives Européennes) Venez donner votre avis et débattre de l’instauration d’un revenu minimum et du vote des résidents non nationaux en Europe ! Le débat sera suivi d’un pot sera offert par le Goethe-Institut. Découvrez en détail l’agenda du débat sur la page de l’évènement. Pour vous inscrire par téléphone, veuillez appeler au 01 44 43 92 30 ; par mail, écrivez à info@paris.goethe.org Et retrouvez l’évènement sur Facebook ici !
Studenti di tutta Europa, unitevi!
Articolo di Federico Guerrieri A circa un anno di distanza dall'aumento delle tasse universitarie imposto dal governo di coalizione guidato da David Cameron, gli studenti inglesi tornano a far sentire il loro dissenso per le strade di Londra. La manifestazione di protesta del 9 Novembre ha ottenuto il supporto della National Union of Students, che rappresenta oltre 7 milioni di studenti, nonche' il sostegno di diversi accademici di tutte le istituzioni universitarie britanniche, tra cui anche le storicamente tradizionaliste Oxford e Cambridge. Lo scorso novembre il governo conservatore decise di triplicare le rette universitarie che nel settembre 2012 passeranno dalle attuali 3000 sterline alle 9000 sterline annue. In una societa' in cui il divario tra ricchi e poveri e' il piu' elevato d'Europa, tali misure avranno come effetto quello di rendere le universita' istituzioni inaccessibili ai giovani provenienti dalle famiglie meno abbienti e frequentabili pertanto solamente dall'elite benestante. Le richieste delle organizzazioni studentesche risultano, dunque, tanto ovvie quanto sacrosante: cancellazione del previsto aumento delle tasse universitarie e contemporaneo innalzamento del numero di borse di studio disponibili per gli studenti piu' meritevoli e per coloro socialmente svantaggiati. La difficolta' semmai sara' quella di mantenere vivo il movimento di protesta che lo scorso anno riusci' a far sentire la propria voce solamente durante le due manifestazioni organizzate a Londra, per poi svanire nel rumore assordante del consumismo londinese. Nel dicembre 2010 le proteste provocarono gravi disordini in citta'. Tutti ricorderanno il sasso lanciato verso l'auto su cui viaggiavano il Principe Carlo e la sua Camilla. Successivamente a quell'episodio, la polizia britannica si contraddistinse per le tattiche e i metodi brutali usati nei confronti dei manifestanti. Piuttosto sconcertante e' il fatto che Scotland Yard abbia autorizzato per la manifestazione del 9 novembre l'uso di proiettili di gomma che potranno essere sparati dai poliziotti nel caso di disordini. Il fatto che tale misura sia stata largamente pubblicazzata e' inoltre deplorevole, in quanto, avendo il chiaro scopo d'incutere timore tra i manifestanti, va a ledere quel sacrosanto diritto di protestare proprio di tutti liberi cittadini. Impedire ai ragazzi provenienti da famiglie meno abbienti di frequentare l'universita' rischierebbe di portare al collasso l'intera societa' inglese, come gia' dimostrato dai riots che la scorsa estate hanno devastato l'intera nazione. Il neo-conservatorismo di Cameron, Sarkozy e della maggior parte degli attuali capi di governo europei non mira solamente ad eliminare cio' che rimane del welfare state, ma anche i diritti fondamentali conquistati dal popolo con anni di lotte, nonche' a distruggere il senso critico dei propri cittadini. Sarebbe necessario che gli studenti di tutta Europa si unissero nella lotta per la rivendicazione dei propri diritti. Se e' vero che ogni nazione ha le proprie specificita', e' ancor piu' vero che il fine ultimo di tutte le proteste dev'essere quello di garantire un'educazione libera ed accessibile a tutti, al di la' delle proprie condizioni sociali di partenza. Un movimento europeo di studenti avrebbe un impatto positivamente devastante e segnerebbe l'inizio del riscatto per una generazione che non puo' accettare l'attuale modello di societa' impostoci dall'elite al potere. Un modello che arricchisce l'1% attraverso lo sfruttamento del resto della popolazione. Un modello a cui tutti noi abbiamo l'obbligo di ribellarci. Non sfasciando citta', bensi' proponendo modelli, soluzioni e soprattutto attitudini alternative.
Etudiants européens, unissez-vous!
Article par Federico Guerrieri Traduit par Sara Petrucci Près d'un an après l’augmentation des droits d’inscription à l’université imposée par le gouvernement de coalition mené par David Cameron, les étudiants britanniques redescendent dans les rues de Londres pour faire entendre leurs voix. La manifestation du 9 novembre a obtenu le soutien de l’Union nationale des étudiants, qui représente non seulement plus de 7 millions d’étudiants mais qui bénéficie aussi du soutien de diverses institutions académiques du Royaume-Uni, parmi lesquelles des universités traditionnellement conservatrices telles que Oxford et Cambridge. En effet, en novembre dernier, le gouvernement conservateur a décidé de tripler les frais d’inscription à l’université qui passeront donc de 3000 à 9000 livres sterling en septembre 2012. Au sein d’une société dans laquelle les écarts entre riches et pauvres sont les plus importants d’Europe, de telles mesures rendront les universités inaccessibles aux jeunes issus de familles moins favorisées et accessibles uniquement aux jeunes dont les familles font partie de l’élite. Les exigences des organisations d’étudiants sont évidentes et justes: bloquer l’augmentation prévue des frais d’inscription tout en augmentant le nombre de bourses d’études disponibles pour les étudiants les plus méritants ainsi que pour les étudiants socialement défavorisés. La difficulté sera de maintenir ce mouvement, qui l’année dernière a réussi à faire entendre ses revendications seulement lors de deux manifestations organisées dans les rues de Londres avant d’être absorbé par le tumulte du consumérisme londonien. En décembre 2010, les manifestations avaient provoqué le chaos dans la ville. Tout le monde se souvient de la pierre jetée sur la voiture dans laquelle se trouvaient le Prince Charles et Camilla. C’est après cet épisode que la police anglaise s’est fait connaître pour ses méthodes et pratiques brutales à l’encontre des manifestants. De plus, le fait que Scotland Yard ait autorisé le recours aux balles en caoutchouc pour la manifestation du 9 novembre est davantage inquiétant, ces balles pouvant être tirées par les policiers en cas de chaos complet. Il est d’autant plus déplorable que l’annonce de cette mesure ait été amplement diffusée dans le but évident d’instiller la peur parmi les manifestants, ce qui va à l’encontre du droit sacré à la manifestation. Eloigner les jeunes des familles moins favorisées de l’accès à l’université pourrait provoquer l’effondrement de l’ensemble de la société anglaise, comme l’ont démontré les émeutes qui ont dévasté la nation entière l’été dernier. Le néo-conservatisme de la plupart des leaders européens actuels, parmi lesquels Cameron et Sarkozy, vise non seulement à éliminer ce qu’il reste de l’Etat-providence mais également les droits fondamentaux gagnés par les citoyens après des années de lutte, en plus de chercher à détruire l’esprit critique des leurs propres citoyens. Les étudiants européens devraient s’unir dans la lutte pour la revendication de leurs droits. S’il est vrai que chaque nation connaît une situation qui lui est propre, il n’en demeure pas moins que l’objectif ultime de ces manifestations devrait être la garantie d’une éducation gratuite et accessible à tous, indépendamment des conditions sociales de chacun. Un mouvement étudiant européen marquerait le début de la libération pour une génération qui ne peut accepter le modèle de société actuel imposé par une élite de dirigeants; un modèle qui enrichit 1% de la population en exploitant le reste de celle-ci; un modèle contre lequel nous avons tous l’obligation de nous rebeller. Non pas en mettant la ville à feu et à sang, mais en proposant des modèles, des solutions et surtout des alternatives.
Students of Europe, Unite!
Article by Federico Guerrieri Translation by Olga Vukovic Almost a year after the increase in university taxes imposed by the coalition government lead by David Cameron, British students return to make their dissent heard in the streets of London. The demonstration of November 9 gained the support of the National Students Union, which not only represents more than 7 million students but also has the support of various academics from various UK university institutions, among whom those which are traditionally conservative such as Oxford and Cambridge. Last November the conservative government decided to triple the university tuition which in September of 2012 will go from the current £3000 to £9000. In a society in which the divide between the rich and poor is the highest in Europe, such measures will have the effect of rendering universities inaccessible to youth coming from families with fewer opportunities and accessible only to those whose families belong to the well-off elite. The demands of student organisations are obvious and just: blocking the foreseen increase in university taxes while at the same time increasing the number of available scholarships for the most deserving students and for those who are socially disadvantaged. The difficulty will be to maintain the movement which last year succeeded in making its voice heard only during the two demonstrations organised on the streets of London, only to be ensorbed by the bustle of London’s consumerism. In December of 2010 the protests provoked chaos in the city. Everyone remembers the rock thrown at the car in which Prince Charles and Camilla were travelling in. Following this episode, the English police became known for their brutal methods and tactics used when confronting the protesters. More concerning is the fact that Scotland Yard authorised the use of rubber bullets for the 9 November protest, which can be used by policemen in case of complete disorder. The fact that such a measure was largely publicised is furthermore deplorable since it has the clear goal of invoking terror among the protesters, and thus harms the sacred right to protest. Preventing youth of less advantaged families from attending university would risk causing a collapse of the entire English society, as was evident with the riots that devastated the entire nation last summer. The neo-conservatism of most current leaders in Europe, among whom Cameron and Sarkozy, does not only aim to eliminate that what remains of the welfare state, but also the fundamental rights won by the people with years of struggles, as well as destroying the critical sense of their own citizens. Students throughout Europe should unite in the battle to revendicate their rights. If it is true that every nation has its own specific situation, it is even more true that the ultimate aim of these protests should be to guarantee a free and accessible education to all, regardless of their social conditions. A European students’ movement would mark the beginning of the liberation for a generation which cannot accept the current model of society imposed by the ruling elite; a model which enriches 1% of the population by exploiting the rest of the population; a model which all of us have the obligation to rebel against. Not by shattering the city, but by proposing models, solutions and above all alternatives.
Segregación y discriminación hacia la población gitana en Cataluña
de Mara Gabrielli y Giorgia Piva El colectivo gitano se puede definir como un grupo étnico-cultural con características transnacionales, transculturales, multiétnicas y multiculturales que difieren mucho de la visión homogénea que los “blancos” del colectivo mayoritario han querido crear entorno al pueblo mismo. El concepto globalizado de “gitano” y las acciones históricas en contra del colectivo han provocado una situación de exclusión social, que perdura desde hace quinientos años, y han dificultado la integración del colectivo en las sociedades. En los contextos donde ha sido posible una cierta integración del colectivo, como es el caso español, esta se ha desarrollado partiendo de un nicho de marginalidad e inequidades. Desde los años setenta, en el caso especifico de Badalona, un área metropolitana de Barcelona con alta concentración de población gitana, las políticas han respondido al chabolismo con la construcción de “viviendas para gitanos” en un barrio específico que ha determinando condiciones de segregación étnica y residencial. En el sistema educativo catalán, frente a políticas que fomentan una escuela comprensiva y de atención a la diversidad, las medidas de integración han ido en dirección de procesos de segregación a causa de una percepción problemática de la presencia de esa misma diversidad en la escuela y en el aula. La segregación escolar deriva, por un lado, del escaso prestigio que la estigmatización social atribuye a las escuelas de periferia con alta concentración de alumnado de diversas origen étnica o extranjera, y por el otro, de las expectativas y representaciones negativas del profesorado construidas sobre la base de imágenes culturales preconcebidas y desde el déficitcultural. La segregación interna a la escuela, basada en una transmisión de valores de pertenencia, no hace que levantar barreras y crear espacios separados de diferenciación étnica. Los profesores siguen considerando los procesos de bajo rendimiento escolar y de abandono prematuro entre los jóvenes gitanos como procesos de déficit cultural a causa de comportamientos asociales, disruptivos y de una actitud poco motivadora por parte de los padres. Frente al rechazo social y escolar que experimentan, los gitanos no consideran el sistema educativo como un referente valido de promoción social, sino bien el bajo rendimiento escolar se percibe como una consecuencia “natural” de las desigualdades de oportunidades académicas y laborales que provoca actitudes de resistencia o rechazo ante los valores y las normas escolares. La historia de contacto conflictiva con la sociedad mayoritaria no ha beneficiado una actitud positiva hacia la institución escolar y, al mismo tiempo, ha determinado una cierta resistencia al cambio. Las mismas familias transmiten a sus hijos mensajes doble-vehiculares: marcan la importancia de la educación en los discursos sobre el futuro de sus hijos, mientras en la práctica no se implican activamente en su proceso de continuidad educativa. A falta de un idioma cultural reconocido, los gitanos marcan una diferencia construida por otros e interiorizada por la misma minoría étnica y, sin otros referentes, la única manera de encontrar un espacio de autodominio y poder es el desarrollo de una contra-cultura, una resistencia colectiva a apayarse (“actuar como los payos)[1] como práctica de defensa de su identidad étnica. En el estudio: “Estudi de la Població Gitana a Catalunya” se analizan globalmente, entre otras, las trayectorias educativas y laborales de la población gitana en Cataluña. En el ámbito de la inserción en el mercado laboral se ha podido individuar que la mayoría de las personas gitanas se incorporan en sectores de trabajos informales, de auto ocupación y en menor medida en trabajos formales pero con contratos muy precarios[2]. . La discriminación en el mercado de trabajo se basa en una serie de construcciones sociales entorno a la figura del gitano, de hecho a la hora de contratar una persona de etnia gitana los empresarios presentan resistencia alegando la escasa responsabilidad en el empleo, la dificultad de mantener un trabajo estable o la poca confianza que les trasmite el colectivo. Como también pasa para algunos colectivos inmigrantes, en el caso de los gitanos, se transforman en rasgos culturales y étnicos los comportamientos de individuos aislados, atribuyendo a esta población una tendencia a dedicarse a trabajos ilícitos o a actividades ilegales. En muchos casos se ignora el factor discriminación focalizando el problema en la “falta de formación laboral”, en la “falta de ejemplos y modelos familiares” y en la de “ciertos hábitos culturales que tienen un efecto negativo en el acceso al empleo”. Su ausencia en el mercado de trabajo es interpretado como la prueba de que “ellos no quieren trabajar” y de “que no quieren integrarse” que son algunos de los estereotipos más dañinos. Desde una perspectiva de género podemos notar que las mujeres gitanas sufren mayores discriminaciones en el momento de su incorporación al mercado de trabajo, que desde nuestra experiencia, presentan características parecidas a la trayectoria laboral de las mujeres inmigrantes, ya que ambos colectivos sufren tres tipos de discriminaciones: por ser mujer, por pertenecer a una minoría étnica, por la escasa formación a la cual han podido acceder, por la clase social. Estas tres dimensiones de la discriminación hacia las mujeres provocan una “posición laboral subordinada” que no permite a las mujeres gitanas insertarse en el mercado de trabajo en igualdad de condiciones que los hombres del mismo colectivo y sobre todo provoca una notable diferencia de estatus si se compara con el conjunto de la población activa catalana. Por lo tanto podemos notar como haya barreras internas y barreras externas para las mujeres gitanas: internas porque pertenecen a un grupo en el cual la mujer debe cumplir un papel y un rol que a veces les impide promocionarse y barreras externas, porque la sociedad las estigmatiza y tiene la tendencia a pensar que no van a ser buenas profesionales. En la actualidad, la sociedad mayoritaria sigue mostrando una cierta resistencia al reconocimiento socio-cultural de los gitanos: mientras formalmente se promueve su participación activa, los agentes sociales (políticos, prensa, sociedad civil…) no consiguen adoptar prácticas inclusivas que permitan su efectiva integración social en la sociedad. [1]Los gitanos definen toda…
Una relazione sui diritti e la tutela delle persone LGBT in Europa
I risultati mostrano come nessun paese in Europa possa garantire piena eguaglianza ai suoi cittadini LGBT, per quanto alcuni paesi si comportino decisamente meglio di altri.
Classement des droits et de la protection des personnes LGBT en Europe: où se situe votre pays ?
Copyright : ILGA Europe Par Alessandro Valera Traduction : Alexis Gratpenche L'ILGA Europe a publié son rapport sur la situation des personnes lesbiennes, gays, bisexuel-le-s et transgenres/transexuelles (LGBT) en Europe (à lire ici). Dans ce classement, les pays européens se voient attribuer une note suivant le statut légal qu'ils offrent aux citoyens à l’orientation sexuelle ou à l’identité de genre minoritaire. Ces notes sont calculées à partir de 24 critères législatifs et administratifs. Les pays gagnent des points s'ils ont instauré des politiques dans les domaines suivants : Législation contre les discriminations en matière d'orientation sexuelle et/ou d'identité de genre Reconnaissance légale du genre des personnes transexuelles Reconnaissance des unions des couples homosexuels Droits parentaux des couples homosexuels Droit pénal en ce qui concerne les propos et crimes haineux à caractères sexiste, homophobe et transphobe Liberté de réunion et d'organisation de “prides”. Les pays perdent des points s'ils bafouent les droits des LGBT dans les domaines suivants : Interdiction des manifestations ou rassemblements LGBT Age de consentement différent pour les actes sexuels entre partenaires du même sexe Absence de procédures légales et administratives en matière de reconnaissance des changements de sexe Obligation de divorce et de stérilisation avant tout changement de sexe Absence totale d'union entre partenaires du même sexe Les résultats montrent qu'aucun pays en Europe n'offre un traitement égalitaire à ses citoyens LGBT, bien que certains pays se placent beaucoup plus haut que d'autres. Le Royaume-Uni, avec 12,5 points, ainsi que l'Espagne et la Suède, avec 12 points, arrivent en tête du classement. Tous les pays d'Europe occidentale obtiennent une note positive, sauf l'Italie, les enclaves de Saint-Marin et du Vatican, ainsi que Monaco et le Liechtenstein, qui obtiennent des notes neutres ou négatives. L'Allemagne et le Portugal, qui ont amélioré leur note par rapport à l'année dernière, se sont vus félicités. A l'inverse, la Lituanie et la Hongrie se démarquent par la dégradation de leursituation nationale : dans ces deux pays, le gouvernement et le Parlement tentent en effet de restreindre les libertés des LGBT et d'empêcher que l'on débatte de l'homosexualité à l'école. Chypre, l'Italie, la Lettonie et l'Ukraine ont été encouragés à faire des progrès car on ne relève aucune amélioration dans ces pays depuis plusieurs années. La situation législative des LGBT est particulièrement préoccupante dans les pays qui se sont vu attribués une note négative, tels que la Russie, le Bélarus, l'Ukraine, la Moldavie, la Géorgie, la Macédoine, l'Arménie, l'Azerbaïdjan, Saint-Marin, le Vatican, Monaco, le Liechtenstein et Chypre, seule dans cette liste à être membre de l'Union européenne. Ce rapport met en lumière tout le travail qu'il reste à accomplir en Europe afin de garantir l'égalité de traitement aux LGBT, qui à l'heure actuelle ne jouissent de l'égalité totale dans aucun pays d'Europe. Alternatives Européennes poursuit son engagement afin de mettre en relation les LGBT et les autres défenseurs des Droits de l'homme de toute l'Europe, dans le but de créer ainsi une société civile européenne qui puisse influencer les institutions européennes et les gouvernements des Etats membres. Dans les mois à venir, le projet People, Power, Participation se penchera en particulier sur la question des droits des LGBT (https://euroalter.com/ppp/). Par le biais d'une campagne -parmi les plus importantes que nous ayons lancées-, nous nous battons pour faire reconnaître les mariages et les unions civiles par les différents Etats européens. Pour le moment, tous les Etats membres ne reconnaissent pas les mariages entre partenaires du même sexe, même s'ils ont été célébrés dans un autre Etat membre. Nous estimons que cette situation va à l'encontre de la législation européenne. (Précédents articles à ce sujet disponibles sur la droite de la page.) Alors que les institutions européennes souffrent visiblement d'une désillusion grandissante, conséquence du succès toujours plus grand des nationalistes, des eurosceptiques et des partis d'extrême-droite en Europe, l'Union a le devoir d'envoyer un signal fort à ses citoyens. Elle doit être un espace où l'on ne sanctionne pas seulement les déficits budgétaires, mais également les atteintes aux droits de l'homme et aux libertés publiques. Pour plus d'informations ou si vous souhaitez prendre part au travail d'Alternatives Européennes sur les droits des LGBT, écrivez à l'adresse suivante : a.valera@euroalter.com.
How is your country scoring? Report on LGBT rights and protection in Europe
by Alessandro Valera (copyright: ILGA Europe) ILGA Europe has published a comparative report on the situation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender/transsexual people (LGBT) in Europe (available here). This has taken the form of an index in which each European country has been given a score for its legal treatment of those citizens who have a minority sexual orientation or gender identity. This country index is calculated on the basis of 24 legal and administrative parameters. Points are given to countries that have developed policies in the following areas: Anti-discrimination legislation referring to sexual orientation and/or gender identity Legal gender recognition of trans people Partnership recognition of same-sex couples Parenting rights of same-sex couples Criminal law (hate speech/crime) referring to sexual orientation and gender identity Freedom of assembly/Pride events Points are subtracted to countries that have been found violating LGBT rights in the following areas: LGBT public events banned Unequal age of consent for same-sex sexual acts Absence of legal/administrative procedures for legal gender recognition Compulsory divorce or sterilisation as a prerequisite for gender reassignment Absence of any form of same-sex partnership The results demonstrate that no country in Europe can guarantee full equality to its LGBT citizens, although some countries do a lot better than others. The UK (12.5 points), Spain and Sweden (12) have the most positive records. All western European countries have an overall positive score, with the exception of Italy, its enclaves of San Marino and the Vatican City as well as Monaco and Liechtenstein, who receive negative or neutral scores. Germany and Portugal receive praise for having improved their score compared to last year, while Lithuania and Hungary are singled-out as countries in which the situation of LGBT people has worsened, with governments and parliaments in both countries trying to curb the freedom of LGBT people and the discussion of homosexuality in schools. Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Turkey and the Ukraine are invited to do better, as no improvement has been registered in years. The legal situation of LGBT people is particularly worrying in countries that receive a negative overall score, which include the Russian Federation, Belarus, the Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Cyprus, Macedonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, San Marino, the Vatican City, Monaco and Liechtenstein. The only member of the European Union among these countries is Cyprus. This report highlights how much work still needs to be done in Europe to guarantee an equal treatment of LGBT citizens, who at the moment cannot enjoy full equality in any European country. European Alternatives continues its commitment to connect LGBT and other human rights activists from around Europe to create a European civic society able to influence European institutions as well as member-states’ governments. The People, Power, Participation project in particular (https://euroalter.com/ppp/) will focus on LGBT right in the next few months. One of European Alternatives’ main campaigns advocates for the mutual recognition of all existing marriages and civil unions in Europe. At the moment, not all EU countries recognise the marriages of same sex couples, even if they have been celebrated in another member state. We believe that this violates EU law, as expressed in previous articles, which can be accessed through the links on the right. While we witness an increased disillusion with European institutions, crystallised in the growing support for nationalist, Eurosceptic and far right parties around the continent, the European Union must send a strong signal to its citizens: it needs to become a space where not only budget deficits but also disrespect for human rights and civil liberties are sanctioned. For any further information or expression of interest in collaborating to European Alternatives’ work on LGBT rights, please write to a.valera@euroalter.com
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Hungary must not become a symbol of a failed European dream
(Blank newspaper cover to protest media reforms- flickr-Lamarietta) European Alternatives calls on European leaders to condemn the threats to democracy and freedom in Hungary and for the European Institutions to apply Article 7 of the Treaty of Lisbon to Hungary There is a growing contradiction between Europe’s calls for democracy, freedom and the rule of law outside its borders, and its failure to protect these values within the EU. The Copenhagen criteria which any country joining the EU must meet, clearly lay out the imperatives of a free media, a democratic electoral system, and an independent judiciary. Not for the first time, these values are coming under threat inside the EU, this time in Hungary. Failure to address these threats undermines Europe’s influence in the world, weakens democracy and freedom throughout the European Union, and makes the EU appear hypocritical to its citizens. At a time when Europe’s leaders are calling for countries to lose their voting rights, and be taken to court, when they breach certain budgetary rules imposed by the credit markets, Europe’s failure to address threats to democracy in Hungary makes the EU look ever more like a self-interested project of economic elites. Europe must show it defends its citizens’ rights and fundamental freedoms and is not only interested in the market. European Alternatives has manifested several times its worry about the status of democracy in Hungary since the re-election of Viktor Orban in 2010. Our focus has been primarily on media freedom and pluralism, which rapidly deteriorated with the reforms of the media law carried out in 2011. These reforms, initiated shortly before Hungary was to assume the rotating presidency of the European Council, led European Commissioner Neelie Kroes, after much pressure from civil society and the European Parliament, to officially intervene from Brussels to ask for reform of those elements that would breach Community law. Unfortunately, the media reform was only the tip of the iceberg of a series of reforms and a new constitution, swiftly passed through a parliament in which the governing party enjoys a two-third majority, that seriously threaten core principles of democracy, justice and human rights. On January 1st, 2012 a new Constitution came into effect in Hungary. At the same time twenty-seven areas of Basic Law, left out of the constitution, were also quickly approved by Parliament, without the necessary time to be properly debated and examined. This series of drastic institutional changes were brought through without any involvement of the opposition or any meaningful consultation of civic society or citizens at large. Aside from a series of reforms which we oppose, but which fall within the borders of democratic legitimacy (i.e. the reforms in education), the Orban government has been responsible for several constitutional and institutional changes that can only be defined as anti-democratic. The former High Court Authority has been split in two, each managed by party people, so close to the ruling party that one of them is married to a Fidesz MEP. The new authorities have much more limited powers than previously and only MPs, not citizens or organisations, can appeal to it. Several hundred judges have been sent to early retirement and the new authority is now overseeing the selection of new judges. The rules determining the function of Parliament have also been altered. Now Fidesz has been put in the position of proposing a law and closing it within twenty-four hours. With the changes in the judiciary system described above, we see the risk of the deterioration of the checks and balances system and the separation of powers, at the basis of democracy. The media law continues to be the strictest in the EU, with enormous fines for those who breach censorship laws set up by the state and with new highly centralised authority, headed for the next nine year by Szalai Annamaria, again a close ally of the Fidesz party. Private pension funds have been nationalised, marriage re-defined as solely the union of a man and a women, freedom of religion has been hampered, with only twelve religions now recognised by Hungarian law.Unemployed people may, under the new regime, be forced to move to another side of the country where work is available. The only area in which jobs are in surplus in some areas of Hungary is construction and the people most affected by these relocations are, unsurprisingly, the Roma minority. European Alternatives has in the past asked the European Parliament to intervene on Berlusconi’s attempt to modify media regulation and to limit freedom of speech in the media fearing that this would have had a domino effect on other European countries (we called it the Berlusconisation of Europe). We join the president of the European Liberals, Guy Verhofstadt and the vice-president of the European Socialists and Democrats, Hannes Swoboda, in asking the European Institutions to apply Article 7 of the Treaty of Lisbon. This article states that if principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms have been violated, a process can start that may lead to various consequences, including the loss of voting rights in the Council by the member state found to have violated those core principles. We realise that for such a procedure to be initiated by the European Parliament, the EPP would have to support it, and the EPP counts Victor Orban as one of its Presidents and Fidez MEPs amongst its members. The EPP deciding to speak out against one of its own would mark a major evolution in the independence of the European Parliament and its genuine representation of European citizens, but we appreciate it is unlikely. This is yet another reason to call for the emergence of transnational parties and lists which are not beholden to national political parties. The European Commission, in recent days, has been active in calling for Hungary to ensure its constitution is in line with European Law, and we support the Commission in taking as strong a line as it can through the courts. What is…
La crise requiert une révolution culturelle en Europe
Photo: Flickr Traduction : Sara Petrucci Le co-président d’Alternatives européennes, Niccolo Milanese, a été interviewé par le journal grec Tovima (interview en grec ici). Pensez-vous que la monnaie unique puisse survivre sans davantage d’intégration fiscale et politique dans un futur proche ? Cela pourrait-il déboucher sur une forme de fédéralisme (comme le suggère l’idée des Etats-Unis d’Europe) dans quelques années? Certaines formes d’intégration fiscale sont déjà en cours d’adoption: le semestre européen, qui permettra à la Commission Européenne d’approuver les budgets nationaux avant que ceux-ci ne soient soumis aux parlements nationaux, la dette commune à travers le Mécanisme Européen de Stabilité… et dans le cadre des propositions pour un nouveau traité, des plafonds d’endettement et des pénalités automatiques pour les pays qui dépasseraient ce plafond sont envisagés. Les décideurs européens n’ont par ailleurs pas exclu les euro-obligations, ni la possibilité pour la BCE d’agir en tant que prêteur en dernier ressort. Ce qui a été largement ignoré par les dirigeants européens jusqu’à présent, c’est la dimension de l’intégration politique, et le caractère “intergouvernemental” de la proposition d’un nouveau traité en est la preuve la plus récente. L’intégration fiscale en tant que telle n’est question que de discipline, que cette discipline soit mise en oeuvre par la Commission européenne ou par les membres les plus puissants de l’Union, ou encore par les marchés autorisés à attaquer les parties les plus faibles de l’économie européenne. La monnaie unique survivra tant que les populations se soumettront à ce type de discipline. Nul ne peut cependant garantir combien de temps cela durera. Pour faire plus que simplement survivre, pour vraiment incarner la monnaie unique des peuples européens, une forme d’intégration politique me semble essentielle: les populations doivent décider de la direction économique de l’Europe, au lieu de se soumettre aux dictats des marchés ou à l’orthodoxie économique. C’est à ce moment-là que l’euro deviendra véritablement notre devise. Je ne pense pas qu’une telle intégration politique doive prendre la forme des « Etats-Unis d’Europe» ou d’un modèle fédéral au sens traditionnel du terme. L’Etat-nation en tant que forme politique peut se décomposer de plusieurs manières différentes, et nous devons faire preuve d’ouverture d’esprit quant à la façon dont il pourra être remplacé. Vous affirmez qu’une économie européenne ne peut exister sans une vraie démocratie européenne. Seriez-vous d’accord avec l’idée que le remède au fameux “déficit démocratique” devrait impliquer l’émergence d’un pluralisme politique, et donc peut-être celle de partis politiques européens ? Maintenir une économie européenne dynamique sans développer une vraie démocratie européenne n’est uniquement possible qu’en montant les peuples les uns contre les autres dans une logique de concurrence. Or les lacunes d’un tel système se manifestent à partir du moment où l’économie apparaît en déséquilibre, et qu’une partie de l’économie doit en soutenir une autre, alors que ces dernières se concurrençaient auparavant. Le prétexte utilisé jusqu’à récemment était que l’économie européenne (et l’économie en général) se situait en dehors du champ de la politique, qu’il s’agissait de quelque chose d’automatique en lien avec les lois de la nature et qui, à ce titre ne nécessitait pas de contrôle humain. Or ce prétexte a été pulvérisé par les interventions évidentes de la plupart des Etats afin de « soutenir » les économies de leurs pays. Les décisions politiques concernant l’économie européenne sont prises de la même manière que pour toute autre économie, et ces décisions ne sont pas neutres d’un point de vue idéologique – elles correspondent en effet à toute une série de valeurs et de priorités. Même la décision de laisser le marché décider de tout est en soi un choix politique – on ne peut pas échapper à la politique. Les questions cruciales sont donc celles-ci : qui prend les décisions, quelle est la légitimité de ces personnes, et quelles valeurs promeuvent-elles. Les décisions concernant l’économie européenne sont des décisions qui touchent au bien commun de tous les Européens. Les institutions dans lesquelles ces décisions sont prises doivent respecter ce bien commun à tous les Européens. Il n’ y a aucune raison de croire que les dirigeants des différents Etats membres sont les mieux placés pour représenter ce bien commun. Premièrement, si tous les espaces de décision sont délimités de manière nationale, alors personne ne pensera d’abord à ce bien commun européen, mais plutôt à ses propres intérêts qui se posent à court terme d’un point de vue national. Deuxièmement, la tentation de profiter d’autres nations ou de bénéficier de certains avantages au détriment des autres existera toujours. Troisièmement, tant que la politique et la réflexion politique seront confinées à une approche nationale, les nouvelles possibilités politiques qui ont émergé au sein d’un espace transnational radicalement modifié resteront invisibles. Pour toutes ces raisons, j’estime que l’avenir d’une économie européenne vivable pour les Européens et qui soutienne une société européenne décente requiert l’émergence de partis politiques transnationaux. Ces derniers permettraient de porter des visions différentes du bien commun et de les exposer auprès d’institutions démocratiques dotées de pouvoirs décisionnels et qui pourront prendre une décision de manière transparente. Selon vous, quels sont les défis les plus importants en termes de participation démocratique et d’égalité sociale qui se posent à l’Europe actuellement affaiblie par la crise de la dette ? Comment pourrions-nous surmonter ces obstacles? Jusqu’à récemment, l’Europe apparaissait comme un espace dont l’incapacité d’imaginer de nouvelles manières de faire de la politique, d’organisations de la société et de nouveaux modes de vie en communauté, était potentiellement catastrophique. Heureusement, la crise économique et des évènements ayant eu lieu ailleurs comme en Afrique du Nord ont sensibilisé les citoyens européens sur la possibilité et le besoin d’une innovation et d’une expérimentation politique. C’est en effet devenu une nécessité pour beaucoup, car rien ne peut être considéré comme acquis: ni la richesse, ni la démocratie, ni la tolérance, ni la solidarité. Néanmoins la plupart des partis politiques restent coincés dans une vision archaïque, totalement déconnectés de ces nouveaux mouvements et incapables d’y prendre part sans passer pour des usurpateurs, étant donné qu’ils ont perdu tout contact…
The crisis calls for a cultural revolution in Europe
Photo: Flickr European Alternatives co-president Niccolo Milanese gave the following interview to the Greek newspaper Tovima (in Greek). Do you believe that the common currency can survive without more fiscal and political integration in the near future? Could this lead to a form of federalism (aka the United States of Europe) in the not so distant future? Some forms of fiscal integration are already being adopted: the European semester by which the European Commission will be able to approve national budgets before they are submitted to national parliaments, joint debt through the European Stability Mechanism … and in the proposals for the new treaty, there is talk of debt ceilings and automatic penalties for countries that break the ceiling. Europe’s decision-makers have not ruled out Eurobonds or the ECB acting as a lender of last resort either. What has been largely ignored by Europe’s leaders so far is the dimension of political integration, and the ‘intergovernmental’ nature of the new treaty proposal is the latest sign of this. Fiscal integration alone is simply a matter of discipline, whether that discipline is doled out by the European Commission, or by the most powerful members of Europe, or by the markets being allowed to attack the weakest parts of Europe’s economy. The common currency will survive for as long as the people submit to this kind of discipline. How long that will be is not guaranteed. To do more than survive, to really live as the common currency of the people of Europe, political integration of some kind seems to me to be essential: there has to be a decision of the people about the economic direction of Europe, not subservience to market dictats or economic orthodoxy. Only then would the euro be our currency. I do not think that such a political integration must take the form of a ‘United States of Europe’ or federal model as it is traditionally understood. The nation state as political form may break down in many different ways, and we should be open minded about exactly how it is replaced. You argue that a European economy is impossible without a genuinely European democracy. Would you agree with the idea that a cure for the so-called “democratic deficit” could entail a plural political existence, with the creation, perhaps, of European political parties? Maintaining a dynamic European economy without fostering genuinely European democracy is only possible by setting peoples against one another in competition, and the shortcomings of that logic become apparent as soon as the economy becomes unbalanced, and one part of the economy is asked to support another part that previously it had been in competition with. The pretence until recently has been that the European economy (and the economy more generally) is outside of politics, something automatic which is in tune with the laws of nature and therefore does not need human oversight. That pretence has been exploded by the very obvious intervention of most states to ‘prop-up’ the economies of their countries. Political decisions are taken about the European economy as they are about every other economy, and those political decisions are not neutral from an ideological point of view – they correspond to a set of values and priorities. Even the decision to let the market decide everything is a political decision – the politics cannot be escaped. The crucial questions are who is taking the decisions, what legitimacy they have, and what values they are advocating. The decisions concerning the European economy are decisions concerning the common good of all Europeans. The institutions in which those decisions are taken need to respect the common good of all Europeans. There is no reason to suppose that this common good is best represented by the leaders of the different nation states. Firstly, if all the spaces for decision are nationally bounded, there is no reason to suppose anyone need directly consider the common European good, rather than their own short-term interests from their national perspectives. Secondly, there will always be the temptation to ‘free ride’ on other nation states or attempt to gain a benefit at the expense of others. Thirdly, for as long as politics and political reflection remains nationally bounded, the new political possibilities opened up by a radically changed transnational space remain hidden. For all those reasons I think the future of a European economy which is livable for Europeans and which supports a decent European society requires the emergence of transnational political parties which can present different visions of the common good, and democratic institutions with decisional powers in which those political parties can present their competing visions and a decision can be taken with transparency. What are, in your opinion, the most significant challenges, in terms of democratic participation and social equality, in the debt crisis- stricken EU of today? How could we overcome them? Up until recently Europe has seemed to be a space with a potentially catastrophic inability to imagine new ways of doing politics, new ways of ordering society and new ways of living together. Thankfully the economic crisis and events in other parts of the world like North Africa have woken some European citizens up to the possibility, the necessity, for political innovation and experimentation. This has become a necessity for many because nothing can be taken for granted: not wealth, not democracy, not tolerance nor solidarity. Unfortunately most of the political parties remain stuck in the old world, totally disconnected from these new movements and unable to participate without appearing as frauds, because they have lost any contact they once had with the grass roots. And for the moment the movements of citizens searching for something new remain a minority. The challenge for politics in the debt-crisis EU is to articulate an aspirational politics in a way that is convincing and not hollow. The only way to do that is to build on people’s genuine desires for change, to work with their sentiments of injustice or indignation, and to articulate that there are…
EA wins prize for Transeuropa Festival from EESC
2011 EESC Civil Society Prize: Translating EU values into action On 7 December, at the plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee, the 2011 Civil Society Prize was awarded to three civil society organisations. The prize was created to reward excellence in civil society initiatives that foster European values. This year's second prize went to European Alternatives for its flagship event “Transeuropa Festival”. More than 50 projects were evaluated by a selection board chaired by EESC president Staffan Nilsson. Opening the ceremony, Mr Nilsson emphasised how difficult it had been to choose among them, adding that they all “should be proud of their contribution to European society”. Before presenting the three winning organisations, Mr Nilsson stressed that “this award is more than a sum of money; we want our winners to get European public recognition. I am delighted that we have found initiatives which, through dialogue and participation, have made a memorable contribution to European society, acting on the values which keep it alive”. The Erasmus Student Network received first prize for its SocialErasmus project, which gives students the opportunity to get to know a new culture and new education systems. Straight after the Erasmus project, on the second step of the podium was our European Alternatives, which was recognised for its capacity to create bottom-up participation and empower European citizens to take control over their common future. Transeuropa Festival, the initiative for which we received the prize, is a two-week cultural festival and political event that took place simultaneously in twelve European cities in May 2011, celebrating political integration, solidarity, social diversity, interculturality and exchange. In May 2012 Transeuropa Festival will come to 14 European cities, thanks to the ever-expanding Transeuropa Network. Why not join the Network and actively participate in the work of European Alternatives and Transeuropa Festival? European Alternatives would like to thanks all members of Transeuropa network, and all the volunteers, supporters, and enthusiasts who made this possible! You can watch a video of the initiatives awarded here
Alternative reali: Congresso europeo per il cambiamento
Sullo sfondo della crisi permanente, di nuovi governi sostenuti dall'UE in Grecia e Italia, e di movimenti di protesta a livello continentale, oltre cento organizzazioni da tutta Europa si incontrano a Bruxelles per definire un percorso transnazionale di alternativa basato sulla partecipazione, la solidarietà, e il controllo democratico sull'economia e la finanza. Il Congresso di Bruxelles raccoglie attivisti, cittadini, e organizzazioni da tutto il continente che condividono una visione comune per rilanciare l’Europa su basi democratiche e sociali. Il forum vuole riuscire a definire alternative reali allo status quo economico, politico, e sociale, lavorando verso la costruzione di una piattaforma di coordinamento europeo capace di portare queste alternative a fruizione. Il Congresso vuole essere un’opportunità di aggregazione transnazionale per contribuire alla costruzione di strutture più efficaci di attivismo europeo, anche nel contesto dell’inaugurazione del nuovo strumento dell’iniziativa dei cittadini europei, del rilancio del Forum sociale europeo, e della crescente consapevolezza della necessità di portare la proposta di alternative direttamente a un livello europeo per restituire ai cittadini il potere di decidere sul proprio futuro, contro ogni tentativo di delega del potere ai mercati finanziari. “Se i governi nazionali sono stati finora timidi nel cammino verso una maggiore integrazione politica europea, un processo di convergenza di società civile, cittadini, e movimenti sociali non può più essere rimandato”, commenta Lorenzo Marsili, direttore di Alternative Europee, associazione promotrice del congresso. Il Congresso affronterà diverse riforme europee necessarie, fra cui cambiamenti al mercato del lavoro per combattere la precarietà attraverso l’estensione di un reddito minimo europeo, l’allargamento delle libertà civili e dei diritti di cittadinanza a migranti, gruppi LGBT e comunità Rom, e la necessità di fare retromarcia sulle privatizzazioni dei beni comuni e di immaginare nuovi modelli produttivi. Infine, il Congresso lavorerà ad un accordo per una grande campagna transnazionale che chieda la democratizzazione dello spazio europeo e la restituzione ai cittadini europei del controllo sulle principali decisioni economiche e politiche. Il Congresso è organizzato da Alternative Europee, organizzazione transnazionale e movimento di cittadini che lavora in tutta Europa attraverso campagne, conferenze, festival, e consultazioni popolari. Al congresso prenderanno parte anche Membri del Parlamento Europeo, tra cui Sonia Alfano, Marie-Christine Vergiat, Helene Flautre, Pervenche Beres, Judith Sargentini, Delli Karima, Vittorio Prodi e il giurista e teorico dei beni comuni, Ugo Mattei. Info sul congresso e agenda: https://euroalter.com/IT/ppp/eventi/424/ Organizzazioni partecipanti European Alternatives, ARCI, New Economics Foundation, CGIL, Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, Migreurop, Democracia Real Ya, Nikos Poulantzas Institute, Institut Emile Vanderveldee, FLARE, Observatoire des Extrêmes, La Centrale Générale – FGTB, Universidad Nomada, Amnesty International UK, Iniziativa Femminista Europea, Citizens for Europe, Osservatorio Europa, Municipality of Fyli, Open Democracy, La Confédération étudiante, Toxic Europe, Qui Va Payer, Basic Income Earth Network, Transform! Network, Cafe Babel, CIVILSCAPE, CIVES, ECAS, Open Society Institute, AFIES, Missione Sviluppo, Alliance international de journalists, Transeuropa Network, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Campaign Against Homophobia, Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer, Hungarian Europe Society, JEF Europe, Our society, Cercle des Voisins, Initiative Zivilgesellschaft, European Youth Forum, Tilt, Il Fatto Quotidiano, CriticAtac, European Civic Forum, Animo young left, SEL, Il nostro tempo è adesso, CFJ, European House, Take the square, Si Rinnovabili No Nucleare, Permanent Forum of European civil society, CIME, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, L'apis coop, Upact, Greek Social Forum, ENNA, Legambiente Onlus, Europea house for culture, Oxfam Wales, WPPS, Europanova, European Association for the Defence of Human Rights, Altramente FINE Per ulteriori informazioni: Cecilia Anesi and Giulio Rubino / press@euroalter.com / www.euroalter.it
Alternatives Réelles : Congrès Européen pour le Changement
De plus en plus les citoyens européens considèrent que l’articulation d’alternatives politiques claires directement au niveau européen et transnational, est l’unique possibilité pour eux de reprendre aux marchés financiers la capacité à choisir leur avenir. Le forum transnational de Bruxelles regroupe plus de 100 organisations qui sont actives à travers le continent et qui partagent une vision commune pour le renouveau de l’Europe. Le Congrès a pour objectif d’énoncer clairement des propositions pour des alternatives réelles à notre statut quo actuel dans le domaine économique, social et politique. L’objectif final est de créer une plateforme transnationale de coordination pour réaliser ces alternatives à travers des campagnes, des forums et des assemblées transnationales pendant l’année 2012 et au-delà. « Si les gouvernements nationaux ont été trop timides jusqu’à présent pour aller plus loin dans l’intégration politique européenne, un processus de convergence de la société civile, des citoyens et des mouvements sociaux européens est plus que jamais nécessaire » proclame Lorenzo Marsili, directeur d’Alternatives Européennes. Le Congrès traitera des réformes européennes nécessaires, notamment des changements nécessaires sur le marché du travail pour mettre un terme en particulier au scandale de la précarité des jeunes ; l’extension des libertés civiles et des droits en matière de citoyenneté des migrants, des personnes LGBT et des communautés roms ; enfin, de la nécessité d’inverser la tendance vers la privatisation des biens communs, et celle de renouveler notre modèle de production. Enfin, le Congrès traitera de la nécessité d’une campagne à l’échelle européenne pour la démocratisation de l’espace européen et le poids accru des citoyens dans le processus de prise de décision. Plusieurs intervenants participeront à ce forum comme Ugo Mattei, juriste et théoricien des « biens communs », Anna Coote de la New Economics Foundation, des représentants de mouvements sociaux venus d’Espagne, de Roumanie, d’Italie, de Grèce, des députés européens comme Sonia Alfano, Marie-Christine Vergiat, Hélène Flautre, Pervenche Bérès, Judith Sargentini, Karima Delli, Vittorio Prodi. Le Congrès est organisé par Alternatives Européennes, une organisation transnationale et un mouvement de citoyens qui agit à travers toute l’Europe pour mener des campagnes, des conférences, des festivals et des consultations citoyennes. Plus d’informations sur le Congrès et l’agenda ici Organisations participantes : European Alternatives, ARCI, Osservatorio Europa, New Economics Foundation, CGIL, Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, Migreurop, Democracia Real Ya, Nikos Poulantzas Institute, Institut Emile Vanderveldee, FLARE, Observatoire des Extrêmes, La Centrale Générale – FGTB, Universidad Nomada, Amnesty International UK, Iniziativa Femminista Europea, Citizens for Europe, Municipality of Fyli, Open Democracy, La Confédération étudiante, Toxic Europe, Qui Va Payer, Basic Income Earth Network, Transform! Network, Cafe Babel, CIVILSCAPE, CIVES, ECAS, Open Society Institute, AFIES, Missione Sviluppo, Alliance international de journalists, Transeuropa Network, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Campaign Against Homophobia, Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer, Hungarian Europe Society, JEF Europe, Our society, Cercle des Voisins, Initiative Zivilgesellschaft, European Youth Forum, Il Fatto Quotidiano, CriticAtac, European Civic Forum, Animo young left, SEL, Il nostro tempo è adesso, CFJ, European House, Take the square, Si Rinnovabili No Nucleare, Permanent Forum of European civil society, CIME, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, L'apis coop, Upact, Greek Social Forum, ENNA, Legambiente Onlus, Europea house for culture, Oxfam Wales, WPPS, Europanova, European Association for the Defence of Human Rights, Altramente, Think Young, Urban Pollinators
Real Alternatives: European Congress for Change
European citizens increasingly see the necessity of articulating clear political alternatives at a directly European and transnational level, as the only chance for European citizens to take back from financial markets the power to decide of their future. The Brussels Congress for Change brings together over 100 organisations active throughout the continent and sharing a common vision for the renewal of Europe. The Congress aims to clearly spell ideas for real alternatives to our social, economic, and political status quo. The final goal is to create a transnational coordination platform to make alternatives viable through transnational campaigns, forums and assemblies during 2012 and beyond. “If national governments have so far been too timid in their steps towards greater European political integration, a process of convergence of European civil society, citizens, and social movements is now needed as never before”, says Lorenzo Marsili, director of European Alternatives, promoter of the event. The Congress will deal with needed European reforms, including changes to the labour market to end scandal of youth precarity, the extension of civil liberties and citizenship rights to migrant, LGBT, and Roma communities, and the necessity to reverse the trend towards privatisation of common goods and to renew the production model. Finally, the Congress will address the necessity of a Europe-wide campaign for the democratisation of the European space and the empowerment of citizens in the decision-making process. Among others, the congress will be attended by Ugo Mattei, jurist and theoretician of “common goods”, Anne Coote from the New Economics Foundation, social movements from Spain, Romania, Italy, and Greece, and Members of the European Parliament such as Sonia Alfano, Marie-Christine Vergiat, Helene Flautre, Pervenche Beres, Judith Sargentini, Delli Karima, Vittorio Prodi. The Congress is organised by European Alternatives, a transnational organisation and a citizens’ movement working throughout Europe to run campaigns, conferences, festivals, and citizens’ consultations. Further information on the Congress and agenda here Participating organisations European Alternatives, ARCI, Osservatorio Europa, New Economics Foundation, CGIL, Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, Migreurop, Democracia Real Ya, Nikos Poulantzas Institute, Institut Emile Vanderveldee, FLARE, Observatoire des Extrêmes, La Centrale Générale – FGTB, Universidad Nomada, Amnesty International UK, Iniziativa Femminista Europea, Citizens for Europe, Municipality of Fyli, Open Democracy, La Confédération étudiante, Toxic Europe, Qui Va Payer, Basic Income Earth Network, Transform! Network, Cafe Babel, CIVILSCAPE, CIVES, ECAS, Open Society Institute, AFIES, Missione Sviluppo, Alliance international de journalists, Transeuropa Network, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Campaign Against Homophobia, Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer, Hungarian Europe Society, JEF Europe, Our society, Cercle des Voisins, Initiative Zivilgesellschaft, European Youth Forum, Il Fatto Quotidiano, CriticAtac, European Civic Forum, Animo young left, SEL, Il nostro tempo è adesso, CFJ, European House, Take the square, Si Rinnovabili No Nucleare, Permanent Forum of European civil society, CIME, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, L’apis coop, Upact, Greek Social Forum, ENNA, Legambiente Onlus, Europea house for culture, Oxfam Wales, WPPS, Europanova, European Association for the Defence of Human Rights, Altramente
Scacco matto allEuropa: democrazia con la pistola alla tempia
“Non ci sono alternative” è una menzogna comunemente usata per coprire con un mantello di inevitabilità scelte economiche palesemente partigiane. Raramente questo ritornello è suonato così convincente a tante persone.
Echec et mat européen : la démocratie en joue
Traduction: Elisa Sance La position d'Alternatives Européennes “Il n'y a pas d'alternative” est une imposture couramment utilisée afin de balayer toute décision clairement partisane sur le plan économique. Rarement ce faux refrain n’aura semblé si convaincant pour une grande partie de la population, notamment lorsque les gouvernements d'Italie et de Grèce ont été mis devant le choix suivant : obéissance ou banqueroute. Ce chantage est le résultat de la décision politique qui consiste à ne pas prendre de voie alternative, et à obéir à la 'logique' du marché. Mais d'autres solutions ont toujours existé, elles n'ont simplement pas été articulées, de manière assez forte et de façon suffisamment claire. En dépit des opinions concernant spécifiquement Monti et Papademos et leur gouvernement respectif, dans un concours où il ne peut y avoir qu'un gagnant, nous ne pouvons que rester très préoccupés par l'affaiblissement de la vie politique et démocratique en Europe. Que Monti soit une réponse opportune à la crise italienne ou non, les conditions de son investiture créent un très dangereux précédent : l'Italie est dans le viseur des marchés financiers, qui menacent de la plonger dans une situation de non-paiement. Qu'il s'agissent des leaders de la France ou de l'Allemagne, du groupe de Francfort, ou des leaders économiques et du secteur bancaire qui profitent du système actuel, un groupe d'élites est parvenu à dérober le pouvoir des citoyens européens par une utilisation adroite de la crise économique, afin de détourner les institutions européennes ainsi que le processus d'intégration européen. Plus que jamais, ce processus apparaît aux yeux des citoyens et des hommes et femmes politiques des pays en dette, comme une camisole de force dans laquelle personne ne peut prendre de décisions allant contre l'inexorable logique économique. Le faux-semblant de souveraineté nationale a été rompu. Les Etats-nations européens, dans leur tentative aveugle d'empêcher une évolution vers une union fédérale, dans l'intérêt de conserver le peu de souveraineté qu'il leur reste, ont fini par confier cette même souveraineté aux marchés financiers et aux élites non-responsables.Cela est évident dans la cas des pays dits «périphériques», mais cela semble aussi être le cas des Etats dits « noyaux », et en particulier de la France, capable de décider indépendamment de suivre les mêmes cures d'austérité que celles imposées aux pays du sud de l'Europe, mais qui est incapable de mettre en oeuvre un modèle alternatif pour contrer la menace de perdre le statut de « triple A » et du chaos financier qui en découlerait. La souveraineté pour les pays «noyaux » n’a lieu d’être que si elle est utilisée pour répondre ‘je serai ce que vous voulez que je sois ». Mais il n’y a pas de souveraineté véritable sans la possibilité de répondre et d’incarner un autre choix. Fermer l'espace à des alternatives Tout aussi préoccupante est la tentative de fermer sciemment tout espace à une alternative qui mûrit pourtant depuis l’année passée avec le printemps arabe, les manifestations pan-européennes des indignados, le mouvement Occupy, et le succès d'un discours condamnant l'inégalité et la règle des 1%. Le fait que l'occupation du Zuccotti Park ait été stoppé par la police new-yorkaise le même jour que la nomination de Monti en tant que Premier Ministre en Italie n'est peut-être qu'une coïncidence. Mais c'est une coïncidence révélatrice, et qui met à jour la volonté de fermer physiquement tout espace à la critique du modèle économique et financier actuel ainsi et des réponses offertes jusque là à la crise. Il y a un double danger dans une telle situation. D'un côté, le message envoyé à l'opinion publique est qu'il n'y a vraiment aucune alternative ni à l'austérité, ni à un démantèlement plus important du modèle social européen afin de payer pour les maux du secteur financier. Le bien des banques devient l'équivalent du bien du peuple, et toute politique divergeant des recommandations de la Banque Centrale Européenne ou du FMI est présentée comme impossible et immature. D'un autre côté, avec la quasi-totalité des partis politiques en Italie et en Grèce qui soutiennent leur nouveau gouvernement technocratique, les nombreux secteurs de la population résistants à une telle équivalence et qui restent convaincus que des politiques alternatives peuvent exister et sont viables, sont privés de représentation politique. Un fossé se creuse entre les parlements et de larges pans de l'opinion publique. “Ils ne nous représentent pas”, un des slogans des indignados, risque maintenant de devenir réalité pour une majorité de la population, avec un risque important pour le fonctionnement futur des démocraties nationales. La lutte pour une démocratie européenne L'importance centrale de la dimension européenne dans la prise de décision concernant notre futur devrait maintenant apparaître clairement. Mais il n'y aura pas d' occasion de reconquérir la capacité à choisir du cours de nos sociétés et d'ouvrir des espaces afin que des politiques alternatives émergent, si nous ne sommes pas capables de demander et d'obtenir une démocratisation radicale de l'espace européen, contre toute tentative de déléguer le pouvoir au consensus des élites ou des marchés. La bataille pour la démocratie doit donc avoir lieu au niveau européen : la vie politique doit véritablement devenir politique et démocratique, c’est à dire que les différents partis politiques et mouvements sociaux doivent offrir, de façon claire, des programmes politiques différents et avoir la capacité de les mettre en œuvre. Cela signifie un contrôle démocratique sur l'économie européenne. Une plus grande harmonisation du processus de prise de décision en rapport avec les économies européennes est inévitable. De fait, ces décisions sont déjà en train d’être prises. Ce dont nous avons besoin, ce sont d'institutions officielles qui prennent les décisions au lieu de clubs informels, et de procédures démocratiques permettant aux citoyens de l'Europe de prendre eux-mêmes ces décisions. Les institutions européennes et l'intégration européenne devraient précisément être les entités qui donnent aux gens le pouvoir de prendre des décisions. Il est nécessaire d'avoir une vision sur le long terme : soit il s’agit d’une vision d'obéissance et d'austérité pour le plus grand nombre, soit c'est une vision de réappropriation…
European checkmate: democracy at gunpoint
European Alternatives Position “There is no alternative” is an imposture commonly used to cover with a mantle of inevitability clearly partisan economic decisions. Rarely has this false refrain sounded so convincing to so many people as when the governments of Italy and Greece have been given the alternative: obedience or bankruptcy. This blackmail is the result of political decisions not to take an alternative course and to obey the 'logic' of the market. But alternatives have always existed, they just haven't been articulated loudly and clearly enough. Regardless of the specific opinions on Monti and Papademos and their respective governments, we cannot but remain highly preoccupied by the reduction of political and democratic life in Europe to a contest with only one possible winner. Whether Monti is a valid response or not to Italy’s crisis, the terms of the appointment are an extremely dangerous precedent: at the gunpoint of financial markets and their threat to strongarm Italy into a default. A group of elites, whether they are the leaders of France or Gemany, the ‘Frankfurt’ group, or the business and bank leaders who profit from the current system, have managed to steal power from the citizens of Europe by a deft employment of the economic crisis to hijack the European institutions and the process of European integration, which now appears more than ever to citizens and politicians in debtor countries like a strait-jacket in which no one can take decisions against an inexorable economic logic. The pretence of national sovereignty has been broken. European nation-states, in their blind attempts to block moves towards a federal union in the interest of retaining what little remains of their sovereignty, have ended up with consigning this very sovereignty to financial markets and unaccountable elites. This is obvious in the case of “peripheral” countries, but sounds no less true in the case of “core” countries, and especially France, able to independently decide to follow the same recipes of austerity forced on Southern countries, but unable to implement any alternative model against the threat of loss of “triple a” status and ensuing financial chaos. Sovereignty holds for core countries only in so far as it is employed to respond “I am what you want me to be”. But there is no sovereignty without the possibility of being otherwise. Closing the space for alternatives Equally worrying is the overt attempt at closing the space for an alternative that had been maturing over the last year through the Arab spring, the pan-European protests of the indignados, the Occupy movement, and the success of a discourse condemning inequality and the rule of the 1%. It is perhaps only a coincidence that the occupation of Zuccotti Park has been stopped by the New York police the same day that Monti has been nominated prime minister in Italy. But it is a telling coincidence, and one that uncovers the desire to physically close any space for a critique of the existing economic and financial model and the responses offered so far to the crisis. There is a double danger in such situation. On the one hand, the message sent to public opinion is that there really is no alternative to austerity and to further dismantling of the European social model to repay the ills of the financial sector. The good of the banks becomes equivalent with the good of the people, and any policy diverging from the recommendations of the European Central Bank or the IMF is portrayed as impossible and immature. On the other hand, with the near totality of political parties in Italy and Greece supporting the new technocratic governments, the large sectors of the population resisting such equivalence and remaining convinced that alternative policies exist and are viable are left bereft of political representation. A wedge is being driven between Parliaments and large sectors of public opinion. “They don’t represents us”, one of the slogans of the indignados, now risks becoming a reality for a majority of the population, with profound risks for the future functioning of national democracies. The struggle for European democracy The central importance of the European dimension in deciding of our future should now have become apparent to all. But there is no opportunity to regain the freedom to choose the course of our societies and to open spaces for alternative politics to emerge if we are not able to demand and obtain a radical democratisation of the European space, against all tendencies to delegate power to elites or market consensus. The fight for democracy must be therefore at the European level: European politics must become political and democratic, where that means that different political parties and social movements must offer clearly different political programs and have the power to implement them. That means democratic control over the European economy. A greater harmonisation of decision-making over European economies is unavoidable. De facto these decisions are already being made. What is required are formal institutions which make the decisions, rather than informal clubs, and democratic procedures for the citizens of Europe to take these decisions themselves. The European institutions and European integration should be precisely what give people the power to make decisions. There must be a long term vision: either it is a vision of obedience and austerity for the many, or it is an empowering vision of European citizens retaking control over the economy and their common future. European Alternatives chooses the second of these visions, and a choice we suspect many of our fellow citizens would also prefer. The coming weeks and months will be a crucial testing ground for the maturity of the people of Europe to rise up and demand democracy, equality, and transnational institutions capable of guaranteeing both. With these objectives in mind, European Alternatives is calling a Congress for Change in the European Parliament on the 30th November, as the start of a process of political emancipation that will run over 2012.
Alla Fiom per un reddito di cittadinanza
L'assemblea nazionale della Fiom del 18 febbraio, convocata per preparare lo sciopero del 3 marzo, ha rilanciato sul tema del reddito di cittadinanza. Pubblichiamo qui l'intervento di Lorenzo Marsili, co-direttore di European Alternatives, che ha presentato durante l'assemblea la campagna europea per un reddito minimo garantito sostenuta anche da EA. L'invito alla Fiom di farsi parte attiva di questa campagna è stato accolto in chiusura dal Segreatario Landini. di Lorenzo Marsili E’ evidente a tutti il tentativo di dividere quanti resistono lo smantellamento del sistema di welfare da quanti resistono l’attacco alla dignità del lavoro e alle libertà sindacali. La retorica dello scambio fra riforma degli ammortizzatori sociali e l’articolo18 e il diritto alla contrattazione collettiva ne è solo l’esempio più grossolano. Così come la volgarità di una presunta opposizione fra “troppo garantiti” da un lato (e poi chi sarebbero, forse chi si alza alle 4 del mattino per lavorare a 1.200 euro al mese? chi ha cominciato a lavorare a 16 anni e si è vista tolta la pensione di anzianità?) e “precari” dall’altro, questo esercito che si vorrebbe “giovane” semplicemente per mascherare che la precarietà si è istituzionalizzata a metodo di ricatto sociale, e che serve a zittire chi al lavoro ancora associa la parola dignità. Precarietà e contratti a termine che toccano oramai chi di anni ne ha quaranta, cinquanta, sessanta. A questo tentativo di dividerci bisogna rispondere in maniera netta. Il welfare è storicamente legato al lavoro. Dove il lavoro è stabile c’è occupazione e c’è reddito. Dove il lavoro è sotto scacco c’è precarietà, povertà, e attacco ai sistemi sociali. Il rilancio del lavoro è il rilancio del welfare, e il rilancio del welfare è il rilancio del lavoro. Sono qui per parlare di una campagna europea sul reddito minimo garantito. Lo scorso fine settimana oltre quaranta organizzazioni provenienti da tutta Europa si sono riunite al Teatro Valle per lanciare un’Iniziativa dei cittadini europei sul reddito minimo. Come sapete l’iniziativa dei cittadini europei, dal primo aprile di questo anno, permetterà di raccogliere almeno un milione di firme in almeno sette paesi europei per presentare una proposta legislativa direttamente alla Commissione europea. Vogliamo usare questo strumento per richiedere una direttiva europea per l’instaurazione in tutti gli stati membri di un reddito minimo garantito. E per esprimere il più netto rifiuto ad ogni divisione fra welfare, reddito, e lavoro. Il reddito è lo strumento per opporsi al ricatto della povertà e della precarietà, un ricatto, come ci insegnate, che ha come primo obiettivo il mondo del lavoro. Un ricatto che schiaccia la dignità della persona e la costringe ad accettare lo sfruttamento, abbassando il potere negoziale degli stessi lavoratori. Un ricatto che crea competizione per la sopravvivenza, e costruisce quindi la folle trappola per cui diventa il sindacato – e la richiesta che il lavoro sia giusto, sia degno, sia a servizio della persona – l’ostacolo all’occupazione. Con questa iniziativa europea non vogliamo chiedere un reddito inteso come contropartita per la consegna dei corpi al profitto. Non chiediamo una mancetta che permetta di tenere in vita un esercito di riserva disposto a farsi macchina dell’accumulazione, ad accendersi e spegnersi quando conveniente. Non chiediamo un reddito che sia l’anticamera dello smantellamento dell’organizzazione collettiva del lavoro. Chiediamo invece un reddito che permetta la libera scelta di un lavoro oltre il ricatto della sopravvivenza, un reddito che dia autonomia e opportunità alle persone di agire la loro autodeterminazione, un reddito garantito come diritto economico proprio per rimettere al centro del dibattito la questione della ridistribuzione delle ricchezze. Un reddito che permetta al lavoratore di uscire dal ricatto della povertà ed esprimere un chiaro “no” allo sfruttamento, esattamente come voi siete stati capaci di dire “no” ai diktat che chiedevano lo schiacciamento dei diritti come precondizione per la continuità occupazionale. La linea che l’Iniziativa europea vuole seguire è quella già tracciata da una risoluzione del Parlamento europeo dell’ottobre 2010, dove il reddito minimo è espresso come percentuale del reddito mediano, costruendo quindi un’immediata comunità di interessi fra costruzione del welfare e rilancio del lavoro. Il Parlamento europeo ha quindi già espresso il suo parere favorevole a un reddito minimo europeo; ma come sapete, il Parlamento europeo non ha il potere di iniziare nuove leggi, ma solo di valutare quelle proposte dalla Commissione. Con l’iniziativa dei cittadini europei questo potere di proposta legislativa è ora però concesso agli stessi cittadini. E va usato. Portare la rivendicazione per un reddito minimo a livello europeo ha in dote almeno altri due importanti elementi. Ci permette di rifiutare nettamente la scelta fra reddito e lavoro. Il terreno non è più quello puramente nazionale ma quello europeo, e la richiesta di una direttiva comunitaria per il reddito prescinde, per sua stessa natura, da qualunque gioco a metterci gli uni contro gli altri e a richiedere l’abbassamento delle tutele del lavoro come contropartita per il completamente del sistema di welfare. E’ l’Europa che ce lo chiede… quante volte abbiamo sentito questa frase. Noi vogliamo che l’Europa questa volta ci chieda di garantire a ogni cittadino un reddito dignitoso. E che questa sia la base per sganciare il rilancio del lavoro da qualunque baratto. Ancora più importante è l’effetto sistemico dell’introduzione di un reddito minimo su scala europea. Ci insegnate voi i rischi del social dumping, di una competizione fra salariati in un continente dove il capitale circola liberamente ma i diritti sono frazionati e ora anche “esportabili”, permettendo a imprese di paesi a basso reddito di spostare i propri lavoratori in paesi a reddito più elevato mantenendo le stesse condizioni salariali di provenienza. Un reddito minimo su scala europea è una chiara barriera contro tutto ciò, e uno strumento importante per inceppare il meccanismo della competizione al ribasso. Atene è il simbolo del disastro che attende un’Europa incapace di concepire la centralità del lavoro e della dignità della persona, di un’Europa incapace di investire nei propri cittadini e di smarcarsi dal giogo di una finanza cannibale. Noi dobbiamo immaginare e soprattutto costruire un’Europa capace di futuro, e…
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We are hiring a Head of Office, Romania
Job vacancy: Head of office, Cluj Napoca European Alternatives is recruiting a head of office for our growing office in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. European Alternatives has been active in Cluj for over two years, and is looking to develop its activities throughout Eastern and South Eastern Europe with the Cluj office taking a lead role. The head of office will be someone with a strong and demonstrable commitment to European Alternatives values and mission of promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. She or he will need to show experience in working internationally and project management and administration, ambition and vision to develop the organisation and spread its activities throughout the region. The post will require regular travel to attend meetings of our organisation throughout Europe. The main responsibilities of the head of office will include: – Working with local groups throughout Romania to develop a strong and highly active network of members of European Alternatives – Overseeing and managing the operations of European Alternatives in the Cluj office, including project management, overseeing administration – Defining and implementing, in dialogue with the board of European Alternatives, a strategic plan for the development of the organisation throughout Romania and East and South Eastern Europe – Managing staff and volunteers – Fundraising and relations with funders and partners. The candidate will show – Experience in project management – International experience working in the NGO field – Fluency in English and Romanian, further languages an advantage. Deadline for applications: 8th February Anticipated start date: February 20th Salary: based on experience and in line with Romanian average, circa € 1,200 – €1,600 pm gross To apply send a cover letter and CV to info@euroalter.com
Nach Frankfurt
di Francesco Raparelli Se leggiamo con attenzione i primi commenti politici e giornalisti dell'accordo raggiunto dalla troika con il governo Papademos, sembra evidente che non si è trattato di una svolta. Un coro unanime, dal Corsera al Sole, da Repubblica alla Stampa, dal Financial Times al Guardian, chiarisce, senza timidezza, che il default greco è stato solo rinviato di qualche mese. Mesi utili per le banche e per le corporation tedesche e francesi, che non hanno mai smesso di fare affari con la penisola ellenica. Mesi utili per i fondi sovrani cinesi o indiani, che continuano il “saccheggio” di terre assolate e porti, aeroporti e autostrade. La Bce inietterà nuova liquidità a sostegno delle banche e le banche continueranno a farne l'uso fatto fino ad adesso: capitalizzare per riprendere a speculare. L'economista francese Fitoussi, sulle colonne di Repubblica, ha usato le parole giuste: nell'epoca che ci tocca in sorte l'unico sovrano è il Debito. Sull'Unità, invece, Silvano Andriani ci chiarisce un aspetto dell'accordo greco a dir poco inquietante: per la prima volta la trattativa si è svolta tra Stati – quello tedesco in particolar modo – e i leader di partito. Motivo? Semplicissimo: chiedere un impegno vincolante ai partiti, affinché, le eventuali svolte elettorali di aprile, non mettano in crisi gli accordi raggiunti. La democrazia in Europa non raggiungeva livelli così bassi dal trentennio delle guerre mondiali e dei fascismi. Non solo, l'assenza di un vero e proprio demos europeo ha accompagnato il “sacrificio greco” con un silenzio assordante. Ma è un demos che occorre costruire in Europa? Una sfera pubblica razionale e riflessiva capace di rilanciare, nonostante la «dittatura commissaria» dei mercati finanziari e della Bce, quel modello liberale e socialdemocratico nello stesso tempo che per anni ha qualificato la differenza europea? Penso proprio di no. In Europa non serve un demos, omogeneo e dialogico (perché dotato delle stessa competenza comunicativa), piuttosto ci vogliono linee di frattura, discontinuità, lotte. Il progetto neoliberale tedesco ha tentato di costruire l'Europa attraverso una moneta e un patto di stabilità, una «governamentalità attiva» a sostegno del rigore di bilancio e della libera concorrenza. I risultati disastrosi sono sotto gli occhi di tutti: non ci voleva la spietatezza degli hedge fund americani per capire che una moneta senza una vera banca centrale e delle politiche fiscali unitarie non aveva e rischia di non avere alcun futuro. Ma per la Merkel che guarda a Oriente la sopravvivenza dell'euro, evidentemente, non sembra più cosa fondamentale. È in questo quadro che si inserisce la sfida dei movimenti sociali: solo il conflitto, solo una moltiplicazione virtuosa di contropoteri può ridare senso alla prospettiva europea! Da qui è nata la sfida del meeting europeo dal titolo Reddito, beni comuni e democrazia che si è svolto al Teatro Valle Occupato tra il 10 e il 12 di febbraio. Oltre 40 associazioni e gruppi europei (dalla Romania alla Grecia, dalla Spagna alla Germania, dall'Austria alla Bulgaria) hanno discusso per tre giorni e con grande passione della necessità di rilanciare con forza la costruzione di un'Europa sociale fatta di diritti fondamentali e di nuova democrazia. Beni comuni e reddito di cittadinanza sono stati i terreni privilegiati del confronto politico e organizzativo, nella consapevolezza che sono questi gli assi strategici lungo i quali far crescere un'alternativa potente alla catastrofe neoliberale. Beni comuni e reddito di cittadinanza sono due questioni fortemente intrecciate. Quando si parla di beni comuni, infatti, non si parla semplicemente di beni o di categorie merceologiche: al centro c'è la questione del comune, della cooperazione produttiva, della «relazione di servizio». Non ci sono beni comuni senza la comune gestione delle risorse, siano esse naturali o artificiali. Altrettanto: senza cogliere il processo di violenta espropriazione dei commons, dalla privatizzazione dell'acqua al land grabbing, dalla proprietà intellettuale ai brevetti, è impossibile riuscire a parlare di reddito di cittadinanza. È la nuova «accumulazione originaria» che si è fatta regola, lo sfruttamento biopolitico che investe la società per intero, a rendere il reddito di cittadinanza una pretesa necessaria: una «rendita sociale» contro il profitto che si è fatto rendita finanziaria e speculazione. È stato davvero interessante ascoltare i racconti dei movimenti rumeni, da inizio gennaio in rotta di collisione con il governo e con l'austerità europea che impongono tagli alla sanità. Le lotte per il welfare nei paesi post-comunisti segnano una novità decisiva nella scena dell'Unione a 27: non è più vero che a Est si annida solo una minaccia per il modello sociale europeo. Da Est arriva un vento che chiede di farla finita con il neoliberismo selvaggio e “mafioso” che ha fatto seguito al crollo del socialismo reale. Hanno appassionato gli interventi tedeschi che, a vario titolo, hanno chiarito che non c'è alcun modello sociale e del lavoro tedesco da imitare o da invidiare: le riforme del mercato del lavoro e degli ammortizzatori sociali imposte da Schröder hanno violentato salari e diritti, mentre le «politiche attive» hanno fatto il resto, imponendo forme di controllo inedite sui tempi di non lavoro e la formazione di milioni di giovani. Proprio dalla Germania è arrivata una grande indicazione di lotta. Il 18-19 maggio, al seguito della giornata di mobilitazione globale proposta dal coordinamento spagnolo 15M per il 15 maggio, il movimento e la sinistra radicale tedeschi intendono occupare la city di Francoforte, contro le politiche di austerità e la troika che sta affamando Atene e l'Europa tutta. Se ne è discusso ulteriormente in una action conference che si tenuta proprio a Francoforte a fine febbraio. Sono state le ICE, «iniziative dei cittadini europei», motivo di riflessione operativa sulle due campagne da avviare nei prossimi mesi. Strumento introdotto dall'articolo 11 dell'infelice Trattato di Lisbona, la ICE consente ai movimenti di attivare, attraverso la raccolta di 1 milione di firme (anche per via telematica) in 7 paesi europei a sostegno di una proposta di legge da presentare alla Commisione, una rete di comunicazione ampia, utile a comporre quel “corpo sociale europeo”, indispensabile per fare dell'Europa sociale da conquistare un obiettivo realistico e non velleitario. L'urgenza della crisi greca…
Per una ricostituente europea
L’indebolimento del percorso dei fori sociali non deve farci demordere. Nel mezzo dell’emergenza e della crisi, sta crescendo una nuova “coscienza europea”.
COMUNICATO DI SOSTEGNO ALLE PROTESTE EUROPEE
COMUNICATO DI SOSTEGNO ALTERNATIVE EUROPEE www.euroalter.it European Alternatives sostiene il movimento nato in Spagna in questi giorni che sta lottando per una democrazia reale capace di offrire ai cittadini una vera scelta politica sul proprio futuro e capace di restituire le principali decisioni economiche al controllo della cittadinanza. Negli scorsi mesi la quasi totalità dei paesi europei è stata soggetta a politiche di austerità, tagli nei sistemi di protezione sociale, e una generale tendenza a riversare sulle fasce più deboli della popolazione i costi della crisi economica e del salvataggio delle banche. Sotto la spinta di un consenso economicista portato avanti dal Consiglio Europeo e dal Fondo Monetario Internazionale, e nella futile difesa di una presunta e oramai moribonda sovranità nazionale, le classi dirigenti europee si sono mostrate non solo incapaci di mettere in pratica gli strumenti necessari per frenare la speculazione finanziaria, ma anche sorde verso le tante proposte alternative emerse dalla società civile europea e da importanti settori del mondo dell’economia. Quello che più colpisce e preoccupa è l’annientamento di ogni vera alternativa nella quasi totalità delle democrazie europee. I partiti della sinistra storica fanno a gara con i partiti conservatori per mostrarsi i più ligi servitori della retorica economicista. La destra xenofoba aggiunge il disprezzo per il diverso e il tentativo di scaricare il malessere popolare sui migranti. In questo contesto la protesta non può che prendere come sua la bandiera della democrazia. Dove democrazia significa in primo luogo costruzione dell’alternativa, e contesto elettorale significa competizione fra diverse possibilità di intendere il bene comune. Questa tragica condizione emerge dall’impossibilità per qualsiasi stato europeo di offrire, da solo, una vera risposta alla crisi economica o a qualsiasi altro grande tema politico dei nostri giorni, dalla migrazione al cambiamento climatico. Incapaci di tenere testa ai mercati mondiali, i nostri dirigenti chinano il capo e si conformano. European Alternatives sostiene il movimento nato in Spagna nel nome della costruzione di una vera democrazia europea dal basso e di un reale governo democratico dell’economia, capace di restituire ai cittadini il controllo sul proprio destino e di dimostrare che la cittadinanza europea è più unita, solidale, e propositiva di quanto il triste spettacolo dei nostri dirigenti non lasci pensare. Facciamo appello a tutti i cittadini d’Europa perché rispondano alla chiamata di Puerta del Sol e agiscano all’unisono nelle settimane e mesi che verranno per costruire un’Europa più democratica, sociale, e solidale, affinché il nostro non torni ad essere un continente tragico e diviso.
Communication de soutien aux manifestations en Europe
Traduction de Camille Nore Alternatives Européennes soutient le mouvement né en Espagne ces derniers jours luttant pour une réelle démocratie, capable d’offrir aux citoyens un vrai choix pour leur futur et de restaurer un contrôle démocratique sur les grandes décisions économiques. Ces derniers mois, presque tous les pays européens ont fait l’objet d’une politique d’austérité, de coupes dans la protection sociale, et d’une tendance générale à répartir de manière disproportionnée le coût de la crise économique et à sauver les banques plutôt que les plus faibles de la population. Sous l’impulsion d’un consensus économique promulgué par le Conseil Européen et le Fond Monétaire International, et dans la vaine défense d’une souveraineté nationale présomptueuse et moribonde, les classes dominantes d’Europe se sont montrées non seulement incapables de mettre en place les instruments nécessaires pour freiner la spéculation financière mais ont aussi fait la sourde oreille face aux nombreuses propositions alternatives faites par la société civile européenne et par une grande partie du secteur des affaires. Le plus frappant et inquiétant est le manque de réelle alternative politique dans presque toutes les démocraties européennes. Les partis historiques de gauche sont en compétition avec les partis conservateurs afin de démontrer qui est le meilleur serviteur de la rhétorique néolibérale. La droite xénophobe et populiste tire profit du désir d’alternatives politiques et tente de placer toute la responsabilité du mécontentement public sur les migrants. Dans ce contexte, toutes les manifestations ne peuvent se faire que sous la bannière de la démocratie. Démocratie signifie avant tout la construction d’alternatives, et les élections doivent signifier la compétition entre différentes interprétations du bien public. Cette tragique situation résulte de l’impossibilité des Etats membres européens à agir par eux mêmes afin d’offrir une réelle réponse à la crise économique ou à quelconque autre grand défi politique de notre temps, des enjeux migratoires à ceux du changement climatique. Incapables de résister au marché mondial, nos leaders s’y résignent. Alternatives Européennes soutient le mouvement né en Espagne au nom de la construction d’une réelle démocratie européenne et d’une réelle gouvernance démocratique de l’économie, capable de redonner aux citoyens le contrôle de leur futur et de démontrer que les citoyens européens sont plus unifiés et déterminés que le triste spectacle de nos politiciens ne veulent nous faire croire. Nous croyons que tous les citoyens européens devraient répondre à l’appel de la Puerta del Sol et agir à l’unisson dans les prochaines semaines et mois pour construire une Europe de la solidarité plus démocratique et sociale et faire en sorte que notre continent ne retombe jamais dans la division ou la tragédie.
Communication of support for the European Protests
European Alternatives supports the movement born in Spain in May, fighting for a real democracy, able to offer citizens a real choice over their own future and to restore democratic control over the main economic decisions. In recent months almost all European countries have been subject to a politics of austerity, cuts to the social security system, and a general tendency to disproportionately place the cost of the economic crisis and of saving the banks onto the weaker parts of the population. Under the impetus of an economic consensus promulgated by the European Council and the International Monetary Fund, and in the futile defense of a presumptuous and moribund national sovereignty, the ruling classes of Europe have shown themselves to be not only incapable of putting in place the necessary instruments to slow down financial speculation, but also deaf to the many alternative propositions made by European civil society and significant parts of the business sector. What is most striking and worrisome is the lack of every real political alternative in almost all democracies in Europe. The parties on the historic left compete with the conservative parties to demonstrate who is the best servant of neoliberal rhetoric. The xenophobic and populist right wing is taking advantage of the desire for a political alternatives and attempts to place all the blame for public unhappiness on migrants. In this context all protest cannot but take place under the banner of democracy. Democracy means first of all the construction of alternatives, and elections must mean competitions between different understandings of the public good. This tragic condition emerges from the impossibility of any European member state acting on its own to offer a real response to the economic crisis or any other great political challenge of our times, from migration to climate change. Incapable of standing up to the global market, our leaders tip their hat and follow it. European Alternatives supports the movement born in Spain in the name of the construction of a real European democracy from the bottom-up, and of a really democratic governance of the economy, capable to give back to citizens the control over their future and to demonstrate that the European citizenry is more united and determined than the sad spectacle of our politicians might lead one to believe. We believe all citizens in Europe should respond to the call from Puerta del Sol and act in unison over the coming weeks and months to construct a more democratic and social Europe of solidarity, and to make sure that our continent does not once more return to division or tragedy.
Ouverture du Festival du Film International des Droits de l’Homme!
Du 6 au 13 mars 2012, le Festival du Film et Forum International sur les Droits Humains (FIFDH) propose des projections, mais aussi des expositions photos, des concerts et débats sur l'état des droits de l'homme dans le monde. Découvrez la bande annonce de l'édition 2012! Cette année, TRANSEUROPA et le FIFDH de Paris croisent leurs points de vue sur deux faits majeurs: l'impact des nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique, et l'ouverture des centres de détention des migrants à la société civile, à travers les films : Fragments d'une révolution, Vol Spécial et La forteresse. Ces thèmes rejoignent les problématiques abordées par l'édition 2012 du Festival Transeuropa, ainsi que dans le cadre de la campagne Open Access Now! menée par Alternatives Européennes et Migreurop au niveau européen, afin d'ouvrir les centres de détention des migrants en Europe aux journalistes et à la société civile. Plus d'informations sur le site du FIFDH!
Alternatives Européennes recrute un Responsable pour la recherche de financement!
Alternatives Européennes recherche un nouveau collaborateur en charge de la recherche de financement (fundraising), pour développer les activités d'AE de promotion de la démocratie, de l'égalité et de la culture au-delà de l’Etat-nation à travers toute l'Europe. Retrouvez l’annonce en anglais ici sur notre site, le poste pouvant être basé à Paris, Rome ou Londres ! Pour envoyer votre candidature (CV+lettre de motivation), écrivez-nous à info@euroalter.com avant le 31 janvier 2012 !
European Alternatives Recruiting Head of Fundraising
Head of Fundraising European Alternatives is recruiting a head of fundraising to develop its activity throughout Europe promoting Democracy, Equality and Culture beyond the Nation state. An opportunity to join a fast growing and dynamic movement working in innovative ways on some of the most urgent questions facing society in Europe. Main responsibilities: Coordinating fundraising activities of local groups Developing membership, patron and donation programs Developing sponsorship programs Extending the contacts of the organisation with grant-making bodies and foundations Profile: Commitment to European Alternatives values and mission (see www.euroalter.com) Demonstrable experience and/or training in fundraising Interest in politics, social questions and culture Multilingual with fluent English + at least 1 language Based in: Paris, Rome or London (or willing to relocate) Working time Flexible between 3-5 days a week. Remuneration according to experience and profile between c.£22,000 – £30,000 pro rata (with possibility of commission) Starting date: 13 February 2012 To apply: Email info@euroalter.com with a cover letter and CV by 31 January 2012
20 activistes européens du Réseau Transeuropa aux Etats Généraux de lEurope !
Le 10 Mars, des membres du Réseau Transeuropa venus de Bulgarie, Allemagne, Roumanie, Grande-Bretagne, Italie, Espagne, Pays-Bas, Pologne, Serbie et République Tchèque participeront aux Etats Généraux de l’Europe, grand rassemblement d’organisations de la société civile européenne, qui se réuniront à Sciences Po ce samedi (plus d'informations ici!). L’objectif de cette journée est d'échanger et de discuter de propositions entre citoyens de l’Union et décideurs nationaux et européens sur des thématiques européennes clés débattues également dans le cadre de la campagne présidentielle française ! Au menu, des débats sur des questions comme la situation des jeunes dans l’UE ou encore les défis européens posés par la crise sur le front économique! Partenaire de l’évènement, Alternatives Européennes proposera, de 13h15 à 14h10 (salle 11 à Sciences Po), un Café Europa au côté des membres européens du Réseau Transeuropa présents à l’évènement. Autour d'un café, vous aurez l'occasion de rencontrer les activistes européens du Réseau Transeuropa, et discuter du Festival Transeuropa et des thématiques d’action d'Alternatives Européennes : migrations et centres de rétention des migrants (Ouverture de la campagne Open Access Now !), économie et démocratie, nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique, ou encore précarité et revenu citoyen européen. Retrouvez tout le programme des Etats Généraux de l’Europe ici! Pour plus d’informations sur le Café Europa, veuillez nous écrire à paris@euroalter.com!
Two shores, one struggle : IndignaCtion Forum
From September 10th – 12th, around 70 young protagonists of the Arab Spring and the European Indignant movements, coming from twenty European and Arab countries, gathered together in the Centre Culturel des Rencontres Abbaye de Neumünster, Head of the Anna Lindh Foundation Network in Luxembourg.
Deux rives, un combat : le forum « IndignaCtion ! »
Du 10 au 12 septembre, près de 70 jeunes protagonistes du printemps arabe et des mouvements européens des Indignés, issus de vingt pays européens et arabes, se sont rassemblés au Centre culturel des Rencontres Abbaye de Neumunster, le siège du réseau de la fondation Anna Lindh au Luxembourg.
FAQs on basic income
by Alessandro Valera 1. Where does the discourse on basic income come from? Work and labour have undergone profound changes since the 1990s. Particularly, Europe witnessed the end offordist labour relations, in which workers would find, after a period of free and stardardised education, a job for life. This job would accompany most workers until they would retire, guaranteeing a certain degree of protection in case of illness, pregnancy or accident. The cost of retiring would be paid off by the taxes on labour paid by workers as well as employers throughout the 30 or so years of continuous labour within the same company or at least within the same sector. This model worked for a few decades of economic boom, demographic structures by which a large number of workers would maintain a smaller pool of retired people, and in which Western Europe faced little economic competition from a poor “third world” and no competition from a socialist “second world”. With the fall of communism, economic globalisations and change in demographic patterns, this model became unsustainable and most countries took steps in liberalising labour, by creating flexibility, in particular in terms of relations between employers and employees. Work became a commodity, used to maximise profit and to be disposed of as soon as it became unnecessary. Young people first, and increasingly large parts of society, had to accept jobs without rules, without protection which contributed to create precarious working conditions, and therefore precarious living conditions (i.e. precarity). The idea of basic income comes from this historical prospective: if labour is no longer able to guarantee welfare to workers and their families, a shift needs to be made by which a minimum level of welfare becomes a human right to which citizens (or residents) of one country should be entitled to, irrespective of their working situation. 2. Wouldn’t a basic income policy discourage people to actually seek work, if they can be paid for doing nothing? Basic income is usually implemented by calculating a poverty threshold, under which a person cannot meet a dignifying standard of life. Anyone who cannot reach this level, through work or other benefits, is paid the remaining quota through a monthly cheque. Although basic income thresholds reach up to 1200 euro a month in countries such as Denmark or Luxemburg, usually they are kept sufficiently high to meet the basic needs of a person, but sufficiently low to encourage most people to actively look for work to improve their welfare. Furthermore, a basic income policy would put workers, and especially precarious workers who are not backed by collective bargaining nor by trade unions, in the position to choose an adequate position without being blackmailed by their employers. This, in turn, is likely to have a positive impact on the economy overall. A guaranteed minimum income would reduce the amount of people who would accept a low-paid, alienating and tiring job and thus leaving employers to face a stark choice: either to increase the salary for these jobs or to invest in technologies and organisational models that are more efficient or more modern. A basic income would also foster entrepreneurship. More people would consider starting a business if they could be covered by a form of income in the first few months or year in which the business would slowly take off and possibly not provide enough income for the entrepreneur. 3. How can European countries, hit by sovereign debt, afford to pay benefits to all those who would qualify for basic income provisions? Basic income provisions would absorb several forms of benefits that already exist (incapacity benefits, unemployment benefits etc) while cutting the costs relating to excessive bureaucracy related to management and check of the different benefits. Nevertheless it would imply a cost for the state that should raise more taxes or cut other services to make this provision affordable. As described above, however, changes in the labour market have gone hand in hand with changes to the economic and financial market. At the moment, the state taxes its citizens by taxing mostly labour (income taxes) or consumption (VAT). With gini- coefficients mirroring the polarisation all across Europe between a shrinking middle class and the strengthening of a small number of super rich, taxation could also change from labour to possession, tackling those owning large assets, land or luxury goods. Even more simply, taxing financial transactions, as it has been advocated for decades, for as low as 0.01% would raise sufficient funds for basic income. Cutting privileges enjoyed by the political elite or of certain religious groups, could also contribute to the cost of a universal basic income provision, as would putting in place radical anti-evasion measures. The message is clear: what is lacking are not possible sources of financing basic income, but political keenness. By implementing changes such as the ones afore-mentioned (or many others) sufficient funds could be secured. 4. How much should be paid monthly to those entitled to receive basic income? In October 2010, the European Parliament voted in favour of a resolution called “Role of Minimum income in combating poverty and promoting an inclusive society in Europe”, which urged member-states to implement a minimum income threshold of at least 60% of the median income of that country. We think that what the European Parliament asks for is a reasonable request. 5. What is the relationship between basic income and gender? The welfare state that dominated in Europe from the end of War War II until basic income was introduced was one in which the family would be the basic unit of welfare, rather than the individual. Often, women would not be engaged in formal labour and confined to domestic and childcare work, and be supported by their working husbands. The welfare system was created in such a way that workers benefits would cover for their partner and children. Women were therefore largely subordinated to the employment conditions of their husband, who could actually have had the time to be outside of the house for…
FAQ sur le revenu de base
by Alessandro ValeraPar Alessandro Valera Traduction: Alexis Gratpenche 1. Quand est apparue l’idée d’un revenu de base ? Le monde du travail a connu des changements profonds depuis les années 90. En Europe, les relations de travail ont vu disparaître le modèle fordien, dans lequel les travailleurs, après un passage par le système éducatif conventionnel et gratuit, trouvaient un travail à vie. Un travail que la plupart des travailleurs conservait jusqu’à leur retraite et qui leur garantissait une certaine protection quand ils tombaient malade, attendaient un enfant ou étaient victimes d’un accident. Les retraites étaient alors financées par les cotisations salariales et patronales prélevées au cours de la trentaine d’années pendant lesquelles l’employé restait dans la même entreprise ou au moins dans le même secteur professionnel. Ce modèle a fonctionné pendant les quelques décennies où l’économie était florissante, où la pyramide démographique faisait en sorte qu’à un petit nombre de retraités correspondait un grand nombre de travailleurs, et où l’Europe occidentale connaissait peu de concurrents économiques dans les pays pauvres du “tiers-monde” et aucun dans les pays socialistes du “second monde”. Avec la fin du communisme, la globalisation et les changements démographiques, ce modèle a cessé d’être viable et la majorité des pays se sont mis à déréguler le monde de travail, en y introduisant une dose de flexibilité, notamment dans les relations entre employeurs et employés. Le travail est devenu un bien de consommation, au service du profit, dont l’on peut se débarrasser quand on en n’a plus le besoin. Les jeunes en premier, puis peu à peu les autres sphères de la population, n’avaient d’autre choix que d’accepter des emplois soumis à aucune règle, ni protégés d’aucune manière, ce qui a contribué à l’apparition de conditions de travail précaires, puis à des conditions de vie précaires (autrement dit, la précarité). L’idée d’un revenu de base a vu le jour dans ce contexte historique : si le travail n’est plus synonyme de protection sociale pour les travailleurs et leur famille, il est nécessaire d’opérer un changement qui fasse de la protection sociale minimum un droit universel auxquels ont droit tous les citoyens (ou résidents) d’un pays, quelque soit leur situation professionnelle. 2. Est-ce que l’instauration d’un revenu de base ne découragerait pas les demandeurs d’emploi à chercher du travail s’ils reçoivent de l’argent pendant leur période d’inactivité ? Le revenu de base est souvent fixé par rapport au seuil de pauvreté, qui marque la limite au-dessous de laquelle un individu ne peut pas vivre dignement. Toute personne qui n’atteint pas ce seuil, par l’emploi ou par d’autres sources de revenu, touche la différence grâce à des indemnités mensuelles. Bien que le seuil de revenu de base puisse atteindre 1200 €uros dans des pays comme le Danemark ou le Luxembourg, il est généralement fixé à un niveau assez élevé pour couvrir les besoins fondamentaux des personnes tout en restant suffisamment bas afin d’encourager la plupart d’entre elles à chercher activement un emploi afin d’améliorer leurs conditions de vie. En outre, un revenu de base permettrait au travailleurs, et avant tout aux travailleurs précaires qui ne bénéficient pas des accords collectifs et du soutien des syndicats, de pouvoir choisir un poste convenable sans avoir à subir le chantage de leur employeur. En retour, une telle politique aurait des répercussions positives sur la situation économique en général. Un revenu de base réduirait le nombre de personnes qui acceptent des emplois aliénants, éreintants et mal payés et pousserait inévitablement les employeurs à choisir entre les deux options suivantes : augmenter la rémunération de ces emplois ou investir dans des technologies et des modèles d’organisation plus efficaces et plus modernes. Un revenu de base favoriserait également l’entrepreneuriat. Davantage de personnes envisageraient de créer leur entreprise s’ils étaient assurés de recevoir une forme de revenu pendant les tout premiers mois, alors que l’entreprise décolle et ne dégage peut-être pas encore un revenu suffisant pour l’entrepreneur. 3. Comment les pays européens, frappés par une crise de la dette souveraine, peuvent-il se permettre de verser des indemnités à tous ceux qui remplissent les conditions d’accès à un revenu de base? Un fonds pour le revenu de base engloberait plusieurs formes de prestations déjà existantes (indemnités d’incapacité, indemnités chômage, etc.), ce qui entrainerait une diminution des coûts excessifs qu’engendre la bureaucratie chargée de l’attribution et de la supervision des différentes prestations. Néanmoins, cette politique aurait un coût pour les Etats, qui alors devraient augmenter leurs recettes fiscales ou réduire le fonctionnement d’autres services pour financer ce fonds. Or, comme il l’a été dit plus haut, les changements dans le monde du travail vont de pair avec des changements sur le marché économique et financier. A l’heure actuelle, les Etats taxent surtout leurs citoyens sur le travail (impôt sur le revenu) et la consommation (TVA). Au regard des coefficients de Gini qui mettent au jour la polarisation qui existe dans l’Europe toute entière entre une classe moyenne de plus en plus restreinte et une petit nombre de super-riches qui gagnent toujours plus, l’imposition pourrait se faire sur les capitaux personnels plutôt que sur le travail, touchant ainsi les propriétaires d’actifs importants, de biens fonciers et de produits de luxe. Ou bien, encore plus simplement, une taxe sur les transactions financières comme celle qui est proposée depuis des décennies, même à 0,01%, serait suffisante pour financer le revenu minimum. La réduction des privilèges de l’élite politique et de certaines organisations religieuses pourrait aussi contribuer à remplir un tel fonds, tout comme la mise en place d’une législation forte en matière d’évasion fiscale. Le message est très simple : ce ne sont pas les sources de financement qui manquent mais le bon-vouloir politique. En mettant en oeuvre ce genre de mesures (et d’autres encore), les Etats seraient assurés du financement de ces fonds. 4. Quelle devrait être la somme à allouer mensuellement aux allocataires ? En octobre 2010, le Parlement européen a voté une résolution dénommée “Rôle du revenu minimum dans la lutte contre la pauvreté et la promotion d’une société inclusive…
AAA: “Act-up Agora Agency”
Il progetto AAA: Act-up Agora Agency” mira ad accendere il dibattito sui programmi dei partiti e sui manifesti per le elezioni europee grazie ad una “agenzia di rating partecipativo dei programmi”.
Open Access Now
La campagna Open Access Now chiede l’accesso incondizionato per i membri della società civile e per i giornalisti ai centri di detenzione per immigrati.
SHAREs – Informing Transnational Action
SHAREs è stato un lungo progetto artistico per sviluppare una collaborazione transnazionale che ha coinvolto persone provenienti da circa 10 paesi europei per stabilire un dialogo duraturo con i paesi non ancora membri dell’UE.
Pas de place pour la discrimination dans notre démocratie européenne: Condamnez le site Internet de Geert Wilders!
Signez la pétition! Aux Pays Bas, le parti anti-migration de Geert Wilders a lancé un site Internet où les citoyens hollandais peuvent de manière anonyme déposer plainte contre des travailleurs d’Europe centrale et de l’Est. Pour faciliter « l’introspection » de ces « plaignants » afin de cibler exactement la « raison » de leur réclamation, cette plateforme propose plusieurs catégories telles que : ivresse publique, trouble à l’ordre public, incitation aux pertes d’emplois etc. La libre circulation des travailleurs et de leur famille est une des valeurs centrales de l’Union Européenne. A ce titre, ce droit fondamental est garanti aux citoyens de l’Union à travers les Traités. Cette initiative est clairement une offense envers les personnes qui ont toute liberté de travailler et de résider au Pays Bas. L’égalité entre les personnes se trouve minée par ce type d’initiatives. Jusqu’à présent, le Premier Ministre hollandais Mark Rutte n’a rien fait pour condamner ce site web. Son gouvernement a été rendu possible grâce au soutien sur plusieurs sujets du Parti de la Liberté de Geert Wilders. Cette action de Geert Wilders a pourtant un impact pour les citoyens vivant au Pays Bas ; puisqu’elle revient à soutenir le traitement inégal dont ces personnes sont victimes. En tant que Premier Ministre, Mark Rutte devrait prendre position pour condamner cette discrimination dont souffre plusieurs citoyens qui sont juridiquement sous sa responsabilité. C’est pour cela que nous voulons promouvoir cette pétition. Nous demandons à Mark Rutte de fermer ce site web afin de montrer clairement que l’intolérance et l’incitation à la discrimination n’ont aucune place dans notre démocratie européenne. Alternatives Européennes
Discrimination has no place in our European democracy: condemn the website of Geert Wilders
SIgn the petition! The Dutch anti-migration party of Geert Wilders has launched a website where Dutch people can file anonymously complaints on workers from Central and Eastern Europe. To make it easy for prospective ‘plaintiffs’ to remember what exactly it is they are resenting, the platform provides handy categories, e.g. public intoxication, disturbing the public peace, spurring job losses etc. The free movement of workers and their families is one of the core values of the EU. As such, this fundamental right is guaranteed to EU citizens by the Treaties. This initiative is clearly offensive against people who have every right to work and reside in the Netherlands. Equality of people is undermined by initiatives like this. Mark Rutte has so far said nothing to condemn this website. His government exists because they are supported on a great number of issues by the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. This action by Geert Wilders has impact on the citizens living in the Netherlands and supports their unequal treatment. As prime minister, Mark Rutte should stand up against this discrimination those living under his jurisdiction and responsibility. That's why we're promoting a petition. We ask Mark Rutte to stop this web site to make clear that such intolerance and incitement to discrimination has no place in our European democracy. European Alternatives
People Power Participation: evaluation
Throughout 2011, European Alternatives has managed the project People, Power, Participation (PPP). After each of the eighteen citizens’ consultations that we organised across Italy, Spain, Romania, France, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom, we distributed a questionnaire to the participants. We have collected and analysed the answers to the questionnaires, which will help us evaluate the impact of our project and to improve the way our forums work in the future. For the full evaluation of the project click here
Cerchiamo un Head of campaigning
European Alternatives aumenta il suo impegno per la costruzione di vere campagne politiche europee – dal pluralismo dell'informazione al reddito garantito, dai diritti dei migranti alla financial transaction tax. Contiamo di essere fra i primi ad utilizzare il nuovo strumento delle Iniziative dei cittadini europei. Per questo motivo stiamo cercando un nuovo Coordinatore delle campagne e della partecipazione che possa organizzare al meglio il nostro lavoro in questo campo. Dato che la posizione richiede ottima conoscenza dell'ingese scritto e parlato, questa job call continua in inglese European Alternatives is increasingly involved in running European campaigns – from media pluralism to basic income, from migrant rights to financial transaction tax. We are planning to be amongst the first to use the new tool of the European Citizens Initiative (ECI), allowing one million citizens from at least seven member states to present a legislative proposal directly to the European Commission. For this reason we are currently hiring an experienced head of campaigning and participation. The position includes: Developing and implementing a successful strategy for transnational campaigns, in particular on the themes of media pluralism and basic income, where we plan to run ECIs from April Building strong transnational support-networks around our campaigns, engaging NGOs, civil society groups, institutional representatives, and social movements from a large number of European countries Engaging our members and supporters, and developing a clear strategy for them and our local groups to participate in campaigning Developing elements of fundraising for the campaigns The ideal candidate wil: Show commitment to European Alternatives values and mission Show previous experience in campaigning or political work Be willing to travel regularly and extensively, including on weekends Be a natural communicator and mediator, able to bring together a plurality of actors around common objectives Have a capacity to relate to and liaison with different levels, from the institutional to the grassroots Have native-level English proficiency, with additional languages an advantage The position can be full-time or part-time Salary: circa €24,000 – €28,000pa (or pro-rata equivalent for part-time) Based in: Rome or Paris Starting: April 1st To apply: please send a CV and a Cover Letter to info@euroalter.com by March 18th with “Head of campaigning” in the subject line
We are hiring a Head of campaigning
European Alternatives is increasingly involved in running European campaigns – from media pluralism to basic income, from migrant rights to financial transaction tax. We are planning to be amongst the first to use the new tool of the European Citizens Initiative (ECI), allowing one million citizens from at least seven member states to present a legislative proposal directly to the European Commission. For this reason we are currently hiring an experienced head of campaigning and participation. The position includes: Developing and implementing a successful strategy for transnational campaigns, in particular on the themes of media pluralism and basic income, where we plan to run ECIs from April Building strong transnational support-networks around our campaigns, engaging NGOs, civil society groups, institutional representatives, and social movements from a large number of European countries Engaging our members and supporters, and developing a clear strategy for them and our local groups to participate in campaigning Developing elements of fundraising for the campaigns The ideal candidate wil: Show commitment to European Alternatives values and mission Show previous experience in campaigning or political work Be willing to travel regularly and extensively, including on weekends Be a natural communicator and mediator, able to bring together a plurality of actors around common objectives Have a capacity to relate to and liaison with different levels, from the institutional to the grassroots Have native-level English proficiency, with additional languages an advantage The position can be full-time or part-time Salary: circa €24,000 – €28,000pa (or pro-rata equivalent for part-time) Based in: Rome or Paris Starting: April 1st or earlier To apply: please send a CV and a Cover Letter to info@euroalter.com by March 18th with “Head of campaigning” in the subject line
Détenus en perdition
Alternatives Européennes, conjointement avec Migreurop, dirige la campagne Open Access Now, demandant à ce que la société civile et les journalistes obtiennent un libre accès aux centres de détention européens.
Launching a European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism
The fourth estate is tempting to many, perhaps to too many, and in several European countries there are multiple cases of editorial independence and information pluralism being threatened. Take note of Hungary who recently passed “a gag order” to regulate all information content by creating a Media Authority and a Media Council, two government-run organisations. The United Kingdom has long struggled with the political effects of the dominant positions of information tycoons, someting clearly brough home last summer in the Murdoch affair. In France, President Sarkozy was recently given the authority to nominate the director of France Television. Romania is considering to calssify certain media information a potential threat to national security. Due to the close ties between politics, organised crime and the media, Bulgaria took last place on the Freedom House list. The anomaly that Italy has represented since 1994, with a prime minifestr directly controlling three private news channels and indirectly controlling three other public channels, should have led to the end of these kind of actions, however the European Union, reneging on its obligations to its citizens, has washed its hands of it and claims no responsibility. In the case of Italy, alarm bells should have sounded and resulted in Italy becoming an example for other European countries. This development has reawakened a debate, more usually originating beyond EU borders. In order to address this situation, starting in 2010 we have been working towards the establishment of a European Initiative for Media Pluralism, a coalition promoting the idea that European institutions should safeguard the right to independent and pluralistic information as sanctioned by the new European Charter on Fundamental Rights. The Initiative ran several conferences throughout Europe and in the European Parliament, amongst which: ? Three regional consultations in Rome (Italy), Iasi (Romania) and Stara Zagora (Bulgaria). These had the aim of bringing together local organisations with an interest in media pluralism, assessing local concerns and methods, and working with local organisations to prepare a common platform in view of the two European conferences in Brussels and Bologna. ? A large, civil-society working conference at the European Parliament co-organised with five and co-financed by four European Parliamentary Groups. ? A public European conference in Bologna, bringing together participants from the previous Brussels conference to fne-tune strategy and gather commitments for next steps of the initiative And now… We are currently working for the construction of a Europe-wide coalition to launch a European Citizen's Initiative* (ECI) on May 31st 2012 demanding a EU directive for the improvement of anti-concentration regulation at EU level for the media and publicity sectors. * Starting from April 2011, the new tool of the “European Citizens’ Initiative” will become available. The Citizens’ Initiative allows civil society coalitions to collect online or offline one million signatures in at least 7 EU member states to present directly to the European Commission a legislative proposal forming the base of a potential EU Directive. How you can take part: – An an individual, show your support and sign up to the Initiative – As an organisation, consider joining the Initiative and become part of Europe's first transnational coalition for the defense of media pluralism! More information available on the Initiative's webpage: www.mediainitiative.eu
Centri di detenzione per migranti: trattamenti inumani e degradanti
Il Rapporto sullo stato dei diritti umani nelle carceri e nei Cie era uscito il 6 marzo scorso, quasi in sordina, poco valutato dalla stampa nazionale.
Transeuropa Festival: London’s calling for volunteers!
Are you interested in gaining valuable experience volunteering for a transnational organisation? If so, this is the right opportunity for you. Join us at 6pm on Tuesday 24th of April at the Lower Cafe of the Rich Mix Cinema (35-47 Bethnal Green Road – E1 6LA – London). For more details check the event on Facebook and join the Transeuropa London page. European Alternatives is an international team, working together to organise Transeuropa Festival which will be held in 15 cities throughout Europe during May. Transeuropa Festival, a transnational festival of culture, arts and politics, promotes political and cultural exchange across Europe and collective action for alternative visions on the economic crisis, migrations and democratic participation. We are looking for the following volunteers to help out for a few hours a week from now until the end of May. Communications Volunteer: supporting the communication referent in advertising and contacting stakeholders for the festival events Events Volunteer: managing the logistical and administrative tasks of the office Press Volunteer: contacting media, managing media partnerships, working on press documents. Design Volunteer: creating brochures, leaflets and online material for the Festival If you're interested in joining the Transeuropa team, contact us at london@euroalter.com! You can download the programme of the festival in London here
Appel à bénévoles pour le Festival Transeuropa!
L’ouverture de la troisième edition du Festival TRANSEUROPA approche! Edition 2012 du Festival: Focus sur Paris Du 9 au 20 mai, le Festival TRANSEUROPA proposera une série d’évènements culturels, artistiques et politiques transnationaux, se déroulant dans 14 villes à travers toute l’Europe :à Amsterdam, Barcelone, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologne, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, Londres, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sofia et Varsovie. Cette troisième edition se clôturera par un forum européen qui aura lieu les 2 et 3 Juin à Rome. Le Festival Transeuropa promeut un échange politique et culturel autour de l’Europe et de l’action collective pour des visions alternatives sur la crise économique, les migrations et la participation démocratique. Du 9 au 13 mai à Paris, le Festival est organisé en collaboration avec Presseurop, Café Babel, Euradio Nantes, Touteleurope, le Festival International du Film des Droits de l’Homme, l’Institut des Cultures d’Islam, le Centre Barbara, le Lavoir Moderne, les Promenades Urbaines, A Travers Paris, Radio Primitive et les vignobles André Lurton. Découvrez le programme des évènements ici! Devenir bénévole du Festival et membre du Réseau Transeuropa! Le Festival TRANSEUROPA est organisé par Alternatives Européennes et le Réseau TRANSEUROPA, qui est un réseau de jeunes militants, intellectuels et curateurs venus de toute l’Europe se mobilisant toute l’année pour organiser plus de 80 évènements dans le cadre du Festival cette année. Le mois de mai est donc une période de mobilisation intense pour tous les militants partout en Europe pour proposer un festival de qualité, gratuit et ouvert à tous! En vous investissant avec le Festival TRANSEUROPA vous aurez l’opportunité d’échanger avec ces personnes , soit directement en les rencontrant aux évènements du Festival en mai, ou plus tard lors des reunions du Réseau qui ont lieu tous les mois dans différentes villes en Europe! A Paris, nous recherchons des bénévoles pour nous aider à organiser l’édition 2012 au mois de mai, mais aussi pour intégrer le Réseau Transeuropa! Découvrez en quoi pourriez-vous nous aider à mettre en oeuvre les évènements du Festival cette année! Vous aimez bouger,être à l’extérieur et communiquer: – Vous pouvez nous aider à distribuer des programmes dans vos endroits favoris – Aider à coller des affiches du Festival – Informer les gens à propos des évènements – Pendant le Festival vous pouvez participer à l’accueil des intervenants et du public, expliquer en quoi consiste le Festival etc. Vous aimez utiliser Internet et les réseaux sociaux : – Vous pouvez agir sur Internet régulièrement et envoyer des news sur FB et Tweeter ou sur d’autres sites à propos du Festival. – Live-tweeter certains évènements – Participer à l’animation de la page Facebook du Festival à Paris – Aider à metre en place le web-streaming et les connections Skype pendant les évènements du Festival – Apporter votre connaissance des nouvelles technologies et réseaux sociaux pour construire une communication efficace et de qualité sur le web entre toutes les villes du Festival! Vous êtes un journaliste et aimez communiquer: – Vous pouvez nous aider à contacter la presse : écrire des communiqués de presse, identifier des journalistes à contacter – Aider à toucher de nouveaux publics en participant à la stratégie de communication – Aider à envoyer des news sur ce qu’il se passe à Paris pendant le Festival aux autres villes hôtes, et rapporter ce qu’il s’est passé dans les autres villes. – Rédiger des articles pour le site web et le blog du Festival à Paris – Réaliser des interviews des intervenants Vous êtes passionnés par la photo et la vidéo: Nous avons besoin de documenter en permanence les évènements du Festival pour informer le plus possible les autres villes participantes! – Vous pouvez être photographe bénévole du Festival et documenter les évènements du Festival, en faisant découvrir votre travail dans d’autres villes en Europe – Vous pouvez également filmer des évènements ou realiser des interviews video, et faire connaitre ainsi votre talent à un large réseau! Vous êtes intéressés par l’évènementiel et la gestion logistique: Nous aurons besoin d’aide pendant le Festival pour preparer les lieux d’accueil des évènements, faire le lien avec les prestataires ainsi qu’avec les intervenants, gérer les goodies du Festival, etc. Vous êtes intéressés par les thématiques du Festival: Droits des migrants, lute contre les discriminations, developer des alternatives à l’austérité économique, redynamiser la participation citoyenne, comprendre les nouvelles formes de mobilisation en Europe mais pas seulement…Autant de sujets d’actualité et de questions cruciales qui peuvent vous intéressent! Venez partager votre point de vue et débattre avec des militants européens de ces questions dans le cadre du Festival! – Entrer au sein d’une discussion en ligne avec d’autres personnes des autres villes qui sont intéressées ou travaillent sur les memes thèmes. – Nous aider à affiner la preparation des évènements en faisant des recherches sur le sujet et en formulant des propositions – Rencontrer des spécialistes français et européens de ces questions qui participant aux évènements du Festival Pour en savoir plus : – Ecrivez-nous à paris@euroalter.com – Suivez-nous sur Facebook sur notre page Transeuropa Paris (et aimez-là!) – www.transeuropafestival.eu
Découvrez le programme du Festival à Paris!
Télécharger le programme de Transeuropa Festival Paris ICI Mercredi 9 Mai : Transeuropa Festival @Faîtes l’Europe! 11h-16h Mairie de Paris, Parvis de l’Hôtel de ville, 75004 Paris Venez discuter des thématiques de Transeuropa 2012, et tenter votre chance au quizz organisé avec Presseurop! Mercredi 9 Mai: La Goutte d’or, terre d’accueil en Europe – Promenade transnationale à partir de 17h30 Métro Barbès (Sortie Boulevard Rochechouart), 75018 Paris Une promenade contée dans la ville multiculturelle européenne avec des contributions de l’artiste Tania Brugera! Rejoignez-nous tout au long du parcours , carte disponible sur www.transeuropafestival.eu (inscriptions limitées sur paris@euroalter.com) Mercredi 9 Mai: Ouverture du Festival Transeuropa! 20h30 Institut des Cultures d’Islam, 19 rue Léon, 75018 Paris Lancement du festival à Paris autour d’un pot festif et d’un concert! Jeudi 10 Mai: “Comme un homme sur la terre”- Projection des Jeudis du Festival International du Film des Droits de l’Homme 20h Cinéma le Latina, 20 Rue Temple, 75004 Paris Récit documentaire par Riccardo Biadene, Andrea Segre et Dagmawi Yimer. Parcours de migrants entre l’Ethiopie et l’Europe, en passant par les centres de rétention en Libye, suivi d’un débat avec Dagmawi Yimer (à confirmer), Flore Murard-Yovanovich (journaliste) et Laure Blondel (Migreurop, Campagne Open Access Now: www.openaccessnow.eu) -Entrées à tarif réduit. Vendredi 11 Mai: HISTOIRES- Regard(s) engagé(s) Sélection de courts métrages proposée par la Cinémathèque de Tanger (105 mn, arabe-français-anglais) 19h30-21h Institut des Cultures d’Islam, 19 rue Léon, 75018 Paris Histoires sur l’engagement politique par ceux qui l’ont vécu et et par la nouvelle génération.Untitled de Neil Beloufa (Algérie, France), My father is still a communist de Ahmed Gossein (Liban/EAU), Wanted de Ali Essafi (Liban/EAU), The story of milk and honey de Basma al Sharif (Palestine), Living Room de Danielle Arbid (Liban) Vendredi 11 Mai: Quand le peuple descend dans la rue, est-ce la démocratie qui l'emporte?” – Débat 21h30 Institut des Cultures d’Islam, 19 rue Léon, 75018 Paris La société civile dans les pays arabes s’est mobilisée contre la dictature; les citoyens européens sont descendus dans la rue pour dénoncer les politiques d’austérité. Pour autant la démocratie s’en trouve-t-elle renforcée? Débat avec Nicolas Haeringer (rédacteur en chef de la revue Mouvements) et Bassem Samir (Directeur de l’ONG Egyptian Democratic Academy), modéré par Guilhem Delteil (RFI) Samedi 12 Mai: Comme c’est étrange! 14h-18h Centre musical Fleury Barbara-Goutte d’Or, 1 rue de Fleury, 75018 Paris Migrez au cours d’un parcours sonore, vidéo et ludique pour lutter contre les stéréotypes! A disposition: témoignages, “librairie vivante”, jeux de rôle, podcasts etc.! Samedi 12 Mai: No control, no borders-Concert 19h Centre musical Fleury Barbara-Goutte d’Or, 1 rue de Fleury, 75018 Paris Zamua, Jessica Fitoussi et des membres du groupes MmMmM! Entrée gratuite, réservation sur paris@euroalter.com Dimanche 13 Mai: Europe: Quelles alternatives aux mesures d’austérité? 14h18h Lavoir Moderne Parisien, 35 rue Léon, 75018 Paris Crise démocratique, crise économique?Quelles solutions alternatives aux réponses données à la crise? Ateliers de discussions avec des activistes et spécialistes européens sur l’économie sociale et solidaire, un système bancaire coopératif, un revenu universel et la question des biens communs. Plus d’infos sur www.transeuropafestival.eu
Il Transeuropa Festival è in arrivo a Bologna. Ecco come partecipare!
Vuoi partecipare in prima persona a un festival transnazionale e poliedrico? Vuoi condividere le tue opinioni sui principali temi di attualità a livello europeo e cerchi una piattaforma valida per farlo? Partecipa al Festival Transeuropa! Dal 9 al 13 maggio torna a Bologna il Festival Transeuropa, il primo festival di cultura e politica veramente transnazionale! Arrivato alla sua terza edizione, quest’anno il festival si rinnova e si estende, con il coinvolgimento contemporaneo di ben 15 città europee (Amsterdam, Barcellona, Belgrado, Berlino, Bologna, Bratislava, Cardiff, Cluj-Napoca, Londra, Lublino, Parigi, Praga, Roma, Sofia, Varsavia). A Bologna il festival prevede cinque giorni ricchi di dibattiti, performance nello spazio pubblico, proiezioni, musica di strada e molto altro! Gli appuntamenti saranno coordinati con le altre città partecipanti, creando una rete europea di eventi. Il Festival si interrogherà sulle sfide poste dalla crisi, analizzerà le nuove forme di partecipazione dal basso e le molteplici sfaccettature di una società multiculturale. Se vuoi partecipare attivamente al festival come volontario, o se semplicemente vuoi saperne di più, partecipa all’aperitivo di presentazione che si svolgerà il 24 aprile alle ore 18.30 alla Linea (Piazza Re Enzo). Per avere più dettagli, clicca sull’evento su Facebook e seguici sulla nostra pagina Transeuropa Bologna.
Il Transeuropa Festival è in arrivo a Bologna. Ecco come partecipare!
Vuoi partecipare in prima persona a un festival transnazionale e poliedrico? Vuoi condividere le tue opinioni sui principali temi di attualità a livello europeo e cerchi una piattaforma valida per farlo? Dal 9 al 13 maggio torna a Bologna il Festival Transeuropa, il primo festival di cultura e politica veramente transnazionale! Arrivato alla sua terza edizione, quest’anno il festival si rinnova e si estende, con il coinvolgimento contemporaneo di ben 14 città europee (Amsterdam, Barcellona, Belgrado, Berlino, Bologna, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, Londra, Lublino, Parigi, Praga, Roma, Sofia, Varsavia). A Bologna il festival prevede cinque giorni ricchi di dibattiti, performance nello spazio pubblico, proiezioni, musica di strada e molto altro! Gli appuntamenti saranno coordinati con le altre città partecipanti, creando una rete europea di eventi. Il Festival si interrogherà sulle sfide poste dalla crisi, analizzerà le nuove forme di partecipazione dal basso e le molteplici sfaccettature di una società multiculturale. Se vuoi partecipare attivamente al festival come volontario, o se semplicemente vuoi saperne di più, partecipa all’aperitivo di presentazione che si svolgerà il 24 aprile alle ore 18.30 alla Linea (Piazza Re Enzo). Per avere più dettagli, clicca sull’evento su Facebook e seguici sulla nostra pagina Transeuropa Bologna.
Al via la Campagna “LasciateCIEntrare”
Nella maggior parte dei paesi dell’UE i giornalisti e la società civile godono di un diritto di accesso nei centri di detenzione per migranti estremamente limitato. In moltissimi casi è impossibile incontrare e parlare con i migranti detenuti. Generalmente solo i parlamentari hanno la possibilità di accedere a tali centri. La scarsa trasparenza che circonda questi luoghi aumenta il rischio di abusi e di violazione dei diritti. La campagna “LasciateCIEntrare” intende condurre nei prosimi giorni delle visite nei Centri di Identificazione ed Espulsione (CIE) nella varie città italiane dove sono presenti . Giornalisti ed organizzazioni della società civile potranno in questo modo verificare le condizioni di vita dei migranti e il reale grado di tutela dei diritti di cui godono. In seguito saranno redatti dei rapporti che riassumano il reale stato dei centri di detenzione; l’attenzione verterà soprattutto sull’effettiva durata della detenzione e sulle eventuali violazioni dei diritti delle persone. Il sito del quotidiano la Repubblica ha oggi pubblicato il video prodotto dai promotori della Campagna. I diritti dei migranti sono inoltre uno dei temi principali del Transeuropa Festival, il quale avrà inizio il 9 Maggio 2012 e si concluderà con un Forum a Roma il 2 e 3 Giugno 2012. Per ogni ulteriore informazione circa il programma del Festival nelle 15 città europee dove avrà luogo è possibile consultare il sito www.transeuropafestival.eu In Italia le visite nei CIE si svolgeranno dal 23 al 28 Aprile con il seguente programma: Campagna “LasciateCIEntrare” Mobilitazione italiana ed europea con OPEN ACCESS NOW in ITALIA dal 23 al 28 APRILE con il seguente programma BOLOGNA – 23 aprile Referente: Cecile Kienge – 366.5044328 – ckyenge@gmail.com TRAPANI – Serraino Vulpitta – 23 aprile Referente: Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo – 392.1246325 – fulvassa@tin.it MODENA – 24 aprile Referente: Cecile Kienge – 366.5044328 – ckyenge@gmail.com MILANO – Via Corelli – 25 aprile Referente: Ilaria Scovazzi – 328.5473099 – scovazzi@arci.it CROTONE – 26 aprile C.A.R.A. Sant’Anna – ore 11.00 Referente: Carmen Messinetti – 393.9012511 – carmenmessinetti@cgilcrotone.it ROMA – Ponte Galeria – 27 aprile CIE PONTE GALERIA – Referente: Gabriella Guido . 329.8113338 – ggabrielle65@yahoo.it CALTANISETTA –27 aprile CIE/CDA/CARA di Pian Del Lago Referente: Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo – 392.1246325 – fulvassa@tin.it TORINO – 27 aprile – ore 10.00/12.00 CIE CORSO BRUNELLESCHI , Ingresso Via Mazzarello, 31 Referente: Lamine Sow – 335.7629613 – sow@cgiltorino.it GRADISCA – 28 aprile Referente: Corinna Opara – 339.1993253 – oparacorinna@yahoo.it Per maggiori informazioni sulla campagna: GABRIELLA GUIDO – ggabrielle65@yahoo.it – 329.8113338 RAFFAELLA COSENTINO – raffaella.cosentino@gmail.com – 333.7401795 BARBARA PERVERSI – barbara.perversi@gmail.com – 347.9464485 Su FACEBOOK: LasciateCIEntrare Sito web: http://www.openaccessnow.eu/it
Prochaines étapes après le forum de Rome
Traduction par Camille Nore Les 10 et 12 Février, Alternatives Européennes a organisé un important forum transnational pendant trois jours au Teatro Valle à Rome, réunissant plus de 40 organisations venant de 8 pays européens. Voici notre feuille de route pour la suite. Les leaders européens semblent incapables d’imaginer des alternatives sociales et économiques à la crise européenne et accroissent simplement sur des mesures d’austérité et des coupes dans les dépenses sociales, enfonçant un peu plus l’Europe plus loin dans la récession. Nous croyons qu’il est maintenant temps pour les citoyens européens de décider et de mener des actions coordonnées, ainsi que de montrer qu’une issue alternative à la crise – basée sur la participation, la solidarité et le contrôle démocratique sur l’économie et la finance – est possible. Pour cette raison, les 10 et 12 Février, Alternatives européennes a organisé un important forum transnational pendant trois jours au Teatro Valle à Rome réunissant plus de 40 organisations venant de 8 pays européens (plus d’infos sur le forum) Le forum de Rome a lieu à la suite d’un autre meeting transnational important organisé par Alternatives Européennes au Parlement Européen le 30 Novembre, qui a ouvert la voie au meeting de Rome (plus d’infos ici) Nous travaillons maintenant à établir une suite claire pour veiller à ce qu’un processus de politique transnationale soit engagé durant les prochains mois. Voici les points principaux de conclusion : • Nous sommes d’accord pour lancer une campagne européenne sur le revenu minimum, en utilisant le nouvel outil de l’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne (ICE), qui permet à au moins un million de citoyens d’au moins 7 Etats Membres de remettre une proposition législative directement à la Commission Européenne en collectant des signatures hors et sur internet. Proposer un revenu minimum européen signifie se battre pour une plus forte protection sociale pour les jeunes, les travailleurs précaires, les chômeurs et les pauvres, exigeant que tout le monde puisse jouir du droit à une vie indépendante et digne. Le Parlement Européen, dans une résolution d’Octobre 2012 (ici), a déjà exigé une telle politique. Avec cette campagne, nous souhaitons défendre ce droit et s’opposer directement à l’attaque contre la protection sociale en Europe. Durant les prochains mois, nous voulons organiser des meetings dans le plus grand nombre de pays européens possible, sur les thèmes de la précarité, du chômage parmi les jeunes et du revenu de base. Nous prévoyons déjà des forums à Londres et à Barcelone. • Nous nous sommes mis d’accord, en particulier avec les artistes et les intellectuels du Teatro Valle, pour explorer le thème du Peuple et du bien commun, comme réponse à la volonté de privatiser constamment les services de base au niveau européen (l’eau, la santé, le bien commun numérique et la propriété intellectuelle, etc.). Nous voulons construire une Europe non pas basée sur la clôture des biens et des services fondamentaux et leur soumission à une logique marchande, mais une Europe où tous les citoyens peuvent en profiter pleinement. Nous explorerons ce thème lors d’une série de meetings durant le festival Transeuropa, et nous planifions un forum à Bucarest pour poursuivre le travail commencé à Rome. • Enfin, nous avons conclu qu’il est essentiel d’aller au-delà des exigences spécifiques (revenu commun) et de penser à de nouveaux moyens de fédérer tous les groupes et les réalités résistant à la réponse actuelle qui est donnée face à la crise économique – du travail des ONG à l’occupation des espaces publics, des protestations actuelles en Europe de l’Est aux appels pour une démocratie européenne plus grande. Par conséquent, nous imaginons un grand forum transnational pour conclure le festival Transeuropa en Mai, rassemblant des membres du réseau, des activistes, des organisations et des mouvements sociaux de toute l’Europe, pour travailler ensemble à la construction d’un contre-pouvoir citoyen transnational et de la base vers le haut face à l’Europe des accords intergouvernementaux et des mesures d’austérité. Vous voulez vous engager et nous aider à amener ce processus plus loin ? Alors rejoignez notre Réseau Transeuropa, et devenez un acteur essentiel de la construction du futur d’Alternatives Européennes ! Comment les membres du Réseau Transeuropa peuvent agir ? • Aidez-nous à mener nos campagnes! Notre but est de vous tenir au courant de chacune de nos avancées dans la construction de l’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne, et bientôt viendra le moment de collecter les signatures et d’informer tout le monde dans votre ville à propos de la campagne ! • Dîtes-nous ce que vous pensez ! Utiliser l’espace commentaires au bas de cette page pour nous permettre d’avoir votre opinion ou suggestions d’idées, de problèmes, d’organisations à engager dans ce processus. • Organiser des débats locaux sur un de ces sujets avec votre groupe local : si besoin, nous sommes ravis de vous aider à imaginer un angle intéressant pour approcher le débat ! • Pour ceux qui sont engagés dans les préparations du Festival, réfléchissez à comment peut être présenté durant le Festival le processus entamé à Rome, utilisant aussi les évènements actuels pour rassembler les organisations partageant notre approche. • Faites passer le message! Si vous aimez nos actions, dites à vos amis de rejoindre le groupe local et le Réseau Transeuropa (ici) : nous devons être nombreux pour avoir un impact ! Alternatives Européennes aimerait remercier tous ses membres et partenaires pour leur soutien : une Europe basée sur l’égalité, la Démocratie, et la culture est une construction commune rendue possible par votre passion et votre engagement !
Next steps after the Rome forum
Over February 10-12 European Alternatives organised an important three-day transnational forum in the Teatro Valle in Rome with over forty organisations from eight European countries. Here is our plan for follow-up. European leaders seem unable to imagine social and economic alternatives to the European crisis, and merely insist on austerity measures and cuts to social spending, driving Europe further into recession. We belive it is now time for European citizens to take coordinated action, and show that an alternative way out of the crisis – one based on participation, solidarity, and democratic control over the economy and finace – is possible. For this reason over February 10-12 European Alternatives organised an important three-day transnational forum in the Teatro Valle in Rome with the participation of over forty organisations from eight European countries (information on the forum). The Rome forum follows another important transnational meeting organised by European Alternatives in the European Parliament on November 30, which paved the way to the Rome meeting (information here). We are now working on a clear follow-up to make sure a transnational political process is started over the coming months. Here are the main points of conclusion: We have agreed to launch a European campaign on basic income, also using the new tool of the European Citizens Initaitive (ECI), which allows at least one million citizens from at least 7 member states to present a legislative proposal directly at the European commission by collecting signatures online and offline. Proposing a European basic income means fighting for stronger social protection for young people, precarious workers, the unemployed and the poor, demanding that everyone be granted the right to a dignified and independent life. The European Parliament, in a Resolution from October 2010 (here), already demanded such a policy. With this campaign we wish to take up this demand and directly oppose the attack on welfare protection in Europe. Over the coming months we are looking to organise meetings in as many European countries as we can on the theme of precarity, youth unemplyment, and basic income. We are already planning forums in London and Barcelona. We have agreed, in particular with the artists and intellectuals of the Teatro Valle, to explore the theme of “commons” and common goods, as a response to the drive towards continuous privatisations of basic services at European level (water, heatlh, digital commons and intellectual property, etc.). We want to construct a Europe based not on the enclosure of fundamental goods and services and their subservience to profit, but a Europe where all citizens can enjoy access to them. We will explore this theme in a series of meetings during Transeuropa Festival, and are planning a forum in Bucharest to take forwards the work started in Rome. Finally, we have concuded it is essential to go beyond specific demands (basic income, commons) and think of new ways of federating together all those groups and realities resisting the current response to the economic crisis – from the work of NGOs to the occupations of public spaces, from current protests in Eastern Europe to calls for greater European democracy. We are therefore imagining a large transnational forum to conclude Transeuropa festival in May, bringing together network members, activists, organisations, and social movements from throghout Europe to work together for the construction of a transnational, bottom-up, citizens’ counter-power to the Europe of inter-governmental agreements and austerity measures. Do you want to take a stand and help us take this process forwards! Then join our Transeuropa Network, and become a key player in shaping the future of European Alternatives! What can Transeuropa Network members do? Help us run the campaigns! We aim to keep you informed of every next step in the construction of the European Citizens Initiative, and soon the time will come to start collecting signatures and telling everyone in your city about the campaign! Tell us what you think. Use the comment box at the bottom of this page to let us have your opinion or suggestions of ideas, issues, organisations to engage on this process. Think of organising local debates on either of these topics with their local group: if needed we are delighted to help you think of an interesting angle to the debate! For those involved in the Festival preparations, think how the process started in Rome can be best presented during the Festival, using the events also to bring together organisations sharing our approach. Spread the word! If you like what we do, tell your friends to join your local group and Transeuropa Network (here): we need to be many to have an impact! European Alternatives would like to thank all its members and partners for their support: a Europe based on equality, democracy, and culture is a common construction made possible by your passion and engagement!
Between Translation and Action – New forms of political mobilisation
The awakening of a new form of political consciousness faces many challenges, but there are two crucial ways that many of these challenges can be understood: as a problem of translation, and as a problem of action.
Entre traduction et action – les nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique
La naissance d’une nouvelle forme de conscience politique fait face à beaucoup de défis, mais il y a deux manières essentielles de comprendre ces défis : dans une approche de « traduction », et dans une approche d’ « action ».
Tra Traduzione e Azione – Nuove forme di mobilitazione politica
Il risveglio di una nuova forma di consapevolezza politica si trova di fronte svariate sfide, ma due sono i modi cruciali per poter arrivare a comprenderne molte: come un problema di traduzione e come un problema di azione.
As we move: migration, borders and social change
The act of migrating extends far beyond the act of moving across a geographical space. Within the borders of Europe, migrants are increasingly mobilising in response to discrimination and socio-economical marginalisation to demand their rights.
En mouvement : migration, frontières et changement social
Migrer suppose bien plus que le simple fait de changer d’espace géographique. À l’intérieur des frontières de l’Europe, les migrants sont de plus en plus mobilisés pour revendiquer leurs droits face à la discrimination et à la marginalisation socio-économique.
Mentre ci muoviamo: migrazione, mobilitazione e cambiamento sociale
L’atto di migrare va ben oltre l’atto di spostarsi su uno spazio geografico. All’interno dei confini dell’Europa, i migranti si stanno sempre di più mobilitando per rispondere alla discriminazione e all’emarginazione socio-economica, reclamando i loro diritti.
Quizz à la fête de l’Europe: toutes les réponses ici!
Retrouvez les réponses des quizz du mardi 8 et du mercredi 9 mai proposés lors de la Fête de l’Europe, en partenariat avec Presseurop et Touteleurope ! Merci pour votre participation, et bravo aux gagnants ! Ces derniers ont été contactés par mail à propos de leur lot. N’hésitez pas à nous écrire à paris@euroalter.com si vous désirez plus d’infos sur les réponses ci-dessous ! Réponses Quizz du Mardi 8 Mai Politique 1) Quel a été le premier nom de l’Union européenne ? ? CECA : Communauté européenne du charbon et de l'acier ? CED : Communauté européenne de défense ? CEE : Communauté économique européenne 2) Quel pays ne fait pas partie de l’Union européenne ? ? La République Tchèque ? Malte ? La Turquie 3) Qui est le chef de l'Etat en Allemagne ? ? Angela Merkel ? Christian Wulff ? Joachim Gauck Société 4) Dans quel pays de l’UE le mariage homosexuel n’est-il pas reconnu ? ? Pays Bas ? Portugal ? Grande-Bretagne 5) Quel pays membre de l’UE a admis l’année dernière l’idée de créer un salaire minimum ? ? Irlande ? Allemagne ? Pays-Bas 6) Un citoyen de l'UE résidant dans un autre pays de l'Union peut-il voter dans son pays de résidence aux élections municipales et européennes ? ? Oui ? Non Culture 7) Quel film a remporté le Prix LUX du cinéma en 2011 ? ? Play de Ruben Östlund (Suède, France, Danemark) ? Les neiges du Kilimandjaro de Robert Guédiguian (France) ? The Artist de Michel Hazanavicius (France) 8) Dans quels pays se déroulera le Championnat d’Europe UEFA de football 2012 (Euro 2012) ? ? Ukraine et Croatie ? Pologne et Ukraine ? Pologne et Allemagne 9) Quelle est la langue parlée en Finlande ? ? Le finlandais ? Le suomi ? Le finnois 10) Quelle était la nationalité du compositeur Frédéric Chopin ? ? Allemande ? Française ? Polonaise Bonus 11) Qui a dit la célèbre phrase « I want my money back » ? ? Tony Blair ? Margaret Thatcher ? Bill Clinton 12) Dans quel pays n’existe-t-il pas de congé paternité ? ? Italie ? Suède ? Grande-Bretagne Réponses Quizz du Mercredi 9 Mai La crise économique 1) Quelle agence de notation a dégradé la note de plusieurs pays dont la France et l’Autriche ? ? Fitch Ratings ? Moody's ? Standard & Poor's 2) Quel est le montant du plan d’aide accordé à la Grèce en 2012 ? ? 15,5 milliards d’euro ? 35,5 milliards d’euro ? 55,5 milliards d’euro 3) En quelle année a démarré la crise des subprimes qui a donné naissance à la crise économique et financière actuelle ? ? En 2007 ? En 2008 ? En 2009 Les migrations 4) De quel pays vient la plus grande part de la population immigrée en Allemagne ? ? Autriche ? Grèce ? Turquie 5) Qu’est-ce que l’espace Schengen ? ? Un espace de libre circulation des personnes ? Un espace de libre circulation des biens ? Un espace de libre circulation des biens et des personnes 6) Un citoyen de l'UE résidant dans un autre pays de l'Union peut-il voter dans son pays de résidence aux élections municipales et européennes ? ? Oui ? Non Les nouvelles formes de participation politique 7) Parmi ses slogans, lequel n’a pas été repris par le mouvement des Indignés – au sens large ? ? Démocratie réelle maintenant ? Révolution par la rue ? Nous sommes les 99% 8) L’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne, introduite en avril 2012, permet à des citoyens de 7 pays différents de l’UE de proposer une loi à la Commission Européenne, qui a l’obligation de l’étudier. Combien de signatures doivent-ils recueillir au minimum pour cela ? ? 7 millions, venant de citoyens européens originaires de 7 pays ? 1 million, venant de citoyens originaires de 7 pays ? 700 000, venant de citoyens originaires de 7 pays 9) Dans quel pays européen le mouvement des Indignés est-il né ? ? Grèce ? Espagne ? Grande-Bretagne Bonus 10) Pourquoi la convention d’ouverture des frontières entre pays signataires se nomme «Convention de Schengen » ? ? Schengen est un village positionné sur une frontière ? Schengen est le nom du fonctionnaire européen à l’origine de la convention ? Schengen est le nom d’une commune au Luxembourg
Launch of the first European Citizens Initiative on Media Pluralism
European Parliament PHS P7C050, 3pm, 31 May 2012 Teatro Valle, Rome, 6pm, 2 June 2012 On May 31st the first European Citizens’ Initiative on media pluralism will be launched in the European Parliament by a coalition of civil society organisations, academic departments, and media from 9 European member states. The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) allows at least one million citizens from at least seven member states to present a legislative proposal directly to the European Commission. According to most independent accounts, the situation of media freedom and pluralism in the European Union is worsening. European Institutions have, so far, refrained from taking a strong stance against individual Member States for such deterioration. This hands-off approach seems to have contributed to a negative domino effect, with worsening of legislation in one country indirectly leading to restrictive moves in another, as recently evidenced by the closing down of Klubradio by the Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán. “A Europe-wide civil society initiative to push for a stronger role for European institutions in safeguarding and protecting the independence and pluralism of the media is long overdue, and we plan to use this new tool of participative democracy to demand that European institutions really safeguard the right to independent and pluralistic information as sanctioned by the Lisbon Treaty and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights”, says Lorenzo Marsili, director of European Alternatives, one of the promoters of the Initiative. The proposed ECI calls on the Commission to use its antitrust powers to fight concentration of the media market and dominant positions in member states, ensuring respect for pluralism and freedom of enterprise. Countries participating in the launch of the ECI are: France, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom, Romania, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Portugal. Information The launch will take place in the European Parliament, room PHS P7C050, 15.00h -18.30h. For press information, please contact Anna Lodeserto, a.lodeserto@euroalter.com Visitors wishing to access the European Parliament should send by 28th May 2012 their full name, address, organization, nationality, ID and date of birth to: a.lodeserto@euroalter.com.
In piazza con La meglio gioventù
La precarietà non è un’emergenza del mercato del lavoro, è il più grande attacco alla democrazia italiana degli ultimi decenni. La precarietà significa essere costretti a sopravvivere e si manifesta nella fotografia del diritto allo studio negato, delle scuole che crollano, dell’aumento delle tasse all’università, dell’impossibilità di scioperare o dire no di fronte a un sopruso sul lavoro, di non poter amare la nostra compagna o il nostro compagno, di pagare un affitto o comprarsi una lavatrice ed essere indipendenti, così come lo sono i giovani nel resto d’Europa. European Alternatives è felice di aderire alla mobilitazione nazionale “La meglio gioventù” in programma il 26 maggio a Roma. IL TESTO DELL'APPELLO Sostiene questo Paese con idee, desideri, progetti, volontariato, azioni concrete, scopre nuovi mondi e inventa il futuro eppure è sempre disoccupata, in cerca di lavoro, precaria, senza stipendio. Studia per dare il meglio di sé e migliorare le vite di tutti e di tutte, ma una volta laureata è costretta ad andarsene. E’ composta di giovani donne che vivono in un Paese ancora a misura di vecchi modelli maschili, giovani donne che non trovano alcuna opportunità. Produce ricchezza e non ha niente in cambio: i giovani operai perdono il lavoro; i piccoli imprenditori sono costretti a chiudere l’attività. Lavora ma in nero e sul lavoro rischia la propria vita e a volte la perde, perché non ci sono tutele e perché allo Stato e alle imprese spesso non interessa investire in sicurezza. L’arricchiscono ragazzi nati in Italia da genitori immigrati in Italia e che non sanno se in futuro saranno riconosciuti italiani. Questa è la meglio gioventù del nostro tempo, la gioventù detiene in Europa il primato come Neet, l’acronimo inglese in cui si ingabbia una generazione a cui non viene riconosciuto quel che già fa o che non può più studiare, lavorare, che non ha mai avuto l’opportunità di contribuire al cambiamento del proprio Paese, mentre la disoccupazione giovanile sfiora il 36%. In nome di questa generazione il Governo Monti propone una riforma sbagliata, una truffa per tutti e in primo luogo per i giovani. In nome di questa generazione le politiche di austerity del Governo e della BCE cancellano il futuro di tutti, perpetuando lo stesso modello che ha alimentato le disuguaglianze, che ci ha condotto alla crisi economica e al fallimento di un intero continente. Il disegno di legge sul mercato del lavoro presentato dal governo non risponde ai problemi principali che affliggono la vita di una generazione intera: lascia intatta la giungla delle 46 forme contrattuali, comprese quelle che il Governo aveva annunciato di voler eliminare; non estende gli ammortizzatori sociali, visto che l’assicurazione per l’impiego lascerà fuori buona parte dei lavoratori precari; non prevede nessuna forma di reddito minimo; scarica l’aumento di costo dei contratti a progetto sulle buste paga dei collaboratori; rappresenta una beffa per le reali partite iva che dovranno pagare di tasca loro l’aumento dei contributi. Le tante promesse del Governo non sono state mantenute, così i giovani sono diventati il pretesto per precarizzare chi ha ancora un contratto stabile, altro che tutelare i precari! Si è cercato, in questi anni, di dividere i padri dai figli, le madri dalle figlie, i “garantiti” dai “non-garantiti”. Noi pensiamo che ci siano oggi, come ieri, i ricchi e i poveri, chi vive di sfruttamento e speculazione e chi vive di lavoro. Per questo vogliamo mobilitarci assieme ai nostri padri e alle nostri madri, perché vogliamo unire due generazioni nella difesa dei diritti e nella lotta contro la precarietà, perché non è vero che non c’è alternativa alla disperazione attuale. I suicidi di questi giorni ci parlano di questo: quando si parla di “salva Italia” bisognerebbe pensare a quelle vite spezzate e alle tante solitudini che la precarietà e le disuguaglianze hanno creato. La precarietà non è un’emergenza del mercato del lavoro, è il più grande attacco alla democrazia italiana degli ultimi decenni. La precarietà significa essere costretti a sopravvivere e si manifesta nella fotografia del diritto allo studio negato, delle scuole che crollano, dell’aumento delle tasse all’università, dell’impossibilità di scioperare o dire no di fronte a un sopruso sul lavoro, di non poter amare la nostra compagna o il nostro compagno, di pagare un affitto o comprarsi una lavatrice ed essere indipendenti, così come lo sono i giovani nel resto d’Europa. Per noi la precarietà è il messaggio che da vent’anni una classe dirigente ci trasmette: andatevene. Noi vogliamo restare, cambiare le nostre vite e dare un presente al nostro Paese. Vogliamo poter dire che il nostro problema è la precarietà e l’impossibilità di costruirci un futuro. Ancora prima del posto fisso e dell’articolo 18, ci interessa costruire un paradigma diverso, un altro modello di sviluppo e un welfare diverso, che ricomponga le sue basi sui principali diritti di cittadinanza. Abbiamo proposte migliori di quelle del Governo. Noi chiediamo di investire su Università e Ricerca, di riconvertire ecologicamente il nostro sistema industriale per creare buoni e nuovi posti di lavoro. Chiediamo un modello di welfare universale, finanziato dalla fiscalità generale e da una patrimoniale che colpisca chi finora non ha mai pagato la crisi: rendite parassitarie, profitti finanziari, grandi capitali. Un welfare che si faccia promotore e fattore di crescita, personale prima che economica, e insieme garanzia di diritti e tutele. Chiediamo che venga bandita sul serio la truffa della precarietà. Ad un lavoro stabile deve corrispondere un contratto stabile e i diritti fondamentali devono essere estesi a tutte le forme di lavoro: l’equo compenso, il diritto universale alla maternità/paternità e alla malattia, i diritti sindacali, il diritto ad una pensione dignitosa, la continuità di reddito nei periodi di non lavoro, la formazione continua. Chiediamo infine un reddito minimo, fatto di sussidi e servizi, per garantire la dignità della vita e del lavoro com’è in tutti i paesi europei (e come definito nella risoluzione del Parlamento europeo 2010/2039, approvata – a larghissima maggioranza – il 20 ottobre 2010). E’ necessaria una grande mobilitazione contro la precarietà, per il reddito, per i saperi e per…
La Marche Transnationale
Cet article fait partie du Journal Transeuropa publié à l'occasion du Festival Transeuropa 2012 Par Sara Saleri Le Festival Transeuropa ouvrira le 9 mai avec un évènement transnational- un geste commun-, simple et symbolique à la fois: une marche ayant lieu simultanément dans toutes les villes du Festival. Le fait même de marcher, simple et ordinaire à la fois, est le moyen privilégié pour placer le corps dans l'espace public de la ville, en prise directe avec la fabrique urbaine. Pour reprendre des mots de De Certeau, “c’est dans l'acte de marcher que les personnes écrivent et réécrivent la ville comme étant leur espace”. Lorsqu’elle est menée de manière collective (dans le cadre d’une manifestation ou d’un défilé), la marche (ou promenade) devient un puissant moyen pour transformer l'espace environnant, pour se l'approprier et le ré-exprimer. En marchant collectivement dans différentes villes d'Europe, nous créerons un espace transnational commun à travers un geste à la fois créatif, critique et politique. Tous ensemble, les mouvements des corps produiront un ensemble de trajectoires et également une forme de discours – un discours sur la ville, sur l'expérience urbaine, sur l'Europe elle-même. L'ouverture du Festival Transeuropa ne consiste pas en un ensemble de promenades distinctes, mais en un événement unique ayant lieu à travers tout le continent, créant ainsi une carte complexe liant toutes les villes entre elles. Comme avec n'importe quelle carte, celle-ci est construite à partir d'un point de vue spécifique, une sorte de lentille permettant de lire le paysage urbain européen: une lentille fournie par les réseaux transnationaux de migrants, qui produisent de nouvelles identités, de nouveaux espaces, des (dé)localisations nouvelles et variables. Notre carte a pour but d’explorer la diversité culturelle et les multiples mouvements des villes contemporaines, en examinant comment l’espace européen s’enrichit de ces dynamiques diverses et multiculturelles. Dans chaque ville, la promenade ira à la rencontre de lieux portant des signes de l'expérience migratoire: des quartiers «multiculturels» comme el Raval à Barcelone ou Barbès- la Goutte d’Or à Paris, aux recoins cachés et petites rues de Varsovie, au centre-ville de Cluj et ses stratifications historiques de la diversité. Dans chaque aspect formant la configuration complexe de ces quartiers, nous apercevons des signes de la mobilité inhérente au projet et à l'expérience migratoires. Voyage et déplacement – qui sont au centre du projet migratoire – animent continuellement les lieux où les migrants s'installent, ou semblent s’installer. Nos trajectoires dans ces quartiers raconteront ces mouvements et déplacements inhérents aux migrations, en ajoutant une autre couche: les géographies migratoires de chaque ville “migreront” symboliquement dans les autres villes, les narrations urbaines voyageant de ville en ville au cours de cette promenade transnationale. Dans chaque ville, chaque arrêt de la marche racontera ou évoquera ainsi une narration d'un lieu d’une autre ville du Festival, créant une sorte de “porte spatio-temporelle” s’ouvrant vers une autre ville européenne. Performances théâtrales, vidéos, photos, musique: tous ces éléments contribueront à ce déplacement temporaire. Ainsi, la marche transnationale crée une juxtaposition, une carte multi-couches et constitue un moment paradoxal de déconstruction et de recomposition, une expérience ambiguë entre emplacement et déplacement. Chaque promenade sera une exploration et une réappropriation par la base d'un quartier, ce qui nous permettra de cartographier des lieux méconnus ou de dialoguer avec de nouvelles pratiques. Dans le même temps, cette promenade entraînera une sensation de déplacement et de dépaysement. Les participants auront la possibilité de marcher à travers l'Europe tout en se déplaçant dans les rues de leurs villes, et en même temps, pourront explorer une nouvelle ville imaginaire. Tous répandus à travers le continent, réunis dans une carte idéale par des bribes de cartes provenant de toutes les villes. A l’occasion de la Journée “officielle” de l’Europe, nous voulons raconter une autre histoire de l’Europe- une Europe complexe et plurielle- qui doit reconnaitre sa propre diversité.
The Transnational Walk
This article is part of the Transeuropa Journal that will be published in conjunction with the Transeuropa Festival 2012. by Sara Saleri The Transeuropa Festival opens on the 9th of May with a transnational event – a common gesture – simple and powerful at the same time: a walk taking place simultaneously in all the Festival cities. The act of walking itself, simple and ordinary as it is, is the prime way to place one’s body in space, to link effectively with the public space of the city, taking direct contact with the urban fabric. To use De Certeau’s words, “it is in the act of walking that persons write and rewrite the city as their space”. Through these trajectories the city takes shape, as a crossroads of moving beings. When enacted collectively (in a demonstration, or in a parade), walking becomes a powerful means to transform the surrounding space, to appropriate it and re-signify it. Walking collectively in many different European cities, we will create a transnational common space through a critical, political and creative gesture. The movements of the bodies, all together, will produce a set of trajectories and also a form of discourse – a discourse about the city, about the urban experience, about Europe itself. The Transeuropa Festival opening is not a set of separate walks, but a unique event spread across the continent, creating a complex map which links all the cities. As with any map, this map is built starting from a specific perspective, a lens to read the European urban landscape: the one provided by the transnational networks of migrants, which produce new identities, new spaces, new and varying (de)localizations. Our map is to explore the cultural diversity and the multiple movements of the contemporary cities, investigating how the European space is enriched by it being diverse and multicultural. In every city, the walk explores places showing traces of the migratory experience, ranging from ‘multicultural’ neighbourhoods such as Raval in Barcelona or Barbès in Paris, to the hidden angles and side streets of Warsaw, or the city centre of Cluj, with its historical stratifications of diversity. In every aspect of the complex configuration of these neighbourhoods, we find signs of the mobility inherent to the project and experience of migration. Travel and displacement – which are at the centre of the migration project – do not stop animating the places where the migrants settle, or seem to settle. Our trajectories in these neighbourhoods take this movement and displacement seriously, by adding another layer: the migratory geographies of each city symbolically “migrate” in the other cities, urban narrations travel from a city to another. In every city, each stop of the walk will tell or evoke a narration of a place in another place in one of the Festival’s cities, creating a sort of ”spatio-temporal gate”, opening towards another European city. Theatrical performances, videos, photos, music: all these elements will contribute to this temporary displacement. So, the transnational walk creates a juxtaposed, multi-layered map and is a paradoxical moment of unsettling and resettling, an ambiguous experience between location and dislocation. Each walk will be an exploration and re-appropriation from below of a local neighbourhood, allowing us to map hidden places, dialogue with new practices. At the same time it will provoke a sense of displacement and of being out of place. The participants will have the possibility to walk across Europe while moving in the well–known streets of their cities, and at the same time explore a new, imaginary city. Stretching throughout the continent, uniting in an ideal map from bits of maps of the other cities. On the ‘official’ Day of Europe, we want to tell another story of Europe – a plural, complex Europe – which has to recognize its own diversity.
Join Transeuropa Festival! Become a Volunteer!
TRANSEUROPA Festival The first transnational Festival in Europe For Democracy, Equality and Culture beyond the Nation State! Even if you only have 30 seconds You can help TRANSEUROPA Festival to be interesting and successful What are opportunities opened up by a participation in TRANSEUROPA Festival? TRANSEUROPA Festival is organised by European Alternatives through a network of young activist, intellectuals, curators from all over Europe. By involving with TRANSEUROPA Festival you’ll get a chance to get in touch with all these people, either directly, meeting them at the Festival events or later to Transeuropa Network meetings or through internet – interacting with them on the web. If you have: …30 seconds: LIKE the TRANSEUROPA (name of your city) Facebook page, e.g. “Transeuropa London“ Join EA Decide on which festival event I want to come to… …2 minutes: Same as above (2 min) + LET my friends know about it Invite my friends to come to EA opening event and LIKE Transeuropa FB page Write a tweet about the festival to my community (#transeuropa) ….5 minutes: Same as above (2 min) + Think at other people I know, or have worked with who would be interested, find their contact, send them an email Write down in my calendar the date of the event I am coming to …1 or 2 hours: Same as above (2 min) + Come to one of our preparatory meeting and/or one event of the Festival contacting the the Transeuropa page of your city .…More: THANKS a lot! Your hep can them become more specific depending on your skills and will so go down the list You like being outside and chat with people: – you can help to distribute programmes in your favourite places – put up posters – and let people know about the Festival – during the festival you can come to events, welcome participants, explain what the Festival is about You are a geek and you LOVE the internet or complicated software – you can act on the web regularly and send news on FB and tweet or on other websites about the Festival – you can help us setting up the web-streaming during the festival – Set up Skype connection – and help with all the technology during festival events You are a journalist or a natural communicator – you can help us contact the press: write press release, help identify journalists to contact, write articles for the EA website – you can help us reach out new publics while assisting the communication strategy – you can help us send news about what happened in Paris during the festival to other cities and report on what happened in the other cities You don’t mind helping with practical matters – We’ll need help during the festival to set up the rooms, move out things, go and pick up our speakers in their hotel etc… You are good at making PHOTOS and VIDEOS – We badly need documentation around the festival, so we’ll welcome any support if you are happy to cover one or more events by making pictures or filming the meetings – we’ll also need specific filming capacity for a workshop on the project ‘it gets’ better during the festival on Wednesday 11th of May You are interested in specific topics: New forms of democratic participation, Migration and Alternatives to Austerity Measures – Enter into a discussion online with people in the other cities that are interested or work on these issues – Help us refining the events preparation by researching the topic and building proposals – Write an article for EA website or on your blog mentioning TRANSEUROPA Festival – Come to related events before and during the festival
Festival Transeuropa, le compte à rebours commence
Le mois de Mai approche, et en Mai a lieu le Festival Transeuropa. Alors que l’Europe fait l’objet de tensions, et de tentatives d’affaiblissement de son unité civile et sociale, la troisième édition du Festival Transeuropa proposera de nouvelles visions pour l’émergence d’une Europe alternative. Le Festival Transeuropa est un festival transnational unique d’évènements culturels, artistiques et politiques se déroulant dans 14 villes à travers toute l’Europe du 9 au 20 Mai (à Amsterdam, Barcelone, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologne, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, Londres, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sofia, Varsovie), comprenant également un évènement à Cardiff et un forum de clôture à Rome les 2 et 3 Juin. Le Festival Transeuropa vise à débattre des risques liés à une crise culturelle, une crise de l’imagination, où les citoyens sont bloqués dans un présent oppressant, divisé et qui exclue. A travers son action, le Festival montre que des modèles alternatifs sont possibles, à la fois dans le domaine politique et culturel. Le Festival Transeuropa promeut un échange politique et culturel autour de l’Europe et de l’action collective pour des visions alternatives sur la crise économique, les migrations et la participation démocratique. Le Festival Transeuropa ouvrira le 9 Mai avec un évènement transnational qui sera un geste commun et partagé, se déroulant simultanément dans toutes les villes du Festival, un geste simple et fort à la fois: une marche se déroulant simultanément dans toutes les villes du festival. Le Festival propose ainsi deux semaines de débats, de performances, d’expositions et installations artistiques, de projections de films, des librairies vivantes et des activités simultanées, préparées tout au long de l’année par Alternatives Européennes et le Réseau Transeuropa. Le Festival se clôturera par un Forum Européen se déroulant à Rome au Teatro Valle les 2 et 3 juin, un moment de débat et d’action où les représentants de toutes les villes du Festival convergeront, en mettant en commun les résultats du Festival. En 2012, le Festival Transeuropa propose plus de 80 évènements, ouverts au public et gratuits. Le Festival est préparé par une équipe de plus de 100 activistes, artistes et intellectuels venant de toute l’Europe, depuis l’été 2011 jusqu’au printemps 2012. Cette équipe fait partie du Réseau Transeuropa, un réseau transnational innovant qui agit pour une développer une véritable approche politique et culturelle transnationale. En 2011, le Festival a vu la participation de plus de 400 intervenants, 150 artistes, et plus de 25 000 personnes ont asssité aux évènemements dans les 12 villes. Le programme integral du festival sera très prochainement disponible sur www.transeuropafestival.eu
Transeuropa Festival, the countdown starts
May is approaching, and May is the month of Transeuropa Festival. While Europe will be subject to tensions and attempts at weakening its social and civil unity, the third edition of the Transeuropa Festival will take place, proposing new visions for the emergence of an alternative Europe. Transeuropa Festival is a unique transnational festival of culture, arts and politics, taking place in 14 cities all over Europe (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologna, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, London, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sofia, Warsaw) from the 9th to the 20th May, with a closing forum in Rome on the 2nd and 3rd of June. Transeuropa Festival aims at challenging the risks of a cultural crisis, a crisis in the imagination, where citizens are blocked in an oppressive, divided, exclusive present. Through its action the Festival shows that alternative models are possible, both in the political and cultural realms. Transeuropa Festival promotes political and cultural exchange across Europe and collective action for alternative visions on the economic crisis, migrations and democratic participation. Transeuropa Festival will open on the 9th of May with a transnational event, a common and shared gesture happening simultaneously in all the Festival’s cities, simple and powerful at the same time: a walk taking place simultaneously in all the Festival cities. At the core of the festival, are weeks of debates, performances, art exhibitions and installations, films, living libraries and simultaneous activities, prepared throughout the year by European Alternatives and the Transeuropa Network. The Festival will be closed by a European Forum taking place in Rome at Teatro Valle on the 2nd and 3rd June, a moment of debate and action where representatives from all the Festival cities will converge, bringing together the results of the Festival. In 2012 Transeuropa Festival features over 80 individual events, open to the public for free, and is prepared by a team of over 100 activists, artists and intellectuals from all over Europe between Summer 2011 and Spring 2012. The team of activists forms part of the Transeuropa Network, an innovative transnational network working for a genuinely transnational politics and culture. In 2011 The Festival saw the participation of over 400 speakers, 150 artists, and was attended by over 25,000 people in 12 cities. The full programme of the festival will soon be available on www.transeuropafestival.eu
Une avancée significative vers la démocratie du 21e siècle en Europe : soutenez les listes transnationales !
Par Niccolo Milanese Traduction par Camille Nore Le 14 Mars, le Parlement Européen votera une proposition afin d’autoriser les listes transnationales dans les élections européennes. Pour l’instant, les citoyens européens ne peuvent voter que dans les listes nationales : les citoyens de l’Union Européenne votent pour les candidats des pays dans lesquels ils résident. La proposition demande à ce que les citoyens de l’Union Européenne puissent avoir un second vote: pour une liste transnationales de 25 Députés du Parlement Européen élus à travers l’Union. Les listes transnationales seraient composées de candidats venant au moins d’un tiers des Etats membres, pour assurer que la liste soit vraiment transnationale. Il est de plus en plus clair pour beaucoup de gens en Europe que les décisions cruciales pour notre futur sont prises au niveau européen, et en même temps le processus de décision au niveau européen semble pour beaucoup encore plus éloigné, passif et indifférent quant au bien-être des citoyens d’Europe. Par conséquent, le moment est opportun pour changer de manière décisive dans la manière dont nous sommes représentés à l’échelle européenne. Pour le moment, les partis politiques nationaux ont une totale domination sur le processus électoral pour les élections européennes: ils sélectionnent des candidats, ils gèrent les campagnes, et ils les financent. Il n’est pas surprenant que les campagnes pour les élections européennes restent alors une affaire strictement nationale, et les candidats sélectionnés le sont largement pour des questions d’ordre national. La crise de la dette actuelle dans l’Union Européenne a révélé les interrelations inextricables entre les pays européens, et le fait que résoudre nos problèmes communs repose en premier lieu sur la reconnaissance de nos intérêts communs. Les institutions construites sur les circonscriptions nationales ont prouvé qu’elles sont incapables de donner aux citoyens la possibilité de s’exprimer sur leurs intérêts communs, comme elles restent redevables des intérêts nationaux à court terme. Par conséquent, les institutions nationales et les partis politiques nationaux sont actuellement en train de priver les citoyens de l’Union Européenne du droit électoral. L’élection des représentants transnationaux serait une avancée importante vers la construction d’institutions démocratiques qui permettraient aux citoyens d’exprimer leur volonté au niveau transnational commun, et de donner aux citoyens d’Europe le choix démocratique de leur futur commun. La résolution de la crise de la dette est probablement le problème politique européen le plus visible, qui nécessite une démocratisation plus grande, mais en réalité il n’y a pas de domaine dans le processus de décision politique en Europe qui n’ait pas de dimension transnationale : que ce soit l’économie, la politique environnementale, le transport transfrontalier, les communications, les migrations, le bien-être et le modèle social. Actuellement le processus de décision dans ces domaines reste largement un processus de consensus construit sur la base de différents intérêts nationaux, alors qu’il y a un intérêt commun des citoyens européens beaucoup plus important qui n’est pas représenté dans le processus. Le Parlement a le droit de prendre l’initiative de réformer les élections européennes, mais il n’a pas le dernier mot. S’il adopte la résolution la semaine prochaine, il aura besoin de faire appel à la Convention Européenne pour modifier les Traités Européens pour rendre les listes transnationales possibles. Ce serait également l’occasion de faire appel à d’autres mesures pour démocratiser le processus de décision dans l’Union Européenne. Il n’est en aucun cas certain qu’un nombre suffisant de députés du Parlement Européen soutiendront la résolution la semaine prochaine, sous la pression de leur partis politiques pour garder les politiques de l’Union Européenne sous contrôle. Pour cette raison, les citoyens à travers l’Union ont besoin de faire pression sur leurs députés directement pour promouvoir le développement d’un système plus démocratique.
A significant step towards 21st century democracy in Europe: support transnational lists!
by Niccolo Milanese On March 14th the European Parliament will vote on a proposal to allow transnational lists in the European elections. At present the European citizens can only vote on national lists: EU citizens vote for candidates in the countries that they are resident in. The proposal calls for EU citizens to have a second vote: for a transnational list of 25 MEPs elected across the Union. The transnational lists would be composed of candidates from at least one third of member states, to ensure that the list is genuinely transnational. It is increasingly clear to many people in Europe that the crucial decisions about our future are being taken at a European level, and at the same time the European level of decision-making seems to many ever more remote, unresponsive and unconcerned with the views and welfare of citizens of Europe. The moment is opportune, as well as urgent, therefore, to make a decisive change in the way in which we are represented at a European level. For the moment, national political parties have total dominion over the electoral process for the European elections: they select the candidates, they run the campaigns, and they finance the campaigns. It is unsurprising that the campaigns for the European elections thereby remain highly national affairs, and the candidates selected are selected largely on national issues. The ongoing debt-crisis in the EU has shown more than ever the inextricable interrelations between the countries of Europe, and that resolving our common problems relies on seeing our common interests. Institutions build on national constituencies are proving largely incapable of giving citizens a say over these common interests, as they remain beholden to short-term national interests. As such the national institutions and national political parties are currently disenfranchising EU citizens. The election of transnational representatives would be an important step forwards in building democratic institutions which allow citizens to express their will at this common transnational level, to give to the citizens of Europe the democratic choice over their common future. The resolution of the debt-crisis may be the most visible of the European political problems needing greater democratisation at the moment, but in reality there is almost no domain of political decision-making in Europe which does not have some transnational dimension: whether in economy, environmental policy, cross-border transport, communications, migration, welfare and the social model. At the moment decision making in these areas remains largely a process of consensus building amongst different national interests, whilst there is a much greater common interest of European citizens which is unrepresented in the process. The parliament has the right to take initiative in reforming European elections, but it does not have the last say. If it adopts the resolution next week, it will need to call a European Convention to redraft the European treaties to make transnational lists possible. That would also be an occasion to call for further measures to democratise decision making in the EU. It is by no means sure that the enough MEPs will support the resolution next week, under pressure from their national parties to keep EU-politics under their control. For that reason citizens from throughout the Union need to pressure their MEPs directly to promote the development of a more democratic system.
Open Access Now! Campagne pour laccès de la société civile et des journalistes aux centres de détention de migrants en Europe
Traduction de Sara Petrucci Aujourd’hui, dans la plupart des pays de l’UE, les journalistes et la société civile n’ont qu’un accès très limité aux centres de détention. Il est souvent impossible de rencontrer les personnes en détention, ni même de leur parler. En général, seuls les parlementaires ont le droit d’y accéder. Ce manque de transparence augmente le risque de mauvais traitements et de violations des droits. Dans le cadre de son engagement continu pour défendre les droits des migrants, Alternatives Européennes lance, en collaboration avec Migreurop et une coalition européenne d’organisations, la campagne européenne 'Open Access Now', qui réclame l’accès aux centres de détention pour les organisations de la société civile et les journalistes. La campagne se concentrera sur des visites effectuées par des journalistes et des organisations de la société civile dans des centres pour migrants. Après les visites, nous réunirons les rapports sur les conditions d’accès à la situation des personnes détenues dans les centres (durée de la détention, éventuelle violation des droits). Ces visites se dérouleront entre le 26 mars et le 26 avril 2012. L’objectif principal est d’informer les citoyens de ce qu’il se passe en leur nom en Europe, et de lancer un débat sur la manière dont l’Europe défend (ou ne défend pas) le respect des droits de l’homme. Vous trouverez plus informations sur le site Internet de la campagne, qui sera constamment mis à jour avec des informations de fond et des documents nécessaires pour accompagner les groupes souhaitant participer, leur permettant de déposer une demande d’autorisation et de poser des questions pertinentes lors de la visite (kit spécifique de visite). Nous invitons les organisations de la société civile et les journalistes intéressés de à déposer leurs demandes d’accès aux centres de détention de migrants afin d’évaluer les conditions de détention et leur durée. Rejoignez notre campagne ici!
Open Access Now! Campaign for access of civil society and journalists to detention centres in Europe
Today, in most EU countries, journalists and civil society have very limited access to migrant detention centres. Often, it is impossible to meet people in detention, or even to talk to them. Generally, only MPs have right of access. This lack of transparency increases the risk of malpractice and numerous rights violations. European Alternatives, in its ongoing commitment to defend migrants' rights, is launching together with Migreurop and a Europe-wide coalition of organization, the European campaign 'Open Access Now', calling for access to detention centres for civil society organisations and journalists. The campaign will focus on visits by journalists and civil society groups to detention centres for migrants. After the visits, we will collect the reports on the possibility of access and on the situation of people detained there (length of detention, possible violation of rights). Visits will take place between March 26 and April 26. The main aim is to let people know what's carried on in their name in Europe and to trigger debate on the way Europe defends (or in this case does not) defend human rights in Europe. You can find more information in a dedicated website, which will be constantly updated with background information and all relevant documents to accompany groups willing to participate, to make a demand of authorisation and then to ask the relevant questions during the visit (visit kit). We invite interested civil society groups and journalists to ask for access to detention centres for migrants in order to report on the situation of detentions and on the situation and length of detention. Join our campaign here!
Convocazione: verso la campagna europea per il reddito
Domenica 3 giugno Teatro Valle Occupato, Roma Agorà Transeuropa Il 26 aprile 2012 al Parlamento europeo di Bruxelles è stata presentata la prima Iniziativa dei cittadini europei (ICE) per il reddito garantito. L’ICE permette ad almeno un milione di cittadini di almeno sette paesi europei di presentare una proposta legislativa direttamente alla Commissione europea. Questo nuovo strumento di democrazia partecipativa a livello europeo verrà usato per richiedere alla Commissione europea un atto legislativo af?nché tutti gli stati membri implementino strumenti di reddito garantito a livello nazionale su tutto il territorio dell’Unione Europea. Il reddito garantito è una risposta alla continua precarizzazione del lavoro, al ricatto della povertà, e all’attacco verso i diritti di studenti, lavoratori, precari, e disoccupati. La campagna europea per l’ICE sul reddito rappresenta un importante momento aggregativo sia a livello italiano che europeo, tanto che ad oggi sono già 14 i paesi dell’UE che aderiscono a tale campagna. Per questo oggi è necessaria E’ necessaria la costruzione di una forte rete italiana per sostenere la campagna e la raccolta ?rme, che diventi quindi parte di una più grande rete transnazionale per portare avanti la campagna a livello europeo. Per questo motivo diamo un primo appuntamento il 3 giugno al Teatro Valle di Roma a tutte le associazioni, movimenti, realtà, e singoli interessati a far partire un percorso di aggregazione che porti a breve alla costituzione di una rete italiana per la campagna europea. L’incontro avverrà all’interno dell’Agorà Transeuropa, una due-giorni che porterà a Roma oltre trenta reti europee per discutere di campagne transnazionali sul reddito, beni comuni, libertà d’informazione, e altri temi. L’incontro vedrà dunque coinvolte reti europee, con la partecipazione di attivisti da Francia, Regno Unito, Romania, Bulgaria, Ungheria, Spagna, e accademici quali Guy Standing e Carlo Vercellone che discuteranno proprio della necessità di un reddito garantito come diritto continentale. Qui informazioni sul programma della due giorni L’incontro è aperto a tutti/e, per aderire alla convocazione è suf?ciente mandare una mail con il proprio nome o il nome dell’organizzazione a rsvp@euroalter.com con “reddito” in oggetto.
How big data can help us better understand the civic economy
From peer to peer sharing to hyper local campaigning , it’s never been easier through social networks and crowd funding platforms for people to set up a group to campaign on issues that matter to them or pool their resources to provide services to meet unmet needs. But many of these are off the radar of policy makers looking to understand the impact of the civic economy. Through our research on how young people make a living across Europe, we identified a new tribe of people called “Lifestyle Hackers” who are creating new forms of civic economy under the radar. At our recent Transeuropa Festival, we brought together these lifestyle hackers and neo-nomads to develop solutions to better explore these new lifestyles. One of the outcomes was to develop a project to better understand their social impact and how these groups connect with each other to develop these new ways of building society. We’d like to announce that NESTA has funded us to bring this project to life which will last from April 2014 – March 2015! Along with the other successful organisations – Demos, the Royal Society of Arts, NCVO and Cardiff University – we’ll be developing new ways of using data-driven methods for understanding the social economy. We will use big data and social network analysis to identify the location, level and type of participation of these groups. By visualising the relationships between thematically related groups below the radar, we will identify key actors who can help make links between existing and new groups. Visualising the social impact and social networks within each project and organisation, will help these organisations to understand how they can better support and motivate their members. The interactive website we will develop will also enable policy makers and commissioners / investors to identify them in their local or thematic area. We will build on our experience developing research methods to map groups below the radar in the social economy, including creating new innovative methods to collect the data, developing different methods to map groups below the radar and visualising outputs to illustrate the findings and trends. Below you can find an overview of our work to date in this area. Developing different methods to map groups below the radar We’ve trained 30 young people to identify, engage with and document the social impact of groups below the radar across Europe through our Transeuropa Caravans project. We’ve identified 40 civic initiatives which work with public services, the market & communities and evaluating their social impact. We’ve mapped how young people cope with making a living, through surveying hundreds of people across Europe, accompanied by in-depth interviews. We’ve also worked with hundreds of groups below the radar in over 30 cities across Europe to identify issues and develop proposals through our Citizens Pact. Creating new innovative methods to collect data on the civic economy We’ve developed a method using walking tours to uncover groups using unusual behaviours to tackle needs, working with social researchers, artists, storytellers and civic entrepreneurs. We’ve used social network analysis to identify groups to collaborate with. Visualising outputs to illustrate the findings and trends We’ve developed scenarios and infographics based on the data from the Making a Living project and to develop challenges for people to co-design activities for the Transeuropa Festival. We’ve trained young people to evaluate policies through the AAA Citizens Rating Agency project. The methods we will develop will notably be used to map groups below the radar across Europe, building on our Transeuropa Caravans project and be used to help us develop the Transeuropa Festivals across our 13 cities. The methods will also be shared with our partners to help them identify groups below the radar in their respective domains
How Big Brother can teach us how (not) to live together
If you’ve ever watched Big Brother, you’ll know how easy it is for people who don’t know each other in enclosed environments to wind each other up! Admittedly, this structured reality show is designed for this purpose and increasingly contestants play to this to get their 15 minutes of fame. For our Transeuropa Caravans, we will have five people who each will have individual roles & responsibilities with associated skills – film makers, cartoonists, researchers, social reporters / communicators & field operations. We will be travelling in a much more enclosed…claustrophobic-friendly environment – whether that’s a caravan or a campervan, living quite literally on top of each other. But unlike most caravan trips, the vehicle will act as much as a co-working space as a co-living space…and even a meeting space when we meet the initiatives throughout the continent. Like Big Brother, we’ll also be filming…and be filmed for a fly-on-the-wall documentary of how travelling through different environments to uncover groups using creative methods to tackle social issues. So, we’ve used the internationally-recognised Myers Briggs test to self-assess our individual personality traits and perhaps more importantly, to share these with our caravan comrades, so that they can get a better idea in advance of what makes each of us tick…and what winds us up! How personalities interact? We have three Diplomats who are each at the edges of this interaction style, the INFJ with the Analysts and two ENFPs with the Explorers. We have one Analyst and one Sentinel, but surprisingly, given all these people applied to join the caravan team, there are no Explorers! What we’re using the personality profiles for our caravan journey, is that even if some personalities have a need for particular needs to met, its important that these are met for everyone on the caravan, including: Celebrate people’s achievements on the caravan so that people feel their work is valued Encourage people to review each other’s work, whether it’s a plan of what we’re going to do for the day or a blog post Provide a space for people to voice their concerns to avoid being overloaded with work Provide space for people to unwind and relax and have some “me time” Encourage open and honest debate between people on the team, but be sensitive about how you criticise someone’s work Encourage people to think creatively about how to approach a task Provide a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of each person on the team as well as the collective responsibilities that we all have Be aware of what motivates other people on the caravan, but also what frustrates and winds them up These set of principles are based on the personality types and interaction styles for the people on our team. They might not work for people in your team, look at each others’ personality types and interaction styles and discuss what principles work with everyone’s personality types! It’s easier said than done…
Dole Animators
This film captures some of the real experiences people are facing today in the light of the governments recent changes to the welfare system. Dole Animators is a group of benefit claimants based who have worked together to make this animated documentary. You can find out more information about the project at Dole Animators. This project was funded by an Awards for All Grant from the National Lottery.
Seminario tematico “Immigrazione, Asilo, Cittadinanza” a conclusione del progetto “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa”
Sin dal 2012, European Alternatives partecipa al percorso di avvicinamento della società civile italiana alla preparazione del semestre di Presidenza del Consiglio dell’Unione europea (seconda metà del 2014), nel quadro del “trio” Italia-Lettonia-Lussemburgo. Tale percorso si è sviluppato nell’ambito del progetto denominato “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa” promosso dal Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo (CIME) in accordo con il Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Dipartimento Politiche Europee – Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, la Fondazione CARIPLO e in collaborazione con vari Centri studi e di ricerca in politica internazionale, organizzazioni sindacali, imprenditoriali e rappresentative delle autonomie locali, oltre alle principali piattaforme delle associazioni attive nel terzo settore, tra le quali European Alternatives – Alternative Europee. Quest’ultimo seminario si terrà alla Camera dei Deputati nella sua sede di Palazzo Marini e sarà dedicato ai temi dell’Immigrazione, asilo e cittadinanza, un fronte sul quale siamo da sempre impegnati tanto come network quanto attraverso le attività dei nostri membri in tutta Europa e le campagne specifiche coordinate a livello locale e transnazionale (tra cui “Open Access Now”, “LasciateCIEntrare” e il futuro sviluppo europeo de “L’Italia sono anch’Io” previsto per la seconda metà del 2014) secondo il programma che trovate QUI nel quale è incluso un nostro contributo insieme agli interventi di Pier Virgilio Dastoli (Presidente del Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo), Diego Loveri (Presidente di “Unità Democratica dei Giudici di Pace”), Marco Del Panta (Direttore centrale per le politiche migratorie e i visti presso il Ministero degli Affari Esteri), Stefania Dall’Oglio (Segretario Generale del Comitato Interministeriale per i Diritti Umani e Membro dell’Ufficio Legislativo presso il Ministero dell’Interno), Cesare Pinelli (Professore ordinario di Istituzioni di Diritto Pubblico presso l’Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”), Giandonato Caggiano (Professore ordinario di Diritto dell’Unione Europea presso l’Università degli Studi “Roma Tre”), Marco Borraccetti (Ricercatore di Diritto dell’Unione europea presso l’Università degli Studi di Bologna) e dell’Onorevole Khalid Chaouki (Commissione Affari Esteri e Comunitari). In parallelo, European Alternatives – Alternative Europee, data la specificità dei temi di lavoro dell’organizzazione,ha prontamente risposto all’invito della Commissione europea di proclamare il 2013 “Anno europeo dei cittadini” per sottolineare il 20esimo anniversario dell’introduzione della cittadinanza dell’Unione europea nel trattato di Maastricht. Sempre a partire dal 2012 abbiamo, infatti, iniziato a lavorare con le organizzazioni partner europee e con quelli attivi in Italia in particolare, partecipando poi dal mese di gennaio 2013 ai tre gruppi di lavoro dell’Alleanza europea per “l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013” (EYCA 2013, The European Year of Citizens Alliance) con propri rappresentanti così come al percorso dell’Alleanza italiana per “l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013” (EYCA Italia) coordinato sempre dal Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo (CIME) insieme all’Associazione delle Agenzie della Democrazia Locale (ALDA) e al Forum Nazionale del Terzo Settore. Poggiando sull’esperienza e le conoscenze dei suoi membri che continuamente operano perché la cittadinanza diventi una dimensione permanente e trasversale del processo decisionale, dell’attuazione e della valutazione delle politiche pubbliche europee, l’Alleanza italiana per “l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013” si riunisce periodicamente – anche dopo la conclusione formale della prima parte di questo percorso a Vilnius, Lituania, il 13 dicembre 2013 – con lo scopo di elaborare e avanzare proposte concrete volte a collocare la cittadinanza europea al centro dell’agenda politica dell’Unione Europea.Tale impegno da parte di tutte le organizzazioni coinvolte in questo percorso dal 2012 a oggi sarà confermato anche in occasione dell’evento pubblico finale che si terrà, invece, presso il CNEL il prossimo lunedì 24 febbraio, in orario pomeridiano, alla presenza del Ministro degli Affari Esteri Emma Bonino.Per la partecipazione al seminario tematico “Immigrazione, Asilo, Cittadinanza” in programma il prossimo mercoledì 12 febbraio dalle ore 17:00 alle ore 19:30 presso la Camera dei Deputati (Sala Mercede, via della Mercede 55, Roma) è necessario richiedere l’accredito entro lunedì 10 febbraio 2014 scrivendo al seguente indirizzo di posta elettronica: segreteria@movimentoeuropeo.itPer ulteriori informazioni e aggiornamenti su queste tematiche e sui percorsi “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa” e “Alleanza italiana per l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013 – EYCA Italia” potete invece scrivere a: a.lodeserto@euroalter.com oppure a: rome@euroalter.com Potete scaricare QUI il resoconto del seminario.
Migrant Rights across Europe
On October 17th an international conference on human rights violations and alternatives to administrative detention, organised by European Alternatives and the Italian campaign LasciateCIEntrare, took place at the European Parliament under the title “The Routinisation of Administrative Detention of Migrants and Free Movement of Citizens: Time to Explore Alternatives”. It succeeded in bringing together representatives of national governments, the European Parliament and civil society in order to explore ways in which the detention of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees can be prevented at the European level. The conference focused on long-term objectives, such as advocating for a stronger role for European institutions in safeguarding and protecting the free movement of citizens, including third-country nationals, as well as pushing for the adoption of European Union legislation in this field, setting clear standards of liberty of the person’s residence and freedom of movement. The October conference at the European Parliament followed on the request for a hearing submitted by the coalition to the European Commission about the transposition of the EU’s ‘Return Directive’ (2008/115/EC) in the Member States. The conference hosted the Italian Minister for Integration, Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, the Members of the European Parliament Silvia Costa (S&D), Marie-Christine Vergiat (GUE NGL), Hélène Flautre (Greens/EFA), as well as activists and academics from all over Europe. They advocated for a radical change in migration policies in Europe, which constantly cause tragedies such as the widely publicised tragedy of Lampedusa. Taking place in this very sensitive context, the conference pushed forward clear alternative proposals to the routinisation of administrative detention of migrants and the obstacles to free movement of citizens. Over the last few years European Alternatives has been working intensively to defend Migrants’ rights, the free movement of citizens, and against the politics of detention, notably through the campaigns Open Access Now, launched in 2011 with Migreurop, and LasciateCIEntrare and a broad coalition of associations. Both campaigns call for access to detention centres for migrants by journalists and civil society organisations, and fights against the suspension and restrictions of basic European civil rights, such as the right to independent and free information. European Alternatives has thus far worked towards contributing to a reasoned policy change to better address all areas of migration with European institutions also the implementation of its short term programme entitled “A New Migration Policy for Europe”. European Alternatives and its partners have also run several other projects related to migrant’s rights, such as the 3-year-long process that has come to produce the Citizens Manifesto and specific advocacy actions in view of the ‘Return Directive’ revision. European Alternatives played an active role in the European Year of Citizens Alliance – EYCA 2013 – working group on European and inclusive citizenship. This followed a research and consultation process aiming at identifying key policy areas where European advocacy can be promoted, while building greater collaboration amongst relevant European actors. European Alternatives and other member organisations of the “Open Access Now” campaign are now actively participating in the process promoted by Melting Pot Europe and many other civil society organisations in the aftermath of the Lampedusa tragedy, which is leading to the development of a more comprehensive proposal: ‘The Charter of Lampedusa’ adopted on the 2nd of February 2014 and the quest for democratic legitimacy of EU migration policies. Anna Lodeserto Here you can find the whole catalogue available for download: TRANSEUROPA Festival 2013.
ESCAPES Conference “Transits, barriers, freedoms: seeking refuge in the Mediterranean and in Europe”
EA will participate in the first ESCAPES official conference “Transits, barriers, freedoms: seeking refuge in the Mediterranean and in Europe” to be held at the University of Milan on April 10th and 11th, 2014. ESCAPES is a research group based at the University of Milan with the aim of investigating different aspects of migration, paying special attention to the experiences of those who are usually included in the category of forced migration: asylum seekers, refugees and subsidiary protection holders, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and others forced to flee or to leave their countries or places of habitual residence. This two-day event will open with a series of international panels, starting with an opening session focusing on Syria and the refugee crisis with contributions from the following speakers: Guita Hourani (Notre Dame University – Louaize, Lebanon), Madeline Garlick (Head of the Policy and Legal Support Unit at the UNHCR European Bureau) and Roger Zetter (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford). A round-table on the asylum system in Italy run by Daniela Di Capua (Director of SPRAR and Head of the Delegated Authority for the European Refugee Fund, Central Service of the Protection System for for Asylum Seekers and Refugees), Laura Cantarini (UNHCR, Territorial Commission of Trapani, Italy), Roberto Guaglianone (Regional Coordination Asylum in Lombardy Region) and Paola Ottaviano (Borderline Sicily) will then follow. The second day will be open with a plenary session with Nando Sigona (University of Birmingham) and Enrica Rigo (University of Roma Tre), discussing the narratives of exile and belonging entitled “The Politics of Voice” and will conclude with 7 different panels (some of them at the same time) where more than thirty papers submitted by scholars from different disciplines and accepted in response to the call for papers published in January 2014, including Anna Lodeserto, who will present her research work “Walls and borders of Europe: the challenges and limits of the freedom of movement” at the ESCAPES conference as part of the “Institutions of the Frontier” sub-session. You can find a detailed programme of the conference HERE. Participation in the conference is free, but registration is required by April 4th, 2014. You can register by filling out the form at the following link: http://users2.unimi.it/escapes/transiti-barriere-liberta/iscrizioni/ Event page on Facebook: “Transiti, barriere, libertà: cercare rifugio nel Mediterraneo e in Europa”
The limits of EU policies on migration and the defence of migrants’ rights in Greece
Tomorrow, the 20th of March, we will be participating in the public debate to discuss EU migration policy and how increased border security impacts the human rights of migrants, especially in Greece, entitled “EU Migration Policy: A Push Back for Migrants’ Rights in Greece?”. It is an event promoted by our friends and partner organisation on multiple initiatives PICUM (Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that aims to promote respect for the human rights of undocumented migrants providing a direct link between the grassroots level, where undocumented migrants’ experience is most visible, and the European level, where policies relating to them are deliberated. The event will be hosted by Nikos Chrysogelos MEP (Greens/EFA), Maria Eleni Koppa MEP (S&D), and Kriton Arsenis MEP (S&D) at the European Parliament in Brussels and is organised by PICUM in cooperation with Amnesty International, The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), The European Network of Migrant Women (ENoMW), The European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN), The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) and Médecins du Monde (MdM) as part of the project “Promoting EU Action to Address Criminalisation of and Violence Against Migrants in Greece”, funded by the Open Society Foundations and the the European Commission under the PROGRESS FUND. This initiative is also supported by Aitima, Greek Forum of Migrants, Asante, Greek Forum of Refugees, ARSIS, Generation 2.0 RED, and Syn-eirmos. The debate aims to develop recommendations and push for coherent strategy to improve the working and living conditions of migrants by addressing specific inclusion needs and the case of Greece. A first panel, focusing on borders security and fundamental rights, will include speakers from the European Commission, DG Home Affairs, the Office of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights as well as Greek organisations. A second panel, will see representatives from Médecins du Monde Greece, Human Rights Watch and the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights present recommendations for action against racist and xenophobic violence, hate crime, apprehension and detection practices. All participants are asked to propose concrete measures that Members of the European Parliament and other EU institutions can take to improve the situation and treatment of migrants in Greece. Building on crucial work developed in recent years by key human rights institutions including the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the Council of Europe, recommendations generated during this debate will target Members of the European Parliament and will also be directed at the European Commission, other EU institutions and the European Council, responsible for developing the successor to the current Stockholm Programme in the area of Justice and Home Affairs, which ends in 2014. The defence of migrants’ rights in Greece is especially important after the tragedy that took place on January 20th, 2014, when a boat carrying twenty-eight migrants from Afghanistan and Syria sank near the eastern Greek island of Farmakonisi in the Dodecanese area of the Aegean Sea, while under tow by a Hellenic Coast Guard’s vessel. Many international organisations, such as ECRE and Pro Asyl, UNHCR officers in Athens and witnesses immediately reported that migrants attempting to cross the EU’s external borders with Turkey are systematically pushed back from Greek territorial waters, the Greek islands as well as from the land border and that the so-called “Farmakonisi tragedy” could be another deliberate “push-back” operation of the kind frequently indulged in by authorities to keep human cargo at bay. Tactics such as these have indeed become common along European borders leading to the strengthening of the “Fortress Europe”. In December 2013, Amnesty International reported that European and Greek border authorities were systematically and brutally preventing people fleeing Syria trying to escape the conflict from reaching European territory, leaving them into danger at sea, assaulting them and destroying or confiscating their property. EA is and has always been fully committed to the defence of migrants’ rights also condemning all forms of “push-back” policies and similar operations. In the past, we have already partnered on specific initiatives against push-back policies such as the “No More Push-Backs!” campaign launched by ZaLab and Amnesty International in 2012. The final agenda of the EP public debate “EU Migration Policy: A Push Back for Migrants’ Rights in Greece?” can be found HERE. Following the debate, participants will be invited to take part in a public action outside the Council building at 1:00 p.m. (Schuman roundabout, park Cinquantenaire side), organised by Amnesty International. This action will be a reminder of the dangerous reality faced by many along Europe’s shores. The European Parliament will live stream the event. You can also follow the debate on Twitter through: #MigrantsinGreece
International Conference “Rethinking EU Immigration: legal developments, management and practices”
This week we will be part of the CDCDI international conference entitled “Rethinking EU Immigration: legal developments, management and practices” promoted by the Research and Information Centre on Immigrant Integration (Centru de Documentare și Cercetare în Domeniul Integrării Imigranților, CDCDI) and organised by the Romanian Association for Health Promotion (Asociaţia Română pentru Promovarea Sănătăţii, ARPS) in partnership with the SOROS Foundation Romania that will take place on March 13-14, 2014 in Bucharest, Romania. Is immigrant integration a key challenge for the EU states? How should governments address the European trends in Migration? These are among the most relevant issues to be dealt from scholars, practitioners and NGOs representatives during the event. Immigration and integration are, indeed, of high interest for political actors, academics, researchers and policy makers. With increasing migration to and within an already diverse European Union, the need for understanding and explaining the immigration process is urgent in order to identify the most appropriate integration frameworks. Viewed both as a challenge and as an opportunity, immigration cannot be efficiently managed without coherent integration measures. The economic crisis and the focus on the nation-state from the last 5 years pushed the governments to make adjustments to their immigration policies that answered to the “party induced public pressure”. The European legal framework in the area of migration and asylum has undergone some important changes during 2013. To what extend are those changes likely to improve the life prospect of both immigrants and local population in the member states? What are the risks related to the transposition of the recast Asylum Procedures Directive at the national level, taking into account the protracted conflict in Syria? The conference aims to explore the political, economic, legal and social implications of immigration in the EU, as well as the development potential of migration for the member states and the region as a whole. The conference programme includes around thirty speakers from several other NGOs and civil society organisation as well as universities and institutions, such as the Migration Policy Group, the University of Leiden, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), the University of Amsterdam, the University of Essex, the Centre of Migration Research of Warsaw, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Migrants’ Rights Network, and the University of Geneva, to discuss around the following themes: Transnationalism, European identity and integration in Europe; Understanding the European integration modules; Challenges in measuring immigrant integration; Action research on migration; Legal perspectives on European immigration; The role of migration research centres in migration management; Migration and development. At the beginning of 2014, a call for abstracts was also open to submission of topics from an inter-disciplinary approach to migration dynamics and integration policies and contributions covering research actions, policy analyses, as well as good practice models in migration management. Anna Lodeserto will attend this conference with a paper selected for presentation with the title “Walls and Borders Ruling Europe in Times of Free Movement of Citizens” focusing on the free movement governance models within the EU following the lifting of the final restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian workers by January 1st, 2014, under Accession Treaties. This research work also assesses the actual socio-economic situation of Romanian migrants and the ‘securitarian’ approach emerging in Bulgaria with the government’s plans to build a razor-wire fence along the country’s border with Turkey thus posing further investigative questions on the strengthening of the “Fortress Europe” in times of crisis. The full paper can be downloaded here: “Walls and Borders Ruling Europe in Times of Free Movement of Citizens” Link to the Facebook event page: “International conference: Rethinking EU Immigration” (ABplus Events) For further information about the conference, please contact: conference@cdcdi.ro
European Citizens’ Initiative public hearing
Making Water a Human Right The time has come for the first ever European Citizens’ Initiative to be heard by the European institutions having surpassed the ambitious one million signature threshold. The inaugural debate on a European Citizens Initiative was held for the “Right2Water” ECI on Monday, February 17th, 2014, at the European Parliament’s premises in Brussels and organised by the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), in association with the Committee on Petitions, the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection, and the Committee on Development. The public hearing brought together representatives from the “Right2Water” Citizens’ Committee, MEPs and the European Commission, which will react to the initiative’s proposals by March 20th to say whether it will table new legislation. The response from the public was huge, as testified by the crowded room and more than 450 accredited participants.The Citizens’ Committee, the organisers and the hundreds of activists who ran the signature collection campaign were all present in the room for the public hearing, and urged the European Commission to guarantee access to water and sanitation as a human right through appropriate legislation. This would mean promoting the provision of water and sanitation as essential public services for all EU citizens, and giving a legal undertaking that water services will not be liberalised in the EU. The majority of MEPs attending the hearing shared the view that access to water is a basic human right, but some of them also pointed out that rules on providing all citizens with sufficient and clean drinking water and adequate sanitation remain the remit of EU member states. “We shall have a reason to celebrate when the European Commission acts to show that the ECI is not something that you can just shrug off” said Jan Willem Goudriaan, Vice-President of the ECI “Right2Water” Citizens’ Committee. Following the reception of the initiative by the Commission on 20 December 2013 and the validation of 1,680,172 signatures as final number (the minimum of signatures required to submit an ECI was one million, as for all the ongoing ECIs, whereas the number of valid signatures varies between 88% and 95% of the total handed in national authorities in each of the 28 EU countries) collected in more than 7 countries (minimum of countries where a specific threshold must be reached in order to successfully conclude the first phase of the ECI process), the European Parliament hosted the ECI “Right2Water” organisers for this public hearing, which provided them with the opportunity to present their three key goals to all attendees: Guaranteed water and sanitation for all in the EU; Global access to water and sanitation for all; No liberalisation of water services. Hailing the first-ever hearing on a Citizens’ Initiative as “a milestone in the history of European democracy being a monumental step forward from a Europe of governments to a Europe of citizens,” Gerald Häfner (Greens/EFA MEP, Germany), representing the European Parliament as the Petitions Committee (PETI) Rapporteur for the Citizens’ Initiative and Coordinator of the Greens Group in the EP Constitutional Affairs Committee, said “today, the EU is switching to ‘listening mode’ as citizens present their proposals in the EP. The question now is how we can better legislate on an issue that is crucial. We are all here to recognise that clean water is a human right and should remain in public hands”. Just a few days ago, the PETI committee also unveiled its study on ECI and first lessons of implementation while tackling other issues and voted on two reports such as: the successful adoption of the 2013’s EU Citizenship Report; the petitions on immigration; the petitions on fundamental rights dealing with child custody/protection. Cora Pfafferott, speaking on behalf of Democracy International, the European Citizen Action Service and the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe (three pioneering organisations which have joined up for the first ECI support centre, a new initiative aiming to provide independent information and to give first-hand advice on how to organise and implement an ECI), explained that this public hearing could also be considered a “litmus test” for the actual, impacting success of the European Citizens’ Initiative, which is the first agenda-setting instrument for citizens at transnational level in history. This also is because EU legislation on the ECI instrument does not provide any specific rules on the actual procedure of the hearing, and that the ECI is a non-binding instrument giving the European Commission the leeway to decide whether to accept the citizen-initiated law proposals or not. For all these reasons, the outcome of this public hearing on “Right2Water” will be a decisive milestone for the future of the European Citizens’ Initiative in view of the upcoming revision of its legislation in 2015. Its success also demonstrates to citizens how valuable it is to go through the effort of drafting a law proposal and collecting one million signatures, which are required to submit the proposal to the European Commission. Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President of the European Commissionin in charge of Inter-Institutional Relations and Administration, declared that “Citizens have shown a very clear proof that this instrument of participatory democracy works, that they would like to have a direct say and to communicate with EU institutions on how its agenda should be shaped”. At the same time, is it also important to remember that, in spite of the clear success of “Right2Water”, very few people actually know how exactly, since April 1st, 2012, we as European citizens’ can directly influence European legislation through a “European Citizens’ Initiative” (also known as ECI). This new tool for participatory democracy, introduced as a result of the Treaty of Lisbon with the express purpose of increasing participation and direct democracy at the EU level, allows citizens to collect at least one million signatures (0.2% of the EU population) online or offline to call directly on the European Commission to consider introducing a specific legislative proposals of interest to them in an area of EU competence, thereby changing EU law. If they succeed, as we hope for our very first initiative to reach the public hearing stage, the first ECIs will be truly recognised as a great change in European decision-making process and agenda setting, although there are…
Follow us Live this morning from Brussels!
A new migration policy for Europe European Parliament, Room P5B001 October 17th, 2013, 9.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. Watch live streaming video from euroalter at livestream.com FOR A FULL PROGRAM AND MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE EVENT SEE HERE.In the past three years, European Alternatives has organised a number of specific sessions of discussion on migrants’ rights and the politics of detention, which represents a growing and worrisome issue across Europe. This area of work culminated over the last two years in the coordination and implementation of transnational campaigns against the administrative detention and the role of civil society organisations and media in reporting the conditions of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants held in administrative detention in many EU Member States, notably through the Open Access Now (officially launched jointly with the Migreurop network in 2011) and LasciateCIEntrare campaigns (broad-based coalition of associations based in Italy calling for access to the detention centres for journalists and CSOs against the suspension and restrictions on the right to information), joined in 2011. The envisaged future process will build on this campaigning experience gained so far in the coordination and implementation of specific transnational coalitions, aiming at raising awareness amongst both European politicians and the general public about the defence of migrants’ rights, the routinisation of immigration detention, and the participation in thematic networks working on these issues at the European level, including the EYCA (European Year of Citizens Alliance) working group on European and inclusive citizenship that is elaborating a final proposal to be presented at the European Parliament, and citizens manifesto being developed by European Alternatives in advance of the European elections in 2014, as part of the citizens’ pact of European Alternatives calling for greater citizen participation in European decision-making. The aim is to expand the scope of these activities to a more active role in contrasting detention and proposing solutions that go beyond the right of access to the centres and the defence of the right to information for citizens. This meeting will offer the opportunity for a reasoned and constructive debate with Member of the European Parliament, Ministries of EU Member States, and other institutional and civil society representatives from throughout Europe. The event will focus on alternatives to custody following administrative decisions, the reduction of the length of detention and the conditions of detention as analysed during the course of a much broader consultation process involving activists, civil society organisations, journalists and legal experts.
Seguiteci in diretta stamattina da Bruxelles!
Lampedusa: Incontro al Parlamento europeo per una nuova politica migratoria Parlamento Europeo, Sala P5B001 Giovedì 17 ottobre 2013, 9:30 – 12:30 Watch live streaming video from euroalter at livestream.com Per l’agenda e piu informazioni sul’evento clicca qui. Dopo i recenti accadimenti di Lampedusa da più parti è arrivata la richiesta di un ruolo più incisivo delle istituzioni europee affinché la politica dʼasilo europea possa essere ripensata e il trattamento disumano che si accompagna al movimento delle persone lungo le frontiere smetta di essere routine. Nei centri di detenzione amministrativa, così come già denunciato da UNHCR, Consiglio dʼEuropa, e lo stesso Parlamento europeo, trattamenti disumani e situazioni di violazioni sistematiche dei diritti umani sono allʼordine del giorno. Il prossimo giovedì 17 ottobre 2013 al Parlamento Europeo di Bruxelles verrà organizzato un momento di confronto con la presenza del Ministro dell’Integrazione Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, di diversi europarlamentari fra cui Hélène Flautre e Marie-Christine Vergiat, al quale è invitata anche la Commissaria Europea per gli Affari Interni Cecilia Malmström. Lʼincontro vedrà altresì la partecipazione e lʼinterazione di rappresentanti della società civile impegnati in campagne contro la detenzione amministrativa in Italia (coalizione LasciateCIEntrare, ASGI, CGIL) oltre che rappresentanti dalla Francia, Spagna, Ungheria e Regno Unito. Lʼincontro è promosso da European Alternatives, ONG transnazionale che ha lavorato attivamente con le organizzazioni coinvolte in attività di monitoraggio e denuncia promuovendo sin dallʼinizio una discussione anche a livello istituzionale sulle possibilità di alternative alla pratica della detenzione amministrativa per lo sviluppo di una nuova politica migratoria europea. European Alternatives è da sempre impegnata nellʼambito della difesa dei diritti dei migranti e, in particolare, nel contrasto alla prassi della detenzione amministrativa e nella promozione della libertà di circolazione delle persone in Europa. Questʼimpegno si è concretizzato in particolare nel lavoro costante al fianco delle campagne per lʼaccesso dei giornalisti e dei rappresentanti della società civile ai centri di detenzione per migranti: LasciateCIEntrare, rete di associazioni, giuristi e giornalisti attivi sul territorio italiano, e Open Access Now, campagna transnazionale lanciata da European Alternatives insieme a Migreurop, rete di organizzazioni attive in Europa e nei paesi del Mediterraneo, nel 2011.
EA gets the Paolo Giuntella Freedom of Information Award 2012
“The battle in defence of Article 21 of the Constitution will not have to be fought another day: it has to be fought every day and every minute.” This is the mission of Articolo21 [the article refers to the “Right to Freedom of Expression” as guaranteed in the Italian Constitution], an association of representatives from the media field, in the words of its spokesman Beppe Giulietti. On 19th July 2012, the association Articolo 21 assigned 6 awards “Paolo Giuntella per la libertà di informazione (The Paolo Giuntella Freedom of Information Award)” given to organisations that, through their activities and commitment, have made important contributions to promoting the defence of freedom of expression and information. The organisations behind the Campaign LasciateCIEentrare / Open Access Now, including European Alternatives, were honoured with the Giuntella Prize at an official ceremony held yesterday in Rome. Journalists were denied access to detention centres for migrants for years, but now thanks to all the awareness-raising actions, training and requests for visits carried on within the framework of the Campaign, citizens can have access to more information through the reports journalists are compiling after their visits to detention centres. Raffaella Cosentino, Stefano Galieni, Gabriella Guido and EA’s Anna Lodeserto accepted the award – on behalf of all the organisation involved in the Campaign “LasciateCIEntrare / Open Access Now” – given to them by Roberto Natale, President of FNSI (National Italian Press Federation), in the presence of more than two hundreds journalists, representatives from media groups, from NGOs (MoveOn Italy, Libera, Libertà e Giustizia, Lunaria and many others) as well as institutions, including the President of the Province of Rome, Nicola Zingaretti.
The Riace Model or Migration as a Value for a Truly Global Citizenship
EA’s Anna Lodeserto and Rosen Dimov are taking part in the first international work-camp organised by the network “RE.CO.SOL. Rete dei Comuni Solidali (Solidarity Network of Municipalities), Comuni della Terra per il Mondo – Towns of the Earth for the World” to bring young people together from different parts of Europe in the virtuous centre of Riace, Southern Italy, from August 4th to August 18th, 2012. Tomorrow – 12th August – and the day after – 13th August – they will run a workshop seeking to address current aspects of media approaches to ensure genuine inclusion and the expression of pluralism in our contemporary European societies, notably assessing their portrayal of minorities and situation of detention centres for migrants, included in the programme of the Recosol Camp. During the second session, the video “Citizens²: Voices for a Diverse Europe” created by and produced by members of European Alternatives in Italy, France, Germany and the UK, will be shown to the public. This video tells the stories of young people whose parents are migrants, but who grew up in Europe, highlighting their contribution to the building of a European society and identity which recognises its own diversity. The video is, indeed, a result of the project “CITIZENS2: NEW VOICES FOR A DIVERSE EUROPE” aimed at involving young people in a transnational discussion and action on the meaning of European citizenship, starting from the situation of young people with ethnic minority backgrounds. After having being presented in Paris and Rome during the Transeuropa Festival 2012, and shown in the Theatre and Short Film Festival Sudaka in Ecuador, will be then shared with the participants and trainers of Recosol work camp in Riace coming from many European Countries such as Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Malta, Poland and Romania. In the last few years, in the Ionian zone of the Province of Reggio Calabria, known as Locride, five small villages, such as Caulonia, Stignano, Monasterace and Badolato, along with Riace itself (the first case), have become successful models of integration offering immigrants arriving from across the sea a warm welcome along with homes in a number of empty buildings in the historic centre. These experiences are based on an experiment of territorial development through the rebirth of rural economies in Southern Italy that had almost disappeared. This way, migration is providing a new lease of life to rural villages abandoned over the last two centuries that have now been repopulated and can be lively communities once again. Starting from this assumption, the five Italian villages that risked becoming “ghost towns” because of the emigration of most part of their population to the USA, Northern Italy and the rest of Europe, are now experimenting long-term strategies and policies regarding migration, seeing migration itself as a positive factor enhancing the whole society economically, socially and culturally. These models represent a concrete alternative to the “flexible emergency response mechanisms” (in contrast to the first migration and reception experiences that occurred in these areas), such as the fatal realities of Detention Centres in Europe and the Italian government’s policy of “pushing-back” to the shores of North Africa migrant boats intercepted on the open sea. These municipalities now are gaining more and more respect all over Europe recognised as they are from EU Civil Society, Media and Institutions for having bucked the usual trend of hostility towards foreign newcomers with courage and far-sightedness and for the ability of the Mayor of Riace, Domenico Lucano, who then inspired other Councilmen and Local Government Officers, to work at the institutional as well as socio-economic levels with passion, commitment and persistence to promote cross-cultural understanding. These stories also became protagonist of the short film IL VOLO (“The Flight”) produced by the German film director Win Wenders in 2012 with the support of Calabria Region and UNHCR as a firsthand account – through Wenders’ off-camera narration – of immigration seen as a resource instead of a threat. This will be screened in Stignano (3 km northwest of Riace) for the participants of the work-camp. The camp currently held in Riace offers a concrete opportunity to develop a direct experience from the ground gaining a better understanding how such a difficult territory has successfully become the “laboratory” of best practices of integration for immigrants. Despite the active presence of organised crime groups over the whole Locride area, these new policies and political practices, were drafted in creative ways to deal with the cultural and structural changes that have recently happened. They constitute, indeed, a concrete response to the increasing need for integration policies, which will create a lasting and suitable socio-cultural structure having a meaningful impact in contributing to a fairer and more equal society by raising a new generation of truly global citizens.
Le modèle de Riace, ou la migration comme valeur d’une citoyenneté véritablement globale.
Traduction : Adeline MonninAnna Lodeserto et Rosen Dimov, membres d’Alternatives Européennes, participent au premier atelier international de travail organisé par le réseau « RE.CO.SOL. Rete dei Comuni Solidali (Réseau de solidarité des municipalités), Comuni della Terra per il Mondo – villes de la Terre pour le Monde », pour rassembler des jeunes issus de divers pays européens au centre de Riace, au sud de l’Italie, du 4 au 18 août 2012. Lors des deux jours à venir, soit les 12 et 13 août, elles tiendront un atelier concernant les aspects actuels des méthodes de travail des médias, pour assurer une véritable inclusion et expression du pluralisme dans nos sociétés européennes modernes. Le portrait qu’ils dressent des minorités sera évalué, ainsi que celui des centres de détention pour les migrants, inclus dans le programme du camp Recosol. Lors de la seconde session, la vidéo « Citizens²: Voices for a Diverse Europe », créée et produite par des membres d’Alternatives Européennes en Italie, en France, en Allemagne et au Royaume-Uni, sera dévoilée au public. Cette vidéo présente l’histoire de jeunes nés de parents migrants, mais qui ont grandi en Europe, et révèle quelle est leur contribution à la construction d’une société et d’une identité européennes, qui reconnaissent leur propre diversité.La vidéo est le fruit du projet « CITIZENS2: NEW VOICES FOR A DIVERSE EUROPE » qui a pour but d’inclure les jeunes dans des actions et des discussions transnationales sur le sens que revêt la citoyenneté européenne, en commençant par la situation des jeunes issus de minorités ethniques. Cette vidéo sera d’abord diffusée à Paris et à Rome, à l’occasion du Festival Transeuropa 2012, puis au Festival de Sudaka, dans l’Équateur, consacré au théâtre et aux courts-métrages. Enfin, elle sera projetée aux participants et aux animateurs de l’atelier de travail de Recosol, à Riace. Ces personnes viennent de divers pays européens : Belgique, Finlande, Allemagne, Italie, Malte, Pologne et Roumanie. Aux cours des dernières années, dans la zone ionienne de la province de Reggio de Calabre, aussi connue sous le nom de Locride, cinq petits villages (Caulonia, Stignano, Monasterace et Badolato, ainsi que Riace qui a été l’instigateur) sont devenus des modèles d’intégration réussie : les migrants arrivant par la mer sont accueillis chaleureusement et bénéficient d’un logement dans certains bâtiments inutilisés, au cœur du centre historique. Ces expériences se fondent sur une expérience de développement territorial par le biais du renouveau des économies rurales du sud de l’Italie ; économies qui avaient pratiquement disparu. Ainsi, la migration permet de faire revivre des villages ruraux qui sont se dépeuplés au cours des deux derniers siècles, et deviennent à nouveau des communautés vigoureuses. En partant de ce principe, les cinq villages italiens qui ont failli devenir des « villes fantômes » parce que leurs habitants émigraient vers les États-Unis, le nord de l’Italie ou dans d’autres pays européens, expérimentent désormais des stratégies et des politiques à long terme en ce qui concerne la migration. En effet, ils la considèrent comme un facteur positif permettant de faire avancer l’ensemble de la société, économiquement, socialement et culturellement.Ces modèles offrent une alternative concrète aux « mécanismes de réponse d’urgence flexibles » (par opposition aux premières expériences de migration et d’accueil dans cette zone), comme la réalité sordide des Centres de détention européen et de la politique de « renvoi » du gouvernement italien, qui repousse vers les côtes d’Afrique du Nord les bateaux migrants interceptés en haute mer. Aujourd’hui, l’Europe entière accorde un respect grandissant à ces municipalités qui sont reconnues par la société civile de l’UE, les médias et les institutions, pour avoir été courageusement à l’encontre de l’hostilité généralement exprimée envers les migrants, abordant le problème avec une vision à long terme. De plus, le maire de Riace, Domenico Lucano, a inspiré d’autres conseillers municipaux et fonctionnaires locaux, qui travaillent désormais avec engagement aux niveaux institutionnels et socio-économiques, ne cessant de promouvoir une compréhension interculturelle. Ces histoires sont aussi abordées par le court-métrage IL VOLO (« Le Vol ») produit en 2012 par Win Wenders, réalisateur allemand ; avec le soutien de la région de Calabre et de l’UNHCR (Haut Commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés) pour sa qualité de récit de première main, par le biais de la narration hors caméra de Wenders, sur l’immigration vue non pas comme une menace, mais en tant que ressource. Ce court-métrage sera projeté aux participants de l’atelier de travail, à Stignano (à 3 km au nord-ouest de Riace). L’atelier de travail qui se tient actuellement à Riace présente une opportunité concrète de développer une expérience directement à partir du terrain, permettant de comprendre comment des villages en proie à de véritables difficultés ont réussi à devenir le « laboratoire » des meilleures méthodes d’intégration des migrants. Même si des groupes appartenant au crime organisé sont très actifs dans toute la zone de Locride, ces nouvelles méthodes et politiques ont été élaborées de façon créative afin de convenir aux récents changements culturels et structurels. Le fait est qu’en élevant une nouvelle génération de citoyens véritablement « globaux », elles constituent une réponse concrète à la nécessité croissante de politiques d’intégration et fourniront une structure socioculturelle durable et adaptée, également plus consistante et avec une société plus juste.
Migrant Camps in Europe: Open the doors! We have the right to know!
4th May 2012 The reality of administrative detention of foreigners, a familiar instrument of European migration policies, is hidden from civil society and to the media. Such secrecy makes abuses and attacks on human rights both more likely and harder to combat [1]. European citizens have the right to know the consequences of the policies which are put in place in their names. As part of the civil society campaign “Open Access: open the doors! We have the right to know!” [2], the networks of Migreurop and European Alternatives made demands to visit detention centres for foreigners in Europe and beyond between 26th March and 26th April 2012. Our purpose was to establish the conditions of access for civil society (notably associations and media) to locations of detention for foreigners. According to the European Treaties and texts, access to information is in inalienable right of European citizens, defended by all European institutions [3]. Reporters without borders, many journalists, associations and collectives of citizens have therefore made formal requests to visit detention centres to the competent authorities in their regions. National and European Parliamentarians, associations and in very rare cases journalists were able to visit 14 locations of detention, in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, France, Mauritania, Serbia and Croatia. The results of the campaign are particularly disquieting because they demonstrate a real determination to keep these centres invisible and inaccessible. Many visits could not be made by associations because either the authorities refused or simply did not respond. The access of journalists has clearly been denied. These results lead to the question “and now what do we do?” A more detailed report of the visits will be made available soon and will give some details of the situations of detained foreigners. This will also be the moment to outline the future of this campaign. Knowing and making public the reality of the conditions of detention of foreigners in these establishments must be made possible. We have the right to know what happens there. BELGIUM Access to the Bruges centre was twice refused to the Belgian Human Rights League and to five journalists on the basis that there are already sufficient internal and external organs of control, contributing to a humanisation of the centres. Demonstrative a strange interpretation of transparency and thereby showing that the authorities decide themselves who are appropriate people to access the centres, only some targeted journalists (none of whom participate in the campaign) were invited by the relevant ministry for a guided visit of a new centre called “Caricole” opened on the 25th April, even though it was still totally empty. BULGARIA Only one of the four intended visits was authorised. Access was refused to Pastragor, and requests for access to the centres of Banya and Lyubimets had no respone. Although the parliamentarian Pavel Dimitrov was able to access the centre of Varna, civil society had to wait outside the doors. CROATIA Authorisation for a visit to the centre Prohvatni centar z astrance Jezevo was given for only one day. Four members of the Centre for Peace Studies and one journalists made the visit on 10th April. SPAIN Requests for visits to the centres of Zapadores and Murcia were sent conjointly by parliamentarians, associations and journalists. Despite sending them several times, these requests solicited no response for a long time. Finally only the visit to the centre of Zapadores was possible for an Ombudsman and associations. Parallel to the refusal given to journalists to visit the centre, the Interior ministry organised a press conference at Barcelone. Journalists were able to gather images of the installations but did not have any possibility to speak with the detained persons. FRANCE Whilst transposing article 16 of the Returns direction on the access of associations to detention centres for foreigners, the French government made a decree on the 8th July 2011 which makes this ‘right to visit’ extremely restrictive and constraining. This decree was attacked by many associations. Accordingly, the visits of associations to centres of detention had to be carried out with the accompaniment of a parliamentarian. The journalists made their requests for visits either autonomously or described themselves as accompanying parliamentarians. No journalist nor member of an association was able to enter a centre (with the exception of members of those specific associations which have already have an authorisation). A large number of centres were the subject of requests: Administrative detention centres at Toulouse, Rennes, Bordeaux, Vincennes, Palaiseau, Rouen, Strasbourg, Mesnil-Amelot, Cergy and waiting zone at Roissy. Access was granted only when parliamentarians made the demand, but they had no right to be accompanied by civil society, journalists or others.Parliamentarians made visits in Toulouse, Rennes, Vincennes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Roissy. ITALY Access was requested to four detention centres : the centres of identification and expulsion in Milan, Bologna and Trapani, and for the first time in Italy, the international zone of the airport Rome Fiumicino. Access for civil society was only granted in Bologna. In Trapani, associations were refused access orally “whilst waiting for the authorisation of the Interior Ministry” (even though this not foreseen in Italian law) and were only able to visit the centre with a parliamentary. In Milan, the lawyers of migrants accused of having provoked the revolts of January 2012, journalists, a regional councillor and journalists all had their requests for access refused for different reasons: security reasons for lawyers and journalists, the coincidence of the planned date with a national celebration for the associations. With regards to the regional councillor, it was a written response on the condition again of final authorisation of the Interior ministry. Same response with regards to Rome Fiumicino airport for civil society. Once again, the visit finally took place thanks to the presence of a senator. MAURITANIA Requests for visits were made for the centres of Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. Members of associations were only able to visit the Nouakchott camp. SERBIA The centres « Prihavtiliste z astrance » in Padiska…
The publication RE: Think European Democracy – Democratic Engagement and Advocacy Capacities at European Level is now online
This publication was issued by EuroAlter Romania and written by the participants in the projectsStrengthening Romanian Civil Society's Capacity to Advocate at European Level and RE: Think European Democracy! as a result of the workshops on European advocacy and of the visits to national and European institutions in Romania, Italy and United Kingdom. You may access the publication RE: Think European Democracy – Democratic Engagement and Advocacy Capacities at European Level here.
Another road for Europe? Maybe
di Giuseppe Caccia Apparso su GlobalProject Centocinquanta persone provenienti da differenti Paesi di tutto il Continente hanno partecipato giovedì 28 giugno a Bruxelles, in un’aula del Parlamento Europeo, al Forum “Another Road for Europe” (in appendice l’elenco delle realtà presenti). Data e luogo scelti non a caso: il giorno d’avvio del decisivo vertice del Consiglio d’Europa, a meno di trecento metri dall’edificio dove sono in riunione i Capi di governo degli stati dell’Unione per discutere di crisi dell’Eurozona. Il Forum, nato dall’omonimo appello e introdotto dagli interventi dei promotori Rossana Rossanda e Mario Pianta, ha visto un confronto a tutto campo tra economisti, sociologi e politologi insieme ad esponenti dei movimenti sociali, delle organizzazioni sindacali, della società civile, con partiti e parlamentari europei (Verdi e Sinistra, ma anche Socialisti e democratici, compreso qualche nostrano PD). E’ impossibile dare qui conto per intero della ricchezza della discussione, prolungatasi per quasi dieci ore, ma cercheremo di segnalarne gli spunti più significativi. DOMARE LA FINANZA Il Forum si è articolato in tre sessioni di lavoro. La prima, dedicata a moneta unica, mercati finanziari, debito e politiche fiscali, è stata introdotta da Trevor Evans (della rete di economisti che redigono periodicamente il rapporto Euromemorandum) con un intervento che ha denunciato la condizione di “democrazia sospesa” a fronte dello strapotere della finanza e sottolineato come il dibattito ufficiale sia condizionato a monte da un’ “analisi fuorviante del problema”, in cui viene rimosso come l’origine della crisi del debito sovrano europeo sia da collocare nella crisi dei mutui statunitensi del biennio 2007-2008. Le banche europee sono state “affogate dai sub-prime” che avevano cartolarizzato, gli Stati europei sono corsi in loro soccorso facendo lievitare il debito pubblico e le minori entrate fiscali, in conseguenza della recessione di produzione e consumi, hanno fatto il resto. A partire da questa lettura, Evans ha presentato una serie di proposte, poi in parte riprese e sintetizzate nel comunicato finale, tra le quali l’introduzione della settimana lavorativa di trenta ore, strumenti di “controllo sociale delle multinazionali” (l’attenzione critica è stata soprattutto puntata sulle centrali finanziarie – ha sostenuto – ma gli attori principali, anche delle dinamiche speculative, sono prevalentemente le grandi corporation), la ridefinizione della “posizione dell’Unione Europea nel mondo”, in particolare nel rapporto con il suo Sud, e la riduzione del consumo delle materie prime, anche per tagliare le emissioni di gas serra. Ne è seguito un dibattito ampio: per Antonio Tricarico (re:common) bisogna capire “come riappropriarsi a livello europeo della finanza pubblica e sganciarla dalla speculazione finanziaria privata”, ad esempio – ha suggerito – rilanciando il ruolo delle banche d’investimento pubbliche, oggi dipendenti dal mercato finanziario. Per Jorgos Vassilikos, con il controllo dell’Eurogruppo, cioè della riunione dei ministri economici, sui bilanci nazionali si avvera il “sogno antidemocratico” descritto dal rapporto della Trilateral del 1975. Mentre sono impressionanti le cifre fornite da Andrea Banares (Fondazione Responsabilità Etica): il debito pubblico italiano corrisponde a meno dell’un per cento delle migliaia di miliardi di dollari in prodotti derivati, controllati dalle quattro più importanti banche d’affari di Wall Street. E solo in Italia il peso dei derivati è cresciuto negli ultimi vent’anni del 642 %, venticinque volte più del Pil. E’ la temporalità dei mercati finanziari, e della loro crisi in rapporto a quella della politica a risultare drammaticamente asimmetrica: per Banares, con la risoluzione del Parlamento Europeo a favore dell’introduzione della Tobin Tax, ovvero della tassazione delle transazioni finanziarie (TTF), si apre “uno spiraglio”, ma ci sono voluti vent’anni di campagne (e la portata della crisi) per arrivare a questa decisione politica, peraltro non ancora esecutiva, mentre bastano pochi millesimi di secondo per una decisione finanziaria dagli “effetti nocivi” devastanti. Problematico, a mio avviso, l’intervento di Klaus Suehl (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung): la sua insistenza, al ritorno da un viaggio ad Atene, sulla “necessaria solidarietà” da portare ai “popoli vittime della crisi” non può essere considerato solo un retaggio da cultura terzomondista anni Sessanta, ma è molto più rilevatore di un atteggiamento diffuso nella sinistra tedesca, che rischia di inibire invece la ricerca di una pratica sociale e politica comune del comune spazio europeo. Sono seguiti gli interventi dei parlamentari europei: il ritorno rispetto alle questioni poste, e riassumibili nell’urgenza di stabilire forme di controllo sociale e democratico sulle dinamiche dei mercati finanziari, è stato senza alcun dubbio positivo, ma è difficile nascondere la sorpresa per il fatto che pure gli eurodeputati del Partito Democratico italiano, con alcuni tratti di involontaria comicità, quando “giocano in trasferta” appaiano quasi “estremisti”, dimentichi del sostegno generosamente offerto al Governo Monti e alle sue politiche. A chiudere la sessione poche, ficcanti parole di Rossana Rossanda: a ricordare, dopo gli interventi di esponenti della CES (la Confederazione europea dei sindacati), come di fronte al quadro descritto non solo nessuno immagini l’indizione di uno sciopero generale continentale, ma addirittura i sindacati in Europa non si facciano “neppure una telefonata fra di loro”. Certo, le organizzazioni sindacali – ha aggiunto – non hanno più “alcun effettivo potere, ma sono troppo tranquilli per questo”. Insomma, la sinistra che lei ha conosciuto è stata sconfitta, negli ultimi trent’anni in Europa, ma “almeno, cominciate a parlarvi tra di voi.” EVITARE UNA GRANDE DEPRESSIONE La seconda sessione, in mattinata, si è occupata di “green new deal”, occupazione, conversione ecologica e beni comuni. Introdotta da Danny Lang (rete degli Economistes atterrés) intorno all’interrogativo su come “migliorare lavoro e welfare, senza tornare all’impossibile riproposizione del vecchio modello industrialista”, la relazione di Pascal Petit (Université Paris XIII) ha preso le mosse dalla constatazione che la stessa agenda politica neoliberista è diventata “ostaggio della finanza, controproducente rispetto ai suoi stessi fini”, insomma è andata “troppo in là”, trovandosi incastrata nella sua stessa “trappola ideologica”. Tutti i suoi paesi modello, di diversi modelli comunque sotto il segno del neoliberismo trionfante, sono in crisi, anche quando la nascondono: vale per gli Stati Uniti, così come per Germania e Gran Bretagna. E servono certo strumenti giuridici più avanzati per mettere a nudo e contenere gli effetti delle “debolezze” del sistema finanziario, ma…
FAQ sur le revenu de base
Par Alessandro Valera Traduction: Alexis Gratpenche 1. Quand est apparue l'idée d'un revenu de base ? Le monde du travail a connu des changements profonds depuis les années 90. En Europe, les relations de travail ont vu disparaître le modèle fordien, dans lequel les travailleurs, après un passage par le système éducatif conventionnel et gratuit, trouvaient un travail à vie. Un travail que la plupart des travailleurs conservait jusqu'à leur retraite et qui leur garantissait une certaine protection quand ils tombaient malade, attendaient un enfant ou étaient victimes d'un accident. Les retraites étaient alors financées par les cotisations salariales et patronales prélevées au cours de la trentaine d'années pendant lesquelles l'employé restait dans la même entreprise ou au moins dans le même secteur professionnel. Ce modèle a fonctionné pendant les quelques décennies où l'économie était florissante, où la pyramide démographique faisait en sorte qu'à un petit nombre de retraités correspondait un grand nombre de travailleurs, et où l'Europe occidentale connaissait peu de concurrents économiques dans les pays pauvres du “tiers-monde” et aucun dans les pays socialistes du “second monde”. Avec la fin du communisme, la globalisation et les changements démographiques, ce modèle a cessé d'être viable et la majorité des pays se sont mis à déréguler le monde de travail, en y introduisant une dose de flexibilité, notamment dans les relations entre employeurs et employés. Le travail est devenu un bien de consommation, au service du profit, dont l'on peut se débarrasser quand on en n'a plus le besoin. Les jeunes en premier, puis peu à peu les autres sphères de la population, n'avaient d'autre choix que d'accepter des emplois soumis à aucune règle, ni protégés d'aucune manière, ce qui a contribué à l'apparition de conditions de travail précaires, puis à des conditions de vie précaires (autrement dit, la précarité). L'idée d'un revenu de base a vu le jour dans ce contexte historique : si le travail n'est plus synonyme de protection sociale pour les travailleurs et leur famille, il est nécessaire d'opérer un changement qui fasse de la protection sociale minimum un droit universel auxquels ont droit tous les citoyens (ou résidents) d'un pays, quelque soit leur situation professionnelle. 2. Est-ce que l’instauration d’un revenu de base ne découragerait pas les demandeurs d’emploi à chercher du travail s’ils reçoivent de l’argent pendant leur période d’inactivité ? Le revenu de base est souvent fixé par rapport au seuil de pauvreté, qui marque la limite au-dessous de laquelle un individu ne peut pas vivre dignement. Toute personne qui n'atteint pas ce seuil, par l'emploi ou par d'autres sources de revenu, touche la différence grâce à des indemnités mensuelles. Bien que le seuil de revenu de base puisse atteindre 1200 €uros dans des pays comme le Danemark ou le Luxembourg, il est généralement fixé à un niveau assez élevé pour couvrir les besoins fondamentaux des personnes tout en restant suffisamment bas afin d'encourager la plupart d'entre elles à chercher activement un emploi afin d'améliorer leurs conditions de vie. En outre, un revenu de base permettrait au travailleurs, et avant tout aux travailleurs précaires qui ne bénéficient pas des accords collectifs et du soutien des syndicats, de pouvoir choisir un poste convenable sans avoir à subir le chantage de leur employeur. En retour, une telle politique aurait des répercussions positives sur la situation économique en général. Un revenu de base réduirait le nombre de personnes qui acceptent des emplois aliénants, éreintants et mal payés et pousserait inévitablement les employeurs à choisir entre les deux options suivantes : augmenter la rémunération de ces emplois ou investir dans des technologies et des modèles d'organisation plus efficaces et plus modernes. Un revenu de base favoriserait également l'entrepreneuriat. Davantage de personnes envisageraient de créer leur entreprise s'ils étaient assurés de recevoir une forme de revenu pendant les tout premiers mois, alors que l'entreprise décolle et ne dégage peut-être pas encore un revenu suffisant pour l'entrepreneur. 3. Comment les pays européens, frappés par une crise de la dette souveraine, peuvent-il se permettre de verser des indemnités à tous ceux qui remplissent les conditions d'accès à un revenu de base? Un fonds pour le revenu de base engloberait plusieurs formes de prestations déjà existantes (indemnités d'incapacité, indemnités chômage, etc.), ce qui entrainerait une diminution des coûts excessifs qu'engendre la bureaucratie chargée de l'attribution et de la supervision des différentes prestations. Néanmoins, cette politique aurait un coût pour les Etats, qui alors devraient augmenter leurs recettes fiscales ou réduire le fonctionnement d'autres services pour financer ce fonds. Or, comme il l'a été dit plus haut, les changements dans le monde du travail vont de pair avec des changements sur le marché économique et financier. A l'heure actuelle, les Etats taxent surtout leurs citoyens sur le travail (impôt sur le revenu) et la consommation (TVA). Au regard des coefficients de Gini qui mettent au jour la polarisation qui existe dans l'Europe toute entière entre une classe moyenne de plus en plus restreinte et une petit nombre de super-riches qui gagnent toujours plus, l'imposition pourrait se faire sur les capitaux personnels plutôt que sur le travail, touchant ainsi les propriétaires d'actifs importants, de biens fonciers et de produits de luxe. Ou bien, encore plus simplement, une taxe sur les transactions financières comme celle qui est proposée depuis des décennies, même à 0,01%, serait suffisante pour financer le revenu minimum. La réduction des privilèges de l'élite politique et de certaines organisations religieuses pourrait aussi contribuer à remplir un tel fonds, tout comme la mise en place d'une législation forte en matière d'évasion fiscale. Le message est très simple : ce ne sont pas les sources de financement qui manquent mais le bon-vouloir politique. En mettant en oeuvre ce genre de mesures (et d'autres encore), les Etats seraient assurés du financement de ces fonds. 4. Quelle devrait être la somme à allouer mensuellement aux allocataires ? En octobre 2010, le Parlement européen a voté une résolution dénommée “Rôle du revenu minimum dans la lutte contre la pauvreté et la promotion d'une société inclusive en…
From the democratic deficit to a democratic default?
From the democratic deficit to a democratic default? this article is part of the paper “A blessing in disguise? What the Euro Crisis tells us about the democratic deficit and the future of post-national Europe”
Du déficit démocratique vers un défaut démocratique?
Du déficit démocratique vers un défaut démocratique? Cet article fait partie de la communication « Un mal pour un bien ? Ce que la crise de l’Euro nous apprend sur le déficit de démocratie et le futur de l’Europe post-nationale »
Come si scrive crisi
La crisi economica europea quindi, è un momento cruciale nella malattia che sta colpendo la comune casa europea, e la domanda è se la malattia continuerà o se il punto di svolta per la guarigione sia stato raggiunto.
Comment épelle-t-on le mot crise ?
Cet article fait partie du Journal Transeuropa publié à l'occasion du Festival Transeuropa 2012 Par Niccolo Milanese Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin La crise économique européenne, particulièrement associée à la situation de la Grèce dans l'esprit des citoyens, est également formulée en des termes qui dérivent du Grec ancien : krisis signifiait littéralement « décider, juger », et ce mot désignait le moment décisif d'une maladie, la phase critique qui précédait la guérison ou la mort ; le terme « économie » dérive de oikonomia, qui signifie « gestion du ménage ». La crise économique en Europe est donc la phase critique de la maladie qui touche le ménage commun de l'Europe et la question est de savoir si cette maladie va persister ou si l'on a atteint la phase critique précédant laguérison. La crise de la dette souveraine en Europe, qui a envahi les unes des journaux et le programme des sommets européens de plus en plus nombreux ces deux dernières années, a révélé la crise politique sous-jacente de l'Union Européenne. Cette crise politique est une crise de la souveraineté elle-même, une crise au coeur de la capacité à gouverner, qui d’une manière quelque peu ironique, s'exprime sur le plan monétaire sous forme d'une crise de la dette. C’est sans doute une version antérieure à cette crise qui motiva la création de l'Union Européenne elle-même déjà une soixantaine d'années auparavant : détruits par la guerre, les gouvernements des États membres fondateurs de l'Union avaient compris qu'ils n'accéderaient pas à la prospérité en restant indépendants les uns des autres, et que leur légitimité politique reposait sur cet accord. L'Union Européenne était une solution. L'accord s'est évidemment concrétisé de manière inégale et injuste selon les populations européennes à mesure que l'Union s'élargissait, mais un certain nombre d'individus y croyaient assez pour que la crise politique reste plus ou moins cachée. À présent, la promesse d'un nouveau progrès économique quel qu'il soit ressemble de plus en plus à une chimère, tandis que les inégalités économiques, qui sont apparues entre ces trente et vingt dernières années, se creusent et deviennent terriblement injustes pour ceux au bas de l'échelle. Ces inégalités empoisonnent véritablement la situation actuelle et tous les indices pointent une aggravation de cette dernière. La crise politique se situe avant tout au niveau national. La prétendue indépendance de l'économie par rapport au politique n'est que semi-volontaire puisque les pouvoirs politiques au niveau national ne peuvent pas avoir un contrôle total sur l'économie et ses acteurs, même s'ils si ces derniers le voulaient. La réalité s'apparente plutôt à un pacte faustien par lequel les dirigeants politiques ont choisi de laisser certains secteurs plus libres que d'autres (en particulier les marchés financiers) sous promesse d'une croissance suffisante, le but étant de maintenir le contrat social avec la population. L'inégalité de la distribution des bénéfices issus du capitalisme financier s'est accrue ; Et puis, entraîné par la crise du crédit de 2008-2009, le pacte de globalisation se dissout, perdant soudainement la confiance de tous. La bataille se déroule maintenant entre ces dirigeants politiques et les institutions financières qui font toujours quelques profits à court terme sur le dos du système en faillite et des classes de citoyens européens à qui l'on demande de payer les frais. Les institutions européennes, qui étaient l'expression du compromis établi entre les gouvernements et les marchés sur le partage de la souveraineté –en particulier le Conseil européen, la Banque centrale européenne et la Commission européenne– souffrent à présent de dysfonctionnements et sont, de plus en plus souvent, tout bonnement contournées. Le pacte budgétaire signé dernièrement, censé résoudre la crise économique européenne grâce à une austérité et une discipline renforcées, est l'expression pure du déséquilibre du pouvoir dans ce royaume intergouvernemental. Les élites économiques commencent à abandonner le ménage européen pour construire des ateliers de misère dans les pays voisins. Un retour à une économie et à une politique nationales est aussi impossible qu'indésirable pour les pays européens, trop petits pour prospérer dans un environnement où les acteurs régionaux passent à l'échelle mondiale, et déjà trop liés sur les plans économiques et sociaux. Le désir d'un retour au « modèle national » utopique n'est là que pour soutenir la situation actuelle où les premières puissances économiques dirigent les autres ; seulement, le club des « premières puissance économiques » risque bientôt de ne plus compter aucun état européen. Les citoyens de l'Europe doivent reconnaître la crise de la légitimité des gouvernements européens pour ce qu'elle est : l'expression d'une crise déjà ancienne, dissimulée derrière une promesse de prospérité. Nous pourrions considérer que la première victime de cette crise économique est la démocratie elle-même, mais il serait plus exact de dire que la crise économique a été causée par un échec de la démocratie. La solution doit donc surtout oeuvrer sur la question démocratique. Les mouvements d'occupation ou toute autre forme de mobilisation citoyenne montrent que de nombreux citoyens ont saisi la nécessité de réinventer la démocratie et réclament en même temps une refonte de l'économie sous une forme plus équitable. Là où les États-nations et les élites ne trouvent plus d'intérêt à soutenir le ménage européen, les citoyens doivent se mobiliser. Car la construction de l'Europe, quels que furent ses défauts et trahisons ces dernières années, offre des possibilités pour fonder une forme de société nouvelle et plus démocratique adaptée au XXIe siècle : une société basée sur la solidarité et la coopération, pas sur la compétition et l'exploitation, une société assez grande pour réguler les flux de capitaux internationaux et bâtir chez elle une économie alternative qui influencera le monde.
How do you spell crisis?
This article is part of the Transeuropa Journal, the official publication of the Transeuropa Festival 2012 by Niccolo Milanese The European economic crisis, most associated with Greece in the minds of the population, is also expressed in terms deriving from ancient Greek: krisis literally meant “to decide, to judge”, and the term was used for a turning point in a disease, the critical moment of going towards recovery or death; economy derives from oikonomia, meaning “household management”. The European economic crisis, then, is a turning point in the disease affecting the common European household, and the question is whether the disease will continue or whether a turning point towards recovery has been reached. The sovereign debt crisis in Europe – which has filled the front pages of newspapers and the agendas of more and more European summits for the past two years – has revealed an underlying political crisis within the European Union. That political crisis is a crisis of sovereignty itself, a crisis in the very possibility of governance, which somewhat ironically expresses itself in a monetary form in the debt crisis. An earlier version of this crisis arguably motivated the creation of the European Union itself already over 60 years ago: devastated by war, the governments of the founding member states of the Union realised they could not achieve domestic prosperity independently of one another, and that their political legitimacy relied upon that promise. The European Union was an answer. That promise, of course, has been realised unevenly and unfairly in the European populations as the European Union has enlarged, but it was sufficiently believable for enough people to more or less keep the political crisis hidden. Now the promise of any further economic advancement is looking more and more like a chimera, and the gaping inequalities which have opened over the past 20 to 30 years are becoming bitingly unfair for those at the bottom end. The inequalities are the real poison of the disease, and all the recent signs show that the disease is getting worse. The political crisis is above all at a national level. The pretence of the independence of the economy from politics is only half-willed, for the political powers at a national level can not totally control the economy and all its actors even if they want to. The reality is more like a Faustian pact, whereby political leaders have chosen to let certain parts of the economy freer than others (the financial markets in particular) on the promise of sufficient growth and in order to maintain a social contract with their populations. The distribution of the proceeds of financial capitalism has become increasingly inequitable, and spurred by the credit-crash of 2008-2009 this globalisation pact has now come undone with a sudden loss of faith on all sides. The battle is now between those political leaders and financial institutions who are still getting some short-term profits from the failing system, and the classes of the people of Europe being asked to pay the price. The institutions of European governance, which were the expression of the compromise found between governments and markets in sharing sovereignty – in particular the European Council, the European Central Bank, the European Commission – have become dysfunctional, and are increasingly bypassed altogether. The newly agreed ”fiscal compact” – which is supposed to resolve the European economic crisis through enforced austerity and discipline – is a pure expression of the disequilibrium of power in the intergovernmental realm. The economic elites are beginning to abandon the European household and build a sweatshop next door. A return to a national economy, just like a return to a national politics, is as impossible as it is undesirable for European countries, too small to prosper in an increasingly globalised world of regional actors, and already highly interlinked both economically and socially. The desire for a return to a mythical ”national model” is simply to support the current situation where the more economically powerful nations dictate the rest: only soon the club of ‘the most economically powerful nations’ may no longer include any European members. The European citizens must see the legitimation crisis of European governments for what it is: the expression of a longstanding crisis that was covered over by the promise of wealth. We could say that the first victim of the economic crisis is democracy itself, but it would be more accurate to say that the economic crisis was brought about by a failure in democracy. The response must therefore insist upon democracy above all. In the occupy movements as well as other forms of citizens’ mobilisation, we have seen that many citizens understand the need to reinvent democracy at the same time as they demand a reinvention of the economy to a more equitable form. Where the nation states and elites no longer see their interest in upholding the European household, the citizens must occupy. For the European construction, whatever its shortcomings and betrayals over the past years, offers the potentials for the foundations of a new and more democratic form of society fit for the 21st century: one that is based on solidarity and collaboration, not competition and exploitation, one big enough to regulate flows of global capital and build an alternative economy within itself which will influence the world.
LGBT rights: should legislation or people’s attitudes change first?
Article by Alessandro Valera Caricatures by Dan Perjovschi The agorà Transeuropa, the final event of TRANSEUROPA Festival, focused on the rights of minorities. Lesbians, gay, bisexuals and transsexual (LGBT) people are among the minority groups that are still discriminated in Europe. This type of discrimination is sometimes expressed as restriction on individual rights (gay men in most EU countries cannot donate blood, for example) or on access to institutions only opened to heterosexual couples (marriage, adoption etc.). While the EU is among the most advanced places in the world in terms of respect for LGBT rights, the situation is patchy, with some countries, such as Sweden, Spain or the Netherlands, being close to offer full equality to LGBT citizens and others, such as Lithuania, even banning the word homosexual to be pronounced in schools. Through the participation to the forum of Renato Sabbadini, President of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA Europe), Antonio Rotelli, President of Rete Lenford, a network of lawyers working on cases of LGBT discrimination in Italy and Jose Diaz Lafuente, an academic from the University of Valencia, as well as Sara Saleri and Alessandro Valera from European Alternatives, the forum was able to present the different legal situations regarding LGBT rights in Europe, and in the EU in particular. These speakers, together with the audience, discussed different way of ensuring LGBT rights were respected across the EU and beyond. All participants agreed that what we should strive for equality for all groups, including LGBT people. So, rather than asking for special institutions that resemble marriage, like the UK or Germany have done with their civil partnership laws, existing institutions and legal practices (such as marriage and adoptions) should be open to all citizens, despite their sexual orientation or gender identity. The dialogue continued between one of the speakers and a participant. Mr Sabbadini claimed that in all cases where marriage equality was reached, it was the products of decade of work by LGBT activists, feminists and other friendly groups to educate society about these issues through the production of films, books arts, public debates, pride parades etc. In a nutshell “you have to change society before you can change the laws”, Mr Sabbadini said. A participant from Bulgaria disagreed with this approach, saying that, especially when countries join in the European Union and have access to a certain sets of rights, they should have access to all rights granted by the EU, including the right to marry or to adopt, even if this needs to be imposed by a central authority. In this case “you have to change the laws to change society”. It was broadly agreed that both side of the story had some value and that the two are not mutually exclusive: changing people’s attitudes towards LGBT people and fighting for legal equality should be pursued simultaneously, through political as well as cultural and artistic means. What’s your opinion? Should society change to make room for legal changes, or should an “enlightened” legislator change the laws so that society, by abiding to them, learns the importance of protecting LGBT rights? Also, what could the EU do to protect minority rights? And how could equality activists across Europe work together to see everybody’s rights granted in the whole of Europe?
Droits des personnes LGBT : Le changement doit-il venir dabord de la législation ou des mentalités?
Article par Alessandro Valera Traduction par Alexis Gratpenche Caricatures par Dan Perjovschi Les lesbiennes, gays, bisexuel-le-s et transsexuel-le-s (LGBT) font encore partie des minorités discriminées en Europe. L'Agora Transeuropa, qui a clôturé le festival Transeuropa, a notamment eu pour thème principal les droits des minorités. Ce genre de discrimination peut prendre la forme de restrictions des droits individuels (par exemple, dans la plupart des pays européens, les homosexuels n'ont pas le droit de donner leur sang) ou de restrictions de l'accès à certaines institutions qui sont réservées aux couples hétérosexuels (le mariage, l'adoption, etc.). L'Union européenne fait certes partie des régions du monde où les droits des LGBT sont les plus respectés, mais la situation est disparate : dans certains pays, comme la Suède, l'Espagne ou les Pays-Bas, l'égalité des droits est presque totale alors que dans d'autres, comme la Lituanie, on va jusqu'à interdire que soit prononcé le mot “homosexuel” à l'école. Grâce à la participation de Renato Sabbadini, président de l' International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA Europe), d'Antonio Rotelli, président de Rete Lenford, un réseau d'avocats spécialistes des questions de discrimination envers les LGBT en Italie, de Diaz Lafuente, universitaire de la Faculté de Valence, ainsi qu'à celle de Sara Saleri et Alessandro Valera d'Alternatives Européennes, le forum a permis de présenter les différentes situations législatives des pays d'Europe et, en particulier, des membres de l'Union européenne. Ces intervenants, ainsi que le public du forum, ont réfléchi à différentes manières pour garantir le respect des droits des LGBT dans l'Union européenne et au-delà. L'ensemble des participants s'accordaient à dire qu'il fallait lutter pour l'égalité entre toutes les communautés, y compris les personnes LGBT. Ainsi, plutôt que de demander la création de nouvelles institutions semblables au mariage, comme cela a été fait au Royaume Uni ou en Allemagne avec l'introduction du partenariat civil, on devrait ouvrir les institutions et les procédures légales actuelles (le mariage, l'adoption) à l'ensemble des citoyens, peu importe leur orientation sexuelle ou leur identité de genre. L'échange s'est prolongé entre un des intervenants et un participant originaire d'Europe de l'Est. M. Sabbadini affirmait que la conquête de l'égalité des droits en matière de mariage est toujours le fruit de décennies de travail pendant lesquels les militants LGBT, les féministes et d'autres groupes sympathisants sensibilisent la société sur ces questions, grâce à des films, à des livres, à l'art de manière générale, à des débats publics, à des marches des fiertés, etc. En résumé, “il faut changer la société avant de changer la loi”, a déclaré M. Sabbadini. Un participant bulgare s'est opposé à cette vision des choses, en affirmant que, tout particulièrement lorsque des pays deviennent membres de l'Union européenne et acquièrent de nouveaux droits, les citoyens devraient avoir accès à tous les droits garantis par l'Union européenne, y compris le droit au mariage ou à l'adoption, même s'il faut pour cela qu'ils soient imposés par le pouvoir central. Dans ce cas, il s'agit plutôt de “changer la loi pour pour changer la société”. La majorité des participants s'accordaient à dire que chacune des deux approches de la question avaient ses mérites et que l'une n'excluait pas totalement l'autre. Quel est votre point de vue ? La société doit-elle changer et rendre possible des changements législatifs ou un législateur “éclairé” doit-il modifier la loi pour que la société, qui doit respecter ses principes, comprenne l'importance du respect des droits LGBT ? De plus, quelle mesure l'Union européenne pourrait-elle mettre en œuvre pour protéger les droits des minorités ? Et de quelle manière les militants pour l'égalité dans toute l'Europe pourraient-ils collaborer afin que les droits de chacun-e soient garantis sur l'ensemble du continent ?
Personne ne s’attend à…
Personne ne s'attend à… Concevoir la mobilisation transnationale Festival Transeuropa 2012 Image: Aldo Giannotti “Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible !” L’Internationale situationniste “Personne ne s'attend à… Concevoir la mobilisation transnationale ” est un appel à idées lancé par le Réseau Transeuropa et Alternatives européennes à l'occasion de l'édition 2012 du festival Transeuropa. Personne ne s'attend à… fait clairement référence à un des premiers hashtags créés pendant la mobilisation espagnole du printemps 2011 ; il permettait de placer ce mouvement dans la continuité du Printemps arabe tout en donnant au terme “révolution” un sens nouveau, et cette dénomination permettait également de lier cette mobilisation aux autres mouvements européens. #Personne ne s'attend à la révolution espagnole était une manière ironique de s'approprier la célèbre réplique des Monty Python “Personne ne s'attend à l'inquisition espagnole” pour en faire un slogan efficace qui annonçait et présentait le mouvement comme un élément imprévisible qui était alors en mesure de remettre en question et en cause le scénario pré-établi. Les mouvements de protestation et les manifestations qui, les unes après les autres, ont éclaté dans le monde entier ont fait apparaître la relation qui lie étroitement communication et mobilisation, et ont montré que les manifestants éprouvaient le besoin urgent de trouver des formes communes de communication visuelle, verbale et corporelle pour faire naître un sentiment d'appartenance indépendamment de leur situation géographique. C'est ainsi que l'échange d'expériences et de bonnes pratiques allait de pair avec les tentatives de mise en place de différents modèles de démocratie participative concernant la prise de décision et le lancement de nouvelles actions. Ces pratiques sont elle-mêmes devenues un exercice et un moyen pour le mouvement de créer sa propre image, en permettant ainsi aux militants de se concevoir comme des éléments d'un grand ensemble collectif. Personne ne s'attend à… est une réponse à cette situation et se présente comme un appel à idées destiné à des artistes de tout domaine et toute nationalité, afin pour qu'ils proposent des formes possibles ou, mieux encore, des formes impossibles de mobilisation et des modalités d'action, d'échange et de progrès collectif au-delà des frontières spatiales (et temporelles). Ce projet se veut le reflet du contexte dans lequel il s'inscrit, c'est-à-dire le festival Transeuropa qui a lieu dans 14 villes, et qui est organisé par tout autant de groupes de militants membres du réseau Transeuropa. Ainsi, le festival est lui-même une forme alternative de mobilisation transnationale, qui engendre un nouvelle subjectivité collective constamment mise en pratique. Cet appel permettra d'engranger les idées des artistes sous forme de dessins, d'esquisses, de partitions, de chorégraphies, et d'imaginer des actions transnationales réalisables ou non, afin de proposer une réponse à l'image qu'on donne souvent des mobilisations collectives et à la manière dont elles sont perçues. Voilà pourquoi le but de cet appel est de dépasser l'idée de la mobilisation comme protestation et manifestation pour la concevoir plutôt comme un ensemble de moyens destinés à mettre en pratique la réciprocité des échanges et la solidarité. En “demandant l'impossible”, les projets des artistes joueront le rôle de formes alternatives de représentation, et constitueront des exercices qui permettront d'ouvrir des voies “inattendues”, sur lesquelles les subjectivités transnationales pourront voir le jour et œuvrer de concert. Le festival Transeuropa est un festival transnational de cultures, d'art et de politique qui a lieu au même moment dans 14 villes européennes : Londres, Paris, Bologne, Berlin, Cluj-Napoca, Lublin, Varsovie, Prague, Bratislava, Sofia, Amsterdam, Belgrade et Rome. Il ne s'agit pas de 14 festivals se déroulant en même temps mais d'un seul et unique festival à l'envergure européenne.
Nobody Expects…
Nobody Expects… Imagining Transnational Mobilization Transeuropa Festival 2012 Image: Aldo Giannotti 'Be realistic. Demand the impossible!' Situationist International Nobody Expects… Imagining Transnational Mobilization is a call for ideas launched by the Transeuropa Network and European Alternatives for the 2012 edition of the Transeuropa Festival. Nobody Expects…clearly refers to one of the first #hashtags invented during the Spanish mobilization in the spring of 2011 and that had the ability to communicate the intent of moving along a line of continuity with the Arab Spring while proposing a different understanding of the term 'revolution' and linking with other European movements. #Nobody expects the Spanish Revolution ironically appropriated the famous Monty Python catchphrase 'Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition' to turn it into an efficacious and appealing slogan that announced and presented the movement as something unpredictable and, as such, in the condition to challenge and question the present scenario. The ongoing protests and demonstrations bursting all over the world made clear the intertwined relationship between communication and mobilization as well as made manifest the urgency of the protesters to search for shared body, verbal and visual languages to produce a sense of belonging independently from geographical coordinates. In this sense, exchanging experiences and best practices, testing reciprocally participatory and democratic models for taking decisions and produce new actions, go along side, and become themselves, forms of self-representation and exercises, for those who mobilized, to understand themselves as parts of the same collectivity. Nobody expects…responds to this situation and is proposed in the form of a call for ideas to artists from different fields and nationality to propose possible or, even better, impossible forms of mobilization and modalities of acting, sharing and moving together beyond spatial (and temporal) limitations. The project intends to mirror the context where it will be presented, namely the Transeuropa Festival that takes place in 14 cities and is organized by as many groups of activists members of the Transeuropa Network. Therefore the festival is itself an alternative form of activist transnational mobilization around which a new collective subjectivity emerges and is constantly practiced. The call will collect artists ideas in form of drawings, sketches, scores and choreographies to design both realizable and unrealisable transnational gestures so as to respond to the ways collective movements are usually perceived and depicted. Hence the call aims at going beyond the notion of mobilization understood as protest and demonstration but more as ways to enact forms of reciprocity and solidarity. By'demanding the impossible' the artists' plans will act as alternative forms of representation and will serve as exercises in imagining 'unexpected' ways for transnational subjectivities to produce themselves and move together. Transeuropa Festival is a transnational festival of culture, art and politics happening simultaneously in 14 cities throughout Europe: London, Paris, Bologna, Berlin, Cluj-Napoca, Lublin, Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava, Sofia, Amsterdam, Belgrade and Rome. It is not 14 different festivals happening at the same time, but one festival taking place throughout Europe.
Nobody Expects… Imagining Transnational Mobilization
Ligna 'Be realistic. Demand the impossible!' Situationist International Nobody Expects… clearly refers to one of the first #hashtags invented during the Spanish mobilization in the spring of 2011 and that had the ability to communicate the intent of moving along a line of continuity with the Arab Spring while proposing a different understanding of the term 'revolution' and linking with other European movements. #Nobody expects the Spanish Revolution ironically appropriated the famous Monty Python catchphrase 'Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition' to turn it into an efficacious and appealing slogan that announced and presented the movement as something unpredictable and, as such, in the condition to challenge and question the present scenario. The ongoing protests and demonstrations bursting all over the world made clear the intertwined relationship between communication and mobilization as well as made manifest the urgency of the protesters to search for shared body, verbal and visual languages to produce a sense of belonging independently from geographical coordinates. In this sense, exchanging experiences and best practices, testing reciprocally participatory and democratic models for taking decisions and produce new actions, go along side, and become themselves, forms of self-representation and exercises, for those who mobilized, to understand themselves as parts of the same collectivity. The ideas produced by the invited artists have been presented in form of posters at the Teatro Valle during the closing days of Transeuropa Festival alongside with installation, video and performances. Here you can see the posters designed by Tim Etchells, Daniela Kostova, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Hiwa K, Ivan Moudov, Ligna, Public Works, Zhou Xiaohu and Aldo Giannotti: Ivan Moudov Aldo Giannotti Hiwa K. Luchezar Boyadjiev Tim Etchells Daniela Kostova
Nobody Expects… Imaginer la mobilisation transnationale
Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin Ligna Traduction du texte de l'affiche: « 9 étapes pour transformer un espace : 1. Prenez du papier, un stylo, de quoi accrocher votre papier sur différentes surfaces (du ruban adhésif par exemple) et un appareil photo. 2. Sortez de chez vous. Faites un tour. Regardez comment les lieux sont utilisés. 3. Choisissez un lieu. Ce peut-être un lieu ordinaire ou controversé. 4. Imaginez une activité qui perturbe la fonction de ce lieu ou qui lui en donne une nouvelle. 5. Notez sur une feuille les consignes pour cette activité. 6. Essayez de rester aussi simple que possible. 7. Accrochez la feuille à un endroit visible. 8. Prenez une photo et envoyez-la à changespace@gmx.de. Les photos seront publiées sur le blog www.paperspace-ligna.blogspot.com 9. Répétez ces étapes autant que vous le voudrez. » « Soyez réalistes. Demandez l’impossible ! » Internationale situationniste Nobody expects… (personne ne s’attend à…) fait clairement référence à l’un des premiers #hashtags inventés pendant la mobilisation espagnole au printemps 2011, hashtag qui permettait également de traduire la volonté d’agir dans la lancée du Printemps arabe, tout en proposant une nouvelle interprétation du mot « révolution », et en faisant le lien avec les autres mouvements européens. #Nobody expects the Spanish Revolution s’est approprié de façon ironique la réplique culte de Monty Python « Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition » pour la transformer en un slogan efficace et galvanisant, qui a annoncé et présenté un mouvement imprévisible et par conséquent susceptible de défier et remettre en question la situation actuelle. Les protestations et manifestations qui éclatent aujourd’hui partout dans le monde ont mis en évidence le lien étroit qui existe entre la communication et la mobilisation, et ont montré combien il était nécessaire pour les manifestants de trouver une structure commune et des langages verbaux et visuels afin de produire un sentiment d’appartenance, affranchi des limites géographiques. Dans cette optique, les processus d’échange d’ expériences et des bonnes pratiques, de test des modèles démocratiques réciproques et participatifs pour prendre des décisions et conduire de nouvelles actions, vont de pair, et constituent eux-mêmes, des formes d’autoreprésentation et d’exercices pour ceux qui se mobilisent, car ces processus leur permettent de se concevoir eux-mêmes comme partie prenante d’une même collectivité. Les idées proposées par les artistes invités ont été présentées sous forme d’affiches au Teatro Valle à la fin du Festival Transeuropa, aux côtés d’expositions, de vidéos et de spectacles. Vous pouvez voir ici les affiches réalisées par Tim Etchells, Daniela Kostova, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Hiwa K, Ivan Moudov, Ligna, Public Works, Zhou Xiaohu et Aldo Giannotti: Ivan Moudov Traduction: « Majeur droit » Aldo Giannotti Traduction: « Cycle continu » Hiwa K. Traduction: Cooking with Mama – Dîner d’occupation (Occupy dinner) « Une série d’événements culinaires diffusés sur Internet sous le nom « Cooking with Mama » sont organisés par l’artiste Hiwa K depuis 2006, dans des contextes toujours différents. Cela aura cette fois lieu dans divers espaces publics à Berlin, là où le mouvement Occupy s’était établi. Chaque fois, la mère d’Hiwa, qui vit en Iraq, transmet une recette à son fils par Skype. Hiwa la traduit du kurde vers l’allemand ou l’anglais pour les participants. D’autres personnes traduiront probablement la recette en d’autres langues avant de l’envoyer vers différents pays. Nous aimerions que Cooking with Mama se développe et évolue dans les prochains mois pour devenir un événement récurrent. Mais surtout nous voudrions appeler les citoyens et Occupy Berlin à revenir dans ces espaces publics et ceux qui ne seront pas ici à nous suivre en ligne. Pour concrétiser cet événement, nous aurons besoin de toutes les personnes intéressées. Si vous aimeriez participer – que ce soit pour cuisiner, organiser, prêter une marmite, nous regarder ou simplement manger avec nous – rejoignez notre groupe Facebook ou envoyez nous un mail. Ce projet est axé sur le processus, requiert la participation des gens et reste ouvert à toute suggestion.» Luchezar Boyadjiev Traduction: LOUE UN GOUV’ « TON gouvernement ne te représente plus ? TON gouvernement ne s’en sort plus ? Tu as l’impression que les organismes internationaux de régulation discutent MAIS n’arrangent pas vraiment TA situation ? TU penses avoir besoin d’un système démocratique plus DIRECT qui soit non seulement efficace MAIS qui vienne de TOI plutôt que d’EUX ? La réponse est – LOUE UN GOUV’ ! LOUE UN GOUV’ est une initiative transnationale de l’artiste Luchezar Boyadjiev pour aller au delà de l’État-nation ! LOUE UN GOUV’ est un OUTIL qui te permet de choisir ton PROPRE gouvernement ! LOUE UN GOUV’ est un moyen de devenir POST-MONDIAL ! TOI et tes concitoyens – discutez, analysez et définissez les BESOINS de votre pays ; TU – RÉCLAMES ton nouveau gouvernement auprès des organismes internationaux de régulation ; TU – NÉGOCIES la composition du ton nouveau gouvernement avec ces mêmes organismes (qui de toute façon te gênent tous les jours…) ; TOI et tes concitoyens concevez votre PROPRE gouvernement ! La MAUVAISE nouvelle c’est que ton nouveau gouvernement est composé d’experts internationaux. La BONNE nouvelle c’est que TOI et CES organismes lui faites confiance ! Tu peux OBTENIR qu’ils t’aident à repenser le RÔLE de ton pays à la fois au niveau européen et au niveau mondial ! Tu les feras TRAVAILLER pour TOI car TU as LOUÉ UN GOUVERNEMENT !!! Ton gouvernement est là pour s’occuper de TOI ; ton GOUVERNEMENT est à ton SERVICE ! » Tim Etchells Traduction:Les pierres parlent / Écrire tout haut « Proposition pour l’instauration d’une Nuit transnationale du graffiti Activistes, artistes et tous les autres, rassemblez-vous pour promouvoir une nuit dédiée à un festival de graffiti mondial et transnational non autorisé chaque année. Cette nuit-là, nous encouragerons les gens, où qu’ils soient dans le monde, à envahir les rues en masse et à prendre part, ensemble ou seuls, à une grande désobéissance civile en écrivant, dessinant ou marquant d’une certaine façon les bâtiments, les murs et la chaussée de l’espace public. Ne laissez aucune surface intacte sur Terre.…
No control, no borders (deuxième partie)
Par Petya Borisova Traduction : Aliénor Daumalin Photo : Evzenia Afanasyeva Vidéos : Loïc Adrien Le festival Transeuropa propose des approches et formats innovants pour créer des espaces culturels et politiques communs qui dépassent les stéréotypes et les frontières nationales. Découvrez en détail les évènements qui se sont déroulés du 9 au 13 mai à Paris! Deuxième partie Jeudi 10 Mai, la principale thématique de la journée était celle des migrations et des droits des migrants clandestins. En partenariat avec les Jeudis du FIFDH de Paris, la projection du récit documentaire “Comme un homme sur la terre”, au cinéma le Nouveau Latina, a donné suite à une discussion au cours de laquelle Laure Blondel de Migreurop et la journaliste Flore Murard-Yovanovich ont présenté la campagne Open access now. L’objectif de cette initiative est d’obtenir, pour les journalistes et les membres d’associations, le droit d’accès aux centres de rétention d’immigrés. Ces deux journalistes ont parlé du manque de transparence et des obstacles aux activités prévues dans le cadre de la campagne, comme lors des visites de journalistes à des immigrés enfermés dans ces centres, et ce malgré le droit inaliénable à l’information accordé aux citoyens européens. Vendredi 11 Mai, la troisième journée était dédiée aux nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique. Malheureusement, l’intervenant Bassem Samir, Directeur de l’ONG Egyptian Democratic Academy initialement invité, n’a pas été autorisé à quitter son pays. Le débat a néanmoins eu lieu avec la participation d’Imad Houssari, membre du Conseil national syrien, et de la journaliste Jade Lingaard. Ils ont discuté du Printemps arabe et de la façon dont il a inspiré les mouvements de protestation à l’Ouest. Pour Jade Lindgaard, même si la situation et la cause des problèmes de ces sociétés divergent, les mouvements au Moyen-Orient et dans les pays de l’Ouest ont de nombreux points communs. « Ils ont transformé le modèle traditionnel des révolutions et la multitude urbaine est devenue l’acteur principal de la révolution. » Le clou de cette fête multiculturelle et transnationale était fixé au Samedi 12 Mai au Centre FGO Barbara. De nombreux ateliers, courts-métrages et improvisations théâtrales dédiés aux stéréotypes culturels et nationaux ont été proposés au public. Beaucoup ont été séduits par le concept de « bibliothèque vivante » : des personnes d’origines et de milieux différents incarnaient des livres et racontaient leur histoire aux « lecteurs » intéressés. Comme l’a expliqué la « bibliothécaire » Sophie Lavigne, « le but est de dépasser les stéréotypes que nous portons tous en nous ». La journée s’est terminée bien après minuit avec un concert de Zamua, Jessica Fitoussi et MmMmM. La musique fabuleuse et le flot ininterrompu d’invités ont attiré beaucoup de gens qui se trouvaient par hasard dans le quartier. La question de la crise économique et des mesures d’austérité a été abordée le dernier jour, Dimanche 13 Mai, autour de tables rondes organisées au Lavoir Moderne Parisien. Les intervenants Pascal Franchet, vice-président du CADTM France, et Antonella Corsani, des Économistes Atterrés, ont discuté des différents facteurs expliquant la situation économique actuelle et leur impact sur la société, des cas de la Grèce, de l’Espagne, de l’Italie et de la France et enfin des moyens de raviver les démocraties européennes. Il a notamment été conclu que la crise et l’accumulation des dettes sont le résultat de la forme de la représentation démocratique aujourd’hui et du cercle vicieux de la consommation dans lequel nous sommes pris. La journée a fini avec un atelier sur les alternatives au système économique actuel. Les participants ont pu évoquer avec des activistes français et étrangers des questions concernant la ville en transition, la nécessité d’un revenu de base garanti, le système d’échanges locaux et enfin les mouvements transnationaux de lutte contre la précarité en Europe. Le dernier échange a prouvé que les idées ne manquaient pas en France et en Europe de nos jours, cependant celles-ci sont encore loin d’avoir conquis le courant dominant. Le festival Transeuropa a permis de créer un pont entre la situation actuelle en Europe et celle du Moyen-Orient et de réunir des personnes venant d’horizons différents. L’événement a mis en place une plateforme de discussion où beaucoup d’idées intéressantes ont été développées. Les initiatives présentées ont montré que si l’Europe avait beaucoup à donner, elle avait aussi beaucoup à apprendre. Avec quatorze villes participantes cette année, les organisateurs espèrent qu’il y en aura encore plus l’an prochain, et particulièrement dans les pays arabes.
No control, no borders (première partie)
Par Petya Borisova Traduction : Aliénor Daumalin Photo : Evzenia Afanasyeva Vidéos : Loïc Adrien Le festival Transeuropa propose des approches et formats innovants pour créer des espaces culturels et politiques communs qui dépassent les stéréotypes et les frontières nationales. Découvrez en détail les évènements qui se sont déroulés du 9 au 13 mai à Paris! Première partie L'atmosphère paisible et paresseuse qui règne habituellement à Paris au mois de mai s’est électrifiée avec la tenue des élections présidentielles, après plus d'une année de débats. C'est à la veille de ce moment crucial, à la fois pour la France et pour l'Union Européenne, que le festival Transeuropa, qui se veut transnational et paneuropéen,a débuté. Durant cinq jours, du 9 au 13 mai, le festival a proposé à la fois des discussions, des courts-métrages, des performances artistiques, des concerts et des ateliers. Ces événements étaient organisés autour des trois axes principaux du festival : les alternatives aux mesures d'austérité économique, les questions relatives aux migrations, enfin les nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique. Ségolène Pruvot, Coordinatrice du festival, explique l'idée de départ: « L’objectif principal de ce festival est d'ouvrir un espace pour le débat, les discussions et les actions qui soit vraiment Transeuropéen. » Le festival est né du mécontentement face à la construction financière et administrative de l'Europe, le but des organisateurs était donc « d’inciter les intellectuels, les artistes et les jeunes activistes à appréhender le concept d'Europe et à se le réapproprier. Il s'agit en fait d'affirmer que c’est un concept fort et qu'il ne faut pas y renoncer pour la simple raison que son état actuel nous déplaît. » Avant le lancement officiel du Festival dans l’ensemble des villes le mercredi 9 mai, à Paris Alternatives Européennes avait donné rendez-vous sur le parvis de l’Hôtel de ville lors de « Faîtes l’Europe! » pour proposer quizz et discussions sur l’Europe ! Dans les 14 villes européennes participantes, le Festival Transeuropa a démarré avec une marche transnationale menée en simultané à Amsterdam, Barcelone, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologne, Bratislava, Cardiff, Cluj-Napoca, Londres, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sofia et Varsovie (voir le programme des autres villes ici) La marche parisienne, dirigée par les guides enthousiastes des Promenades Urbaines et de l’association A Travers Paris, Jens Denilssen et Manon Sajaloli, s'est déroulée dans un des lieux affichant la plus grande diversité culturelle et ethnique de la ville, le XVIIIe arrondissement, et plus précisément dans le quartier de la Goutte d'Or. Cinquante-six nations cohabitent dans ce quartier et s'y sentent chez elles. Le but de la marche était «de visiter des endroits où les touristes ne vont pas. Découvrir ces endroits et tenter d'expliquer aux gens le fonctionnement et la logique que suit la ville », raconte Jens. À chaque détour, une nouvelle surprise : un fait curieux, une lecture publique ou une rencontre avec un spécialiste du quartier. « Ce quartier a spécifiquement pour vocation d'accueillir les immigrés. De plus, il est construit autour d'une vie associative très active qui a renforcé ce sentiment d'appartenance, a souligné M.Labidi, directeur du Café Social, développé par l’association Ayyem Zamen. Selon lui, « il est impossible de mesurer à quel point les gens sont attachés à la Goutte d'Or ». Le spectacle des percussionnistes de batucada Zabumba a constitué l’un des moments les plus impressionnants de cette marche. Le son entraînant de leurs tambours qui résonnait dans tout le quartier a permis de rassembler les marcheurs et les nombreux passants en un long cortège très animé. Le temps fort de la journée a été la représentation de l’artiste Tania Bruguera qui a lu le Manifeste des Migrants devant l’église Saint Bernard, « un lieu très important pour tous les immigrants », a-t-elle précisé. Selon elle, nous devrions « voir les immigrés comme un nouveau groupe social qui a le droit de s’épanouir et qui représente l’avenir du monde ». La première journée du festival s’est achevée sur un magnifique concert de flamenco de Jean-Baptiste Marino et Cristo Cortes à l’Institut des Cultures d’Islam.
Camps détrangers en Europe : un accès largement entravé
Dans le cadre de son engagement continu pour défendre les droits des migrants, Alternatives Européennes a lancé en collaboration avec Migreurop et une coalition européenne d’organisations, la campagne européenne 'Open Access Now', qui réclame l’accès aux centres de détention pour les organisations de la société civile et les journalistes. L’objectif principal est d’informer les citoyens de ce qu’il se passe en leur nom en Europe, et de lancer un débat sur la manière dont l’Europe défend (ou ne défend pas) le respect des droits de l’homme, et de permettre un contrôle citoyen des lieux d’enfermement. Du 26 mars au 26 avril 2012, les différents acteurs de la campagne dans plusieurs pays européens se sont mobilisés pour demander des visites effectuées par des journalistes et des organisations de la société civile dans des centres pour migrants. L’objectif était de tester les possibilités d'accès des organisations et des médias, mais également de récolter des informations relatives au fonctionnement des centres, et à l'exercice des droits des personnes détenues. Des parlementaires se sont joints à l’initiative. Voici les principaux résultats au niveau global et plus particulièrement en France. Seize lieux d’enfermement visités en Europe, et plusieurs refus d’autoriser des visites Seize lieux d’enfermement ont pu être visités en Bulgarie, Croatie, France, Italie, Mauritanie, Roumanie, Serbie. Aucune visite n’a été autorisée en Belgique, Espagne et Pologne. La campagne a mis en évidence la volonté des autorités d’encadrer, voire d’empêcher ce regard extérieur qui inquiète. En témoignent les motifs de refus d’accès invoqués, le plus souvent douteux et dérisoires. En comparaison avec les visites organisées en 2009 et 2011 par le réseau Migreurop, on constate que la situation dans les camps d'étrangers est globalement inchangée : des conditions de détention qui font penser au système carcéral, et des atteintes aux droits fondamentaux (accès aux soins, demandes d’asile, assistance juridique, contrôle de la privation de liberté par un juge). Les violences policières sont fréquemment rapportées. L’enfermement, qui peut durer plusieurs mois (jusqu’à 18 mois d’après les directives européennes), met de fait les migrants dans une situation de détresse psychologique importante. Les sentiments de désorientation, de désespoir et de colère sont palpables. En France, six centres visités mais l’accès refusé aux journalistes et militants associatifs Par décret du 8 juillet 2011, le gouvernement français a encadré de manière restrictive et contraignante le « droit de visite » des associations aux lieux de rétention administrative pour étrangers. Ce décret étant contesté, les associations participant à la campagne n’ont été intégrées aux demandes de visites qu’en tant qu’accompagnants des parlementaires. Les journalistes, quant à eux, ont fait leurs demandes de visites de manière autonome, ou en accompagnement des parlementaires. 48 journalistes se sont mobilisés en France durant la campagne, dont une trentaine uniquement pour Toulouse. Aucun journaliste ou militant n’a pu entrer – hormis les militants appartenant aux associations déjà habilitées, dans le dispositif français, à intervenir dans les lieux d’enfermement. Sur les neuf centres où des visites étaient prévues, seuls ceux où un parlementaire s’est rendu ont pu être visités (Centres de Rétention Administrative (CRA) de Vincennes, Strasbourg, Rennes, Toulouse, Bordeaux et la zone d’attente de Roissy) Les raisons des refus sont multiples : l’administration s’est tantôt appuyée sur le code de procédure civile prévoyant uniquement l’accès des élus aux lieux d’enfermement, tantôt sur le devoir de réserve du personnel administratif pendant la période électorale. Certaines justifications apportant paraissant totalement ahurissantes : Au centre de Cornebarrieu, près de Toulouse, la raison invoquée a été celle du respects des personnes : « Si ces centres sont interdits, notamment aux journalistes, c’est lié au fait que ces retenus ne sont pas des animaux et que nous ne sommes pas dans un zoo» (lire l’intégralité de l’article de Sarah Bosquet , «Sans motif légal, les centres de rétention restent fermés aux journalistes » publié sur Libération.fr le 10 juillet 2012). Le dessinateur Jean-Benoît Meymeck a conçu une BD retraçant les actions et témoignages de la campagne Open Access pour le centre de Cornebarrieu (« CRA » sur le blog de Jean-Benoît Meymeck) Les parlementaires nationaux et européens ayant effectué les visites ont témoigné des conditions de vie de ces lieux fermés. L’observation la plus récurrente concerne l’accès aux soins très limité des personnes maintenues. La majorité des visiteurs parlementaires s’accordent pour dénoncer une privation de liberté pour « des personnes qui n’ont commis aucun acte répréhensible et qui sont juste soupçonnées d’être en situation de séjour irrégulier », ce qui « ne peut pas être accepté dans la conception d’un pays démocratique » Que deviennent ces personnes enfermées ? D’après la Cimade, 40% des personnes placées en rétention sont finalement libérées quand 35% sont expulsées. Marie Barbier, journaliste à l’Humanité participant à la campagne Open Access Now, souligne que « la majorité sont des sans-papiers qui ont été arrêtés dans la rue, alors qu’ils vivent ici depuis des années». En 2010, plus de 60 000 personnes sont passées par un des 26 CRA français (voir l’article de Sarah Bosquet, «Sans motif légal, les centres de rétention restent fermés aux journalistes » publié sur Libération.fr le 10 juillet 2012) La mobilisation des parlementaires, médias et militants associatifs doit se poursuivre. La campagne « Open Access » est lancée, d’autres actions et visites seront organisées dans les prochains mois. Aussi longtemps que ces lieux d’enfermement existent, il faut revendiquer un droit d’accès sans restriction des représentants de la société civile et des médias à ces lieux. Mettre fin à l’opacité qui les entoure est la seule façon de s’assurer que les droits fondamentaux n’y sont pas quotidiennement bafoués, que les garanties de procédures qui doivent normalement entourer toute privation de liberté ne sont pas systématiquement violées. Pour en savoir plus : – Site web de la campagne Open Access Now : www.openaccessnow.eu – Communiqué de presse : « Campagnes de visites 2012 : Camps d’étrangers ? N’entrez pas, violation des droits ! » – 14 juin 2012 -Texte de campagne – Enfermement des migrants en Europe : On a le droit de savoir!…
Europe : Quelles alternatives aux mesures daustérité ?
Les mesures d’austérité ont été présentées en Europe comme la seule mesure possible face à la crise économique et leur mise en place, une priorité, même avant la volonté des populations et leur possibilité de choix démocratique. Pourtant de nombreux économistes se sont mobilisés contre cette idée. Les mouvements de population partout dans le monde ont également refusé que cette doctrine ne soit présentée que comme l’unique forme d’organisation de la société. Aujourd’hui quelles sont les alternatives réelles à l’austérité ? Comment modifier le système ? Quels sont les liens entre économie et démocratie aujourd’hui en Europe, et comment donner la voix aux citoyens dans le choix de leur futur ? Ces questions ont été celles qui ont guidé l’après-midi du 13 mai 2012 dans le cadre du Festival Transeuropa. D’autres villes comme Londres, Bologne, et Sofia ont organisé des forums citoyens sur ces questions. A Paris, des intervenants de partout en Europe, sont venus discuter des alternatives aux modes d’organisation actuels. L’objectif est de comprendre et d’évaluer comment elles peuvent être globalisées et étendues. Chaque personne aura sa voix pour participer à l’élaboration de propositions portées aux autres villes puis potentiellement transformées en actions transeuropéennes. Après une session introductive menée par Pascal Franchet, vice-président du CADTM France, Antonella Corsani, Enseignant-chercheur à l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, et Niccolo Milanese, directeur d’Alternatives Européennes, quatre tables de discussion ont été proposées aux participants, trois portant sur une pratique économique alternative, et une quatrième sur l’organisation de la mobilisation sociale en Europe pour lutter contre la précarité. Les systèmes d’échanges locaux en temps de crise Banque du temps, échange d’expérience non monétaire, quels sont les systèmes d’échange locaux existants en Europe et comment sont-ils mis en place ? Les systèmes d’échanges locaux sont-ils une alternative en temps de crise? Ces systèmes peuvent-ils être étendus à plus grande échelle dans une économie globalisée ? La discussion rassemblait des participants venus de plusieurs pays en Europe : Jonmar Van Vlijmen, Community Lover’s Guide Amsterdam ; Sanae Sad, Banque du temps de Barcelone, Espagne ; Daniel Herlaut, SEL de Paname, France ; et Iulia Badea Guéritée, journaliste roumaine de Presseurop, spécialiste de la Roumanie. Dans la liste des diverses expériences évoquées, celle des caisses d’aide réciproque en Roumanie semble très intéressante. Ce système existe dans de nombreux pays. Il en existerait plus de 53 000 dans le monde et elles sont au cœur de l’année des coopératives, mise en place par les Nations Unies en 2012. En Roumanie, elles ont été développées sous Caucescu. Le système est coopératif, c’est une alternative aux banques classiques : aucun justificatif n’est a priori nécessaire pour y participer mais il faut avoir cotisé pendant une certaine période pour pouvoir ensuite emprunter. Le remboursement est obligatoire après quelques années. Les taux d’intérêts sont bas (entre 5 et 2%). Aujourd’hui en Roumanie il existe encore environ 4 000 caisses d’aide réciproque et environ ¼ de la population y a accès. Une autre alternative en place en Roumanie est la caisse dite tsigane, le même système que la tontine, un système par lequel chaque membre d’un groupe dépose une somme chaque mois, et peut emprunter 12 fois la somme déposée mensuellement une fois par an. En Roumanie, la mise en place de ces systèmes est facilitée par les lois sur les associations roumaines (1924) qui les exonère d’impôts. L’expérience de la banque du temps à Barcelone – également présentée à Barcelone dans le cadre du Festival Transeuropa – est un système très différent puisqu’il ne repose pas sur l’épargne disponible mais sur des échanges non monétaires de services (langues, garde d’enfant, accompagnement des personnes âgées). Il existe 9 banques du temps à Barcelone, chacune avec ses spécificités. C’est un système qui repose sur la confiance et les échanges interpersonnels, qui recréent du lien social, en plus de permettre l’accès à des services qui seraient autrement hors de portée. Ces banques du temps sont soutenues par la mairie de Barcelone. Les SEL sont au contraire une monnaie alternative, dont il existe plusieurs types également en France et en Europe. Il en existe 440 en France. La première a été créée dans l’Ariège en 1994 et le système s’est ensuite développé. Chaque personne dispose d’un chéquier ou/et d’un carnet d’échange qui permettent d’acheter des biens. Cette monnaie s’accompagne d’autres formes d’échange comme l’accès à des nuitées dans le cadre de la route des SEL ou du covoiturage. Ces initiatives de monnaie complémentaire, comme le LETS en Angleterre ont pour objectif de favoriser l’achat de biens durables (il n’y a pas d’intérêt à épargner les SEL puisqu’elle a un intérêt négatif, donc la valeur doit être reportée sur la chose acquise) et de valoriser des activités qui ne donnent ne sont pas marchandes. L’expérience des Community Lovers Guide est une initiative intéressante qui peut permettre de naviguer au sein des projets locaux. Ces guides sont réalisés de manière bénévole et collaborative et mettent en avant des initiatives locales, créatives, durables qui bénéficient à la communauté. Le guide sur Amsterdam a été lancé dans le cadre du Festival Transeuropa à Amsterdam ! Les systèmes d’échanges locaux apparaissent comme une alternative temporaire notamment en temps de crise, alors que l’argent peut venir à manquer. Cependant, dans la plupart des cas, le fait qu’ils soient locaux n’en fait pas des systèmes alternatifs suffisamment développés ou forts pour remplacer les formes actuelles d’organisation de l’économie. Cependant, dans la perspective de repenser et reconstruire les formes d’échanges entre humains et l’organisation de la consommation, il semble qu’il soit utile (voire nécessaire) de s’en inspirer. Revenu universel ou revenu maximum ? Simon Cottin Marx, du Collectif POURS et Stanislas Jourdan, journaliste et membre du Réseau français pour un revenu de base inconditionnel sont devenus discuter des bénéfices liés à l’instauration d’un revenu de base. La première question abordée a été celle de la difficulté de s’accorder sur une définition unique. En français, les définitions tels que « revenu d'existence »« revenu de base »« revenu de citoyenneté » « revenu minimum »…
Tra Traduzione e Azione Nuove forme di mobilitazione politica
Questo articolo è parte del Transeuropa Journal, la pubblicazione ufficiale del Transeuropa Festival di Niccolo Milanese traduzione Francesca Lucci Le varie proteste, occupazioni e campagne virali online che hanno catturato l’immaginazione dei media e di molti cittadini a partire dalle rivolte arabe del 2010 e 2011 mettono in discussione l'attuale sistema di potere, elaborando manifesti politici alternativi e utilizzando forme più o meno nuove della politica. “Occupy!” è percepito sia come una protesta nei confronti di certe politiche specifiche, sia come un nuovo modo di essere politico, di fare politica, che non rientra nei modi delle istituzioni politiche attuali. La conseguenza di ciò è che la mobilitazione politica può ora utilizzare le forme più tradizionali come esibire manifesti, rivolgersi ai politici e decisori attraverso proteste, lobbismo e campagne di sensibilizzazione, ma anche organizzare un'alternativa politica sul campo attraverso valute alternative, agorà pubbliche, picnic di protesta, flash-mob, corsi universitari tenuti all'aperto e così via. Il risveglio di una nuova forma di consapevolezza politica si trova di fronte svariate sfide, ma due sono i modi cruciali per poter arrivare a comprenderne molte: come un problema di traduzione e come un problema di azione. Uno dei punti di forza della nuova ondata di mobilitazione politica risiede nella sua natura transnazionale: nuove reti di comunicazione, solidarietà e comprensione si stanno instaurando in numerose parti del mondo, da Tokyo a Pechino, dalla Russia all'Europa e dal Mediterraneo al Nord America. La maggiore velocità di comunicazione tra i continenti ha contribuito in maniera massiccia a rendere possibile quest'ondata di protesta transnazionale. Tuttavia, il problema della traduzione tra tutti questi contesti è regolarmente sottovalutato. Ovviamente, esistono delle differenze politiche notevoli e significative tra l'Egitto di Mubarak e la crisi greca dell'euro; tra Wall Street e Francoforte. Altrettanto lampanti sono però anche le similitudini, le quali tuttavia devono essere messe in evidenza attraverso la traduzione. Gli slogan “Democrazia Reale” o “Noi siamo il 99%”, che si sono prestati a twitter e agli altri mezzi di comunicazione, mantengono unita una coalizione globale attraverso la loro generalità, ma le situazioni politiche concrete dietro ognuno di essi sono spesso piuttosto differenti. Affinché la coalizione sia efficace in ciascun contesto politico senza frantumarsi, la traduzione deve avvenire in modo tale da mettere in relazione lo specifico con il generale. La coalizione transnazionale, per mantenere la sua unità nel corso del tempo così come la sua efficacia, deve promuovere una consapevolezza condivisa dei vari contesti e di come questi siano in relazione alle opinioni generali. L'Europa gioca un ruolo pressoché unico in questo scenario: essa è sia un crogiolo di informazioni condivise sia una sorta di machina traduttiva gigante. Le culture e i popoli di qualsiasi parte del mondo sono presenti in Europa, rendendola così un luogo dove condividere conoscenza e informazione sulle situazioni politiche di tutto il mondo. Allo stesso tempo, e forse diversamente dagli Stati Uniti che rivendicano in modo simile da più tempo di essere il melting pot del mondo, traduzione e diversità confluiscono nell'autocomprensione europea. L’Europa si trova pertanto nella posizione di forza universalizzante che mantiene diversità e pertinenza ai vari contesti politici. La seconda sfida riguarda l'altra parte della sfida della traduzione, ossia quella di essere politicamente efficaci nei diversi contesti politici, la sfida del mettere in atto. Mentre la traduzione ha il compito di mantenere l'unità della coalizione transnazionale, affinché quella coalizione raggiunga il suo scopo, deve avere un effetto autentico. Ci sono state delle vittorie sostanziali nel corso degli anni passati per coloro che si sono mossi in direzione della democrazia e dell'uguaglianza, sia che si trattasse del superamento delle dittature nel sud del Mediterraneo o la prassi della discussione sulla tassa per le transazioni finanziarie che si trovava ai margini del dibattito politico. Tuttavia ci sono state anche molte occasioni dove il cambiamento non è avvenuto. Il movimento Democrazia Reale in Spagna, per esempio, non è stato in grado di cambiare la direzione della politica nel paese. Uno dei punti di forza del movimento è fare politica in modo nuovo e costruire fuori dalle istituzioni, ma il rischio è quello dell'impotenza se manca una strategia per coinvolgere le istituzioni politiche esistenti che ancora detengono il potere. Il movimento deve essere abbastanza intelligente da cambiare le istituzioni politiche formali mentre ne limita l'importanza. Il nuovo movimento democratico ignora le frontiere dove la politica tradizionale è costretta a fermarsi e negoziare, ma il nuovo movimento democratico deve ancora esprimere tutto il suo potenziale per non permettere alla politica tradizionale di nascondersi tra gli scaglioni delle strutture che ha creato per proteggersi. La sfida è particolarmente complessa in Europa dove la sovranità politica appartiene a vari attori e istituzioni: cambiare la politica di un paese non sarà sufficiente a cambiare la politica dell'Europa nel suo insieme. Proprio questa caratteristica della situazione europea rispecchia la sfida dell'azione del movimento democratico nel suo complesso, che ha bisogno di essere allo stesso tempo specifico e generale, in un mondo globalizzato dove nessun attore politico detiene il dominio totale sul suo territorio, e solamente facendo ciò raggiungerà il cambiamento sostanziale e duraturo a tutti i livelli. Anche da questo punto di vista, l'Europa è il laboratorio di una nuova politica oltre lo stato nazione, che è allo stesso tempo transnazionale e locale.
Entre traduction et action les nouvelles formes de mobilisation politique
Par Niccolo Milanese Traduction de Camille Nore Les diverses protestations, occupations et campagnes virales sur le web qui se sont emparées de l’imagination des media et de beaucoup de citoyens, depuis les révolutions arabes de 2010 et 2011, mettent au défi le système de pouvoir actuel en articulant des programmes politiques alternatifs et la mise en pratique de formes politiques renouvelées. Le slogan « Occupez ! » est compris comme une protestation politique contre certaines pratiques spécifiques, et également comme un nouveau moyen d’être politique, de faire de la politique sans se conformer aux institutions politiques actuelles. La conséquence est que, désormais, la mobilisation politique peut prendre une forme plus traditionnelle comme le fait de placarder des affiches, de se confronter aux hommes politiques et aux décideurs par la protestation, le lobbying ou la sensibilisation, mais peut aussi se traduire par le fait d’organiser une alternative politique au travers de monnaies alternatives, d’agoras publiques,», de flashmobs, , des cours universitaires dans l’espace public etc. La naissance d’une nouvelle forme de conscience politique fait face à beaucoup de défis, mais il y a deux manières essentielles de comprendre ces défis : dans une approche de « traduction », et dans une approche d’ « action ». L’une des forces de cette nouvelle vague de mobilisation politique est sa nature transnationale : de nouveaux réseaux de télécommunications, de solidarité et de compréhension sont construits à travers le monde, de Tokyo à Beijing, de Russie en Europe et du nord de la Méditerranée en Amérique du Nord. La vitesse croissante de la communication entre les continents a grandement contribué à la possibilité de développer des protestations transnationales. Néanmoins, le problème de la « traduction » dans ces contextes est constamment sous-estimé. Il est évident qu’il existe de grandes et d’importantes différences politiques entre l’Egypte sous le régime Moubarak et la crise de l’Euro en Grèce ; entre Wall Street et Francfort. Il est aussi évident pour beaucoup de personnes qu’il existe d’importantes similarités – cependant ces similarités doivent être mises en évidence à travers la traduction. Les slogans habituels « Vraie Démocratie » ou « Nous sommes les 99% », que l’on retrouve sur Twitter ainsi que sur d’autres medias de masse, ont, par leur généralité, un effet de coalition, mais les situations politiques concrètes qui se cachent derrière ces slogans sont souvent bien différentes. Pour que la coalition soit efficace dans chaque contexte politique sans effet de fracturation, la traduction doit relier le spécifique au général. La coalition transnationale, afin de maintenir son unité dans le temps et son efficacité, doit encourager une prise de conscience partagée des différents contextes et la manière dont ces derniers se connectent au contexte plus général. L’Europe a un rôle presque unique à jouer dans ce scenario: c’est à la fois un creuset d’information partagée et une machine à potentiel géant de traduction. Les cultures et les peuples du monde entier sont présents en Europe, ce qui signifie que c’est un endroit de partage des connaissances politiques et des informations sur les situations politiques à travers le monde. En même temps et peut-être à l’inverse des Etats Unis ,qui ont une revendication semblable et ancienne d’être le « melting pot » du monde, traduction et diversité sont construites dans l’auto-compréhension européenne. Par conséquent, l’Europe est en position de jouer le rôle de force « universalisante » qui maintienne la diversité et la pertinence des différents contextes politiques. Le second défi recouvre l’autre aspect de l’approche par « traduction » : c’est le défi d’être politiquement efficace dans différents contextes politiques, c’est le défi d’ « action ». Alors que la traduction est requise afin de maintenir l’unité de la coalition transnationale, pour que celle-ci serve son objectif, elle a besoin d’un effet authentique. Il y a eu d’importantes victoires au cours des années précédentes pour ceux qui se sont ralliés au mouvement vers la démocratie et l’égalité, que ce soit par le renversement de dictatures dans la Méditerranée ou par la discussion sur la taxe sur les transactions financières qui avait pour habitude d’être en marge de tout débat. Mais il y a eu aussi beaucoup d’occasions où le changement n’a pas été provoqué. Le mouvement pour la vraie démocratie en Espagne, par exemple, a été incapable de changer la direction des politiques du pays. Une des forces du mouvement est de faire de la politique d’une nouvelle manière et en dehors des institutions, mais elle s’accompagne d’un risque d’impuissance s’il n’y a pas de stratégie d’engagement avec les institutions politiques existantes qui détiennent toujours le pouvoir. Le mouvement a besoin de mettre une œuvre une stratégie qui puisse changer les institutions politiques officielles tout en limitant leur importance. Le nouveau mouvement démocratique ignore les frontières où les politiques traditionnelles sont obligées de s’arrêter et de négocier, mais le nouveau mouvement démocratique doit encore utiliser toute sa force afin d’éviter que les politiques traditionnelles ne se cachent dans les échelons de structures qu’elles ont construites pour se protéger. Le défi est particulièrement complexe en Europe, où la souveraineté politique est partagée entre une variété d’acteurs et d’institutions : changer la politique d’un pays se sera pas suffisant pour changer la politique de l’Europe dans son ensemble. Cette caractéristique emblématique de la situation européenne reflète le défi d’action du mouvement démocratique dans son ensemble, qui doit être à la fois spécifique et général, dans un monde globalisé où aucun acteur politique n’a une domination totale sur son territoire ; C’est uniquement en agissant à cette double échelle que des changements seront durables et significatifs à tous les niveaux A cet égard, l’Europe est un laboratoire de nouvelles politiques au-delà de l’Etat nation, qui est à la fois transnational et local.
Between Translation and Action – New forms of political mobilisation
This article is part of the Transeuropa Journal, the official publication of the Transeuropa Festival by Niccolo Milanese The various protests, occupations and viral internet campaigns that have seized the imagination of the media and many citizens since the Arab uprisings in 2010-2011 challenge the current system of power by articulating alternative political manifestos and practising (re)newed forms of politics. “Occupy!” is understood as a political protest against certain specific policies as well as a new way of being political, of doing politics that does not fit with the current political institutions. The consequence is that political mobilisation can now take the more traditional forms of holding placards, addressing politicians and decision-makers through protest, lobbying or raising awareness, but also organising a political alternative on the ground through alternative currencies, public agoras, protest picnics, flash-mobs, public-space university courses etc. The awakening of a new form of political consciousness faces many challenges, but there are two crucial ways that many of these challenges can be understood: as a problem of translation, and as a problem of action. One of the strengths of the new wave of political mobilisation is its transnational nature: new networks of communication, solidarity and understanding are being built across large parts of the world, from Tokyo to Beijing, Russia to Europe and the Northern Mediterranean to North America. The increased speed of communication between continents has contributed massively to the possibility of these transnational waves of protest. Nonetheless, the problem of translation between all these contexts is consistently underestimated. It is obvious to say that there are significant and massive political differences between Egypt under Mubarak and euro-crisis Greece; between Wall Street and Frankfurt. It is also apparent to many people that there are significant similarities – but these similarities have to be brought out through translation. The general slogans “Real Democracy“ or ”We are the 99%”, which lend themselves to twitter as well as other mass media, hold together a global coalition through their generality, but the concrete political situations behind them are often quite different. For the coalition to be effective in each political context without fracturing, a translation must take place which relates the specific to the general. The transnational coalition, to maintain its unity over the duration of time as well as its effectiveness, has to foster a shared awareness of different contexts and how they relate to the general sentiments. Europe has an almost unique role to play in this scenario: it is both a crucible of shared information and a kind of giant translation machine. Cultures and peoples from every part of the world are present in Europe, meaning it is a place for sharing political knowledge and information on the political situations throughout the world. At the same time, and perhaps unlike the United States of America which has a similar and older claim of being the ‘melting pot’ of the world, translation and diversity is built into the European self-understanding. It is therefore in a position to play the role of a universalising force which maintains diversity and pertinence to different political contexts. The second challenge is the other side of the translation challenge: it is the challenge of being politically effective in different political contexts, the challenge of taking action. Whereas translation is required to hold together the unity of a transnational coalition, for that coalition to serve its purpose, it needs to have a genuine effect. There have been substantial victories over the past year for those people who associate themselves with a move towards democracy and equality, whether it being the overcoming of dictatorships in the Southern Mediterranean or the mainstreaming of a discussion of a financial transaction tax which used to be on the fringes of political debate. But there have also been many occasions where change has not been brought about. The Real Democracy movement in Spain, for example, was unable to change the direction of politics in that country. One of the strengths of the movement is to do politics in a new way and to build outside the institutions, but this risks impotency if there is no strategy for engaging with existing political institutions which still hold power. The movement needs to be clever enough to change formal political institutions at the same time as it limits their importance. The new democratic movement ignores frontiers where traditional politics is forced to stop and negotiate, but the new democratic movement has yet to use its full strength to not allow traditional politics to hide in the echelons of the structures it has built to protect itself. The challenge is particularly complex in Europe where political sovereignty is shared between a variety of actors and institutions: changing the politics of one country will not be enough to change the politics of Europe as a whole. This very feature of the European situation mirrors the action-challenge of the democracy movement as a whole, which needs to be simultaneously specific and general in a globalised world where no political actor has total dominion over its territory, and only by doing both will achieve lasting and substantial change at any level. In this respect as well, Europe is the laboratory of a new politics beyond the nation state, which is simultaneously transnational and local.
Transeuropa Festival : A transnational mobilisation
Transeuropa Festival is a form of collective public response to short and long term challenges facing European societies. It is an attempt to draw on the potential offered by transnationalism and by a certain idea of Europe and to create a common space in which alternative proposals can emerge, take shape, and be followed up with action.
Final consultation on new EA constitution
Faced with an increasing crisis of democracy in Europe, European Alternatives is conducting a re-organisation of its internal functioning to turn itself into an ever more democratic citizens' movement capable of working at transnational level with new forms of direct participation and involvement. European Alternatives seeks to promote alternative forms of transnational political subjectivity and collective cultural and political action. European Alternatives sees itself as an experiment in the construction of a participatory and democratic transnational actor in Europe. To this end, following a consultation with members through a general online survey, a focus group of a sample of activists, and a consultation with staff, we have drafted a reformed democratic Constitution for the organisation, better clarifying decision-making structures and empowering the membership to control the course of the organisation. The first draft of the constitution has been commented on my members and local groups over the Summer, leading to a second version being drafted. This second version is now subitted to a second round of consultation with members: The revised Constitution draft may be be found here You may leave comments on individual articles or suggest new additions or changes through this online forum Following this last consultaion, a joint meeting of the Transnational Board of European Alternatives and the Cooperative of Local Groups has been called on October 13 in London to approve the final text and begin implementing the new democratic Constitution of European Alternatives!
Ultima consultazione su nuova Costituzione di EA
Confrontata dalla crescente crisi della democrazia in Europa, European Alternatives sta conducendo una riorganizzazione del suo funzionamento interno per trasformarsi in un movimento di cittadinanza ancora più democratico e capace di lavorare a un livello transnazionale con nuove forme di partecipazione diretta e di coinvolgimento. European Alternatives cerca di promuovere forme alternative di soggettività politica transnazionale e di azione collettiva culturale e politica. European Alternatives si considera come un esperimento nella costruzione di un attore partecipativo e democratico in Europa. A questo fine, in seguito a una consultazione con gli iscritti tramite un questionario online, un focus group con un campione di attivisti e una consultazione con il personale, abbiamo redatto una bozza di una Costituzione democratia dell’organizzazione, per spiegare meglio le strutture di decision-making e per chiarire che sono gli iscritti a governare il corso del movimento. La prima bozza è stata commentata da tutti gli iscritti di European Alternatives. Apriamo ora un'ultima fase di consultazione sulla seconda bozza: La costituzione rivista si trova qui E su questo forum potete lasciare commenti o proposte a singoli articoli della Costituzione Alla fine di quest'ultimo giro di consultazione, una conferenza porterà assieme la Transnational Board di European Alternatives e la Cooperativa di tutti i gruppi locali il 13 ottobre a Londra per approvare il testo finale e iniziare ad implementare la nuova costituzione democratica di European Alternatives!
Global Health, Global Security
Think then how global health is intrinsically linked to the health of migrants. Think then how migrants’ health should be among everyone’s primary concerns
Dal 15 al 21 ottobre… una settimana per il reddito garantito
European Alternatives ha aderito alla campagna per un reddito minimo garantito in Italia, lanciata nel giugno scorso da un'ampia coalizione di associazioni, reti sociali, partiti, movimenti, comitati, collettivi. Una campagna nata intorno a una proposta di legge di iniziativa popolare che intende istituire anche in Italia una garanzia per il reddito per coloro che sono precari, disoccupati e inoccupati, oggi soprattutto giovani, donne e Working Poor. Una campagna che vuole rilanciare quelle fondamenta di un modello sociale europeo che le politiche neoliberiste hanno minato, per un Welfare universale che garantisca misure di sostegno alle persone, per rilanciare politiche di redistribuzione delle ricchezze e mettere al centro del dibattito politico le garanzie, i diritti, le libertà di scelta delle persone. La proposta di legge di iniziativa popolare per il reddito minimo garantito in Italia, lanciata a giugno (e che continua a raccogliere adesioni e sostegno) terminerà a dicembre: l'obiettivo minimo è raggiungere almeno 50 mila firme, ma si può fare di più! Raccogliere migliaia e migliaia di firme significa dare un segnale politico e sociale importantissimo, sia alla società che alla politica italiana. Ma non solo: questa campagna rende possibile l'opportunità di discutere di reddito e diritti, di parlare alla società, nelle strade, piazze, università, luoghi di lavoro, con i giovani, le donne, i precari, gli studenti. In poche parole, una grande opportunità di comunicazione e iniziativa sociale che dia maggior forza ad una nuova stagione di diritti a partire dal reddito garantito. Per questo, oltre le tante iniziative già realizzate durante questi mesi e promosse dai partecipanti alla campagna, si è deciso di dare vita a una Settimana per il reddito garantito, dal 15 al 21 ottobre, dedicata a eventi che attraversano la penisola, per creare un dibattito comune e ramificato sui temi del Welfare e dei diritti. European Alternatives partecipa all'incontro Se potessi avere… il Reddito minimo garantito! che si svolgerà a Bologna giovedì 18 ottobre (alle h. 18 alla Linea). Si confronteranno Federico Martelloni (ricercatore Diritto del Lavoro coord. Circolo G.M.Volontè – SEL Bologna), Maria Chiara Patuelli (Forum Welfare SEL Bologna), Cristina Polimeno (TILT Bologna), Sara Saleri (European Alternatives). Per saperne di più: Guarda il video prodotto da European Alternatives Vai al sito della campagna
Call for applications: Communication Expert
Call for applications: Communication Expert European Alternatives is a transnational citizens’ organisation active throughout Europe to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. We are looking for a communication agency or communication expert to inform and manage our overall communication strategy in 2013. Basic roles The agency or expert would be expected to: Lead a reorganisation of European Alternatives’ website Manage European Alternatives facebook page and coordinate the strategy of all EA’s sister pages (European Alternatives Madrid, Rome, etc.) Manage European Alternatives twitter’s page Produce a series of memes to better communicate EA’s values and stances in an impactful way (at least one a month) Finally, we are looking for agency or expert able to develop and lead the implementation of innovative and original communication plans in the following areas: Areas of innovation European Alternatives is a complex, cross-issue, transnational cultural and political actor active throughout Europe. Main areas needing improvement in communication are: Transeuropa festival, taking place in 15 cities each year, including its website European political campaigns. EA is currently working on a campaign for media pluralism, a campaign on detention centres for migrants, and a campaign on European democracy. Membership development and increase in membership numbers. EA is a membership organisation with a profund participatory structure enabling members to inform the work of the organisation and elect its board of directors. The development of a growing and engaged membership base is conceived by the organisation as an ongoing political and communication campaign. Transnational Dimension European Alternatives is a transnational actor active throughout Europe and operating in a multiplicity of languges. While we recognise that no agency or expert will be able to master a majority of European langauges, we are looking for an agency or expert capable of: Speaking multiple languages fluently Understanding the European political context and being able to tweak communication messages to address specificities in different European countries when necessary Develop a plan to best involve European Alternatives’ wide network of local groups and individual members, empowering and coordinating them in taking ownership of local communication and relay of central communication messages in their local language / context Selection process: first step Agencies or individuals interested in applying are invited to send: A CV in case of an individual expert; a presentation of the company and CVs of staff planned to be assigned to the action in case of agencies A portfolio of previous work conducted / clients A brief concept note of not more than one page in length outlining the direction a communication plan for European Alternatives should take Documentation should be sent by November 4th to: l.marsili@euroalter.com with “Communication Expert” in the subject line. Selection process: second step We foresee the selected agency or expert undergoing a first period of structured consultation with key stakeholders of EA, staff members, and a selection of members of European Alternatives to understand the needs of the organisation and its cultural and political direction and make-up. Following this consultation, and on the basis of agreed budget figures (estimated at between €7000 and €12,000 for one year), we foresee the agency or expert making a detailed proposal for the overall management of EA’s communication strategy, including proposals for innovative communication tools and strategies in each of the three areas presented above. This procedure will be conducted with a single agency or expert, and we foresee it leading to commissioning the implementation of the draft plan presented. Should the proposal not be deemed satisfactory and rejected, however, the agency or expert will receive €500 in reimbursement for the work put in during the consultation and plan-development phase.
Reddito Minimo Garantito
Institutional Racism and Ethnic profiling in Italy
Article by Flore Murard-Yovanovitch According to the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), in 2009-10 Italy was the second country in Europe when it comes to the occurance rate of mistreatment, attacks and racially motivated acts of violence. Main victims were citizens of African descent, Roma and Sinti. The Enar Shadow Report, presented on March 21, 2012 to the European Parliament, is based on unofficial data from studies carried out by associations and NGOs dedicated to fighting discrimination. The report is still a core source of information regarding racist violence in Europe. It fills the gap that exists in data due to non-reporting and failure to conduct trials and to impose sentences in regard to acts of racial discrimination. This is not evidence of the limited extent of racism, but the result of a lack of awareness of its victims, and of difficulties involved in accessing the judiciary system. In the case of Italy, it is interesting to note that the report dedicates a number of pages to politics, underlining that the overall “anti-migrant climate” cannot be separated from the violent “xenophobic rhetoric” by the State's highest Representatives. The anti-migrant climate does indeed need to be analyzed in the context of the political power of the Northern League, and of Law 94 of 17 July 2009, which criminalized irregular migration, as well as the increasing “local exclusion policies” introduced at a local level by municipal mayors. These measures, adopted by local authorities on the issues of housing, health services and family reunification, limit the immigrant’s fundamental rights and favour their exclusion. It separates de facto foreigners from the native component of the population. According to the report, “the 'security package' gave more power to the League-affiliated mayors on “urban security” to approve discriminatory measures against migrants in every field of social life”. Police operations aimed at controlling irregular migration are becoming fertile ground for discretionary and abusive behavior by the police force. Police and hunting down illegal aliens “Ethnic/racial profiling” is still not the subject of much study in Italy and there is a lack of data on the issue. ENAR's special report on ethnic profiling in Italy shows that the number of cases of discrimination in police operations reached very serious levels in 2009-10. Two striking cases have been widely covered by the media. Since September 2009, special corps of Milan’s municipal police has been conducting massive checks on buses only on non-Italians, with the result of irregular migrants being locked in “prison-buses” with grates on the windows. The “White Christmas” operation of Coccaglio: a night-time raid on December 25th in 400 homes of foreigners with the aim of verifying their residence permits and of “cleaning up the city” (in the Mayor's own words). Both episodes, however, are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the racially motivated abuses in police operations happening daily. To mention a few examples… In Lombardy and in Veneto cities, some mayors have approved a local regulation regarding a “health-sanitation” requirement, specifically targeting the residences of foreigners, while in Montecchio Maggiore the city police raided 20 homes of migrants to flush out potential non-declared guests of the same nationality. Repeated identity checks are the daily reality for those with “dark-skinned” faces, on the streets and in public transport. Several roundups have taken place on the Pisa-Follonica railway line, with trains being blocked and the selective arrests of Senegalese vendors. According to Arci, in addition to mistreating migrants, operations that use force disproportionately promote a negative image of migrants among the local population. In Verona, aggressive inspections at kebab shops and call centers were carried out by police corps several times per week causing major economic damage to their owners. Yet in the case of intervention to defend or in favor of migrants, the police have been known to withhold support. In 2009, the association of south-east Asian migrants “Dhuumcatu” in Rome reported that the Carabinieri corps, despite being present at the event, failed to stop a Bengalese person from being attacked because the person was an “illegal alien”. In addition, the treatment reserved for citizens of Roma or Sinti origin is persistently worrying, which includes housing in camps, constantly being subjected to forced evictions, the destruction of property, illegal expulsion, violence and psychological pressure. The Enar report stated that in every context of public life, migrants are subjected to violent checks on the basis of their identity, in violation of their individual's rights. As far as the “negative” perception that foreign citizens who live in Italy have of treatment they have suffered at the hands of law-enforcement authorities, the European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU MIDIS) shows that Italy is on the front line in Europe. According to 67% of Albanians, 45% of Romanians, and 55% of North Africans, the last time they were stopped by the police was because of their ethnicity. But, for those victims, to seek justice for the abuses suffered at the hands of the authorities can turn out to be a difficult task due to the lack of awareness, the difficulty in availing themselves of the judiciary system, and for fear of reprisals. Moreover, violation of the code of conduct by police forces, even in the case of Italian citizens, is often covered up and rarely punished. Despite the many international admonitions, Italy is the only country in which there are no political and even fewer legislative stances being taken to include these ethnic profiling events in a normative framework that would make it possible for legal action to be taken.
Forum Citoyen: Quel futur pour leau et les biens communs en Europe ?
Samedi 24 novembre 2012, 13h45-19h Au Pavillon de l'Eau, 77 avenue de Versailles, 75016 Paris Le forum Parisien sur les biens communs s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet « People, Power, Participation », qui réunit des milliers de citoyens à travers l'Europe. Dernière étape d’un processus conduit dans plusieurs pays (Italie, Bulgarie, Roumanie, Grande Bretagne, Espagne), le forum du 24 novembre permettra de présenter les initiatives citoyennes menées en Europe sur la question des biens communs. Les réflexions menées et échangées lors de cette rencontre feront l’objet d’une restitution directe au Parlement Européen en décembre 2012. L’objet du forum est de présenter les enjeux liés à la gestion des biens communs, et de discuter des capacités des citoyens européens à agir pour leur défense. Il est organisé à partir d’une conférence-débat et d’ateliers de discussion ouverts à tous (élus, professionnels, associations, public). Le forum citoyen portera particulièrement sur la Charte Européenne des biens communs et sur les cas de remunicipalisation des services d‘eau (Paris, Naples, Viry-Châtillon, Coordination Eau Ile-de-France). Les actions collectives en cours telles que les Initiatives Citoyennes Européennes (ICE) sur l’eau, la rédaction de la Charte Européenne des Biens Communs et les occupations des théâtres en Italie seront présentées et collectivement discutées. Il sera en outre proposé aux participants de contribuer à la rédaction d’un manifeste pour la gestion publique de l’eau. Le manifeste sera présenté au Parlement Européen en même temps que les travaux menés dans le cadre du programme « People, Power, Participation ». Ce forum proposera une approche multidimensionnelle des biens communs et se concentrera particulièrement, mais pas uniquement, sur la question de l’eau. Il sera animé par des représentants de la société civile, des universitaires et des praticiens français et européens francophones qui échangeront sur la question des biens communs et expériences d’actions citoyennes. Anne le Strat, adjointe au Maire de Paris pour l’eau, l’assainissement et la gestion des canaux, et Présidente de la régie municipale Eau de Paris, et Alberto Lucarelli, adjoint au Maire de Naples pour les biens communs feront part de leurs propres expériences d’institutionnalisation des biens communs. Cette manifestation doit permettre de diffuser le message porté par tous les mouvements européens qui se lèvent contre la privation de ce qui appartient à tous. Agenda de la rencontre 13h45 Accueil des participants 14h15 – 14h25 Ouverture officielle de la journée : présentation sujet des biens communs et des enjeux par Anne le Strat, Alberto Lucarelli et Alternatives Européennes. 14h25 – 15h45 Comment les citoyens européens peuvent-ils agir pour défendre les biens communs en Europe ? Les initiatives citoyennes pour les biens communs sont nombreuses : Charte Européenne des Biens Communs en cours d’élaboration, Initiatives Citoyennes Européennes (ICE l'Eau un droit humain), mobilisation pour les biens communs culturels. Cette discussion permettra d’en présenter quelques-unes et d’évoquer les modes d’action possible. Avec : Gabriella Zanzanaini, Food and Water Europe, Pablo Sanchez, Fédération Syndicale Européenne des Services Publics, Serena Ganci, coordination des théâtres occupés italiens, Ségolène Pruvot, Alternatives Européennes,animé par Elisabetta Cangelosi. 15.45 – 16.00 Présentation et constitution des ateliers 16.00 – 17.15 Ateliers parallèles: Quelles propositions pour une protection européenne des biens communs ? Déroulé des ateliers : introduction au sujet (15 min), puis discussion autour du texte du Manifeste sur le point traité (35 min), propositions (25 min) Atelier 1 : Service Public de l’Eau Avec : Jean-Claude Oliva, Président de la Coordination EAU IDF, Gabriella Zanzanaini, Food and Water Watch, Pablo Sanchez, European Public Services Union. Atelier 2 : Approche juridique de la notion de bien commun : comment la traduire dans les textes européens ? Avec : Catherine Legna, Secrétaire Général de l’Institut International d’études et de recherche sur les Biens Communs, Alberto Lucarelli adjoint au Maire de Naples pour les biens communs et Alice Le Roy, enseignante en écologie urbaine à l’Université Paris XIII, Frédéric Deroubaix, chercheur au Laboratoire Eau, Environnement et Systèmes Urbains de l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées. Atelier 3 : Approches sociales et culturelles des biens communs Avec : Elisabetta Cangelosi, Docteur en Anthropologie et Histoire, Université de Sienne, Alternatives Européennes etSerena Ganci, Teatro Garibaldi Palermo, Coordination des Théâtres Occupés en Italie. 17.15 – 17.45 Plénière :Présentation des résultats des ateliers par les rapporteurs 17.45 – 18.00 Conclusions par Anne Le Strat et Alberto Lucarelli 18.00 – 19.00 Cocktail. Comment y participer ? Il suffit d’envoyer un mail à paris@euroalter.comen précisant le nombre de places que vous souhaitez réserver et l’atelier qui vous intéresse ! Sans oublier de vous inscrire en ligne sur l’évènement sur le site d’Alternatives Européennes ! Attention ! L’inscription ne sera prise en compte qu’après envoi du mail à paris@euroalter.com Contacts Pour plus d’informations sur cette rencontre : Site web d’Alternatives Européennes : www.euroalter.com/FR Ecrire à : paris@euroalter.com Cette rencontre s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet People,Power, Participation soutenu par la Commission Européenne
Media Pluralism in Bulgaria
By Rosen Dimov Bulgarian human rights activists and journalists expressed admiration for the European Media Pluralism Initiative, launched by European Alternatives and a coalition of civil society organisations across Europe, as one of the transnational tools to foster genuine competition in the audiovisual services within the Union and a means of improving European citizens’ access to information. European Alternative’s co-director Lorenzo Marsili, the national coordinator of the “People, power, participation” project, Rosen Dimov and Assen Velichkov, the executive director of Bulgaria’s Centre for Media Development, welcomed the appreciation and inquiries of the audience seated in the Red House Centre for Culture and Debate in Sofia on 21 September 2012. Highlighting the major features of the legislative proposal put forward through the European Citizen’s Initiative, a new tool under the Lisbon Treaty of the European Union, the organisers emphasized the open, deliberative and participatory nature of the media pluralism campaign. After receiving the European Commission’s response on the admissibility of the suggested legal instrument, European Alternatives as well as all other organisations and individuals interested to join may further develop and fine-tune the proposal. The real legislative process will start after fulfilling the legitimacy requirements about the European Citizens’ Initiative (the number of citizens’ signatures gathered totally and on a EU member country basis). Despite the reinforced representation of citizens’ interests in the triangular law-making formula (the European Commission-European Parliament-EU Council) the final word will be given by the European institutions rather than the citizens. To ensure that the final outcome of these Europe-wide consultations with the public corresponds to the authentic and legitimate wishes of the European citizens, European Alternatives aims to mobilise all social actors: therefore, no deviation from original direction taken will be allowed. Secured through the scrutiny of the citizens and their organisations around Europe, the legislative instrument to come (possibly a new Directive) will continue to tackle with the cornerstones of the European Media Pluralism Initiative’s proposal. To that respect, the organisers made it clear that no party would be allowed to benefit the Initiative. Instead, a cross-party transnational alliance in the European Parliament is targeted: the European Parliament being the voice of European citizens would pressure the other European institutions in the legislative process to strictly follow the claims of the European people. Additionally, the plurality of opinions to be voiced by the experts as well as the citizens would make it possible to determine the content and the procedural matters of the Directive to be enforced as an outcome of the Initiative. Last but not least, it is clear that media regulation at the Community level constituted a landmark movement in the European integration: laying it on the foundations of the internal market, free circulation of services and the fundamental right to information, the effect of the Initiative would become a coherent step in deepening the European Union. Further information European Media Pluralism Initiative www.mediainitiative.eu “People, Power, Participation” Project https://euroalter.com/ppp
Pluralisme des médias en Bulgarie
Article de Rosen Dimov Traduction de Maxence Salendre Journalistes et militants des droits de l’Homme bulgares ont exprimé leur admiration pour l’Initiative Européenne pour le Pluralisme des Médias lancée conjointement par Alternatives Européennes et un grand nombre d’organisations européennes de la société civile. Ils ont souligné qu'elle est à la fois l’un des outils transnationaux nécessaires pour favoriser une véritable concurrence entre les services audiovisuels de l’Union et un moyen d’améliorer l’accès des citoyens européens à l’information. Le directeur adjoint d’Alternatives Européennes Lorenzo Marsili, le coordinateur national du projet « peuple, pouvoir, participation », Rosen Dimov, ainsi que le directeur exécutif du Centre Bulgare pour le Développement des Médias , Assen Velichkov, ont accueilli les remarques et répondu aux questions de l’audience rassemblée dans le Centre Culturel et Participatif Maison Rouge à Sofia le 21 septembre 2012. Les organisateurs ont ainsi mis en avant l’ouverture, l’aspect délibératif et participatif de cette campagne sur le pluralisme des médias en soulignant les principaux points de la proposition de loi développée dans l’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne, le nouvel instrument mis en place par l’Union Européenne dans le Traité de Lisbonne. Une fois obtenues les réponses de la Commission Européenne quant à l’admissibilité desdites propositions, Alternatives Européennes ainsi que les autres organisations et citoyens intéressés par le projet pourront développer et affiner la proposition de loi. Le véritable processus législatif ne démarrera qu’une fois les prérequis juridiques concernant l’Initiative Européenne Citoyenne remplis (à savoir l’obtention d’un nombre suffisant de signatures dans chaque pays de l’Union). Malgré le vif intérêt porté par les citoyens à ce procédé d’élaboration législatif triangulaire (réunissant la Commission Européenne, le Parlement Européen et le Conseil Européen), le point final sera apposé par les Institutions Européennes et non par les citoyens. Pour s’assurer que l’objectif final de ces concertations publiques au niveau européen correspond aux véritables souhaits des citoyens, Alternatives Européennes souhaite mobiliser tous les acteurs sociaux. Dès lors, aucune déviation quant au projet de départ ne sera possible. Grâce à la vigilance des citoyens et des organisations européennes, l’instrument législatif produit (peut-être une nouvelle directive) se concentrera toujours principalement sur les fondations de l’Initiative Européenne pour le Pluralisme des Médias. À cet effet, les organisateurs ont fait comprendre qu’aucun parti ne serait autorisé à bénéficier de cette initiative. En revanche, une coalition transnationale de partis politiques est envisagée au Parlement Européen. Le Parlement étant la voix des citoyens européens, il saurait faire pression sur les autres institutions Européennes au cours du processus législatif afin que soient strictement suivies les revendications des citoyens européens. De plus, la diversité des opinions exprimées aussi bien par les experts que par les citoyens permettrait de préciser le contenu et les questions de procédure qui seront rencontrés par la nouvelle directive mise en place à la suite de cette initiative. La régulation des médias au niveau Communautaire s’est toujours inscrite comme un moment phare du processus d’intégration Européenne. En posant ses fondations sur les principes de marché intérieur, de libre circulation des services et sur le droit fondamental à l’information, les effets de l’Initiative constitueraient un pas cohérent dans l’approfondissement de l’Union Européenne. Pour de plus amples informations : European Media Pluralism Initiative www.mediainitiative.eu “People, Power, Participation” Project https://euroalter.com/ppphttps://euroalter.com/ppp
Il Reddito minimo garantito: una questione di uguaglianza
Articolo di Maria Chiara Patuelli, coordinatrice Forum Welfare Sel Bologna L'Italia e la Grecia sono gli unici paesi europei a essere totalmente privi di una misura di integrazione al reddito per le persone in situazione di povertà. Questa assenza, segno di un sistema di welfare che non ha il riequilibrio delle disuguaglianze economiche tra le sue priorità, è particolarmente grave in una situazione di crescente impoverimento. La Proposta di legge di iniziativa popolare per l'istituzione del reddito minimo garantito in Italia, lanciata da una rete di movimenti e associazioni, tra cui European Alternatives, rappresenta un'occasione importante per cambiare il segno al sistema di welfare italiano in chiave universale e per strutturare un sistema coerente di servizi pubblici ad esso strettamente connessi. Nel 2011 l'11% della popolazione italiana (oltre 8 milioni di persone), era sotto la soglia di povertà relativa, con una soglia fissata a 1.011,03 euro di spesa disponibile mensilmente per una famiglia di due componenti (dati Istat). I bambini sono tra i più poveri in Italia: il 27,8% delle famiglie con 3 figli minori è in situazione di povertà. La media è più alta anche tra gli anziani, tra chi ha titoli di studio bassi e tra gli operai. La Strategia della Commissione Europea UE 2020 utilizza un diverso sistema di misurazione della povertà composto da tre diversi indicatori: rischio di povertà relativa (reddito inferiore al 60% del reddito mediano nazionale), situazioni di grave deprivazione materiale, bassa intensità di lavoro dei componenti del nucleo familiare. Il 23% della popolazione europea è, in base a questo calcolo, “a rischio di povertà ed esclusione” (anno 2010); in Italia il dato riguarda ben il 24,5% della popolazione. Il sistema di welfare italiano è noto per essere tra i meno efficaci a livello europeo per il contrasto alle disuguaglianze: la spesa sociale pro-capite è nella media, ma incide molto meno sulla riduzione della povertà. La causa principale di questa asimmetria è la sproporzione nella spesa per il welfare del nostro paese, che è molto sbilanciata a favore della spesa per le pensioni (che riproducono le disuguaglianze nel reddito della vita lavorativa). In Italia la spesa pensionistica incide per il 60% sul totale della spesa sociale, a fronte di una media UE del 45%. Se la sanità – unico vero e grande strumento di welfare universale italiano (e ora, guarda caso, sotto un violento attacco dal governo Monti) – è quasi nella media UE con il 32% del totale della spesa, le altre prestazioni (disoccupazione, famiglia, casa, povertà, non autosufficienza) raggiungono solo l'8%, a fronte di una media UE del 18% (dati Eurostat). In assenza di un reddito minimo garantito, i trasferimenti monetari che caratterizzano il sistema di welfare italiano sono estremamente frammentati, rivolti solo a specifici target di popolazione: ad anziani e disabili – grazie alla pensione minima, alle indennità di accompagnamento, agli assegni di invalidità, e ai nuclei famigliari con figli a carico. Le politiche di sostegno alla famiglia, che dovrebbero essere il cuore di un welfare che garantisca pari opportunità alle nuove generazioni e pensi al futuro, prevedono assegni familiari di modesta entità confronto ad altri paesi europei e detrazioni fiscali per figli a carico erogabili solo a chi percepisce un reddito da lavoro dipendente (escludendo così una larga fascia di giovani famiglie di precari). Negli ultimi anni è stato istituito un modesto assegno per nuclei familiari con 3 figli minori e lo strumento mal strutturato della Social card. A questo quadro vanno aggiunti lo stravolgimento del nostro sistema di ammortizzatori sociali introdotto con la Riforma Fornero e il taglio del fondo per le politiche sociali che nel 2012 viene azzerato. In tale contesto c'è da chiedersi come, fino ad oggi, il sistema abbia retto. La risposta è semplice: delegando alla famiglia il ruolo di protezione sociale che il nostro welfare non è in grado di garantire. Come auspicato nel Libro bianco dell'ex-Ministro Sacconi, la famiglia rappresenta, in assenza di un sistema di assistenza sociale universalistico, la cerniera tra Stato e Mercato. Il breadwinner (il “capofamiglia”), nella maggior parte dei casi maschio, “protegge” i membri della famiglia (donne, giovani) che, non lavorando, hanno difficilmente accesso a prestazioni sociali. Una visione anacronistica, sia per quanto riguarda le nuove forme di relazioni familiari, che per la crescente disoccupazione. Eppure, come è noto, è la stessa Commissione europa a chiedere di istituire in tutti i paesi membri una misura di reddito minimo. Nel 1997, a seguito della Commissione Onofri voluta dal primo governo Prodi, è stata lanciata una sperimentazione del Reddito Minimo di inserimento che, nonostante i risultati positivi, è stata abbandonata e non convertita in legge. La legge 328/2000 di riordino dei servizi sociali aveva previsto l'istituzione del reddito minimo d'inserimento e la definizioni di livelli essenziali nelle prestazioni sociali; a tale legge è però seguita nel 2001 la riforma del titolo V della Costituzione che ha dato potere legislativo alle regioni in materia di assistenza sociale senza però dotarle di una sufficiente autonomia economica. A distanza di più di 10 anni, anche a causa di questo impasse istituzionale e della più generale mancanza di volontà politica, un sistema di welfare universale in Italia che riconosca chiari diritti resta lettera morta. Un ruolo importante nelle misure di contrasto alla povertà viene oggi giocato dagli enti locali che però, in assenza di chiare indicazioni sui livelli minimi e di risorse, forniscono servizi estremamente disomogenei. È alto il livello di discrezionalità nell'erogazione di forme di sostegno al reddito (contributi economici, borse lavoro…) e nell'individuazione di chi è “meritevole” di assistenza, muta con il cambiare delle amministrazioni e spesso in base alle valutazioni dei singoli servizi sociali. È troppo spesso carente una visione politica dei servizi sociali quali forma di redistribuzione del reddito, una capacità di analisi e di scelta sulla definizione delle vecchie e nuove forme di povertà, una cultura diffusa che veda nel diritto ad una vita degna per tutti la priorità delle amministrazioni. Mancano in primis le risorse. A questo si somma la sempre maggiore delega data agli enti caritatevoli che, con un…
Svolta della campagna LasciateCIEntrare Open Access Now: Mai più CIE
I CIE sono ancora off limit per la libertà di stampa e sapere che cosa esattamente accada al di là delle sbarre rimane un’impresa molto difficile. L’obiettivo del convegno Il sistema Cie e la violazione dei diritti umani, promosso dalla campagna LasciateCIEntrare – Open Access Now in partenariato con European Alternatives, e tenutosi il 16 novembre a Roma, era quello di mettere insieme e integrare le varie prospettive sui Cie italiani, da quelle accademiche a quelle giuridiche, da quelle istituzionali a quelle politiche. Ne è venuto fuori un quadro inquietante: l’illegalità di queste strutture, la loro anti-costituzionalità e inutilità in materia di contrasto all’immigrazione cosiddetta irregolare, i costi sproporzionati e particolarmente gravosi per la comunità in tempi di crisi economica. Nonostante la revoca della circolare 1305 del 2011 firmata dall’ex ministro Maroni, che vietava l’accesso ai giornalisti ai Cie (Centri di identificazione ed espulsione) e nei Cara (Centri d’accoglienza per richiedenti asilo), persiste una censura de facto; la discrezionalità da parte di Prefetture e Questure nel concedere l’accesso degli organi della stampa ai centri, è ancora la regola. Lo ha ricordato Roberto Natale, Presidente della Federazione Nazionale della Stampa, invitando i giornalisti italiani a continuare a esercitare il diritto all’informazione e a sistematicamente richiedere l’accesso ai CIE per verificare le condizioni di vita dei detenuti. L’Ong Medici per i Diritti Umani (Medu), membro della campagna italiana, dopo un monitoraggio nazionale nei 13 centri sparsi per la Penisola, ha evidenziato come il diritto alla salute non sia garantito in quelle strutture. Nonché il diritto alla comunicazione con l’esterno e all’informazione sulla durata della propria detenzione: i casi di autolesionismo, depressione e altre gravi patologie psico-fisiche sono numerosi. Come ha dichiarato la vicepresidente del Senato Emma Bonino in aperture del seminario, «in Italia, lo spread da colmare non è solo quello economico ma in primis quello dei diritti umani». Particolarmente interessante per la campagna è stata la prospettiva europea offerta dalla relazione di Chiara Tamburini, consigliere presso la Commissione LIBE (Libertà civili, giustizia e affari interni) del Parlamento europeo, che ha illustrato come gli strumenti legislativi europei, in particolare la Direttiva 2008 (cd. direttiva rimpatri), non “obblighino” – come spesso viene propinato – i vari Stati nazionali a fare uso dello strumento della detenzione amministrativa, bensì vadano tutti nella direzione opposta: quella della sua limitazione. In molti hanno ricordato quanto sia cruciale lavorare al livello europeo per incidere sulla modificazione della legislazione europea, in particolarmente la Direttiva rimpatri. Il convegno ha ulteriormente sancito l’impegno di tutti membri della campagna LasciateCIEntrare a proseguire con il monitoraggio e le denunce sistematiche. Ha soprattutto sancito la svolta cruciale operata dalla campagna italiana, nel allinearsi ulteriormente sulle posizioni della campagna a livello europeo, riaffermando che l’unica soluzione percorribile è l’immediata chiusura di queste strutture. Nel corso dell’incontro, infine, sono stati presentati l’appello da firmare “Mai più Cie” e il policy paper, proposto dalla campagna italiana a conclusione della sua prima fase di lavoro. Nella seconda fase della campagna che sta per iniziare, la priorità continuerà a essere data alla dimensione europea, affinché sia raggiunto al più presto l’obiettivo comune di Open Access Now: mettere fine alla detenzione illegale nei CIE, in tutta l’Europa. (fmy)
A Citizens pact for European Democracy is launched
The transnational forum on Monday 17, attended by various organisations from European civil society and citizens from all across Europe intended to pave the way for a Citizens Pact to fill up the democratic gap in Europe. Discussion was passionate and varied. The Citizens Pact, which should agree on a common set of demands in time for the next European Parliamentary Elections in 2014, intends to voice the citizens’ visions and priorities of how Europe should be, and their concerns particularly in relation to social justice issues, employment and fundamental rights as well as the institutional structure of the EU. The Citizens Pact is wished to move in a different direction to any European inter-governmental Treaty. The Pact aims indeed at being at the same time a pact of cooperation and solidarity between European Citizens (or others living in Europe) and a pact between citizens and some institutions ready to back our demands. Its mandate is also to open a ‘third space’ in which citizens can engage with Europe: neither accepting the current logic of austerity, nor accepting the flat refusal of all European aspiration to a Union or integration. Thus, providing European citizens with a concrete opportunity to exercise their citizenship and articulate their priorities or alternatives at a European level. Any organisations representing European citizens and individuals are welcome to work together towards the Citizens Pact in a variety of ways which may include: – Taking part in organising the series of citizens’ deliberations convened by European Alternatives in Italy, Bulgaria, France, Spain, Romania, the UK, Germany and Slovakia over 2013 – Organising public meetings and deliberations around themes relating to the Citizens’ Pact (we mentioned initiatives in Bologna, Venice, Florence, Lodz) – Organising public activities which are not conferences but include more creative approaches (including TRANSEUROPA festival in October 2013) – A shared campaign to sign European Citizens’ Initiatives over 2013 – Supporting the AlterSummit process, the mobilisations planned for the 14/15th March and the AlterSummit to be held in Athens in June 2013, and introducing the Citizens’ Pact for Democracy into the concerns of the AlterSummit – Producing a citizens’ manifesto for the European elections in 2014, and using it to put pressure on political groupings and individual candidates and MEPs – Contributing to a Charter for European Citizenship – Using an online wiki-constitution and other online platforms for discussion – Contributing to the policy recommendations to be formulated by the Civil Society Alliance for the European Year of Citizens – Engaging in calling for a Constitutional Convention and in putting forward proposals for how such a Convention should include and involve citizens. – Conducting surveys of public opinion If you are interested in joining in these or any other way, get in contact with us at press@euroalter.com or simply start using the banner “Citizens Pact For European Democracy” or common twitter hashtags. Proposals for twitter hashtags include: #Citizenspact or #EUdemocracynow.
Transeuropa Festival 2012
Call for Expression of Interest: Integrated Communication Agency
Background European Alternatives is a transnational citizens’ organisation active throughout Europe to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. European Alternatives, together with the Alliance Internationale de Journalistes, has launched a European Citizens Initiative (ECI) on media pluralism. The ECI is a new tool of transnational participatory democracy allowing a group of citizens from at least seven member states to present a legislative proposal directly to the European Commission by gathering the support of 1 million signatures online or offline. Our ECI demands an EU Directive on Media Pluralism to safeguard the right to a free and pluralistic information throughout Europe. The transnational campaign will start at the beginning of 2013 and finish in November 2013. It will take place throughout Europe, with a focus on *Italy, France, the UK, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Austria, and Germany. This campaign will be conducted through the participation of a wide number of partners in all participating member states, ranging from NGOs to professional bodies, from citizens’ groups to the media, often gathered in country committees. We are looking for an integrated communication agency to lead the definition, design, and implementation of a comprehensive, online-and-offline, transnational communication campaign to help us achieve the required 1-million signatures to make the campaign a success. Basic roles The agency would be expected to perform one or both of the following (2) elements – with a budget that is calculated according to the scope of work. To be clear, we invite submissions from agencies interested in one or both of these elements. Element (1) – Design and Online Tool Development Design and implement a visual identity for the campaign including the primary website, subsidiary websites of the country teams, print materials, and social media properties; Design and implement online tools to support the campaign, including web video, podcasts, social media integration, as well as the infrastructure for mass email distribution to update citizens participating in the campaign; Restructure and refine the website as necessary and improve its effectiveness as the campaign’s online hub (WordPress platform). Element (2) – Campaign Strategy and Communications Define, in cooperation with ECI staff and country teams, an integrated communication strategy. Particular emphasis will be placed on: a) the development of high-impact, coordinated strategies for both online and offline campaigning (with a focus on web-based resources); b) a comprehensive social media strategy; c) the framework for an outreach strategy segmented to the different national contexts, linking the campaign’s message with trending current-affairs topics in the different European local and national public spheres; Develop a plan to support and empower the ECI’s wide network of country teams and individual activists, coordinating with them to take ownership of local communications operations and relay central communication messages in their local language / context; Help organise and run communication training workshops with selected country teams members. Transnational Dimension European Alternatives is a transnational actor active throughout Europe and operating in a multiplicity of languages. The ECI campaign will be conducted at the transnational level with a focus on nine European member states. While we recognise that no agency or expert will be able to master a majority of European languages, we are looking for an agency or expert capable of speaking multiple languages fluently, understanding the European political context, and adjusting communication messages to national specificities. Because this transnational dimension is so essential, we would like to receive expressions of interest from communication companies with (at least) one major office or affiliates based in one of the ECI participating countries (listed above*). Budget The budget available will vary depending on the expertise of the agency, the elements of the project in the scope of work, and the specific roles and tasks finally allocated, but it is estimated at between €10.000 and €40.000 for the duration of the campaign. Exact budget figures will be decided during the second step of the selection process. Selection process: first step Agencies interested in applying are invited to send: A presentation of the company and CVs of staff planned to be assigned to the action; A portfolio of previous work conducted / clients; A concept note of maximum 1-2 pages in length outlining the direction a communication plan for the ECI should take; An indicative financial request for the implementation of a strategy based on such concept note. This may be formulated either in modules (with different communication elements/tools assigned to a cost) or as an indicative cost-bracket. Documentation should be sent by January 20th to: info@euroalter.com and info@mediainitiative.eu with “ECI Communication Agency” in the message subject line. Selection process: second step One or two agencies will be selected to undergo a period of consultation with key stakeholders, ECI staff members, and some members of the country teams in order to understand the make-up and needs of the campaign. Following this consultation, each agency will present a fully detailed proposal for the elements of the campaign for which it has applied. This procedure will be conducted with agencies in which we have full confidence, and we foresee it leading to commissioning the implementation of the plan presented. Should the proposal not be deemed satisfactory and rejected, however, the agency will receive €500 in reimbursement for the work put in during the consultation and plan-development phase. European Alternatives expects all interested companies / individual experts to take all these requirements into account but also feel free to provide any supporting documentation or other additional proposals that will allow the ECI Initiators and Partners to implement the transnational online and off-line campaign. For questions and any further information about this call, you can write to: info@mediainitiative.eu We kindly ask you to be as precise and brief as possible. Thank you in advance for your interest and participation!
VOCI, IMMAGINI E TESTIMONIANZE DAI CENTRI DI IDENTIFICAZIONE ED ESPULSIONE
European Alternatives sta portando avanti la campagna Open Access Now che richiede la chiusira dei campi di detenzione in Europa. In piu, European Alternatives collabora con la campagna Italiana, LasciateCIEntrare, contro la detenzione amministrativa dei migranti, e insieme hanno organizzato varie visite ai CIE, e vari eventi come questo. LasciateCIEntrare, ZaLab, Archivio delle memorie migranti con il sostegno di Open Society Foundations presentano ILLEGAL CAMP – MAI PIÙ CIE VOCI, IMMAGINI E TESTIMONIANZE DAI CENTRI DI IDENTIFICAZIONE ED ESPULSIONE Roma, 4 febbraio 2013, ore 20.30 Teatro Ambra alla Garbatella Piazza Giovanni da Triora, 15 Info: telefono botteghino 06.81173900 info@lasciatecientrare.it Ingresso gratuito fino a esaurimento posti con ERRI DE LUCA, BARBARA BOBOULOVA, ANITA CAPRIOLI, GIUSEPPE CEDERNA, ROBERTO CITRAN e con GIUSI NICOLINI, sindaco di Lampedusa Lunedì 4 febbraio alle ore 20.30 la campagna LasciateCIEntrare insieme a ZaLab e all’Archivio delle memorie migranti presentano una serata dedicata alle “voci dei migranti reclusi” nei CIE, Centri di identificazione ed espulsione, luoghi di ripetute violazioni dei diritti umani. Al termine della serata sarà presentato pubblicamente l’appello MAI PIÙ CIE. Sul palco del Teatro Ambra alla Garbatella, con la regia di Andrea Segre, saranno protagonisti attori e testimonianze, video e foto dai centri che Erri De Luca ha recentemente definito Centri d’Infamia Estrema. Si uniranno allo scrittore, gli attori Barbara Boboulova, Anita Caprioli, Giuseppe Cederna e Roberto Citran che si alterneranno nella lettura di alcune delle numerose testimonianze raccolte nel corso della campagna di denuncia e di mobilitazione LasciateCIEntrare. Il sindaco di Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, leggerà dal vivo, il suo appello “Quanto deve essere grande il cimitero della mia isola?”, nel quale denuncia il silenzio dell’Italia e dell’Europa di fronte agli sbarchi a Lampedusa, ai morti e alla mancanza di una civile accoglienza. In scena anche le testimonianze dirette di Mahamed Aman, mediatore culturale eritreo e Zakaria Mohamed Ali, giornalista somalo. Saranno proiettati video e foto realizzati dentro i CIE, per raccontare quello che non si deve sapere, vedere o sentire al di fuori di mura e recinzioni. Una serata dedicata a chi non vede ancora riconosciuto il proprio diritto ad avere una voce, il rispetto alla propria dignità umana, la tutela dei diritti civili e legali. Una realtà dolorosa e inaccettabile che vede tutti coinvolti, dai semplici cittadini fino alle più alte istituzioni dello Stato.
Conferenza stampa: 50.000 firme per il Reddito Minimo Garantito
Da giugno a dicembre 2012 European Alternatives ha sostenuto in Italia una grande campagna nazionale di raccolta firme per una proposta legislativa di iniziativa popolare per istituire un reddito minimo garantito nel nostro Paese. Oltre 170 le adesioni di associazioni, reti sociali, movimenti, circoli territoriali, sedi sindacali; più di 40 le adesioni a firma singola di personalità della cultura, della politica, della società civile, di sindaci ed assessori di enti locali. Una grande campagna popolare e sociale che ha coinvolto 200 città, con più di 250 iniziative, banchetti, incontri pubblici e che ha consentito di superare nei sei mesi le 50mila firme necessarie. Le firme raccolte saranno consegnate entro i primi 100 giorni della nuova legislatura, affinché la proposta di legge non rimanga solo una dichiarazione di intenti. Per questo indiciamo una Conferenza stampa il giorno 13 febbraio 2013 alle ore 12:00 Sala Stampa della Camera dei Deputati Via della Missione, 4 nei pressi di Piazza Montecitorio, a Roma Saranno presenti Stefano Rodotà, Luigi Ferrajoli, Fausta Guarriello e rappresentanti di alcune associazioni e reti che hanno aderito alla campagna La sala può contenere solo 35 persone ed è necessario accreditarsi scrivendo a redditominimogarantito@sxmail.it Per maggiori informazioni: www.redditogarantito.it – redditominimogarantito@sxmail.it
Debating the commons in post-socialist Bulgaria
Photo: Transeuropa Festival 2012 Rome, Teatro Valle. Article by Mariya Ivancheva This article touches on key ssues which will be further explored during the Forum Europe, Crisis, Democracy: Central and Eastern European Social Movements, organised by European Alternatives in Bucharest on the 26 and 27 October. The concept of “the commons” – basic goods and services that are managed by and serve the interest of the community that produces them – has suddenly attracted the attention of various European theorists and activists alike. A European Charter of “the commons” was drafted in early 2012 at the International University College in Turin. Italy has recently experienced a successful process of reclaiming “the commons”. After the successful referendum that stopped the privatization of water services and repealed regulations on tariffs on water tax, Italian progressive movements also reclaimed cultural goods as a common resource. Numerous sustained occupations of public theatres around the country – pioneered by Teatro Valle, Rome’s first public theatre – gave example of horizontally organized shared management. In other European countries solidarity was built around the question of water (Austria, Germany) and shelter (Spain, France). A pan-European campaign was staged against the ACTA agreement in order to guard intellectual rights. Last but not least, European Alternatives staged a number of transnational forums, discussing successes and challenges to different campaigns reclaiming the commons in Western and Eastern Europe. All these campaigns signalled that the banner of “the commons” could bring together vastly disparate sectors of the population. However, the example of the recent protests against the privatization of protected land in Bulgaria indicates some crosscurrents not only in the theoretical approach but also in practically dealing with “the commons”. In the last half-decade Bulgaria – arguably the most passive country in Southeast Europe – has witnessed a persistent wave of protests. These mobilizations, mainly carried out in the capital city Sofia, erupted in 2007 and were triggered by the increasing privatization of and construction on protected land. This process was accelerated by two laws. The 1999 Law of Property transferred the ownership of state land to municipalities who then eagerly started selling it to entrepreneurs. The 2005 Law on Property and Use of Agricultural Lands allowed citizens of the EU to buy land in Bulgaria and triggered a massive wave of unregulated construction that turned water sources, soils, and natural habitats into concrete wastelands. In 2007, 34.3% of Bulgaria’s territory became protected under the Natura2000 network of the European Commission, supervised by the Directives of Birds and of Habitat. Subsequently the Commission prosecuted Bulgaria for breaching all these agreements. While subsequent Bulgarian governments were manoeuvring between lobby group interests and EU incentives, protests emerged. Networks of environmental activists mobilized against the destruction of protected land in 2007. Later they joined other protests. The debates in Parliament on the law on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), shale-gas fracking, and the secretive subscription of Bulgaria to the ACTA agreement were paralleled by protests and spontaneous flash-mobs around Sofia. As a result, the National Assembly voted against shale-gas fracking and the production, trade, and research of GMO products. After Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s tongue-in-cheek promise that ACTA would not be applied the decision on the agreement was remitted to the European Parliament. In 2012 participants in previous protests and further citizens joined the mass demonstration against the Forestry Act. The latter was amended in favour of the private interest of Tseko Minev, the head of First Investment Bank. His company 'Yulen ltd' which owns a number of lucrative ski-tourism installations in Pirin built on protected land, wanted to expand its activities to further restricted areas. The Act was approved in Parliament on June 13. The same evening thousands of people gathered in the streets of Sofia demanding that the President veto the Act. The next day PM Boyko Borissov met representatives of environmental organizations, and promised a moratorium on construction in protected territories. He put pressure on President Rossen Plevneliev who immediately vetoed the law. The Forestry Act was passed by the Bulgarian Parliament, this time without the controversial clauses. Many ecological activists heralded the protests as a success. Yet, can we say that this phenomenon spells good news for the resurgence of the struggle for “the commons” and a debate on alternatives to neoliberal capitalism? Is it a sign that a sense of social (if not socialist) solidarity has been preserved despite the brutal privatization in the region since 1989? Drawings by Dan Perjovski at Transeuropa Festival 2012. Teatro Valle, Rome. The Forestry Act protesters in Sofia adopted “cool” protest repertoires inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and other anti-austerity campaigns. However, while a few anti-capitalist slogans appeared at the protests, the majority of protesters refused to see the Forest Act as a component of a wider process of capitalist accumulation. The main slogan: “Tseko off Aleko!”, demanded that the oligarch keeps his hands off the Aleko peak, overseeing Sofia. Yet no claims were made against other oligarchic practices in other sectors, or against the government that allowed these. Capitalism was only seen as problematic in its local – allegedly “oriental” or “Balkan”, and thus wrong –pversion. The opinions voiced in the squares and in online forums were mostly concerned with the intrusion against the consumption and leisure of the well-deserving hard-working middle class. The first days of spontaneous protests had no official permission. Once representatives of the environmental movement met Boyko Borissov, they widely advised protesters against street occupations. Instead, protesters were asked to bring ski equipment and identify themselves as skiers. In a country where one-day hire of a rope-line at a ski-resort, costs over 25 euros and the minimum monthly wage is set at 145 Euro, ski has become a sport prohibitively expensive for the majority of the population. Yet the “skiers” made no claims for cheaper and accessible ski or recreation services. At the same time, people living in the protected mountainous regions took a stand against the “skiers”. For many…
Don’t Forget Space. Chinese contemporary art at Transeuropa Festival 2012
by Luigi Galimberti Faussone What are the different types of cultural spaces in China and how are they managed? What is the artist’s role in the self-management of artistic production? What is the relationship between the artist and the transformation of the public space, the overpopulation and the exploitation of natural resources in China? How to define the artist’s role towards the public space? These and other related questions have been explored in occasion of the visit of five Chinese artists and curators to Italy, who had been invited by European Alternatives as part of the Transeuropa Festival 2012. Boliang Shen (curator and journalist, Beijing), Ma Yongfeng (artist, Beijing), Ni Kun (curator, Chongqing), You Mi (artist, curator and writer, Beijing) and Zhou Xiahou (artist, Shanghai) took part in a tour across the Italian towns of Rome, Prato and Bologna with the aim of opening a confrontation on the spaces of artistic expression and production between Europe and China. The first meeting took place on 9th May in Rome, at MACRO, one of the leading Italian contemporary art museums. The public roundtable has been moderated by European Alternative’s co-director, Lorenzo Marsili, with an opening address by Maria Alicata, curator at MACRO. The discussion focused on the issue of the rapid, as well as uncontrolled, urban development in China, which is causing physical and psychological displacement in many communities, which have been affected by such sudden changes in the Chinese landscape. Amongst the many interventions, the presentation of Organhaus’ activities by its founder and curator, Ni Kun, deserves particular attention. Organhaus is the first independent artist-run space in the urban conglomerate of Chongqing, a roughly 30 million people megalopolis in the region of Sichuan in Southwest China. Ni Kun has been running several projects involving the inhabitants of small villages, whose identities have been severely questioned by the displacement caused by the sprawling urbanization that affected Chinese countryside. The open engagement of the artist with public, vital issues showed how deeply and seriously the role of the artist might be played in contemporary China. While in Rome, in addition to the public talk at MACRO, the Chinese artists and curators also engaged on informal meetings, such as the one with the occupants of the Teatro Valle. In particular, journalist and curator Boliang Shen and artist Ma Yongfeng exchanged practices and experiences on the management of spaces of cultural production by artists themselves, with a specific reference to the issue of the commons, on which the Teatro Valle Occupato is at the forefront in the European cultural context. Afterwards, all the participants moved to Prato, a town close to Florence, where they had the chance to visit the exhibition “Moving Image in China”, an extensive retrospective on Chinese video-art, hosted at the cutting edge Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci. The participants – and, in particular, the artist Zhou Xiahou, who is one of the pioneer of Chinese video-art and whose work was also featured in the exhibition – have been welcomed by Centro Pecci’s director, Marco Bazzini, who showed the group around the exhibition and with whom the group discussed many social and artistic issues, such as the relationship of the local art community with Prato’s Chinese inhabitants, who are estimated to account for almost a third of the town’s 180,000 residents. The conclusive stage of the Chinese artists’ and curators’ tour in Italy took place in Bologna, during a busy weekend, full of Transeuropa Festival’s events. On Friday 11th May, a public talk was held at Teatrino Clandestino, Bologna’s renowned underground cultural venue, hosted by the curator Fiorenza Menni. In addition to the presence of the artists and curators from China, Elvira Vannini (curator and lecturer at NABA, Milan) and Luigi Galimberti Faussone, acting as moderator, joined the roundtable. This second talk switched the focus to the issue of alternatives and artist-run spaces, building up a confrontation with some more and less recent experiences in China and Europe, such as the well-established Beijing collective Forget Art, run by Ma Yongfeng, and the energetic, albeit curt, experience of MACAO‘s occupation of a skyscraper in the downtown of Milan, as told in the first-hand account of the the curator Elvira Vannini. On the following day, while the streets of Bologna were flooded with people, be they coming from the public funeral of a beloved local politician, who tragically committed suicide a few days before, or be they joining a fired up protest against the new government cuts to social spending, artist Ma Yongfeng staged a public intervention in Piazza Verdi, a central square in the university area. With the help of half a dozen volunteers, he went on writing slogans on banners and cardboards with red and black air spray painting. With these slogans, which mostly dealt with current, critical, social and political issues, Ma Yongfeng tried to engage the passers-by, as well as the protesters, in order to build up an extemporaneous transnational Sino-European dialogue on politics through art. The participation of five Chinese artists and curators to the Transeuropa Festival 2012 lies within the broader project “Transnational Dialogues“, of which the next step is a research caravan across the towns of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing. This caravan, which is scheduled to take place in early October 2012, involves a large number of artists, researchers, curators and thinkers from China and Europe, who will engage in a research and production trip to map innovative cultural practices, foster new and existing relationships, document, and work towards a sustainable continuation of exchange between cultural innovators in both areas. These activities, as well as others that are in preparation, are part of European Alternatives’ efforts to go beyond the European context and to establish mutually fruitful partnerships between artists and spaces of artistic production, dialoguing and working together in Europe, China and South-East Asia. Articles in the press: “Non dimenticare lo spazio. Macro orientale, a Roma si discute di ruolo pubblico dell’artista e di spazi culturali in…
N’oubliez pas l’espace. L’art contemporain chinois au festival Transeuropa 2012
Par Luigi Galimberti Faussone Traduction: Alexis Gratpenche Quelles sont les différentes sortes d'espace culturel en Chine et qu'en est-il de leur gestion ? Quel rôle joue les artistes dans l'autogestion de la production artistique ? Quel lien existe-t-il entre l'artiste, la transformation de l'espace public, la surpopulation et l'exploitation des ressources naturelles en Chine ? Comment peut-on définir le rôle de l'artiste face à l'espace public ? Voilà le genre de questions qui ont été au cœur de la visite en Italie de cinq artistes et curateurs chinois, invités d'Alternatives Européennes à l'occasion du festival Transeuropa 2012. Boliang Shen (curateur et journaliste, Beijing), Ma Yongfeng (artiste, Beijing), Ni Kun (curateur, Chongqing), You Mi (artiste, curateur et écrivain, Beijing) and Zhou Xiahou (artiste, Shanghai) ont visité les villes italiennes de Rome, Prato et Bologne avec pour objectif de confronter les points de vue sur les espaces d'expression et de production artistiques européens et chinois. La première rencontre a eu lieu le 9 mai à Rome, à MACRO, qui compte parmi les musées d'art contemporain les plus importants d'Italie. Le modérateur de la discussion publique était le directeur adjoint d'Alternatives Européennes, Lorenzo Marsili, tandis que Maria Alicata, curateur au sein de MACRO, a introduit la discussion. Le débat a tourné autour de la question du développement urbain effréné – et hors de tout contrôle – en Chine, facteur de grands changements géographiques et psychologiques pour beaucoup de communautés affectées par ce genre de transformation brutale du paysage. Parmi les nombreuses prises de parole, la présentation du projet Organhaus et de ses activités par son fondateur, Ni Kun, mérite qu'on s'y attarde. Organhaus est le premier espace indépendant géré par des artistes dans ce vaste ensemble urbain qu'est Chongqing, mégalopole d'une trentaine de millions d'habitants située dans le Sichuan, dans le Sud-ouest de la Chine. Ni Kun a été à la tête de plusieurs projets dans lesquels étaient impliqués des habitants de petits villages dont l'identité a été remise en question par les relocalisations que cause l'urbanisation galopante, phénomène qui n'est pas sans conséquence pour la campagne chinoise. Son engagement indiscutable sur des questions publiques de premier rang a démontré l'envergure et l'importance du rôle que peuvent jouer les artistes chinois aujourd'hui. Lors de leur séjour à Rome, outre le débat public à MACRO, les artistes et curateurs chinois ont pris part à des rencontres informelles, comme avec les occupants du Teatro Valle. Boliang Shen, journaliste et curateur, et Ma Yongfen, artiste, ont notamment exposé leur pratiques et leurs expériences dans l'autogestion des espaces de production culturelle, en abordant en particulier le problème du bien commun, un combat pour lequel le Teatro Valle Occupato est en pointe dans le contexte culturel européen. Tous les participants se sont ensuite rendus à Prato, dans les environs de Florence, où ils ont pu visiter l'exposition “Moving Image in China”, vaste rétrospective sur l'art audiovisuel chinois accueillie par l'avant-gardiste Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci. Les participants – et notamment Zhou Xiahou, pionnier dans le monde chinois de l'audiovisuel, dont le travail était présenté à cette occasion – ont été accueillis par Marco Bazzini, directeur du Centro Pecci, qui leur a ensuite fait découvrir l'exposition, et avec qui le groupe a pu débattre d'un grand nombre de questions sociales et artistiques, comme par exemple les relations entre la communauté artistique locale et les habitants chinois de Prato, qui d'après les estimations représentent presque un tiers des 180 000 habitants de la ville. Les artistes et curateurs chinois ont ensuite fait la dernière étape de leur voyage à Bologne, le temps d'un week-end rempli, du fait des nombreux événements du festival Transeuropa. Le vendredi 11 mai, le Teatrino Clandestino, lieu renommé de la culture underground à Bologne, et sa directrice, Fiorenza Menni, ont accueilli une discussion publique. Outre les participants chinois, Elvira Vannini (conservatrice et maître de conférences à NABA, Milan) et Luigi Galimberti Faussone, en charge de modérer le débat, se sont également joints à la table ronde. Ce deuxième débat a tourné autour des alternatives et des espaces gérés par les artistes, et les participants ont fini par confronter leurs expériences plus ou moins récentes en Chine comme en Europe : il a par exemple été question de Forget Art, collectif bien établi de Beijing dirigé par Ma Yongfeng, ou bien de l'expérience audacieuse, quoique brève, qu'a tenté MACAO en occupant un gratte-ciel du centre-ville de Milan, racontée par Elvira Vannini. Le lendemain, alors que les rues milanaises étaient bondées, qu'il s'agissait de la foule venue assister à l'enterrement public d'un homme politique local qui s'était suicidé quelques jours plus tôt, ou de manifestants en colère réunis pour protester contre les réductions des dépenses sociales décidées par le nouveau gouvernement, l'artiste Ma Yongfeng a pris la parole en public sur la Piazza Verdi, une place centrale du quartier de l'université. Aidé par une demi-douzaine de volontaires, il a entrepris d'écrire des slogans sur des bannières et des pancartes à la bombe noire et rouge. Grâce à ces slogans, qui avaient surtout à voir avec des questions brûlantes en lien avec l’actualité politique et sociale, Ma Yongfeng a tenté d'impliquer les passants ainsi que les manifestants afin d'initier un dialogue spontané sino-européen autour de la politique par le biais de l'art. La participation de ces cinq artistes et curateurs chinois au festival Transeuropa fait partie d'un projet plus large, Transnational Dialogues, qui a pour prochaine étape de faire circuler une caravane de chercheurs dans les villes de Beijing, Shanghai et Chongqing. Ce projet, prévu pour début octobre 2012, est constitué d'un grand nombre d'artistes, de chercheurs, de conservateurs et de penseurs originaires de Chine et d'Europe qui participeront à des recherches et à des activités afin de cartographier les pratiques culturelles novatrices, d'entretenir des liens existants ou d'en établir de nouveaux, de se documenter et de faire perdurer les échanges qui existent entre les esprits novateurs de ces deux régions. Ces activités, et d'autres projets en préparation, font partie des moyens choisis par Alternatives Européennes pour…
Citizens²: Voices for a Diverse Europe: Discover New Transeuropa Video
European Alternatives (EA) transeuropean video 'Citizens²: Voices for a Diverse Europe' gives their say to engaged European citizens, whose parents were born abroad. The video has been created by and produced by members of European Alternatives in Italy, France, Germany and the UK and presented during Transeuropa Festival 2012. It’s also just been selected for a movie festival in Ecuador. Séverine Lenglet (SL) is an independant filmaker and journalist. She is also an active member of European Alternatives. She trained the team of EA video makers and created the video. Here she gives us an overview of the project and the video. Discover the film subtitled in French, Italian and Spanish on European Alternatives' You Tube Channel! European Alternatives : Where did the idea of the movie come from? Séverine Lenglet: The idea of the movie “Voices for a diverse Europe” came from European Alternatives local group in Italy which initiated the project “CITIZENS2: NEW VOICES FOR A DIVERSE EUROPE”. This project aimed at involving young people in a transnational discussion and action on the meaning of European citizenship, starting from the situation of young people with ethnic minority backgrounds. The project wanted to emphasise the contribution of young people belonging to the so-called “second generation” to the building of a European society and identity which recognises its own diversity. Some researches and comparative studies have shown that the situation of young people with ethnic minority background is very different depending on the Country they live in. The different systems of access to citizenship can have a very hard influence on the lives of these persons. Most European Countries, especially since the ‘70s, have modified their norms of access to citizenship and made easier the grant of citizenship to the children of migrants. But there are still some Countries – Italy is amongst them – which maintain norms based on the so-called principle of ‘ius sanguinis’, which considers citizenship as an hereditary aspect, excluding people who were born and have grown up in a Country, if they have parents of a different nationality. In this complex and diverse European context, there are still some aspects which are common to second generation young people. Many researches underline that their opportunities and life chances are significantly inferior to those of children born to non-immigrants. Even when they are formally granted citizenship, they are often at disadvantage in the educative system, have a more difficult access to the labour market and experience daily discriminations based on their ethnic origins. We are convinced that the European society has to accept the challenge of this complexity, as an opportunity to redefine collectively what European identity means, recognizing that growing between different cultures is not a handicap but a resource. Second generation young people, bringing differences in themselves, are the pioneers of an authentically multicultural society, they become representative of a European identity that has to recognise itself as diverse. EA: What is unusual in the process of making this movie? Who were the people involved and how did this work? SL: Last year European Alternatives created a transeuropean video team. As a professional filmmaker I was in charge of training young people from 8 different European countries how to film, how to use a video camera, how to make interviews, how to produce a short film, a documentary film, etc. So for this movie, the project participants were young filmmakers coming from Italy, the UK, France and Germany. We met the first time in Bologna in January 2012. We had one day video training and the second day we discussed the idea, the script, the message of the movie, the questions of the interviews. At the end of this week-end each participant went back home and looked for young people with ethnic minority background who would be interested to tell us their story. We collected the stories, filmed them, met on Skype to discuss on the interviews, on the shootings… and we met again at the end of March to speak about the final editing. EA: How did you select the people you interviewed? SL: As the project was focused on the so called “second generation”, we had to look for young people with ethnic minority background who were born or who grew up in one of the four country of the project… As we are all young people involved in a civil society organisation, we decided to look for young people under 30 who are also actively involved in some NGOs, social, political projects because we wanted them to tell us their vision on participation in society. EA : How would you describe the movie? SL: Ç???r, Farah Clémentine, Kaveh, Souad, Sanaà, Aboubakar, Leila are young people with minority background. Their parents left Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Benin, Burkina Faso some decades ago with the hope to have a better life in France, Great Britain, Italy or Germany. Today these young people tell us the stories of their families, their childhood as migrants’children, the discrimination. They give us their visions of Europe, of identity. They tell us about participation, citizenship, cultural diversity. EA: Which future for the movie? ( any film festival, strategy to spread it and show it) SL: We showed this movie in Paris and Rome during the Transeuropa festival 2012. The audience reacted well and very interested. Some local groups of European Alternatives have organised some special events to show and discuss the topic. We would like to present this film in some festivals. For the moment, it will be shown in the theater and short film festival Sudaka in Ecuador.
Découvrez la nouvelle vidéo de Transeuropa!
Traduction : Alexis Gratpenche Dans la vidéo transeuropéenne “Citoyens²: des voix pour une Europe diverse”, Alternatives Européennes (AE) donne la parole à des citoyens européens engagés dont les parents sont nés à l'étranger. Cette vidéo a été réalisée par des membres d'Alternatives Européennes d'Italie, de France, d'Allemagne et du Royaume Uni et a été présentée à l'occasion du festival Transeuropa 2012. Elle vient également d'être sélectionnée pour un festival de films en Équateur. Séverine Lenglet (SL) est cinéaste indépendante et journaliste. Elle est aussi un membre actif d'Alternatives Européennes. Elle a formé les membres de l'équipe de cinéastes d'Alternatives Européennes et a conçu la vidéo. Elle nous donne ici un aperçu du projet et de la vidéo. Alternatives Européennes : Comment est venue l’idée de réaliser ce film ? Séverine Lenglet : L'idée vient d'un groupe local d'Alternatives Européennes en Italie qui est à l'origine du projet “Citoyens² : de nouvelles voix pour une Europe diverse”. Ce projet vise à impliquer les jeunes dans des débats et des actions transnationales sur le thème de la citoyenneté européenne, en prenant pour point de départ la situation des jeunes issus de minorités ethniques. Le but de ce projet était de montrer l’apport de ces jeunes de “deuxième génération”, comme on a l'habitude de les appeler, à la construction d'une société européenne et à celle d’une identité qui reconnait sa propre diversité. Des travaux de recherches et des études comparatives ont démontré que la situation des jeunes issus de minorités ethniques varient beaucoup d'un pays à l'autre. Les différents systèmes d'accès à la citoyenneté peuvent avoir un impact fort sur la vie de ces personnes. La plupart des pays européens, depuis les années 70 surtout, ont changé les critères de citoyenneté et en ont facilité l'accès pour les enfants de migrants. Mais il y a encore des pays – l'Italie par exemple – qui maintiennent des critères basés sur le principe dit du “ius sanguinis”, selon lequel la citoyenneté est une affaire d'hérédité, et qui exclue ainsi les individus qui sont nés et ont grandi dans le pays en question mais qui ont des parents étrangers. Dans ce contexte complexe et disparate, on trouve quand même des éléments qui sont communs à tous les jeunes de “deuxième génération”. Beaucoup d'études montrent que leurs chances dans la vie sont bien inférieures à celles des enfants de nationaux. Même lorsqu'ils acquièrent officiellement la nationalité du pays, ils sont souvent désavantagés face au système éducatif, ont plus de mal à accéder au marché du travail et font quotidiennement l'objet de discriminations à cause de leur origine ethnique. Nous avons la conviction que la société européenne doit accepter de relever ce défi complexe, et doit comprendre qu’il s’agit d’une opportunité pour redéfinir collectivement l'identité européenne, en reconnaissant que grandir au carrefour de cultures différentes n'est pas un handicap mais une ressource. Les jeunes de deuxième génération, porteurs de différences, sont les pionniers d'une société réellement multiculturelle et deviennent les symboles d'une identité européenne qui doit admettre sa diversité. AE : En quoi la réalisation de ce film a-t-elle été « inhabituelle » ? Qui y a participé et comment cela a-t-il fonctionné ? SL : L'an dernier, Alternatives Européennes a mis sur pied une équipe transeuropéenne pour réaliser des courts métrages En tant que cinéaste professionnelle, j'étais chargée de former des jeunes de huit pays européens différents pour leur apprendre à filmer, à se servir d'une caméra, à faire des interviews, à faire un court-métrage, un documentaire, etc. Dans ce projet, les participants étaient de jeunes cinéastes originaires d'Italie, du Royaume Uni, de France et d'Allemagne. Nous nous sommes rencontrés pour la première fois à Bologne en janvier 2012. Le premier jour, nous avons travaillé sur la technique puis, le deuxième jour, nous avons échangé au sujet de l'idée de départ, du scénario, du message que nous voulions faire passer, des questions des interviews. Après ce week-end, les participants sont rentrés chez eux et se sont mis à la recherche de jeunes issus de minorités ethniques qui pouvaient avoir envie de nous raconter leur histoire. Nous avons rassemblé les histoires, nous les avons filmées, puis nous sommes retrouvés sur Skype pour parler des interviews et de ce que nous avions filmé… Ensuite, nous nous sommes réunis fin mars pour discuter du montage final. . AE : Sur quels critères avez-vous choisi les personnes à interviewer ? SL : Comme le projet était centré sur cette fameuse “deuxième génération”, nous devions trouver des jeunes issus de minorités ethniques qui étaient nés ou avaient grandi dans un des quatre pays représentés dans le film… Etant donné que nous sommes des jeunes et que nous militons dans une association, nous avons choisi de rechercher des jeunes de moins de 30 ans, qui soient également militants dans des ONG ou engagés dans des projets politiques ou sociaux car nous voulions qu'ils nous disent ce que signifiait pour eux l’implication dans la vie sociale. AE : Comment pourriez-vous décrire ce film ? SL : Ç???r, Farah Clémentine, Kaveh, Souad, Sanaà, Aboubakar et Leila sont des jeunes issus de minorités ethniques. Leurs parents ont quitté l'Iran, le Maroc, la Turquie, le Bénin, le Burkina Faso il y a quelques dizaines d'années, avec l'espoir de trouver une vie meilleure en France, en Grande Bretagne, en Italie ou en Allemagne. Aujourd'hui, ces jeunes nous racontent l'histoire de leur famille, leur enfance en tant qu'enfants de migrants, la discrimination. Ils nous expliquent ce qu'est pour eux l'Europe, l'identité. Ils nous parlent d'implication dans la vie sociale, de citoyenneté, de diversité culturelle. AE : Quel avenir voyez-vous pour ce film ? (Sa diffusion dans des festivals ? Une stratégie de diffusion plus large ?) SL : Nous avons projeté ce film à Paris et à Rome à l'occasion du festival Transeuropa 2012. Le public a bien réagi et semblait intéressé. Des groupes locaux d'Alternatives Européennes ont organisé des rencontres pour diffuser ce film et en débattre. Nous aimerions le présenter dans certains festivals. Pour l'instant, il est…
Appel à candidatures ! Rejoignez notre projet Chine-UE
Traduction : Aliénor Daumalin Dans le cadre du projet Chine-UE d’Alternatives Européennes, une visite de dix jours entre Pékin, Shanghai et Chongqing sera organisée fin septembre-début octobre. Artistes, curateurs et chercheurs de Chine et d’Europe, participez à un voyage d’étude et de production pour concevoir des pratiques culturelles innovantes, développer des connexions nouvelles ou déjà existantes, enfin documenter et œuvrer pour la continuation des échanges entre les innovateurs culturels en Europe et en Chine. Les trois principaux thèmes qui seront abordés sont : la pratique du bien commun ; les espaces indépendants de production culturelle et artistique en Chine ; l’éducation par l’art. Nous accueillons dès à présent les candidatures des volontaires (artistes, conservateurs, chercheurs, critiques d’art, écrivains, théoriciens, directeurs de galeries d’art et autres créateurs) qui souhaitent postuler pour participer à cette visite. En plus de leur CV, les candidats devront nous adresser une brève lettre de motivation qui montrera leur intérêt et leur connaissance des sujets qui seront abordés ainsi que la façon dont ils pensent pouvoir contribuer à cette visite. Les candidatures seront étudiées au fur et à mesure. AE prendra en charge les frais du voyage (c.à.d. l’aller-retour pour la Chine) tandis que les participants paieront les autres dépenses (transports dans le pays, logement, et nourriture par exemple), estimées à environ 900€ pour la durée du séjour. Pour demander le programme ou des informations complémentaires, écrivez à : china@euroalter.com. Il s’agit d’une occasion exceptionnelle pour ceux qui souhaitent confronter leurs opinions et leurs expériences avec un groupe d’artistes, de conservateurs et de chercheurs chinois reconnus qui pourront à leur tour leur donner un aperçu de la situation en Chine et des possibilités d’interaction avec celle de l’Europe.
Call for application! Join our China-EU project
Within the European Alternatives’ China-EU Project, a 10-day tour across the towns of Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing will take place in late September – early October. Artists, curators and researchers from China and Europe engage in a research and production trip to map innovative cultural practices, foster new and existing relationships, document and work towards a sustainable continuation of exchange between cultural innovators in Europe and China. The three main issues that will be tackled are: practices of the commons; independents spaces of cultural and artistic production in China; education through art. We are now accepting application from perspective participants (e.g., artists, curators, researchers, art critics, writers, theorists, managers of art spaces or other creatives) that are willing to join the tour. In addition to their resume, the participants should provide a brief motivational letter, proving their interest and experience in the issues that will be tackled, as well as how they think they may contribute to the tour. The applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. EA will cover the travel costs (i.e., the return flight from Europe to China), while the participants have to take care of the other expenses (e.g., internal transfers, accommodation, food), which could be estimated at around €900 for the whole trip. In order to request the programme or for more information, write to: china@euroalter.com. This is an amazing opportunity for those interested in confronting their views and experiences with a qualified group of Chinese artists, curators and researchers, who could provide the former with insights on the Chinese context and on possible ways of interaction with that of Europe.
A democratic rupture for Europe – Call for a democratic assembly in Florence
This call launches a participatory process towards the organisation of a large European assembly in Florence – Information on the Florence assembly and participation here Over the last two years the response of European elites to the economic and financial crisis has been marked by an aggressive centralisation of supranational decision-making powers. The new governance structures envisaged no longer simply suffer of a “democratic deficit”, but now represent a true “flight from democracy”. Who takes decisions in the EU? To answer this question all we have to do is turn to the conclusions of the latest European Council. Here we may find, to take such an example, that the definition of the next steps of the planned economic and monetary union will be handed over to a group formed by the Presidents of the European Council, of the Commission, the Eurogroup, and the European Central Bank. Member states, and the European Parliament, will be simply “consulted”. It seems clear that the direction of the European Union is increasingly being defined by an oligarchy responding to the requirements of the financial markets. But the destiny of the European people cannot be decided by an oligarchy, but it should rather be determined by European citizens themselves. The silence of the European Parliament is shocking, with the institution accepting once again to be declassed to a merely consultative role. This situation pushes us to launch a real democratic alarm. The European Council has confirmed and strengthened the construction of an edifice without precedent in the history of democracies, destroying the foundations of the bourgeois state – based on the principle of “no taxation without representation”. We are witnessing the construction of a monetary, fiscal, and banking system realised for the purposes of a market economy that needs to be competitive with the global neoliberal imperative. A system that is to be constructed and governed by technocratic structure entirely deprived of a popular mandate and removed from any form of control or accountability, even that of representative institutions. The approval of the Fiscal Compact is just the latest step towards the imposition of an ever stricter fiscal discipline, following the European Semester, the Europlus Pact, and the Six Pack. The very ideology of the European social model is judged as obsolete – as repeatedly claimed by Mario Draghi. The de-structuring of the foundations of the material conditions and rights of labour, the demolition of the welfare state, the continuous privatisation of fundamental services and common goods, seem to increasingly require the destruction of democracy, even in its representative forms. The electoral process itself no longer takes place in a normal climate, but rather under the permanent blackmail of the crisis of sovereign debts and the threatening oscillations of financial markets. Any opposition to the unjust and inefficient economic and social choices imposed under the blackmail of debt must be accompanied by an equally strong mobilisation capable of resisting the reduction of the democratic life of European citizens and of relaunching on European democracy. We need a democratic rupture. A democratic rupture based on the contestation of technocracy and its impositions, and on the establishment of a democratic constituent process for another Europe. We launch an appeal for the constitution of a vast coailition of social movements, associations, political and trade union forces, but also individual citizens, recognising themselves in the concrete demand of European democracy. We propose for such coalition to meet in an assembly to be held in the context of the Florence 10+10 mobilisations in November 4-8, capable of bringing together around a common set of demands for democratic reform the plurality of voices that have crossed Europe in the recent period. It will be important for such democratic front to be truly transnational, remembering the centrality of the Central and Eastern European space, and to contribute to the innovation of the political practices of movements, parties, and trade unions in Europe. Because democracy does not depend only on institutions, but also on the capacity of active citizenship to develop new transnational political practices.
Una rottura democratica per l’Europa
Questo appello prepara la costruzione di una grande assemblea europea a Firenze a novembre – qui tutte le informazioni sull'assemblea di Firenze In meno di due anni le classi dirigenti europee, per fronteggiare la crisi economico-finanziaria, hanno centralizzato a passo di carica i poteri decisionali dell’UE costruendo una governance che non rivela tanto il tradizionale deficit democratico quanto una vera e propria fuga dalla democrazia. Chi decide nell’UE? Per avere una risposta basta leggere le Conclusioni dell’ultimo Consiglio Europeo e si vedrà, per prendere un solo esempio, che a preparare le prossime tappe dell’Unione economica e monetaria sarà un gruppo formato dal Presidente del Consiglio Europeo, da quello della Commissione, dell’Eurogruppo e della BCE. Essi prepareranno le misure indicando modi e tempi della loro attuazione – si legga il punto 4 delle Conclusioni. Gli stessi Stati, che Dieter Grimm ha sempre definito essere i ‘signori dei trattati’, saranno solo consultati così come consultato sarà il Parlamento europeo. Nell’Unione Europea decide ormai una vera e propria oligarchia, che risponde ai ‘voti’ del mercato finanziario. Per modificare disposizioni fondamentali non si ricorre neppure alle procedure semplificate dell’articolo 48 del Trattato di Lisbona, secondo cui un ‘qualsiasi Stato membro, il Parlamento europeo o la Commissione possono sottoporre al Consiglio europeo progetti’ di modifica. Ora perfino queste disposizioni vengono disattese perché si attiva un gruppo di tecnocrati che proporranno loro al Consiglio europeo se e quali modifiche apportare ai Trattati che gli Stati avranno il solo compito di presentare ai Parlamenti per la ratifica. Chi decide le sorti dei popoli europei non può e non deve essere un’oligarchia, bensì i cittadini europei. Su questa torsione oligarchica non stupisce il silenzio della Commissione (essendone parte), stupisce il silenzio del Parlamento Europeo che accetta di essere ancora una volta declassato al ruolo di organo consultivo. Tutto questo ci spinge a lanciare un vero e proprio allarme democratico. Il Consiglio Europeo ha confermato e rafforzato la costruzione, ormai in stato di forte avanzamento, di un edificio che, senza precedenti nella storia delle democrazie, ha distrutto le fondamenta dello stesso Stato borghese, quelle costruite sulla base del “ no taxation without rapresentation “. Si sta realizzando un sistema monetario, fiscale e bancario in funzione di un’economia di mercato che deve essere altamente competitiva sulla scena del capitalismo globalizzato. E se ne affida la direzione ad una struttura tecnocratica del tutto priva di un mandato popolare e sottratta a ogni forma di controllo, anche delle istituzioni rappresentative. Con l’approvazione del Fiscal Compact un altro passo decisivo si va compiendo dopo quelli realizzatisi con il Semestre Europeo, il Patto euro plus, il Six pack, e ora con le nuove misure del two pack tese ad imporre una sempre più stringente disciplina fiscale. Finanche l’ideologia del modello sociale europeo viene giudicata obsoleta – come ha dichiarato ripetutamente Mario Draghi -, e le politiche liberiste, per destrutturare i fondamenti della condizione materiale e dei diritti del lavoro, per demolire il welfare, per privatizzare i beni comuni, richiedono la distruzione della democrazia, anche di quella rappresentativa. Le stesse elezioni non avvengono più in un clima di garanzie dato che si svolgono sotto il permanente ricatto della crisi dei ‘debiti sovrani’ e del minaccioso andamento dei mercati finanziari. Il voto in Grecia si sono tenute sotto il ricatto del Memorandum della troika e della minaccia di fallimento dello Stato. Il metodo intergovernativo, ispirato dal funzionalismo, ha portato alla costruzione di una tecnocrazia autoritaria al servizio dei mercati. L’opposizione alle scelte economiche e sociali imposte sotto spada di Damocle del debito − ingiuste e inefficaci, se per inefficaci ci si riferisce al benessere sociale e non a quello dei predatori − deve accompagnarsi ad una altrettanto forte mobilitazione per non subire un ulteriore vulnus nella vita democratica dei popoli europei. È necessaria una rottura democratica. Rottura democratica che si basa sulla contestazione della tecnocrazia e delle sue imposizioni, a partire dal Fiscal Compact, e sull’attivizzazione di un processo Costituente Democratico di un’altra Europa. Questo processo si realizza attraverso la costruzione storica del demos che, come afferma Etienne Balibar, è necessariamente un demos sociale aperto e non etnico e che, dunque, si nutre di una democrazia innervata di diritti sociali e di libertà delle persone. Facciamo appello perché si costituisca una vasta coalizione di forze associative, politiche, sindacali, ma anche di singoli cittadini, che si riconosca nella domanda di democrazia europea e che trovi in un’assemblea − da tenere nell’ambito di Firenze 10+10 – una sede in cui far confluire attorno ad un nucleo di rivendicazioni concrete la pluralità di voci che in questi mesi si sono levate. Importante che tale schieramento sia realmente transnazionale, ricordando in particolare l’importanza dell'Europa centrale e orientale, e che contribuisca ad innovare le pratiche politiche di movimenti, partiti, e sindacati. Perché la democrazia non dipende solo dalle istituzioni, ma anche dalla capacità di sviluppare nuove pratiche politiche transnazionali da parte della cittadinanza attiva.
Une rupture démocratique pour lEurope Appel à une assemblée démocratique à Florence
Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin Cet appel marque le début du processus participatif visant à l’organisation d’une grande assemblée européenne à Florence – Informations sur l’assemblée de Florence et les moyens d’y participer ici Ces deux dernières années, la réponse des élites européennes face à la crise économique et financière s’est caractérisée par une violente centralisation des pouvoirs décisionnels supranationaux. Les nouvelles instances dirigeantes pressenties ne souffrent plus seulement d’un «déficit démocratique»: elles représentent aujourd’hui une véritable « fuite face à la démocratie ». Qui prend les décisions dans l’UE ? Pour répondre à cette question, il suffit d’examiner les conclusions du dernier Conseil européen. Nous y découvrons notamment que le choix des prochaines mesures du programme de l’Union économique et monétaire sera laissé à un groupe composé des Présidents du Conseil européen, de la Commission, de l’Eurogroupe et de la Banque centrale européenne. Les États membres et le Parlement européen ne pourront, pour leur part, que donner leur avis. Il paraît évident que la conduite de l’Union Européenne dépend de plus en plus d’une oligarchie qui répond aux exigences des marchés financiers. Mais l’avenir des Européens ne doit pas dépendre des choix d’une oligarchie; il devrait être déterminé par les citoyens européens eux-mêmes. Le silence du Parlement européen est choquant, alors qu’il accepte une nouvelle fois d’être relégué à un simple rôle consultatif. Cette situation nous pousse à lancer une vraie alerte démocratique. Le Conseil européen a confirmé et consolidé la construction d’un édifice sans précédent dans l’histoire des démocraties, détruisant les fondations de l’État bourgeois, basé sur le principe « pas de taxe sans représentation ». Nous sommes témoins de la formation d’un système monétaire, fiscal et bancaire en faveur d’une économie de marché qui se doit d’être compétitive dans un ce monde dominé par le paradigme néo-libéral. Un système qui sera formé et gouverné par une structure technocratique, sans mandat démocratique, qui ne sera jamais contrôlée et n’aura de compte à rendre à personne, pas même aux institutions représentatives. L’approbation du pacte budgétaire n’est que la dernière étape en date vers l’imposition d’une discipline fiscale encore plus stricte, et qui fait suite au Semestre Européen, au pacte pour l’Euro-plus ainsi qu'au Six pack (paquet législatif sur la gouvernance économique), C’est l’idéologie même du modèle social européen qui est jugée obsolète, comme l’affirme régulièrement Mario Draghi. La déstructuration des bases des conditions matérielles et du droit du travail, la désintégration de la protection sociale ainsi que la privatisation incessante des services essentiels et des biens publics impliquent, semble-t-il, un effondrement grandissant de la démocratie, y compris sous ses formes représentatives. Les élections elles-mêmes se déroulent dans un climat anormal, détérioré par la menace permanente de la crise de la dette souveraine et par les fluctuations dangereuses des marchés financiers. Toute opposition à l’iniquité et l’inefficacité des décisions économiques et sociales imposées sous la menace de la dette doit être accompagnée par une mobilisation énergique, capable de résister à l’affaiblissement de la vie démocratique des citoyens et de ranimer la démocratie en Europe. Nous avons besoin d’une rupture démocratique, rupture fondée sur le rejet de la construction d’une technocratie et de ses directives, et sur la revendication d’instaurer un processus constitutionnel démocratique pour bâtir une autre Europe. Nous invitons à former une grande coalition de mouvements sociaux, d’associations, de syndicats et d’unions politiques, mais aussi de citoyens qui se sentent concernés par ce besoin manifeste de démocratie en Europe. Nous proposons à cette coalition de se réunir à l’assemblée qui se tiendra lors des mobilisations « Florence 10+10 », du 4 au 8 novembre. Ce sera l’occasion pour les nombreuses voix qui se sont fait entendre à travers l’Europe ces derniers temps de se réunir autour d’un ensemble de revendications pour une réforme démocratique. Ce front démocratique devra être véritablement transnational, gardant donc à l’esprit l’importance de l’espace de l’Europe centrale et de l’Est, et devra contribuer à développer de nouvelles pratiques politiques des mouvements, partis et syndicats européens. Car la démocratie ne dépend pas seulement des institutions mais aussi de la capacité des citoyens à participer activement au développement de nouvelles pratiques politiques transnationales.
Consultation on new EA Constitution
Faced with an increasing crisis of democracy in Europe, European Alternatives is conducting a re-organisation of its internal functioning to turn itself into an ever more democratic citizens' movement capable of working at transnational level with new forms of direct participation and involvement. European Alternatives seeks to promote alternative forms of transnational political subjectivity and collective cultural and political action. European Alternatives sees itself as an experiment in the construction of a participatory and democratic transnational actor in Europe. To this end, following a consultation with members through a general online survey, a focus group of a sample of activists, and a consultation with staff, we have drafted a reformed democratic Constitution for the organisation, better clarifying decision-making structures and empowering the membership to control the course of the organisation. We are calling all members to express their opinion on the different sections of this Draft Constitution, and to make additional proposals or suggestions for amendments. Here you may read the draft constitution in PDF And here you may find some diagrams to explain simply the different bodies described in the Constitution What do you think? We have set up a dedicated online forum to empower members to comment or express specific proposals or suggestions on the different articles of the Constitution: Access the forum here to leave your specific proposal or comment. All proposals added to the forum will be visible to all members, and will be discussed at an ad-hoc meeting of the Transnational board. Based on these proposals, a second draft of the Constitution will be produced and circulated to members for discussion and approval. For any doubt or question not addressed in the forum, you may contact Lorenzo: l.marsili @ euroalter . com
Consultazione sulla nuova Costituzione di European Alternatives
Confrontata dalla crescente crisi della democrazia in Europa, European Alternatives sta conducendo una riorganizzazione del suo funzionamento interno per trasformarsi in un movimento di cittadinanza ancora più democratico e capace di lavorare a un livello transnazionale con nuove forme di partecipazione diretta e di coinvolgimento. European Alternatives cerca di promuovere forme alternative di soggettività politica transnazionale e di azione collettiva culturale e politica. European Alternatives si considera come un esperimento nella costruzione di un attore partecipativo e democratico in Europa. Per questo fine, in seguito a una consultazione con gli iscritti tramite un questionario online, un focus group con un campione di attivisti e una consultazione con il personale, abbiamo redatto una bozza di una Costituzione democratia dell’organizzazione, per spiegare meglio le strutture di decision-making e per chiarire che sono gli iscritti a governare il corso del movimento. Chiamiamo all’appello tutti i membri per esprimere la loro opinione sulle differenti sezioni della bozza di Costituzione e per fare proposte aggiuntive o suggerimenti per delle correzioni. Qui puoi leggere la bozza della Costituzione in PDF (in inglese) E qui puoi trovare alcuni diagrammi che spiegano semplicemente i diversi organi descritti nella Costituzione Cosa ne pensi? Abbiamo costituito un forum online dedicato per dare la possibilità ai membri di commentare o di esprimere specifiche proposte o suggerimenti sui diversi articoli della Costituzione: Accedi qui al forum per lasciare la tua specifica proposta o commento. Tutte le proposte aggiunte al forum saranno visibili a tutti i membri e saranno discusse in un incontro ad hoc del Transnational Board. Una seconda bozza della Costituzione, basata su queste proposte, sarà prodotta e sarà fatta circolare tra i membri per la discussione e l’approvazione. Per qualsiasi domanda non affrontata nel forum, potete contattare Lorenzo: l.marsili@euroalter.com
Consultation sur la nouvelle constitution d’Alternatives Européennes
Face à une crise démocratique croissante en Europe, Alternatives Européennes conduit une réorganisation de son fonctionnement interne pour devenir un mouvement de citoyens encore plus démocratique, qui soit capable d’agir au niveau transnational via les nouvelles formes directes de participation et d’engagement . Alternatives Européennes cherche à promouvoir des formes alternatives de subjectivité politique transnationale et d’action collective dans le champ politique et culturel. Alternatives Européennes se considère comme une expérience – en construction- d’un acteur transnational participatif et démocratique en Europe. Dans cette optique, suivant une consultation des membres à travers une grande enquête en ligne, un groupe de travail spécifique réunissant une poignée de militants, ainsi qu’ une consultation des salariés, nous avons mis au point un avant-projet de Constitution démocratique révisée pour l’organisation, qui permet de clarifier les structures de prise de décision et de renforcer le statut de membre pour contrôler davantage le cours de l’organisation. Nous appelons tous les membres à exprimer leur opinion sur les différentes sections de cet avant-projet de Constitution, et à faire des propositions supplémentaires ou des suggestions d’amendement. Cliquez-ici pour accéder à l'avant-projet de Constitution (format PDF) Cliquez ici pour accéder à des graphiques simples expliquant les différentes structures figurant dans la Constitution Qu'en pensez-vous? Nous avons mis au point un forum en ligne pour donner plus de place aux membres pour commenter ou formuler des propositions spécifiques ou des suggestions sur les différents articles de la Constitution: Accédez au forum pour laisser vos commentaires et propositions spécifiques Toutes les propositions enregistrées sur le forum seront visibles par l'ensemble des membres, et seront discutées lors d'une réunion ad-hoc du Board Transnational. Sur la base de ces propositions, une seconde ébauche de la Constitution sera produite et circulera parmi les membres pour être discutée et approuvée. Pour poser des questions ou pour en savoir plus sur des points non abordés sur le forum, veuillez contacter Lorenzo : l.marsili@euroalter.com
First results – Transeuropa Festival 2012: Opening a common space for European alternatives
Transeuropa Festival, between 9th May and 3rd June, dealt with some of the most burning issues currently facing Europe: the financial crisis and austerity, new democratic processes and the possibility of mobility and migrations in Europe. The 2012 edition was a resounding success, with more than 15 000 people taking part around Europe. Thanks to its rich, diverse and innovative programme, Transeuropa Festival benefitted from rich media coverage – reaching as far as China! Have a look at the Festival press clippings. Transeuropa Festival’s appeal relied on the creative formats and approaches the festival proposed for its events: including and mobilising the audience in a common research and exploration and in drafting and consolidating common alternatives proposals for Europe. Here are some of the first festival results and feedback… Transnational Urban Walks to inaugurate a Common Transnational Space The Opening Transnational Walk on the 9th of May brought all cities together in a transnational space. Locally participants were led to unexpected places in their cities through urban city games, artistic installations and performances, stories and reading by story tellers and actors. Transnational Walk Talking with books from across the continent One of the greatly appreciated events of the Festival was the living libraries in Bologna, Barcelona, Paris, Cluj-Napoca, Warsaw, Cardiff. The library contained human books, people who told their story, mostly on the topics of migration and civic activism. See videos from Cardiff, Cluj-Napoca and Paris. Art and the activist imagination The artistic events – indoors and outdoors – required the active participation of the public. Tania Bruguera in Paris read the Migrants Manifesto in front of a symbolic building for violence against migrants, Saint Bernard Church, Chinese artists in Rome and Bologna engaged in a debate with local curators and organised live performances (read article in Italian); Hiwa K in Berlin invited the public to the event ‘cooking with Mama’ during which the artist and participants cooked following the instructions given through Skype by the mother of the artist based in Iraq; Dan Perjovschi selected and produced specifically for Transeuropa a series of drawings which were used to illustrate the Transeuropa Journal and were commented by the artist himself during a talk in Rome Agorà Transeuropa. Dan Perjovschi at Agorà Transeuropa Also the experimental short film programme Histoires, curated by the Cinémathèque de Tanger, that presented short films from North Africa on citizens’ and political engagement before the revolution, was shown in almost all festival cities. It was accompanied by debates in all of the cities ranging from the situation for experimental creation in North Africa to more political discussion on democracy in Europe and in North Africa and the Middle East. You can see more in the videos from the debates in Bratislava (in Slovak) and Paris (in French). Finally, concerts, theatre and musical performances gave the opportunity to celebrate new forms of being together. Performance in Warsaw A space for discussion around new ways of thinking Of course we had the chance to exchange views, ideas and proposals either with recognized thinkers and philosophers during keynote lectures and interviews such as those by Franco BIFO Berardi on the cultural reactivation of the social body (in Sofia and Rome), Guy Standing on precariousness in London and Rome (read interview), and Niko Paech in Berlin on alternatives to growth. But in addition to lectures, workshop and assemblies were at the core of Transeuropa 2012, bringing together activists, thinkers and artists from all over Europe, including Serbia and Montenegro, to prepare common actions. Proposals for change: The commons The concept of the commons appeared relevant to create synergies between various movements such as shale gas activism, water movement, and the fight for environmental issues or the fight for the recognition of the cultural commons such as in Teatro Valle, Rome. A caravan of the commons brought artists from Teatro Valle Occupato in many festival cities: Sofia, Belgrade, Cluj, Rosia Montana and Berlin, which transformed into an Eros trip. A short report is available in Italian. Economic and Democratic crisis: For alternative organisations of human exchanges In all cities of the Festival, a wide range of alternatives to austerity measures were discussed: from implementation of financial transaction taxes and citizen’s audits of public debts to the link between the economic and environmental crisis and other forms of exchange that may be brought such as the bank of time and alternative currencies. In London, these discussions took place during the forum on European economy which underlined the link between democratic and economic deficit and enlarged its scope to include a focus on the Balkans (read article); In Prague and Bratislava, debates on participative budgeting proposed new ways of approaching the management of cities’ budgets. Moving away from the detention of migrants In Bologna, Paris, Sofia, Amsterdam events have been organised – in the framework of the Open Access campaign – denouncing the detention of irregular migrants in Europe. In Bologna a national forum brought together activists and organizations, to discuss the possible ways of dealing with migration fluxes that do not imply a criminalisation of migrants – with a commitment to further analyse them and promote them while calling for access to detention centres for civil society and journalists in the mid-term and the closure of the detention centres in the longer term. Opening of the transnational space, beyond European borders The exchanges between the cities took place through the common events such as the walk and the film programme, which gave a highly symbolic unity to an otherwise disperse territory, through the participation of speakers, activists and artists from other countries in one or more cities of the festival, and also thanks to exchanges of ideas through Skype, Twitter, emails and Facebook. The 2012 edition of the Transeuropa Festival was closed by the Agorà Transeuropa, which took place on the 2nd and 3rd June at Teatro Valle in Rome, with the participation of people involved in all the festival cities and activities. Agorà Transeuropa in Rome At the core of the transnational exchange is the Transeuropa Network and European Alternatives local groups, who have mobilised and exchanged all year long, involving in the formation, curation and implementation of a truly transnational programme to make Transeuropa a platform of discussion, experimentation and decisions to go beyond the usual way one perceives and thinks about Europe. More articles will be published in the coming weeks on the result of the festival –…
Transeuropa 2012, i primi risultati: uno spazio comune per alternative europee
Il Transeuropa Festival, nel suo percorso dal 9 maggio al 3 giugno, ha toccato le questioni più urgenti che l’Europa si trova ad affrontare: la crisi economica e l’austerità, le nuove forme di partecipazione democratica e la mobilità e le migrazioni che attraversano l’Europa. L’edizione del 2012 ha avuto un successo straordinario, con più di 15.000 partecipanti in tutta Europa. Grazie al suo programma ricco, diversificato e innovativo, Transeuropa Festival ha avuto una vasta copertura mediatica, che ha raggiunto persino la Cina! Qui puoi trovare un assaggio della rassegna stampa del Festival. Il Transeuropa Festival ha trovato la sua forza nei formati e metodi creativi proposti nel corso di eventi che hanno coinvolto e mobilitato i partecipanti nella ricerca ed elaborazione di proposte alternative comuni per l’Europa. Ecco alcuni dei primi risultati del festival! Camminate transnazionali per inaugurare uno spazio transnazionale comune La camminata transnazionale del 9 maggio ha unito tutte le città in uno spazio transnazionale. I partecipanti sono andati alla scoperta di luoghi inaspettati nelle loro città, accompagnati da giochi urbani, installazioni artistiche, performance e racconti di cantastorie e attori. Camminata transnazionale Libri parlanti attraverso il continente Tra gli eventi più apprezzati del Festival, si sono svolte biblioteche viventi a Bologna, Barcellona, Parigi, Cluj-Napoca, Varsavia, Cardiff. Le biblioteche contenevano “cataloghi” di libri viventi, persone che hanno raccontato le loro storie, prevalentemente sui temi della migrazione e dell’attivismo civico. Puoi vedere le biblioteche all’opera in questi video da Cardiff, Cluj-Napoca e Parigi. Arte e immaginazione attivista Il Festival ha ospitato vari eventi artistici che hanno richiesto l’attiva partecipazione del pubblico. Tania Bruguera a Parigi ha letto il Migrants Manifesto di fronte alla chiesa Saint Bernard, un luogo simbolico della violenza contro i migranti; un gruppo di artisti cinesi, in viaggio tra Roma e Bologna, è stato coinvolto in un dibattito con curatori locali e ha organizzato una performance nello spazio pubblico (leggi un articolo); Hiwa K a Berlino ha invitato il pubblico all’evento “Cooking with Mama”, durante il quale l’artista e i partecipanti hanno cucinato seguendo le istruzioni via skype della madre dell’artista che si trova in Iraq; Dan Perjovschi ha selezionato e realizzato specificamente per Transeuropa una serie di disegni che sono stati usati per illustrare il Transeuropa Journal e che l’artista ha commentato durante l’Agorà Transeuropa a Roma. Dan Perjovschi all’Agorà Transeuropa Il programma di brevi film sperimentali Histoire(s), curato dalla Cinémathèque de Tanger, è stato proiettato in molte città del Festival, accompagnato da dibattiti che hanno spaziato dalla sperimentazione artistica in Nord Africa a discussioni sulla democrazia in Europa, in Nord Africa e in Medio Oriente. Per saperne di più, guarda i video dei dibattiti a Bratislava (in slovacco) e Parigi (in francese). Il Festival ha anche ospitato concerti e performance teatrali e musicali, che hanno dato l’opportunità di sperimentare nuovi modi di stare assieme. Performance a Varsavia Uno spazio di dibattito aperto a nuove idee Il Festival ha dato la possibilità di scambiare idee, prospettive e proposte con riconosciuti pensatori e filosofi, attraverso conferenze e interviste, come quelle di Franco BIFO Berardi sulla riattivazione culturale del corpo sociale (a Sofia e a Roma), Guy Standing sulla precarietà a Londra e a Roma (leggi l’intervista), e Niko Paech a Berlino sulle alternative alla crescita. Ma oltre alle conferenze, al cuore di Transeuropa 2012 ci sono stati seminari e assemblee che hanno riunito attivisti, pensatori e artisti da tutta Europa, inclusi Serbia e Montenegro, per progettare azioni comuni. Proposte per il cambiamento: i beni comuni Il concetto dei beni comuni si è rivelato cruciale per creare sinergie tra vari movimenti, come l’attivismo contro l’estrazione di gas naturale, il movimento dell’acqua, le lotte ambientaliste o la battaglia per il riconoscimento della cultura come bene comune, come quella portata avanti dal Teatro Valle di Roma. Un caravan dei beni comuni ha portato artisti del Teatro Valle Occupato in molte città del Festival: Sofia, Belgrado, Cluj-Napoca, Rosia Montana e Berlino. Leggi il taccuino di viaggio. Crisi economica e democratica: alla ricerca di alternative In tutte le città del Festival sono state discusse possibili alternative alle misure di austerità: dalla messa in atto di tasse sulle transazioni finanziarie e controlli cittadini sul debito pubblico, alla ricerca di altre possibili forme di scambio, come la banca del tempo o le monete alternative. A Londra queste discussioni si sono svolte nel corso di un forum sull’economia europea, che ha sottolineato il legame tra deficit economico e democratico e ha allargato i temi di dibattito, con un focus sui Balcani (leggi un articolo di Giandomenico Majone); a Praga e Bratislava dibattiti sul bilancio partecipato hanno proposto nuovi modi di gestire il bilancio municipale. Superare la detenzione per migranti A Bologna, Parigi, Sofia e Amsterdam sono stati organizzati eventi – nell’ambito della campagna Open Access Now – per denunciare la detenzione dei migranti in Europa. A Bologna un forum nazionale ha riunito attivisti e organizzazioni per discutere possibili metodi alternativi per la gestione dei flussi migratori che non implichino la criminalizzazione dei migranti – con l’impegno a continuare a ricercarli e promuoverli, al tempo stesso richiedendo l’accesso ai centri detenzione per società civile e giornalisti (come obiettivo a medio termine) e la chiusura dei centri detenzione (come obiettivo a lungo termine). Aprire uno spazio transnazionale, oltre i confini europei Lo scambio tra le città è stato un elemento fondamentale del Festival, e si è concretizzato attraverso eventi comuni come la camminata e il programma di proiezioni, che hanno dato un’unità altamente simbolica a un territorio altrimenti disperso; attraverso la circolazione di relatori, attivisti e artisti tra le diverse città del Festival; grazie agli scambi di idee attraverso Skype, Twitter, email e Facebook. L’edizione 2012 del Transeuropa Festival si è chiusa il 2 e il 3 giugno a Roma presso il Teatro Valle, con l’Agorà Transeuropa che ha visto la partecipazione di persone coinvolte in tutte le città e attività del Festival. Agorà Transeuropa a Roma Il fulcro dello scambio transnazionale del Festival è rappresentato dal Transeuropa Network e dai gruppi locali di European Alternatives, che si sono mobilitati dialogando nel corso dell’anno, prendendo parte all’ideazione, organizzazione e realizzazione di un programma realmente transnazionale, che ha reso Transeuropa una piattaforma di discussione, sperimentazione e proposta, per andare oltre le consuete percezioni dell’Europa. Nelle prossime settimane saranno pubblicati nuovi articoli sui risultati del Festival – tieni d’occhio il sito di European Alternatives! Per percorrere il Festival in…
Premiers résultats Festival Transeuropa 2012: Ouvrir un espace commun pour des alternatives européennes
Du 9 mai au 3 Juin, le Festival Transeuropa a abordé plusieurs problématiques cruciales auxquelles l’Europe se trouve aujourd’hui confrontée: la crise financière et l'austérité, les nouveaux processus démocratiques, la question de la mobilité et des migrations en Europe. L'édition 2012 a connu un succès retentissant, avec plus de 15 000 personnes y ayant pris part à travers toute l'Europe. Grâce à son programme riche, diversifié et innovant, le Festival Transeuropa a bénéficié d'une couverture médiatique riche – allant même jusqu’en Chine! Jetez donc un œil sur les coupures de presse du Festival. L’attrait du Festival Transeuropa réside dans le fait qu’il propose des approches et formats créatifs dans le cadre de ses évènements: en d’autres termes, l’objectif était d’impliquer et de mobiliser le public dans une recherche et une exploration communes, ainsi que dans l’ébauche et la consolidation de propositions alternatives pour l'Europe. Voici quelques résultats et premiers retours du festival… Des marches urbaines transnationales pour inaugurer un espace transnational commun Le 9 mai, la Marche transnationale d'ouverture a permis à toutes les villes de faire partie d’un espace transnational commun. Localement, les participants ont été guidés dans des endroits inattendus de leurs villes, à travers des jeux urbains, des installations artistiques, des performances, des lectures et contes. Marche transnationale Discuter avec des livres à travers le continent Un des événement les plus appréciés du Festival : les bibliothèques vivantes organisées à Bologne, Barcelone, Paris, Cluj-Napoca, Varsovie et Cardiff. Ces bibliothèques comprenaient des livres humains, c'est-à-dire des personnes qui ont raconté leur histoire personnelle, principalement en rapport avec les thèmes des migrations et de l'activisme civique. Regardez les vidéos de Cardiff, Cluj-Napoca et à Paris ! Art et imagination militante Les événements artistiques – en intérieur et à l'extérieur – ont requis la participation active du public. A Paris, Tania Bruguera a lu le Manifeste des migrants en face de l’Église Saint Bernard, lieu symbolique de la violence subie par les migrants. Des artistes chinois à Rome et à Bologne se sont engagés dans un débat avec des curateurs locaux et ont organisé des performances en direct (lire l'article en italien); Hiwa K à Berlin a invité le public à l’évènement ‘Cooking with Mama’, au cours duquel l'artiste et les participants ont cuisiné en suivant les instructions données par la mère de l’artiste via Skype, cette dernière étant basée en Irak. Dan Perjovschi a sélectionné et spécialement produit pour Transeuropa une série de dessins qui ont été utilisés pour illustrer le Journal Transeuropa, et qui ont été commentés par l'artiste lui-même au cours d'une discussion lors de Agorà Transeuropa à Rome. Dan Perjovschi à l’ Agorà Transeuropa Par ailleurs, le programme expérimental de films courts intitulé « Histoires », proposé par la Cinémathèque de Tanger présentait des films courts d’Afrique du Nord traitant de l’engagement citoyen et politique avant le printemps arabe. Ce programme a été présenté dans quasiment l’ensemble les villes du festival, et s’est accompagné de débats, allant de la situation de la création expérimentale en Afrique du Nord à une discussion plus politique sur la démocratie en Europe, en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen-Orient. Vous pouvez en savoir plus en regardant les vidéos des débats à Bratislava (en slovaque) et Paris (en français). Enfin, des concerts, du théâtre et des spectacles musicaux ont donné l'occasion de célébrer de nouvelles formes d'être ensemble. Performance à Varsovie Un espace pour discuter des nouvelles manières de penser Bien sûr, nous avons eu l’opportunité d'échanger des points de vues, des idées et des propositions notamment avec des penseurs et des philosophes reconnus, au cours de conférences et d’interviews tels que de Franco BIFO Berardi sur la réactivation culturelle du corps social (à Sofia et à Rome), Guy Standing sur la précarité à Londres et à Rome (lire l'interview), enfin Niko Paech à Berlin sur les alternatives à la croissance. Cependant en plus des conférences, des ateliers et des assemblées étaient au cœur de Transeuropa 2012, rassemblant ainsi des militants, des penseurs et des artistes de toute l'Europe y compris de la Serbie et du Monténégro, afin de préparer des actions communes. Des propositions pour le changement : les biens communs Le concept de biens communs est apparu comme pertinent pour créer des synergies entre les différents mouvements tels que l'activisme contre l’exploitation du gaz de schiste, le mouvement de l'eau, la lutte pour les problématiques environnementales ou encore la lutte pour la reconnaissance des biens communs culturels comme le Teatro Valle à Rome. Une caravane des biens communs a amené des artistes du Teatro Valle Occupato dans plusieurs villes du festival : Sofia, Belgrade, Cluj, Rosia Montana et Berlin, qui s’est transformée en « voyage d’Eros ». Une courte synthèse est disponible en italien. Crise économique et crise démocratique: Pour des organisations alternatives d’échanges entre les hommes Dans toutes les villes du Festival, un large éventail d’alternatives aux mesures d’austérité a été débattu : de la mise en œuvre de taxes sur les transactions financières et des audits citoyens sur les dettes publiques, jusqu’au lien entre crise économique et crise environnementale et d'autres formes d'échange qui peuvent être développées comme la banque du temps ou les monnaies alternatives. A Londres, ces discussions ont eu lieu lors du forum sur l'économie européenne, qui a souligné le lien entre le déficit démocratique et économique, et a élargi son analyse en s’intéressant à la situation dans les Balkans (lire l'article); à Prague et à Bratislava, les débats sur le budget participatif ont abordé de nouvelles manières de gérer les budgets des villes. Fonder une alternative à la détention des migrants À Bologne, Paris, Sofia, et Amsterdam ont été organisés des événements – dans le cadre de la campagne Open Access – pour dénoncer la détention des migrants irréguliers en Europe. A Bologne, un forum national a réuni des militants et des organisations, afin de discuter des moyens de traiter les flux migratoires sans impliquer de criminalisation des migrants – tout en veillant à mener une analyse approfondie de ces flux, ainsi…
Another road for Europe
European Alternatives is delighted to participate in the organisation of this important conference in the European Parliament to open up a debate at the European level between activists, experts, political forces and policy makers on viable actions to move beyond neoliberal policies and towards a sustainable and democratic Europe, free from discriminations and inequalities. European Alternatives will participate in two panels on the day, with Lorenzo Marsili (co-director) and Mariya Ivancheva (European Alternatives Bulgaria). For information or registration: anotherroadforeurope@gmail.com Another Road for Europe European Parliament in Brussels, Room ASP 3G3 June 28, h.9.00 -18.30 Participant organisations European Alternatives, Active Citizenship Network, Arci, Attac France, Attac Germany, Attac Finland, Corporate Europe Observatory, Economistes Atterrés, Euromemorandum, European Federalist Movement, Fiom-Cgil, il Manifesto, Joint Social Conference, New Economics Foundation, OpenDemocracy.net, Red Pepper, Rete@sinistra, Sbilanciamoci!, Social Watch Italian coalition, Soundings, Transnational Institute, more to be added Programme 9.00 Opening Isabelle Durant, vice-president of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA); Rossana Rossanda (il Manifesto) 9.15-11.45: Taming finance, the euro, financial markets, debt and fiscal policies Chair: Mario Pianta (Sbilanciamoci!) Introductory Remarks: Trevor Evans (Euromemorandum) (10 min) Proposals from activists and experts (7 min. each): Dany Lang (Economistes atterrés), Ronald Janssen (ETUC), Andrea Della Vecchia (Joint Social Conference), Antonio Tricarico (Re:Common), Corporate Europe Observatory, Greek activist (tbc), Andrew Simms (New Economics Foundation), Andrea Baranes (Fondazione Responsabilità Etica) Members of the European Parliament and political forces (7 min. each): Leonardo Dominici (Socialists and Democrats), Liem Hoang Ngoc (Socialists and Democrats, France), Jürgen Klute (European United Left, Germany), Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium), Patrick Le Hyaric (European United Left, France), Gianni Pittella, vice-president of the European Parliament (Socialists and Democrats) 11.45-13.00: Avoiding a great depression: A green new deal, employment, ecological conversion and common goods Introductory Remarks: Pascal Petit (Université Paris 13) (10 min) Proposals from activists and experts (7 min. each): Philippe Pochet (ETUI), Etienne Lebeau (Joint Social Conference), Maurizio Landini (Fiom-Cgil), Thomas Coutrot (Attac France), Attac Germany, Mariya Ivancheva (European Alternatives Bulgaria), Tommaso Fattori (Water campaign), Jason Nardi (Social Watch Italian coalition) Members of the European Parliament and political forces (7 min. each): Nikolas Chountis (European United Left, Greece), Stefano Fassina (Partito Democratico, Italy), Sven Gieglod(Greens/EFA, Germany), Marisa Matias (European United Left, Portugal) lunch break 15.00-17.30: A democratic Europe, participation and decision making at European level Chair: Monica Frassoni (European Greens) Introductory Remarks: Rossana Rossanda (Il Manifesto), Susan George (Attac France and Transnational Institute) (10 min each) Proposals from activists and experts (7 min. each): Rosemary Bechler (Open Democracy), Pier Virgilio Dastoli (Federalists), Giulio Marcon (Sbilanciamoci!), Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper, UK), Sarah King (ETUC), Franco Carminati (Joint Social Conference), Massimo Torelli (Rete@sinistra), Daniel Seco (15M movement, Barcelona), Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives), Tamsin Murray-Leach/Sean Deel (London School of Economics), Raffaella Bolini (Arci), Luciana Castellina (former MEP), Roberto Musacchio (former MEP) Members of the European Parliament (7 min. each): Isabelle Durant (Greens/EFA), Paul Murphy (European United Left Ireland), Rui Tavares (Greens/EFA), Gaby Zimmer (President, European United Left, Germany) 17.30-18.30: Conclusions and proposals for action, with summaries of proposals from the Chairs and discussion on the ways ahead and on future European initiatives
Un’altra strada per l’Europa
European Alternatives felice di partecipare a “Un'altra strada per l'Europa”, il forum internazionale che si terrà al Parlamento europeo il 28 giugno in parallelo al summit del Consiglio europeo: reti di movimenti, esperti e associazioni presenteranno proposte concrete per cambiare rotta, evitare il collasso, e rilanciare l'Europa oltre le politiche neoliberal e verso una società sostenibile e democratica, libera dalle discriminazioni e l'ineguaglianza. Durante la giornata European Alternatives parteciperà a due tavoli, con Lorenzo Marsili (co-direttore) and Mariya Ivancheva (European Alternatives Bulgaria). Per informazioni: anotherroadforeurope@gmail.com Another Road for Europe European Parliament in Brussels, Room ASP 3G3 June 28, h.9.00 -18.30 Participant organisations European Alternatives, Active Citizenship Network, Arci, Attac France, Attac Germany, Attac Finland, Corporate Europe Observatory, Economistes Atterrés, Euromemorandum, European Federalist Movement, Fiom-Cgil, il Manifesto, Joint Social Conference, New Economics Foundation, OpenDemocracy.net, Red Pepper, Rete@sinistra, Sbilanciamoci!, Social Watch Italian coalition, Soundings, Transnational Institute, more to be added Programme 9.00 Opening Isabelle Durant, vice-president of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA); Rossana Rossanda (il Manifesto) 9.15-11.45: Taming finance, the euro, financial markets, debt and fiscal policies Chair: Mario Pianta (Sbilanciamoci!) Introductory Remarks: Trevor Evans (Euromemorandum) (10 min) Proposals from activists and experts (7 min. each): Dany Lang (Economistes atterrés), Ronald Janssen (ETUC), Andrea Della Vecchia (Joint Social Conference), Antonio Tricarico (Re:Common), Corporate Europe Observatory, Greek activist (tbc), Andrew Simms (New Economics Foundation), Andrea Baranes (Fondazione Responsabilità Etica) Members of the European Parliament and political forces (7 min. each): Leonardo Dominici (Socialists and Democrats), Liem Hoang Ngoc (Socialists and Democrats, France), Jürgen Klute (European United Left, Germany), Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium), Patrick Le Hyaric (European United Left, France), Gianni Pittella, vice-president of the European Parliament (Socialists and Democrats) 11.45-13.00: Avoiding a great depression: A green new deal, employment, ecological conversion and common goods Introductory Remarks: Pascal Petit (Université Paris 13) (10 min) Proposals from activists and experts (7 min. each): Philippe Pochet (ETUI), Etienne Lebeau (Joint Social Conference), Maurizio Landini (Fiom-Cgil), Thomas Coutrot (Attac France), Attac Germany, Mariya Ivancheva (European Alternatives Bulgaria), Tommaso Fattori (Water campaign), Jason Nardi (Social Watch Italian coalition) Members of the European Parliament and political forces (7 min. each): Nikolas Chountis (European United Left, Greece), Stefano Fassina (Partito Democratico, Italy), Sven Gieglod(Greens/EFA, Germany), Marisa Matias (European United Left, Portugal) lunch break 15.00-17.30: A democratic Europe, participation and decision making at European level Chair: Monica Frassoni (European Greens) Introductory Remarks: Rossana Rossanda (Il Manifesto), Susan George (Attac France and Transnational Institute) (10 min each) Proposals from activists and experts (7 min. each): Rosemary Bechler (Open Democracy), Pier Virgilio Dastoli (Federalists), Giulio Marcon (Sbilanciamoci!), Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper, UK), Sarah King (ETUC), Franco Carminati (Joint Social Conference), Massimo Torelli (Rete@sinistra), Daniel Seco (15M movement, Barcelona), Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives), Tamsin Murray-Leach/Sean Deel (London School of Economics), Raffaella Bolini (Arci), Luciana Castellina (former MEP), Roberto Musacchio (former MEP) Members of the European Parliament (7 min. each): Isabelle Durant (Greens/EFA), Paul Murphy (European United Left Ireland), Rui Tavares (Greens/EFA), Gaby Zimmer (President, European United Left, Germany) 17.30-18.30: Conclusions and proposals for action, with summaries of proposals from the Chairs and discussion on the ways ahead and on future European initiatives
Al via la prima campagna europea per la libertà d’informazione
31 maggio, Parlamento europeo h15.00, Bruxelles 2 giugno, Teatro Valle h18.00, Roma Il 31 maggio al Parlamento europeo di Bruxelles sarà lanciata la prima Iniziativa dei cittadini europei (ICE) per la libertà e il pluralismo dell’informazione. L’ICE permette ad almeno un milione di cittadini di almeno sette paesi europei di presentare una proposta legislativa direttamente alla Commissione europea nei confini delle competenze normative dell’Unione europea. Queste sussistono ogni qual volta il corretto funzionamento del mercato interno è negativamente condizionato dalla presenza di divergenze tra le discipline nazionali. Da un’analisi delle normative nazionali relative ai mezzi di comunicazione di massa emerge che diversi sono i parametri usati per definire le posizioni lesive del pluralismo nei 27 Stati membri, e molto diversi sono anche i rimedi che le varie legislazioni europee adottano per prevenire o rimuovere posizioni lesive del pluralismo, nonché le regole in tema di incompatibilità tra attività politiche e controllo di mezzi di informazione di massa. Queste disparità mettono a repentaglio il funzionamento del mercato interno, ostacolando il diritto di stabilimento (art. 49 TFUE) e la libera circolazione dei servizi (art. 56 TFUE). La campagna sarà presentata a Roma il 2 giugno al Teatro Valle alle ore 18.00 insieme a Roberto Natale (FNSI), Luca Telese (La7 / Il Fatto) e Alberto Negri (Il Sole 24 Ore) nel contesto dell’Agorà Transeuropa, un festival politico e culturale di due giorni che porterà a Roma oltre quaranta reti europee. Secondo la totalità di rapporti, dall’OCSE a Freedom House, la situazione dell’informazione nell’Unione europea continua a degenerare. Le istituzioni europee si sono, finora, astenute dal prendere una posizione forte contro i singoli stati membri. Ma questo approccio passivo ha stimolato diversi governi a restringere o condizionare gli spazi per il pluralismo dell’informazione, come evidente in questi giorni nell’aggraversi della situazione ungherese con la chiusura della radio indipendente Klubradio da parte del governo di Viktor Orban. È dunque attesa già da molto tempo un’ampia iniziativa della società civile a livello europeo che spinga per un ruolo più incisivo da parte delle istituzioni europee nella salvaguardia del diritto a un’informazione libera e plurale. L’iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dell’informazione risponde a questa necessità. L’iniziativa ha attualmente costituito coordinamenti nazionali in 9 stati europei: Italia, Francia, Gran Bretagna, Belgio, Ungheria, Romania, Bulgaria, Paesi Bassi, Portogallo. In ciscuno dei paesi coinvolti associazioni, organi d’informazioni, federazioni della stampa e sindacati stanno aderendo alla campagna europea e preparandosi alla raccolta firme per raggiungere e superare il traguardo di un milione di firme. Sono oltre 30 gli europarlamentari che sostengono la campagna. La campagna è portata avanti in Italia, fra gli altri, da European Alternatives, FNSI, il Comitato per la Libertà e il Diritto all’Informazione, Libertà e Giustiza, Articolo21, MoveOn. Informazioni Contatto stampa Anna Lodeserto, a.lodeserto@euroalter.com Lancio al Parlamento europeo 31 maggio, sala PHS P7C050, ore 15.00 Lancio italiano 2 giugno, Teatro Valle, via del Teatro Valle 21, ore 18.00
Lancement de la première Initiative Citoyenne Européenne sur le pluralisme des média
Parlement Européen PHS P7C050, 31 mai 2012 à 15 heures Teatro Valle, Rome, 2 juin 2012 à 16 heures Le 31 mai, la première Initiative Citoyenne Européenne sur le pluralisme des média sera lancée au Parlement européen, en présence d’une coalition d’acteurs composée d’organisations de la société civile, de départements universitaires et de médias de 9 Etats membres européens. L’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne (ICE) permet au moins à un million de citoyens originaires de sept Etats membres minimum de présenter une proposition législative directement à la Commission Européenne. Selon la plupart des observateurs indépendants, la situation de la liberté et du pluralisme des médias dans l’Union Européenne s’aggrave. Jusqu’à présent, les institutions européennes se sont abstenues de prendre une position forte en opposition aux Etats membres pour condamner cette détérioration. Cette approche non-interventionniste semble être en partie responsable d’un effet domino négatif en Europe, avec une aggravation de la législation d’un pays menant indirectement à des manœuvres de restriction dans un autre (comme l’a prouvé récemment la fermeture de Klubradio par le gouvernement hongrois mené par Viktor Orbán.) « Une telle initiative de la société civile à l’échelle européenne, qui plaide pour renforcer le rôle des institutions européennes dans la sauvegarde et la protection de l’indépendance et du pluralisme des médias arrive tardivement ; par ailleurs nous prévoyons d’utiliser ce nouvel outil de démocratie participative pour réclamer que les institutions européennes protègent réellement le droit à une information indépendante et plurielle, comme le prévoit le Traité de Lisbonne et la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux » dit Lorenzo Marsili, directeur d’Alternatives Européennes, l’une des organisations qui portent cette initiative. L’initiative proposée appelle la Commission à utiliser ses prérogatives « antitrust » pour lutter contre le phénomène de concentration sur le marché des médias et les positions dominantes de certains médias dans les Etats membres, et assurer par la même le respect au service du pluralisme et de la liberté d’entreprise. Les pays participant au lancement de cette ICE sont la France, la Belgique, la Hongrie, l’Italie, le Royaume-Uni, la Roumanie, la Bulgarie, les Pays Bas et le Portugal Information Le lancement aura lieu au Parlement Européen, salle PHS P7C050, de 15h à 18h30. Pour des informations relatives à la presse, veuillez contacter Anna Lodeserto, a.lodeserto@euroalter.com Les visiteurs souhaitant accéder au Parlement européen doivent envoyer avant le 28 mai 2012 leur nom, adresse, organisation, nationalité, numéro d’identité et date de naissance à : a.lodeserto@euroalter.com
European Alternatives is recruiting Head of Administration and Finance
European Alternatives is a transnational citizens’ organisation active throughout Europe to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. We are looking for a dynamic, forwards-looking and professional head of administration and finance for our London office to support and develop our activities throughout Europe. Reporting directly to the presidents of European Alternatives, the head of administration and finance will have as main responsibilities: Maintaining the purchase ledger and making timely payments Maintaining the nominal ledger and reconciliation Maintaining payroll and administering expenses claims Helping with the preparation of annual accounts, and some company secretarial duties Providing monthly management accounts and project budgeting Maintaining accurate and systematic filing of invoices and receipts. Providing administrative support to project managers Ensuring reporting duties are met and ensure that all staff members maintain accurate records of expenses and income Preparing some project applications The candidate will Have demonstrable experience in finance and administration for a small company, NGO or similar in the UK Have training in finance and accounting (ACCA or similar) Have high degree of computer literacy and excel use in particular Be committed to the objectives of European Alternatives Ideally the candidate will also have Experience with EU funding Experience of working in an international organisation Motivation for participating in the organisation of events and campaigns, and the broader life of the organisation. Salary: £22000 – £25000 p.a This post could be part-time or full time and it would be possible to work outside of London in the UK Start date: July 2012 Deadline for applications 15 June 2012 To apply send a CV and letter of motivation to info@euroalter.com The selected applicants will be invited to interview and a test.
From the democratic deficit to a democratic default?
By Giandomenico Majone this article is part of the paper “A blessing in disguise? What the Euro Crisis tells us about the democratic deficit and the future of post-national Europe” presented at the Conference “The UK in Europe’s Economy and Europe’s Economy in the World”, part of the Transeuropa Festival. London, 19 May 2012 As the results of the Greek elections of 6 May 2012 confirm, already today the basis of democratic legitimacy within the euro zone has been reduced to a vanishing point with the emergence of Germany as the sole would-be rescuer of the euro–a concentration of powers justified by the claim that the survival of “Europe” depends on the survival of the common currency. As the German chancellor likes to put it: “Wenn der Euro scheitert, scheitert Europa”. The EU is not, of course, identical with Europe, but the important point is that the EU is supposed to be a free association of sovereign states enjoying the same rights and duties, and united by the principle of loyal cooperation. In fact, the concentration of decision-making powers in a few hands has reached such a level that the other national governments are becoming seriously concerned. In the past, “intergovernmentalism”—a process in which the member states predominate—was opposed to “supranationalism”–a process in which the European institutions enjoy political autonomy and authority. Today the supranational institutions—EP, Commission, Court of Justice—seem to have lost much of the influence they had even in the recent past; but also intergovernmentalism–having been reduced, first to the Franco-German dialogue and then to Germany monopolizing the conversation about the future of the common currency– has lost its collegial character. Unsurprisingly, the other member states are not pleased about such developments. A recent indication of the prevailing dissatisfaction with this new turn in EU governance is the resignation of the head of the Euro Group, Jean-Claude Juncker. The Luxemburg prime minister–who in January 2005 became the first permanent (i.e., non-rotating) president of the group of finance ministers of the euro zone—resigned in April 2012 to express disapproval of the fact that all key decisions on monetary policy are now taken in complete disregard of the collective opinion of the Euro Group. It is true that such decisions have to be taken in a crisis situation, but it is equally true that the most important commitments made now–such as the obligation to respect the strict budgetary conditions imposed by the Fiscal Pact—concern not only the present but also future governments, as well as future generations. In fact, the Fiscal Pact is an international treaty, subscribed by twenty-five sovereign states, and as such it may be modified only by unanimous agreement—a very high hurdle. Precisely for this reason, some German politicians have raised the issue of the constitutionality of the Pact. Already some years ago, a few long-time official participants in the EMU project stated privately that some form of fiscal federalism–i.e., a more federal European structure with centralized redistributive policies of taxing, borrowing, and spending–is a certainty in the long run, although this was at the time a publicly taboo idea (K. McNamara 2006). Since the beginning of the sovereign-debt crisis such voices have become more insistent, and openly articulated. Thus, Jacques Attali–founding president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and former adviser to French President Mitterand–believes that the only possible solution to the present crisis requires the political courage of implementing a plan that includes the establishment of a European Ministry of Finance; the issuing of European Treasury bonds that would stretch out the debts payments of Greece, Portugal, and Ireland; and assessing a broad-based European Value Added Tax that would raise the necessary funds to repay the debt. In the 1980s monetary union had been advertised as being the royal road to political union: Now closer political union is considered to be necessary in order to save monetary union: a good illustration of the paradox of the tail wagging the dog. Paradoxes aside, the defenders of EMU at all costs claim that the present debt crisis can be solved only by expanding the democratic deficit of the EU to a point where, given the state of public opinion, it may become politically unsustainable: a democratic default. The results of the Greek elections of May 2012 provide convincing evidence of the seriousness of the risk.
Du déficit démocratique vers un défaut démocratique?
Par Giandomenico Majone Traduction: Elisa Sance Cet article fait partie de la communication « Un mal pour un bien ? Ce que la crise de l'Euro nous apprend sur le déficit de démocratie et le futur de l'Europe post-nationale » présentée à la Conférence « Le Royaume-Uni dans l'économie européenne et l'économie européenne dans le monde », à l'occasion du Festival Transeuropa, à Londres le 19 mai 2012. Les résultats des élections grecques du 6 mai 2012 l'ont confirmé, aujourd'hui, les bases de la légitimité démocratique au sein de la zone Euro ont déjà été réduites à un point de fuite où l’idée de l'Allemagne comme l’unique soi-disant sauveur potentiel de l’Euro émerge- une telle concentration de pouvoirs justifiée par le fait d'affirmer que la survie de « l'Europe » dépend de la survie de la monnaie commune. Comme la chancelière allemande aime à le dire : “Wenn der Euro scheitert, scheitert Europa”, si l'Euro échoue, l'Europe échoue. Bien entendu, l'UE n'est pas synonyme de l'Europe, mais la chose importante à retenir est que l'UE est censée être une libre association d'Etats souverains jouissant des mêmes droits et devoirs, et étant unis par le principe d'une coopération loyale. En fait, la concentration du pouvoir décisionnel dans quelques mains seulement a atteint un tel niveau que les autres gouvernements nationaux sont de plus en plus inquiets. Dans le passé, «l'intergouvernementalisme » – processus par lequel l’Etat membre prédomine s’opposait au « supranationalisme » – processus par lequel les institutions européennes jouissent d'une autorité et d'une autonomie politique. Aujourd'hui, les institutions supranationales – le Parlement Européen, la Commission, la Cour de Justice – semblent avoir perdu beaucoup de l'influence qu'elles avaient en particulier dans un passé récent ; Même l'intergouvernementalisme –d'abord réduit au dialogue Franco-Allemand, puis à l'Allemagne, monopolisant ainsi les débats sur le futur de la monnaie commune – a perdu son caractère collégial. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que les autres Etats membres ne soient pas satisfaits de telles évolutions. Une indication récente de cette insatisfaction qui prédomine quant à l’évolution de la la gouvernance de l'UE a été la démission du président de l'Eurogroupe, Jean-Claude Juncker. Le premier ministre luxembourgeois – qui est devenu en janvier 2005 le premier président stable (c’est à dire non-tournant) du groupe des ministres de la finance de la zone euro – a démissionné en avril 2012 pour exprimer sa désapprobation sur le fait que toutes les décisions clés qui sont prises concernant la politique monétaire le sont dorénavant en dépit total de l'opinion collective de l'Eurogroupe. Il est vrai que de telles décisions doivent être prises en situation de crise, mais il est également vrai que les engagements les plus importants qui sont pris actuellement – comme l'obligation de respecter les strictes conditions budgétaires imposées par le pacte fiscal – ne concernent pas seulement le présent, mais également les futurs gouvernements ainsi que les générations futures. En fait, le pacte fiscal est un traité international, souscrit par vingt-cinq Etats souverains, et en tant que tel il ne peut être modifié que par un accord unanime — ce qui est un obstacle important. C'est précisément pour cette raison que certains hommes politiques allemands ont soulevé le problème de la constitutionnalité du pacte. Il y a déjà plusieurs années, certains participants officiels de longue date au projet d’UEM (Union Economique et Monétaire) déclaraient, en privé, qu'une forme de fédéralisme fiscal – i.e., une structure européenne plus fédérale avec des politiques redistributives centralisées de taxation, d'emprunt et de dépense – constituait une garantie sur le long terme, bien que cela était à ce moment là une idée publiquement tabou (K. McNamara 2006). Depuis le début de la crise des dettes souveraines, de telles voix se sont faites plus insistantes, et ont été ouvertement évoquées. Ainsi, Jacques Attali – président fondateur de la banque européenne pour la reconstruction et le développement et ancien conseiller du Président français Mitterand – croit que la seule solution possible à la présente crise requiert le courage politique d'implémenter un plan incluant la création d'un Ministère européen des Finances ; l'émission de bons du Trésor européens qui étalerait le paiement de la dette de la Grèce, du Portugal et de l'Irlande ; et l’imposition d’une taxe sur la valeur ajoutée à l'échelle de l'Europe, qui permettrait de collecter les fonds nécessaires afin de rembourser la dette. Dans les années 80, l'union monétaire avait été annoncée comme étant la voie royale vers l'union politique. Maintenant, une union politique plus étroite est considérée comme nécessaire pour sauver l'union monétaire : une bonne illustration du paradoxe de la queue qui fait remuer le chien. Paradoxes mis à part, les défenseurs acharnés de l'UEM affirment que la présente crise de la dette peut être résolue uniquement en agrandissant le déficit démocratique de l'UE jusqu'au point où, vu l'état de l'opinion publique, il deviendrait politiquement inacceptable : un défaut de démocratie. Les résultats de l'élection grecque de mai 2012 apportent des preuves convaincantes de la gravité du risque.
As we move: migration, borders and social change
This article is part of the Transeuropa Journal, the official publication of the Transeuropa Festival by Alina Müller The act of migrating extends far beyond the act of moving across a geographical space. Within the borders of Europe, migrants are increasingly mobilising in response to discrimination and socio-economical marginalisation to demand their rights. These struggles are producing new forms of democratic political participation, and in some cases have succeeded in bringing about stronger anti-discrimination legislation, workers’ rights and political recognition of cultural diversity. At the external borders of the European Union, the violence at the border controls has exposed the disregard on the part of individual European governments for the protection of human rights. This inability or inadequacy of the nation state to guarantee and protect human rights has given rise to calls for alternative legislative frameworks and enforcement mechanisms that can operate at a supra-national and transnational level. At the societal level, the superposition, construction and fracturing of identities effected by the process of crossing borders has transformed demographics and urban geographies across Europe and produced a new sense of self for the individual. Concepts like mestiza consciousness, hybrid identities, and multiculturalism are attempts to articulate and understand these changes that are visibly shaping the social and physical environment of European cities. In this context, migration is better defined by the profound social and political transformations produced through the lived experience of people crossing and contesting borders. These transformations not only deeply mark the lives of men, women and children that choose to migrate, but also significantly affect European societies. By looking at, and giving centrality to the daily instances in which people collectively and individually come up against the array of borders and boundaries in Europe, we want to explore the role migration plays in creating new forms of active citizenship and social change. Through a constant reshuffling and reassembly of internal and external borders coupled with the proliferation of mechanisms of surveillance and exclusion, in the last twenty years Europe has emerged as an ever-changing configuration of bounded spaces. These bounded spaces, both figurative and literal, operate on, and affect the condition of migrants at multiple stages of the migration process. Checkpoints, advanced surveillances systems, military operations and detention centres control the access of migrants to a territory. Point-based systems and immigration policies and legislation regulate their level of inclusion and indeed presence, in a wider sense, in European societies. Cultural hierarchies and an economical system that perpetuates inequality effectively determine their access to the labour and housing market and public and political life, re-enforcing this structure of selective inclusion. It is the daily encounter with, and response to, these borders that has produced a set of transformations which place migrants at the heart of social and political change. At a specific level then, these transformations have redefined the act of moving, working and settling across nation state borders. In a wider sense, they have raised issues of the legitimacy of borders and prompted the questioning and reformulation of notions of citizenship, identity and social cohesion. The act of migrating is therefore a force for social and political change, brought about through the efforts of individuals and groups to remove mechanisms of control and exclusion. The experience of people that cross borders and their struggles for justice and recognition clearly indicate to us the areas we need to address in our aim of promoting a society based on freedom and democratic participation. Not only this, they also clearly demonstrate the need and possibility for a form of political subjectivity and mobilisation beyond the boundaries of the nation state. Through transnational campaigns for open access to detention centres and migrant rights as well as public events and performances that bring migrant struggles to the fore, Transeuropa Festival joins the migrant movement. A borderless Europe can never be fully achieved. At best it’s an ambition, a ‘tending towards’. But it is an ambition we share.
Votez pour le logo du Pacte Citoyen!
Lancé en décembre 2012, le Pacte Citoyen représente une tentative du haut vers le bas d'engager les citoyens européens dans un processus visant le développement d’une société civile européenne, contre le fameux « déficit démocratique », et des élections du Parlement européen en 2014 véritablement transnationales, plutôt que le miroir des élections nationales. Le Pacte est à la fois un pacte de coopération et de solidarité entre les citoyens européens (compris au sens large, c'est-à-dire incluant tous les résidents européens) et un pacte entre les citoyens et les institutions, avec pour but common une Europe plus participative et démocratique. Le Pacte Citoyen est formée par une coalition de citoyens et d’organisations travaillant ensemble pour organiser forums, conférences, débats, performances, séminaires de recherche et bien plus, afin d’élaborer et formuler des demandes concrètes pour l’Europe dans laquelle ils veulent vivre. Les huit logos ci-dessous nous ont été soumis lors du concours transnational et ont été selectionnés parmi tous les logos reçus sur les critères de clarté, originalité et pertinence. Mais le vote final vous revient ! Le logo sélectionné représentera le Pacte Citoyen à travers l'Europe jusqu'aux élections du Parlement européen en 2014 et le gagnant recevra un prix. Les votes sont ouverts à tous jusqu'au 18 février. Tout citoyen ou toute organisation souhaitant inscrire leur initiative dans le cadre global du Pacte Citoyen et se reconnaissant dans ses principes pourra afficher le logo dans ses matériels de communication et sur son site. Logo 1: Paulo Maldini Logo 2: Claudia Rodriguez Cruz Logo 3: Alen Tuco Logo 4: Radovan Djurovic Logo 5: Mirna Kuljis Logo 6: Maddalena Mussi Logo 7: Anel Feric Logo 8: Karla Zuart
Vote for the Citizens Pact logo!
Launched in December 2012, the Citizens Pact is a bottom-up attempt to bridge the infamous democratic deficit in Europe, to empower citizens to take action, and to ensure that the 2014 the European Parliament elections are truly transeuropean, rather than a mirror of national elections. The Pact is both a pact of cooperation and solidarity between European Citizens among themselves (understood in a large sense, i.e. including all residents in Europe) and a pact between citizens and institutions, with the common goal of a more participatory and democratic Europe. The Citizens Pact gathers citizens and organisations from throughout Europe who join their forces to organise forums, conferences, debates, artistic performances, research workshops and much more, in order to advocate for concrete demands for the Europe they want to live in. As a result of the transnational contest for the creation of a logo for the Citizens Pact, we have selected (on the basis of clarity, originality and relevance to the Pact) the 8 logos below among the many received. You can vote for your favourite logo until February 18th to decide which one will represent the Citizens Pact! The logo will be visible all around the continent until the elections of the European Parliament in 2014 and the winner will be granted an award. Any citizen or organisation wishing to inscribe their initiatives in the global framework of the Citizens Pact and signing up to a series of principles will be able to show the logo in their communication material and website. Logo 1: Paulo Maldini Logo 2: Claudia Rodriguez Cruz Logo 3: Alen Tuco Logo 4: Radovan Djurovic Logo 5: Mirna Kuljis Logo 6: Maddalena Mussi Logo 7: Anel Feric Logo 8: Karla Zuart
Vota il tuo logo preferito per il Patto dei Cittadini
Quale logo per il Patto dei Cittadini? Logo 1: Paulo Maldini Logo 2: Claudia Rodriguez Cruz Logo 3: Alen Tuco Logo 4: Radovan Djurovic Logo 5: Mirna Kuljis Logo 6: Maddalena Mussi Logo 7: Anel Feric Logo 8: Karla Zuart
Nobody wants to watch. Struggles for the cultural sector in Poland
Article by Alicja Borkowska, Tomasz Gromadka The artistic and cultural sector in Poland is currently facing two serious problems –a lack of money and the incompetence of politicians, government and local officials, who do not understand the specificity of artistic activity. Some voices among public debate suggest that artists should join the free market and discontinue the use of public funds for the production of films, performances or video-art that “nobody wants to watch”. Engaged in a sort of ideological war, many local politicians are trying to influence artistic work, especially in theatre. For example, in Walbrzych, theatre directors Legnica and Bydgoszcz have to cope with attacks from conservative officials and politicians. After a performance about famous Polish priest Jerzy Popie?uszko, which premiered June 9th, right-wing Bydgoszcz city hall politicians demanded the dismissal of Teatr Polski director Bydgoszcz for having offended religious feelings At the same time in Warsaw, local officials exercised their power to influence the cultural sector, with actions that fell outside the law – for example forgoing public competitions to select theatre directors, appointing them directly without any independent control. These are the conditions that the most important Warsaw stages find themselves in, in the new season (Studio Theater, Dramatyczny Theater and Powszechny Theater). Still, the worst problem for the cultural sector remains a constant lack of money. Instead of focusing on culture, Poland spent billions on organising the European Football Championship, Euro 2012, with almost €2 billion spent only on the construction of the national stadium in Warsaw. In comparison, in 2012 Warsaw spent approximately €18 million (77 millions z?oty) to finance the 19 theatres based in the capital city. Compared to other years the 2012 budget for culture in Warsaw was three times smaller and the funds cut from culture were used to cover costs for the Euro 2012, such as the “Fan Zone” – an area with live screenings of the matches for the public in the centre of the city. Such a big sporting event and the international visibility it placed on the country, could have been the occasion to promote Warsaw, presenting the prestigious Polish artistic performances (similar to what happened in London during the Olympics), but this didn’t appeal to the Polish Municipalities. Budgets of cultural institutions are shrinking and only the biggest can survive, others are destined to make something from nothing or to close. For example, regional funding for the Warsaw Cameral Opera, a prestigious institution with 50 years of tradition, was cut in a way that jeopardized its survival. In order to raise awareness and gain support, the 130 artists of the institution organised a big concert in front of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, which became a strong symbol of the struggle of culture due to the financial crisis for the past months. In this seemingly hopeless situation, many cultural institutions try the third sector way, looking for support from foundations or associations with which they can apply for other public, national and European grants. The ones which suffer most are the small cultural and artistic organisations which end up spending more time filling in application boxes than in real cultural work or artistic research. Important and internationally renowned institutions often struggle to exist too. The recent story of the projects involving the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is especially representative of the current institutional attitude towards cultural projects. In 2006 new plans started to build the new seat of the museum in an innovative building, to be erected in the very centre of the city, in front of the Palace of Culture and Science. Since the project was handed to Swiss architect Christian Kerez, who proposed an avant-garde project for the museum, a series of polemics started, with attacks on the projects by different officials, requests to change it, delays, etc., until the contract with the architect was cancelled in May this year. In the meanwhile, the museum has been opened temporarily in a former furniture shop in the centre of the city, without a clear strategy for its future – and with no significant developments since, considering that the municipality hasn’t bought the lots necessary to start construction. Another discouraging vicissitude regards two of the best and internationally claimed Polish theatre directors, Krzysztof Warlikowski and Grzegorz Jarzyna. The two directors don't have the place to host their performances, because the costs are considered too high, and their last productions, financed by French and German theatres, have been put on throuhgout Europe except for in Poland. Jarzyna will soon be forced to leave his stage and the new theatre of Warlikowski which was supposed to be constructed two years ago and serve as both a theatre and cultural centre dedicated to contemporary culture and art has not been started yet. The first project has already been changed many times to cut the costs of the construction. The directors raised a public debate in hopes of bringing about change, particularly because they would like to continue working in Poland and display their work to the Polish public above all. There are also positive aspects for the cultural and artistic sector in Poland, with ambitious audiences, artists and activists joining forces to fight for their rights. During the last season, there was a big protest of public-civil society during the biggest theatre festival “Warsaw Theatre Meetings”, which presents the most successful performances of the year. The protest was a grassroots initiative to demonstrate against cuts in culture and decisions made by politicians regarding theatre directors that were replaced by managers, because culture “finally has to start earning money”. The main slogan of the protest was that “Theatre is not a product”; it’s not something to be sold, rather, it is a common good that everybody can have an access to, and therefore should not be forced to earn money itself (read here the text of the petition). This was a key point to start a discussion among the cultural actors, whether the cultural and artistic sector should…
« Personne ne veut voir ». Luttes pour le soutien au secteur culturel polonais
Par Alicja Borkowska, Tomasz Gromadka Traduit par Maxence Salendre Le secteur artistique et culturel polonais fait actuellement face à deux problèmes importants : un manque de soutien financier et l’incompétence des hommes responsables politiques, du gouvernement et des officiels locaux qui ne comprennent pas la spécificité de l’activité artistique. Des voix s’élèvent dans l’opinion publique pour réclamer que les artistes rejoignent l’économie de marché et cessent d’utiliser des fonds publics pour produire des films, spectacles ou de l’art vidéo que « personne ne veut voir ». Engagés dans une sorte de guerre idéologique, nombreux sont les hommes politiques à essayer d’influencer le travail artistique et notamment l’activité théâtrale. À Wa?brzych par exemple, les directeurs des théâtres de Legnica et de Bydgosczc doivent faire face aux attaques des cadres et hommes responsables politiques conservateurs. Après l’avant-première, le 9 Juin, d’une pièce sur le prêtre polonais renommé Jerzy Popie?uszko, les membres conservateurs de la mairie ont réclamé la démission du directeur du Théâtre Polonais de Bydgoszcz au motif qu’il aurait heurté la sensibilité religieuse de certains concitoyens. Au même moment, à Varsovie, des hommes responsables politiques utilisent leur pouvoir pour influencer le secteur culturel, bien souvent par des actions qui dépassent le cadre de la loi : absence de toute compétition pour l’obtention des postes de directeurs de théâtre ou encore nomination directe sans contrôle indépendant. Telles sont les conditions dans lesquelles les scènes de Varsovie (notamment les Théâtre du Studio, Dramatyczny et Powszechny) se trouvent en cette nouvelle saison. Mais le problème principal du secteur culturel reste le manque de moyens financiers. Au lieu de concentrer ses efforts sur le secteur culturel, le gouvernement polonais dépense des milliards pour organiser le Championnat d’Europe de Football (Euro 2012). Près de 2 milliards d’euros ont déjà été dépensés pour la construction du stade national de Varsovie. À titre de comparaison, en 2012, Varsovie a dépensé 18 millions d’euros (77 millions de z?oty) pour financer les 19 théâtres de la capitale. Le budget culturel de Varsovie en 2012 était trois fois moins important que celui des années précédentes et les coupes décidées ont servies à couvrir les frais de l’Euro 2012 tels que les « Fan Zone » installées en centre-ville d’où le public peut assister à la retransmission en direct des matchs. À l’instar de Londres durant les Jeux Olympiques, un tel évènement sportif et la visibilité internationale qu’il entraînait au niveau national auraient pu être l’occasion de promouvoir Varsovie et de présenter les prestigieux spectacles artistiques Polonais. Mais cet attrait n’a pas dû convaincre les municipalités polonaises. Les budgets des institutions culturelles diminuent et seules les plus importantes réussissent à garder la tête hors de l’eau. Les autres sont condamnées à travailler à perte ou à fermer. Le fonds régional qui supporte soutient financièrement l’Opéra de chambre de Varsovie, une prestigieuse institution vieille de plus de 50 ans, a vu son budget réduit à tel point que sa survie n’est due qu’à l’organisation d’un concert de soutien par 130 artistes de l’Opéra devant le Ministère de l’Héritage Culturel. Cet évènement s’est converti en un symbole de la lutte du secteur culturel face à la crise financière des mois derniers. Face à cette situation apparemment sans espoir, de nombreuses institutions culturelles tentent d’obtenir le soutien du troisième secteur. Grâce à l’aide de fondations ou d’associations, elles peuvent faire d’autres demandes de subventions publiques, nationales ou Européennes. Bien que les institutions à la renommée internationale luttent pour survivre, ce sont les plus petites institutions artistiques et culturelles qui souffrent le plus. Et elles finissent bien souvent par passer davantage de temps à remplir des formulaires de demande de subventions qu’à effectuer un véritable travail culturel ou de recherche artistique. Les récentes mésaventures du projet de Musée d’Art Moderne de Varsovie sont particulièrement représentatives de l’attitude des institutions publiques quant aux projets culturels. En 2006, un projet prévoyait la construction d’un bâtiment innovant érigé en plein cœur du centre-ville, face au Palais de la Culture et des Sciences, afin d’accueillir le nouveau musée. À peine l’appel à projets remporté par le projet d’avant-garde de l’architecte Suisse Christian Kerez qu’une série de polémiques débutait. Des conseillers municipaux se sont élevés contre ce projet, des demandes de modifications ont été faites, des retards ont été accumulés jusqu’à ce que le contrat avec l’architecte soit annulé en mai dernier. Entre-temps, le musée a été temporairement ouvert en centre-ville dans un ancien magasin de vente de meubles, sans réelle stratégie de développement futur et sans aucune amélioration depuis étant donné que la municipalité n’a pas acheté les terrains nécessaires pour entamer la construction. À ce décourageant tableau s’ajoutent les difficultés concernant deux des meilleurs directeurs de théâtres polonais reconnus sur la scène internationale : Krzysztof Warlikowski et Grzegorz Jarzyna. Les deux directeurs n’ont pas trouvé de scène pour présenter leur pièce car les coûts ont été considérés trop importants. Leurs dernières œuvres, financées par des théâtres français et allemands, ont été présentées dans toute l’Europe excepté en Pologne. Jarzyna se verra bientôt forcé de quitter l’institution où il travaille. La construction du nouveau théâtre de Warlikowski qui devait être à la fois un théâtre et un centre culturel dédié à la culture et à l’art contemporain n’a pas encore débuté alors qu’il aurait dû voir le jour depuis déjà deux ans. Le projet principal a été modifié plusieurs fois afin de réduire les coûts de construction. Les directeurs ont organisé un débat public dans l’espoir d’opérer un changement car ils aimeraient continuer à travailler en Pologne et à présenter leurs œuvres devant un public avant tout constitué de citoyens polonais. Le secteur artistique et culturel polonais offre toutefois quelques aspects positifs notamment des audiences passionnées, des artistes et des militants prompts à se battre pour la défense de leurs droits. Une importante manifestation mêlant le public et des organisations de la société civile s’est tenue la saison dernière pendant le festival «Rencontres avec le Théâtre de Varsovie » qui vise à présenter les meilleurs spectacles de l’année. La manifestation…
Concours de logo: conception du logo pour le Pacte citoyen pour la démocratie européenne
Graphistes et artistes sont invités à un concours transnational pour concevoir le logo du Pacte citoyen pour la démocratie européenne. Fin 2012, tandis que les institutions européennes étaient occupées à imposer un «pacte fiscal» aux pays européens, les citoyens et les organisations qui les représentent ont décidé de développer un pacte alternatif, un «pacte citoyen” revendiquant plus de démocratie au niveau européen. Tout au long de 2013 et jusqu'aux élections du Parlement européen au début de 2014, des citoyens de toute l'Europe organiseront des forums, conférences, débats, performances artistiques, ateliers de recherche et plus encore pour aboutir à un ensemble commun de propositions pour l’amélioration de la démocratie européenne. Tous ceux qui souhaitent prendre part à ce processus ouvert devront adhérer à une série de principes et afficher le logo du Pacte citoyen dans leur matériel de communication et site web. Le logo sélectionné sera visible sur des centaines de pages partout en Europe. Le gagnant recevra également 200 €. Merci d’envoyer votre proposition de logo à a.valera@euroalter.com avant le 10 Février 2013.
Logo Contest: Design the logo for the Citizens Pact for European Democracy
Graphic designers and artists are invited to a transnational contest to design the logo of the Citizens Pact for European Democracy. At the end of 2012, while the European institutions were busy imposing a “fiscal compact” on European countries, citizens and organisations representing them decided to develop an alternative pact, a “citizens pact” asking for more democracy at the European level. Throughout 2013, and until the European Parliamentary elections in early 2014, citizens across Europe will organise forums, conferences, debates, artistic performances, research workshops and much more to come up with a shared set of proposals to improve European democracy. Anyone wishing to take part in this open process, will have to sign up to a series of principles and show the Citizens Pact logo in their communication material and website. The selected logo will appear on hundreds of pages in all corners of Europe. The winner will also be awarded 200€. Please send your logo proposal to a.valera@euroalter.com by 10 February 2013
Concorso: Crea il logo per il Citizens Pact per la Democrazia Europea
Grafici e artisti sono invitati ad un concorso internazionale per creare il logo del Citizens Pact per la Democrazia Europea. Alla fine del 2012, mentre le istituzioni europee erano occupate ad imporre il Fiscal Compact ai paesi europei, alcuni cittadini e associazioni che li rappresentano hanno deciso di sviluppare un patto alternativo, un patto dei cittadini per chiedere più democrazia a livello europeo. Per tutto il 2013, e fino alle elezioni del Parlamento europeo del 2014, gruppi di cittadini in tutta Europa organizzeranno dei forum, conferenze, dibattiti, performance artistiche, laboratori di ricerca e altro ancora, per trovare delle proposte comuni per migliorare la democrazia europea. Chiunque voglia partecipare a questo processo aperto, dovrà aderire ad una serie di principi e mostrare il logo del Citizens Pact nei propri documenti, siti e materiale divulgativo. Il logo che verrà selezionato apparirà quindi su centinaia di pagine in ogni angolo dell’Europa. Il vincitore o la vincitrice verranno inoltre premiati con €200. Inviate le vostre proposte di logo ad a.valera@euroalter.com entro il 10 Febbraio 2013
Lancio dell’Iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dei media
Il 7 Febbraio alle ore 11,30 presso la Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana, in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 349 Roma, si terrà la conferenza stampa per il lancio della prima iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dei media a cui parteciperà, tra gli altri, Tana de Zulueta, portavoce italiana dell’iniziativa e il Segretario generale del Sindacato dei giornalisti italiani, Franco Siddi. La libertà e il pluralismo dei media sono sotto attacco in Europa. L’erosione del diritto a un’informazione indipendente, libera e plurale è una minaccia al pieno esercizio della cittadinanza europea. Ma è un diritto che i cittadini possono rivendicare, firmando a sostegno dell’Iniziativa Cittadina Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media. Grazie a questo nuovo strumento di democrazia partecipativa, che permette ad almeno un milione di cittadini di presentare una proposta di legge direttamente alla Commissione europea, i cittadini potranno fare sentire la propria voce. Per la prima volta, i cittadini potranno anche firmare online – un passo importante verso la democrazia digitale. “Fino ad oggi le istituzioni europee sono rimaste immobili di fronte alla continua violazione della libertà d'informazione in diversi paesi, a cominciare da Italia e Ungheria. Con questa iniziativa chiediamo un'Europa che sanzioni non solo i deficit di bilancio, ma anche e soprattutto i deficit di democrazia e libertà” ha dichiarato Lorenzo Marsili, portavoce europeo dell’iniziativa. Con questa proposta i cittadini europei chiedono in particolare: 1) Una legislazione efficace per evitare la concentrazione della proprietà dei media e della pubblicità; 2) una garanzia di indipendenza degli organi di controllo rispetto al potere politico; 3) la definizione del conflitto di interessi per evitare che i magnati dei mezzi di informazione occupino alte cariche politiche; 4) sistemi di monitoraggio europei più chiari per verificare con regolarità lo stato di salute e l’indipendenza dei media negli Stati Membri. Durante la conferenza sarà presentato il link a cui collegarsi per poter iniziare la raccolta delle firme, a cominciare dagli stessi presenti all’iniziativa del 7 febbraio. “La nostra ambizione è quella di mobilitare i cittadini per rivendicare l’impegno delle istituzioni europee a sostegno dei diritti civili e delle libertà fondamentali, anche quando gli Stati li trascurano, come sempre più sta avvenendo,” ha spiegato Tana de Zulueta, portavoce italiana dell’iniziativa. Puoi essere fra i primi a prendere parte a questa eccitante nuova avventura: FIRMA ONLINE OGGI QUI! Membri del comitato promotore italiano FNSI, Articolo 21, European Alternatives/Alternative Europee, Libertà e Giustizia, CGIL, ARCI, MoveOn Italia, Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo – CIME, Libera Informazione, Caffè News, Associazione da Sud, Cittadinanzattiva, Società Pannunzio, IRPI – Investigative Reporting Project Italy. Per maggiori informazioni: italia@mediainitiative.eu www.mediainitiative.eu
Prevedibile la rivolta a Ponte Galeria
“La rivolta era più che prevedibile. Il CIE di Ponte Galeria, uno dei più capienti ed organizzati su tutto il territorio nazionale ha visto oggi lo sfiorare di una tragedia, che non si può dire non fosse già “nell'aria” – così dichiara la portavoce della campagna LasciateCIEntrare, Gabriella Guido. “Appena due settimane fa una delegazione della campagna LasciateCIEntrare entrava a Ponte Galeria e, a causa della tensione dei cittadini stranieri che ipocritamente vengono definiti dalla burocrazia “ospiti”, non riusciva ad accedere nel reparto maschile. Il livello di tensione era già alto, tra cittadini che non capivano se sarebbero stati espulsi, rimpatriati in paesi, come la Nigeria, dai quali sono dovuti scappare.” La delegazione della campagna che è entrata a Ponte Galeria il 4 febbraio. “Oggi, a seguito del tentativo di rimpatrio di alcuni di loro, è scoppiata una rivolta. Le notizie che sono state diffuse sono di ferite lievi per le forze dell'ordine. Le condizioni di questi luoghi sono inaccettabili – prosegue Guido – anche per quei funzionari che devono applicare leggi e procedure “a forza”. “Al Sindaco di Roma Gianni Alemanno la portavoce della campagna Gabriella Guido controbatte che “su una cosa, in primis, non si può derogare, il rispetto dei diritti e della dignità umana. Cosa che ci viene spesso ricordata anche dalla Corte di Giustizia Europea. I CIE sono luoghi che non possono convivere all'interno di una società e di un paese civile. Le leggi devono essere modificate. Subito. Altrimenti la cronaca non farà altro che continuare a raccontare di uomini che si danno fuoco negli scali aereoportuali, che fuggono costretti ad entrare in quella clandestinità che leggi securitarie hanno costruito senza nessuna visione umana e politica.” “La campagna rilancia con forza l'appello MAI PIU' CIE firmato da numerosissime associazioni e cittadini e presentato ai candidati e ai futuri parlamentari del nuovo esecutivo – conclude la portavoce. Roma, 18 febbraio 2013
Rethinking citizenship beyond the nation state. Interview to Engin Isin
By Teresa Pullano This interview is the first feature anticipating the Transeuropa Journal, which will be distributed during Transeuropa Festival in May. Online version of the journal will be available soon on www.transeuropafestival.eu Engin Isin is the Chair in Citizenship studies and Professor in Politics and International Relations at the Open University, in London. He also directed the Center for Citizenship, Identity and Governance. Of multiple origins, he has worked for fifteen years at York University, in Canada, before coming back to Europe. Deeply rooted in a cosmopolitan experience, the work of Isin focuses on the possibility of overcoming the often narrow horizon of the nation, in order to open up the possibility for forms of community more intense and free. The interview takes place in London, for a conference around the work of the French philosopher Étienne Balibar and the idea of a form of citizenship without (national) community. Q: The idea of a form of citizenship that goes beyond the nation seems today to be the privilege in large part of liberalism and much lesser of critical theory or movements. You understand political theory as a form of activism, therefore which is the idea of political and social emancipation that could be associated to the transpassing of national frontiers? My aim is to develop categories that enable us to think all men and women as political subjects, thus avoiding reducing them to national groups, identifying themselves through natural elements, such as race, gender or ethnicity, such as being black, being a woman, being homosexual. National constructions are the perverse effect of the generic character of notions such as humanity and the state. We have to rethink the idea, formulated by Hannah Arendt, of ‘the right to have rights’. For Arendt, we need to think the citizen outside of the categories of nation and humanity and within the framework of the state. The state is the supreme protector of the political subject. Arendt stresses how the state and the nation have been associated and conflated, creating numerous problems. Stateless people are therefore deprived of any kind of protection. Form here stems Arendt’s critique of human rights, which fail to provide protection to the people when and where they need it. In political life, when you are deprived of a nationality status, being just ‘human’ doesn’t help. As a consequence, even if it is great to acknowledge civil rights, you still treat a ‘negro’ as a ‘negro’. But what Arendt is unable to ask is how to treat a ‘negro’ as a political subject. Q: The idea of citizenship is very ambiguous, it can play a conservative role, justifying the status quo and class as well as social differences, but it can also act as a tool of emancipation. How can we conciliate these two aspects? The fiction at the basis of European citizenship is the one of a political subject that goes beyond any form of belonging to traditional, tribal and kinship relations. The autonomy of the liberal individual is the reason of the superiority of the West over the rest of the world, according to the classical interpretation by Max Weber. Liberalism, bourgeoisie and capitalism make a triangle that structures the foundation of the state, especially the nation-state. This is therefore the narrative of the dominant class, that described its dominant subject as the ideal subject of politics. Presented as going beyond any kind of affiliation, this is instead a very specific and rooted subject. At the beginning, he was male when women were not considered as political subjects. But that has changed as a result of struggles. He was a property-owner: the inclusion within the sphere of politics of the working class or of those who do not own property is also a recent achievement as a result of struggles. He was heterosexual and of bourgeois morality. He was white. Yet these grand narratives reveal instead a specific subject, affiliated to a very specific ‘tribe’. A particular group, constituted by bourgeois, white, male, heterosexual and property-owner constituted itself as dominant group. Saying that implies nevertheless incorporating the struggles for the ‘other’ forms of citizenship with respect to this dominant citizenship. This means the opening towards ecological, gender and cultural identifications. It is not possible to think citizenship without its ‘others’. The project is thus the one of delineating a genealogy of citizenship in order to redefine it. In this way, citizenship can be seen as that form of political subjectivity that allows the others, the dominated and subjugated, to make claims. This must be the source of a new inflection on the meaning of the ‘right to have rights’ to the city and to the polity. Q: In your attempt to redefine contemporary political subjectivity, you tried to develop a new idea, the one of ‘acts of citizenship’. Is this a new way to envisage collective action and political engagement? Can you tell us what you mean with this term? The question we need to ask is: what enables new subjects to constitute themselves as subjects of politics? The notion of “acts” is one of the least theorized concepts in social theory. I started to think precisely about the notion of “acts of citizenship”. I have an activist background, thus I was asking myself: what compels people, what motivates people, what mobilizes them to say: it’s not only unjust what I am observing but it is also intolerable. That’s the foundation of an act. We can rethink the well-known act of Rosa Park. My point of view is psychoanalytical-political: while many people recognize injustices, what did mobilize Rosa Park and nobody else? It’s not enough to notice injustice, but one has to find an injustice intolerable. This is what it means to “act”. In this sense, a speech is not an act. Socially, theoretically, politically, there is room to theorize that: what mobilizes people to take risks? As activist, if you don’t feel that you are putting something on…
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BOUILLABAISSE TO BULLI – HOW TO CREATE MEMES FOR ACTIVITIES
As we’ve been coming up with ideas for activities for our Festival in London, our fellow cities have also been working with young people to come up with ideas. The Cooperative met up at the Transnational Weekend in Sofia to join up the dots between activities we’d put forward in the cities – a creative challenge given the different social contexts & cultural interpretations of the issues! What’s fascinating is how some of the cities put forward more activities than other others. A “bouillabaisse” approach where you pick all the freshest ideas from your city and mix them in together to reveal all the different flavours or a “bulli” approach that makes use different scientific and artistic techniques to condense down ideas into a unique aroma? What types of activities? Click on the image to activate the visualisation. We identified the following different types of activities and they each perform different roles INSTALLATIONS, LIVING LIBRARIES AND PERFORMANCES …selected for how they create the spaces to challenge the way we’ve been brought up to think and act Installations on the use of the body as a form of physical resistance and as a new form of democratic participation Living Libraries with migrants and using our different senses to discover all the themes of the festival. Performances on how the body is used in political action, what we can learn from forum theatre to enact democracy and make sense of how migrants live to how can we use SMS to discuss brain drain. EXHIBITIONS, ROLE PLAYS AND VISUALISATIONS …chosen for how they express the way we collectively feel about the issues we face and the wishes we dream about Exhibitions from cartoons to understand poverty and homelessness to understanding norms of social control of public spaces. Role Plays from simulating a people’s assembly to simulating the European parliament and role playing how migrants live their lives. Visualisations of how migrants feel crossing the borders and in detention camps to visualising how young people feel about being out of work. WALKS AND WORKSHOPS …for enabling people to observe how neighbourhoods can provoke new thoughts and ideas on alternative futures Walks to discover how different cultures live in the city, through performances & games, as well as understanding the history of protest and economic alternatives and showing our discouragement and revolt at the crisis. Workshops to develop pop up democracy and civic activism using open space and creating outputs to social markets of alternatives to consumerism through alternative crafts and learning how to understand migrant’s experiences through making food and sharing stories. DEBATES AND FILM SCREENINGS …for how they enable people to share common experiences and issues between different cities Debates on everything from the influence of the Arab Spring, understanding social mobilisation, the invisible migrants in the city, the impact of migration on gentrification, to understand the impact of ideology on social mobilisation. Film Screenings to show what people they’ve lost when they move abroad, how we misunderstand culture, how Muslim communities feel inEurope and the Arab world to what we can learn from artistic mobilisation. Three new memes pop out from this – the creative disruption of migration in social mobilisation, the role of the body in democratic participation, and negociating how to live together in the city. What is it that could link these concepts up? If you want to find out more about what we do go to our group page or to tell us how you’d like to be involved, fill in our survey.
A TALE OF TWELVE CITIES
As part of co-designing the next Transeuropa Festival, we’re trying to broker connections between the groups we’re working with in each city. We’re also using the keyword technique before to help us join up the dots between people’s ideas, so now it was time to use this to connect up activities from the different cities. Click on the image below to activate the visualisation What’s striking is that many of these keywords are in fact questions. Which is reassuring as often the solutions people put forward don’t work because they haven’t thought well enough about the problem they want to address. They might have provided the right answer but to the wrong question. Of course, the questions you’ll see below are still very broad. But if you’re asking a question in different cities, you need it to be inclusive enough to cater for different interpretations of what we mean by “making a living” or “creative activism”. This then creates the space for being able to make connections between the cities to create a broad-based transnational understanding of the issue. How can people understand the crisis? From role playing a series of situations a “normal” person has to confront (opening a bank account to asking for a loan) in the context of the economic crisis in Bologna to a flashmob on the effects of the recession in Cluj, there is a strong desire to show what the crisis looks and feels like to people on the street – literally as well as metaphorically! From a “pecha kucha” in Warsaw where people can put forward proposals for alternatives to a scenario planning workshop to imagine different futures in Cluj, the cities have come up with inclusive and interactive ways to think of what the good society might look like. We need to find better ways to understand how our peers are coping with the crisis– we know that if we are going to create a better future for our generation, then we need to imagine it together. How can we make a living? From a living library to promote alternative ways to consume in Barcelona to a social market showing how to make crafts in Belgrade, being able to self-organise in public spaces to “make” things helps foreshadow new forms of local economy. From creating an audio map of informal economies in Berlin to touring the history of economic alternatives across the city of Paris, movement is also highlighted as a key factor not just as a constraint to making a living in the sense of finding a job, but in this case of discovering economic alternatives on your doorstep. We know we need to redefine what we mean by “making a living” if we are going to rethink what economy we want to build together. Strange attractor or brain drain? From “skype movies” in Belgrade asking people who’ve left their country how they feel about leaving and “text messaging” actions to ask people in the city what they feel about the “brain drain”, it’s striking how it’s in this thematic that digital technologies are the most visible. In a way, these uses of social media mirror the way migrants keep in touch with their cities of origin and how even though the technology might make them feel back at home, can it reduce the emotional distance to the cultures they’ve been brought up in? The role of cities like Berlin and London in being strange attractors to people across Europe will also be debated. As our cities change to recover from the crisis, we can learn from what people bring to it, but we can also look at cities who’ve been moulded through crisis.How do different cultures live in the city? From working with migrants to perform how invisible they feel on the borders between the private and the public space in Bologna to an urban game to rediscover migration through the different senses across the city in Warsaw, the kafkian concept of the “outsider” is put into play. From organising a community meal with refugees sharing recipes in Amsterdam to a living library with second generation migrants in Bologna, being able to create the spaces for shared experiences is a practical but powerful way of discussing complex issues, as has been demonstrated by initiatives like @pielab. What is the influence of the Arab Spring on Europe? From debates on how the Arab Spring affects our relationship with migration in Barcelona to how it influences civic participation in Berlin, it’s an opportunity to reflect not just on the interdependent nature of globalisation from an economic perspective, but on the network effects of new forms of democratic mobilisation. It’s fascinating how the debate in Belgrade will show how the Serbian movement worked with the Egyptian protesters to develop strategies of revolution. How do we tackle the issues of detention camps and borders? From storytelling a narrative about crossing borders in Amsterdam to recreating the feeling of being detained in a detention camp in Barcelona through emotional mapping, via a joint film programme between Bologna and Tangiers, the use of visuals is critical to highlight issues that are too often unheard and unseen. What does democracy look like? From video streaming the voices of different activists in Belgrade to performing the use of the human body in politics in Barcelona, projecting democracy as a life-form shows that it can be more than fixed institutions or static protests. From forum theatre on political alternatives in Cluj to filming experiences of artistic mobilisation in Paris to a workshop getting people produce a new visual language in Warsaw, it’s important that people can perform new democratic “gestures” that everyone can feel comfortable with. How can we develop democracy in open spaces? From creating installations on “pop up democracy” in Amsterdam to an exhibition on the relationship between social security and social control in open spaces in Barcelona, we see that public space is a blank canvas that can be used for control as well as freedom. From the simulation of an Athenic agora to show how distant parliamentary democracy is from people’s problems in Belgrade…
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET INVOLVED?
We want to find out what drives you. Transeuropa London should be shaped by the people and ideas that form it We would love to find out what your interests are, what type of activities you would like to develop and how you want to get involved. Tell us! We want to know what issues motivate you so we can better involve to help shape what we do in the areas you are interested in. This could be coming up with ideas on the issues, organise an event or even work with other groups on the issue. Tell us! European Alternatives London from Noel Hatch We would like to enable you to participate in developing and share skills with other members, whether on coming up with ideas or developing activities. Tell us! If you would like to coordinate the work on the above areas, you can also apply by writing 200 words on why you’d like to take on one of the roles. We want to enable you to get involved in activities that can help us build our local group. Urban Games to Make a Living from Noel Hatch We aim to make connections that will keep you in touch with the most creative ideas and activities. This is why we are building bridges with other groups, so we can work together on mutual causes and activities and enable you to meet other creative people. So if you are involved in a group that is also working on these types of issues or activities, please let us know which one. We’d love to come and meet the group and see how we can work together.
BORDERS TO CROSS: Open call!
PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT BORDERS TO CROSS How green is (y)our grass? Deadline for applications: 14th June Learn how civic initiatives and other innovations are reshaping the practice of democracy within and across borders. Borders to Cross is an inter national conference that will bring together civil servants, citizens, social entrepreneurs, and scientists to reflect on the innovative ways in which democracy is being practiced and civil society, market and gover nment are working together to address shared problems in Europe. Don’t miss the opportunity to draw insights and inspiration from the work of colleagues from over 20 countries. AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS 29-31 OCTOBER 2013 Why: Transition Europe is bursting with examples of democratic innovation. Citizens are taking public matters into their own hands and driving change through efforts to improve the neighborhoods and cities in which they live. Public officials are experimenting with new forms of practical deliberation and conflict resolution that remake relationships with citizens and other stakeholders. These new forms of cooperation and co-creation challenge us to make sense of how roles and responsibilities are changing. As they rework the relationship between bottom-up and top-down patterns of organization, these practical experiments push public, civic, and market organizations to rethink the ways they relate to each other. Their experiences pose important questions. How can we support and facilitate grass-root initiatives and safeguard public concerns? How can we respond to demands for action when the rules of the game are themselves shifting? Citizens and civic professionals often work pragmatically in these settings —seeking to learn as they act. Their stories contain a wealth of insights that can become the working knowledge that binds a community of practitioners across political and institutional borders. Our ambition is to create an international learning community, whose members can learn together about shifting roles, responsibilities, and opportunities for linking society and democracy. What: Action Learning Community The Dutch ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), the ministry of Health, Welfare & Sport (VWS), the ministry of Infrastructure & Environment (I&M), the ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ), the City of Amsterdam, the Universities of Amsterdam and Leuven, Netwerk Democratie, European Alternatives and G1000 have joined forces to create a conference in which participants can explore challenging responses to societal problems across (and beyond) Europe. Borders to Cross will provide a setting for reflecting on experiences, dilemmas, and designs at the boundary of change. We envision a laboratory for active learning to help participants develop insights that they can bring into play in their own work. Researchers will work as partners in the living labs in order to capture the significance of new relationships and innovations in practical deliberation and problemsolving. The conference aims to bring together 40 inspiring initiatives and projects that cover diverse themes: new forms of ownership and joint decision-making, inclusive participation, and the role of entrepreneurship in the public domain. How: Borders to Cross The conference will have an accessible and flexible nature that allows for personal interaction and group reflection that contributes to action learning and the development of a durable learning community. The conference will begin in the afternoon of Tuesday 29 October and end around lunchtime on 31 October. During these 48 hours there will be opportunities to: — Attend workshops about cutting edge participatory methods; — Reflect with scientists about practical insights and innovative theories; — Listen to leading figures in the field of civic driven change; — Enlarge your vision and learn from initiatives and projects by visiting the marketplace; — Visit civic driven change initiatives in neighborhoods in Amsterdam; — Talk with peers about the daily challenges you face and the borders you have to cross In connection with this conference Amsterdam will subsequently host the granting of the prestigious ErasmusPrize to Jurgen Habermas on November 5th. Expected results The conference provides you with: — a new perspective on the transitions that are underway in democratic practice and the shifting roles for government, markets and civil society actors that this implies — practical strategies that you can implement in your own work. — a renewed network of civic professionals and citizens who are engaged with related challenges. The conference will provide the opportunity to address your questions and think together with international colleagues about new approaches that are suitable for your local societal challenges. The reach of the conference will extend beyond those actually present. The conference activities will be made available through social media, audio and video clips. More practically, participants will share innovative approaches and stories in their home country. Open Call There is an open call to collect interesting initiatives and projects that we can learn from. The Open Call for Innovative Practice and Dilemma’s will gather the most striking examples of efforts in which citizens, civil society actors, and public officials have redefined their roles and modes of interaction. Examples may range from the G1000 in Belgium to a social pharmacy in Greece or a social procurement procedure in Sweden. The cases will be linked by the common effort to reinvent democratic relationships through practical initiatives. Representatives of the projects that are selected will be invited to present and discuss their successes and their frustrations and to bring home innovative approaches to pressing societal problems. Participants & Costs Up to 200 civic professionals will participate in the Borders to Cross conference. Their diversity will create opportunities for surprising encounters and innovations that challenge our thinking. Our goal is a balanced group of government, civil society, and market actors together with researchers. Approximately 20% of the participants in the conference will originate from the Netherlands. The conference is free of charge and does not include travel and lodging expenses. Scholarships for travel andaccommodation expenses can be requested. Funding decisions will be made by the conference organizers on the basis of the contribution an initiative or project can make to shared learning about the themes described in the open call. Questions about the open call? Or do you want to know more about the open call, how to enter or nominate initiatives or projects? Send an email to: Jonmar van Vlijmen amsterdam@euroalter.com Can’t wait to start exchanging?! Get in touch now with fellow civic professionals on the Borders to Cross Linked In group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=4906112&trk=emlgrp-sub&ut=3e-5wgXiPaJBE1 Organizers: Dutch ministry…
Transnational Dialogues across China and Europe: A Bilingual Journal
by Luigi Galimberti Faussone The Project Throughout 2011 and 2012, European Alternatives had been running the Transnational Dialogues, an exchange project between Europe and China involving young artists, curators, researchers and intellectuals from all cultural fields. The activities included numerous transnational camps and research tours, the staging of artistic interventions in urban settings, instigating a great number of video-interviews with Chinese and European cultural figures, and maintaining a blog, which is now accessible along with several videos, photos and articles on the project’s websitewww.transnationaldialogues.eu The Concept The issues at stake were many and all quite sensitive. Economic development, labour conditions, civil rights, democracy, freedom of expression, urbanization, the state and the market, public space, commons, independent art spaces, the role of the artist, etc. Anyone familiar with the Chinese context knows the frustration which originates from openly discussing such issues in depth. In order to avoid a likely stalemate, the discussion moved from the halls of academia to the studios of visual artists, where art itself became a common ground for everyone to exchange their views and develop new thoughts. Therefore, we took art as a language, and yet further, the artist as a privileged interpreter of society and as a powerful impetus for change. The ultimate goal of this project was that of looking at China as if it were a special mirror, through which we can gain a better understanding of the European present and possible future. The Journal The Transnational Dialogues Journal collects the contributions of all participants of theTransnational Research Caravan (Luigi Galimberti Faussone, Lonneke van Heugten, Lorenzo Marsili, Niccolò Milanese, Ségolène Pruvot, Robin Resch, Mike Watson and You Mi), as well as some of the people that had held an active role in supporting the Caravan’s journey (Zandie Brockett, Lu Xinghua, Ni Kun, Alessandro Rolandi, Wang Shuo and Yang Shu) or those who had been actively involved in other activities of related to the project, such as curator Boliang Shen, who was part of a group of Chinese artists and curators whom toured Italy in May 2012 (seehere ) and artist Adeline de Monseignat, who participated in the conclusive trip across Shanghai and Beijing in December 2012. From the Caravan, the Journal has taken the three main research topics, each with a distinct section, which constitutes its focus: Commons & Independent spaces; Urbanisation & Occupation; Role of the artist & Education through art. Each section is divided into four episodes: an introduction, which gives the background of the topic and highlights the most relevant issues; two reflections, which elaborate on some of the most significant aspects of the topic; an action, which shows examples of artistic practices related to the topic; an extra, which tells about other related activities within the same project. The main language of the publication is English, but two articles per section, both by Chinese and European authors, have been given in translation in order to promote the circulation of the journal to a Chinese audience. The publication is freely accessible and downloadable (in PDF format).
Dialogues transnationaux de la Chine à l’Europe : journal bilingue
par Luigi Galimberti Faussone Traduction : Adeline Monnin Le Projet Tout au long de 2011 et de 2012, Alternatives Européennes a dirigé les Dialogues transnationaux, un programme d’échanges entre l’Europe et la Chine auquel participent de jeunes artistes, des conservateurs de musées, des chercheurs et des intellectuels provenant de tous les horizons culturels. Les activités de ce projet comprennent de nombreux camps transnationaux et voyages consacrés à la recherche, la mise en place d’interventions artistiques en milieu urbain, l’instigation d’une plus grande quantité d’interviews vidéo avec des personnalités représentant les cultures chinoise et européenne. Enfin, nous avons également un blog sur lequel vous pouvez désormais trouver plusieurs vidéos, photos et articles relatifs au projet de site Webwww.transnationaldialogues.eu . Le Concept Beaucoup de questions étaient en jeu, toutes très délicates : le développement économique, les conditions de travail, les droits civils, la démocratie, la liberté d’expression, l’urbanisation, l’État et le marché, l’espace public, les biens communs, les espaces d’art indépendant, le rôle de l’artiste, etc. Toute personne familière avec le contexte chinois sait quel degré de frustration peut être exprimé lorsque l’on discute ouvertement, et en détail, de tels problèmes. Afin d’éviter de se retrouver dans une impasse, cette discussion auparavant confinée entre les murs d’académies est aujourd’hui abordée dans les studios d’artistes visuels, où l’art est lui-même devenu un terrain d’échange commun, grâce auquel tout le monde peut exprimer son point de vue et développer de nouvelles pensées. Par conséquent, l’art est devenu notre langage. L’artiste est même devenu un interprète privilégié de la société et une puissante source d’élan pour le changement. L’objectif ultime de ce projet est de voir la Chine comme si elle était un miroir spécial, nous offrant l’opportunité de mieux comprendre le présent de l’Europe, ainsi que son éventuel futur. Le Journal Le Journal des dialogues transnationaux rassemble toutes les contributions des personnes participant à la Transnational Research Caravan (Luigi Galimberti Faussone, Lonneke van Heugten, Lorenzo Marsili, Niccolò Milanese, Ségolène Pruvot, Robin Resch, Mike Watson et You Mi), ainsi que de celles ayant activement soutenu le voyage de la Caravane (Zandie Brockett, Lu Xinghua, Ni Kun, Alessandro Rolandi, Wang Shuo et Yang Shu). Ou encore les contributions de ceux qui se sont beaucoup investis dans d’autres activités concernant ce projet, comme le conservateur de musée Boliang Shen, qui faisait partie d’un groupe d’artistes et de conservateurs chinois qui ont voyagé dans toute l’Italie en mai 2012 (comme vous pouvez le voir ici), et l’artiste Adeline de Monseignat, qui a participé au tout dernier voyage en décembre 2012, parcourant Shanghai et Pékin. Le Journal a choisi trois principaux sujets de recherches grâce à la Caravane, chacun ayant une section distincte sur laquelle se concentrer : biens communs et espaces indépendants, urbanisation et occupation, rôle de l’artiste et éducation grâce à l’art. Chaque section est divisée en quatre parties : l’introduction, qui place le sujet dans son contexte et met l’accent sur les questions les plus pertinentes, deux réflexions qui développent les aspects les plus importants du sujet, une action qui donne des exemples de pratiques artistiques en rapport avec le sujet et enfin un supplément, qui fournit des informations sur des activités liées à ce même projet. L’anglais est la langue principalement utilisée pour les publications, mais dans chaque section, deux articles rédigés par des auteurs chinois et européens sont traduits, ceci afin de promouvoir la diffusion du journal auprès du public chinois. La publication est en accès et en téléchargement libre (au format PDF ).
« Stop à la précarité : agissez démocratiquement ! » : analyses et réflexions sur une semaine riche en échanges d’idées autour des thèmes de la précarité et la démocratie, à la fois dans et à l’extérieur de l’Europe
Echanges d’idées autour des thèmes de la précarité et la démocratie, à la fois dans et à l’extérieur de l’Europe.
“Stop alla precarietà giovanile: agiamo democraticamente!”: Bilanci e riflessioni su una settimana ricca di scambi di idee attorno ai temi della precarietà e della democrazia fuori e dentro l’Europa
Scambi di idee attorno ai temi della precarietà e della democrazia fuori e dentro l’Europa.
“Stop Precarity: Act Democratically!”: Analyses and Reflections on a Week Filled with Exchanges of Ideas Surrounding the Themes of Job Instability and Democracy Both Inside and Outside of Europe
Exchanges of Ideas Surrounding the Themes of Job Instability and Democracy Both Inside and Outside of Europe.
Verso una Carta dei Beni Comuni Europea
Traduzione di Francesca Lucci In risposta all'attuale ondata di privatizzazioni, European Alternatives insieme all' International University College e al suo Istituto per gli Studi di Economia Politica e Giurisprudenza, al Comune di Napoli e al Institut international D'etudes et Recherches sur les Biens Communsare stanno lanciando una serie di forum ed incontri in tutta Europa per elaborare una Carta dei Beni Comuni europea. Tra maggio e giugno si terranno incontri a Zagabria, Cluj-Napoca, Sófia, Berlino, Londra, Parigi e Roma. A breve verranno date più informazioni. ? Perché? ?La dicotomia tra proprietà privata e stato si è rivelata incapace di resistere alle distorsioni derivate da più di vent'anni di ordine neoliberista. Ciò si è tradotto in un forte squilibrio globale che ha favorito il settore privato, in modo specifico gli interessi aziendali a spese della popolazione comune. ?? In tutto il mondo stanno avendo luogo enormi trasferimenti di risorse comuni dal settore pubblico a quello privato, a dispetto di qualsiasi garanzia costituzionale per l'interesse pubblico, di regolari processi, e compensazioni. Le nostre democrazie sono sempre più messe a repentaglio da uno stato colluso e dagli attori di mercato; rappresentanti di governo che pongono i profitti a breve termine dei singoli e delle aziende davanti agli interessi della popolazione. ??Dalla Grecia alla Spagna, dalla Tunisia all'Egitto, dall'Italia alla Bolivia, all'Ecuador, all'India rurale e alla Cina, le persone sono sempre più consapevoli del bisogno di un modello di globalizzazione diverso. Questi attivisti attualmente sono impegnati in atti di riaffermazione dei beni comuni in tutto il mondo. Da coloro che combattono la privatizzazione delle risorse (per esempio in Italia con il referendum sull'acqua o in Romania con i tentativi di privatizzazione del sistema sanitario) alle recenti occupazioni di spazi pubblici contro il neoliberismo (per esempio gli Indignados in Spagna e le rivolte popolari in Grecia). In segno di solidarietà con questi movimenti diamo inizio alla campagna per la Carta dei Beni Comuni europea. Quali sono i Beni Comuni? ?Il nostro approccio ai beni comuni riguarda da un lato la riaffermazione dell'accesso alle risorse fondamentali e dall’altro la garanzia di un processo democratico che regoli la loro distribuzione. Le risorse fondamentali alla vita umana includono beni comuni naturali come acqua, cibo, energia e l'atmosfera, così come beni comuni artificiali, ad esempio tecnologia, salute, internet e la cultura. Riaffermare i beni comuni inoltre richiede una riorganizzazione del processo democratico attuale, in modo che offra un'alternativa al modello di stato e di mercato che fino ad ora ha prevalso. La gestione dei beni comuni comporta uno slittamento del potere dagli stati centralizzati e dal libero mercato alle comunità locali, riconsegnando il potere di soddisfare i bisogni a lungo termine di queste comunità e delle future generazioni nelle mani dei membri della comunità stessa, attraverso una democrazia dal basso, locale e diretta. La Bozza della Carta dei Beni Comuni Europea ?Qui potrai trovare una bozza della Carta dei Beni Comuni europea che puoi commentare liberamente, grazie a uno speciale software partecipativo. Il nostro scopo è quello di elaborare una versione aggiornata della Carta entro l'inizio dell'estate prendendo in considerazione tutti gli spunti ricevuti.
Vers une Charte européennes des biens communs
Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin En réaction à l’actuelle vague de privatisations, Alternatives Européennes s’associe à l’International University College et à son Institute for the Study of Political Economy and Law, ainsi qu’à la municipalité de Naples et à l’Institut international d’études et de recherches sur les biens communs, pour organiser un ensemble de forums et de rencontres à travers l’Europe et esquisser une Charte européenne des biens communs. Des rencontres ont été organisées en mai et juin derniers à Zagreb, Cluj-Napoca, Sofia, Berlin, Londres, Paris et Rome dans le cadre du Festival Transeuropa. Nous avons tiré les conclusions de cette caravane transeuropéenne des biens communs lors du dernier forum transnational au Teatro Vallo à Rome les 2 et 3 juin, avant de considérer et d’annoncer les prochaines étapes de la Charte européenne des biens communs. Pourquoi ? La dichotomie entre État et propriété privée s’est révélée incapable de résister aux distorsions provoquées par plus d’une vingtaine d’années de domination néolibérale. Il en résulte un profond déséquilibre mondial en faveur du secteur privé, en particulier des entreprises, et au détriment des citoyens. Une quantité considérable de ressources communes sont transférées du domaine public au privé à travers le monde, ce au mépris total des garanties constitutionnelles de l’intérêt public, de la régularité des procédures ou des mesures compensatoires. Nos démocraties sont de plus en plus menacées par les collusions entre états et acteurs des marchés ou par des représentants du gouvernement qui font passer les profits à court terme de quelques individus ou entreprises avant l’intérêt général. De la Grèce à l’Espagne, de la Tunisie à l’Égypte, de l’Italie à la Bolivie, l’Équateur, l’Inde rurale ou la Chine, les citoyens prennent toujours plus conscience de la nécessité de changer de modèle de mondialisation. Ces militants mènent en ce moment des actions pour réclamer des biens communs dans le monde entier. Certains résistent à la privatisation des ressources (comme en Italie avec le référendum sur l’eau ou en Roumanie avec la tentative de privatisation des services de santé) tandis que d’autres occupent des espaces publics pour s’opposer au néolibéralisme (comme les Indignados espagnols ou les citoyens grecs). Par solidarité avec ces mouvements, nous lançons une campagne en faveur d’une Charte européenne des biens communs. Que sont les biens communs ? Notre démarche vis-à-vis des biens communs consiste à la fois à réclamer l’accès aux ressources essentielles et à garantir la procédure démocratique qui régit leur répartition. Les ressources essentielles à la vie humaine comprennent aussi bien les biens communs d’origine naturelle comme l’eau, la nourriture, l’énergie et l’atmosphère que les biens communs produits par l’homme comme la technologie, la santé, internet ou la culture. Réclamer ces biens communs suppose également une réorganisation du processus démocratique tel qu’il est aujourd’hui afin de proposer une alternative au modèle établi par les modèles étatique et marchand. Pour gérer les biens communs, il faudra que l’état centralisé et le marché libre cèdent le pouvoir aux communautés locales qui, pour satisfaire leurs besoins et ceux des générations futures sur le long terme, remettront le pouvoir entre les mains des membres de la communauté au moyen d’une démocratie montante, locale et directe. Une esquisse de la Charte européenne des biens communs Vous trouverez ici une esquisse de la Charte européenne des biens communs que vous êtes libres de commenter grâce à un logiciel participatif spécial. Nous avons l’intention de réactualiser cette Charte en prenant en compte toutes les contributions reçues.
Towards a European Charter of the Commons
Responding to the current wave of privatisations, European Alternatives together with the International University College and its Institute for the Study of Political Economy and Law together with the Municipality of Naples, and the Institut international D’etudes et recherches sur les biens communs are launching a process of forums and metings throughout Europe to draft a European Charter of the Commons.
The Citizens Pact has a logo
A logo for the Citizens Pact We are very happy to announce that a logo for the Citizens Pact has been selected! Following a transnational contest in which designers from throughout Europe sent us their proposals, a voting committee was formed, made of various representatives of organisations taking part in the Citizens Pact, from different European countries, genders and ages. They voted to select the logo that will represent the Pact until the elections of the European Parliament in 2014. And the winner is… Claudia Rodriguez Cruz! Thanks to all designers for their creative and very good-looking proposals, who made the choice hard! This logo will be used by a range of organisations signing up to a series of principles on which the Citizens Pact is based (see below). If you would like to join the Pact and receive the logo to use it in your communication materials, please contact Alessandro Valera at a.valera @ euroalter.com. The Citizens Pact principles: We believe that a lot more should be done to make Europe, and the European Union in particular, a more democratic place We believe that a pact should be made among citizens as well as between citizens and institutions We believe that Europe has a united future: we reject the current logic of austerity, without refusing all European aspiration to a Union or to integration. This means that we are critical of the current political process and the ineffectual EU institutions, but believe Europe has a constitutional and institutional future We believe that policy in Europe should deal with issues of immediate concern to citizens, particularly relating to social justice , employment and workers’ rights, environmental protection, conversion of productive model in an ecological sense, civic rights for European citizens (focusing notably on groups generally excluded, such as migrants and LGBT groups) We believe citizens often have the answers to problems of continental scale. Through the Citizens Pact we want to reach as many of them as possible and to hear their policy proposals for a better and fairer Europe We believe that the EU needs to be reformed institutionally, as it currently lacks the structure for citizens to influence the decision-making process at European level We recognize that the European Parliament is the most legitimate organ, despite not having sufficient power and still being formed by MEPs elected in one country and representing that country. For this reason, if necessary, collaboration between MEPs and the Citizens Pact may be sought We also recognize that local government, particularly Municipalities, have to play a crucial role as the institutional level most close to social needs and claims. A radically renewed, democratic “Europe of the citizens” has also to be an “Europe of the cities” We take the European Parliament elections of 2014 as a medium term goal, to make sure that the content of the Citizens Manifesto will be taken into consideration by those who will run to become Members of the European Parliament
Le Pacte Citoyen a trouvé son logo !
Un logo pour le Pacte Citoyen Traduction : Meryl Marcer Nous sommes très heureux d’annoncer que le logo du Pacte Citoyen a été choisi ! Suite à un concours transnational au cours duquel des artistes et designers de toute l’Europe nous ont envoyé leurs propositions, un comité de vote a été créé. Composé de divers représentants d’organisations signataires du Pacte Citoyen, hommes et femmes de tout âge provenant de différents pays européens, le comité a choisi le logo qui représentera le Pact jusqu’aux élections du Parlement européen en 2014. Et la gagnante est… Claudia Rodriguez Cruz ! Merci à tous les artistes pour leurs propositions si créatives ; le choix fut difficile ! Ce logo sera utilisé par des organisations se reconnaissant dans les principes sur lesquels est basé le Citizens Pact (voir ci-dessous). Si vous souhaitez rejoindre le Pacte Citoyen et recevoir le logo afin de l’utiliser dans vos supports de communication, veuillez contacter Alessandro Valera : a.valera @ euroalter.com. Les principes du Pacte Citoyen : Nous pensons qu’il y a encore beaucoup à faire pour rendre l’Europe, et en particulier l’Union européenne, plus démocratique. Nous pensons qu’un pacte doit être conclu entre les citoyens, ainsi qu’entre les citoyens et les institutions. Nous croyons à un avenir commun à toute l’Europe : nous rejetons l’actuelle logique d’austérité, sans pour autant refuser toute aspiration européenne à une Union ou à l’intégration. Nous sommes donc très critiques vis-à-vis de l’action politique actuelle et de l’inefficacité des institutions de l’UE, mais nous croyons à un avenir constitutionnel et institutionnel européen. Nous pensons que l’action politique en Europe devrait se concentrer sur des questions affectant directement les citoyens, en particulier la justice sociale, l’emploi et le droit du travail, la protection environnementale, la conversion du modèle de production vers un modèle plus écologique, les droits civiques des citoyens européens (notamment des minorités souvent exclues, comme les immigrés et la communauté LGBT) Nous croyons que les citoyens détiennent souvent les réponses aux problèmes européens. Nous souhaitons toucher le plus grand nombre de ces citoyens grâce au Pacte Citoyen et entendre leurs propositions d’actions à mener pour une Europe meilleure et plus juste. Nous pensons que les institutions de l’UE doivent être réformées car l’UE manque actuellement de structures permettant aux citoyens d’influencer le processus de prise de décisions à l’échelle européenne. Nous reconnaissons que le Parlement européen est l’institution communautaire la plus légitime, bien que doté d’un pouvoir limité et toujours constitué d’eurodéputés élus dans un pays et représentant ce seul pays. Pour cette raison, et si nécessaire, une collaboration entre eurodéputés et le Pacte Citoyen peut être envisagée. Nous reconnaissons également que les administrations locales, notamment les municipalités, doivent occuper une place centrale, puisqu’elles sont le relais institutionnel le plus proche des besoins et des revendications des citoyens. Une « Europe des citoyens » démocratique et renouvelée en profondeur doit également être une “Europe des villes”. Notre fixons les élections du Parlement européen de 2014 comme notre objectif à moyen terme, afin de nous assurer que le contenu du Manifeste Citoyen soit bel et bien pris en compte par les candidats aux élections parlementaires européennes.
Le Festival Transeuropa fait son grand retour en octobre 2013
Le Festival Transeuropa fait son grand retour en octobre 2013 2013 est officiellement l’« Année européenne des citoyens ». Alternatives européennes ne s’est pas fait attendre pour rappeler que c’est uniquement grâce à une véritable implication de tous les citoyens dans la création collective d’un espace commun que l’Europe peut se bâtir sur des bases durables et créatives. Le Festival Transeuropa est un évènement artistique, culturel et politique organisé par des citoyens européens pour des citoyens européens. Depuis plus de 5 ans, le festival fait œuvre de pionnier : c’est le premier festival transnational impliquant des citoyens dans sa création et sa réalisation. Le Festival fait le lien entre différentes sphères de la société pour doter la manifestation d’une plus grande créativité : artistes, membres d’ONG, hommes et femmes politiques, migrants et groupes de population exclus tels que les Rroms ou les sans-abris participent à l’évènement. Ce dernier propose des activités créatives pour penser l’Europe et participer activement à l’élévation de la voix du citoyen. Vous pouvez en savoir davantage sur la mobilisation transnationale engendrée par le Festival en lisant l’édito du Journal Transeuropa de l’édition de mai 2012. Vous souhaitez vous renseigner sur le Festival de l’an passé? N’hésitez pas à regarder la vidéo du Festival : vous y trouverez les images des festivités dans toute l’Europe et pourrez découvrir les thèmes et les moments clé du Festival. Vous pouvez aussi consulter le programme transnational sur le site Internet du Festival 2012. En 2013, le festival se déroulera en octobre pour concevoir un bon programme d’activités d’Alternatives européennes et valoriser ses résultats. Ces trois dernières années, le festival avait lieu en mai. Cette année, nous avons décidé de le décaler en octobre, et de le placer ainsi en plein cœur de l’« Année européenne des citoyens ». Le but ? Permettre à encore plus de personnes de participer à notre projet. L’évènement aura aussi lieu 6 mois avant les élections aux Parlement européen, et nous serons donc en mesure de donner le la pour la promotion d’une Europe plus créative, inclusive et transnationale. Nous pourrons aussi faire part de la plupart des résultats de nos projets. Le Pacte Citoyen, lancé en décembre 2012, aura permis d’élaborer un Manifeste du citoyen qui fera l’objet de discussions dans toute l’Europe durant le Festival et ses activités interactives et amusantes, accessibles à tous. L’initiative européenne pour le pluralisme des medias sera forte de 8 mois de campagne pour recevoir des signatures partout en Europe. Ce sera donc le bon moment pour mettre en lumière son succès et pour inviter toujours plus de personnes à s’engager elles-aussi. Nous aurons également élaboré un programme de qualité basé sur la créativité comprenant, par exemple, une action transnationale sous la forme d’un ballet radio joué par des artistes de 10 pays européens différents. Ce projet, appelé SHARES (partages) a déjà débuté par une exposition à Istanbul en janvier-février 2013 ayant pour thème « Comment raconter une histoire », avec la participation d’artistes comme Dan Perjovschi et Imogen Sidwothy. Si le Festival Transeuropa vous tente, venez visiter sa page Facebook sur laquelle nous publierons régulièrement des informations ! Si vous souhaitez participer à son organisation, n’hésitez pas à devenir membre d’Alternatives Européennes et à assister à nos réunions si elles se déroulent près de chez vous. Vous pouvez toujours contacter notre équipe qui se fera une joie de répondre à toutes vos questions. Ségolène Pruvot Coordinatrice du Festival Transeuropa
Transeuropa Festival is coming back in October 2013
2013 is the ‘official’ Year of European Citizens. European Alternatives has not waited for it to claim that it’s only by really involving citizens in the creation of a common and shared space that Europe can become sustainable and creative! TRANSEUROPA Festival is an artistic, cultural and political event made by European citizens for citizens TRANSEUROPA Festival has been for more than 5 years the first experiment of a truly transnational Festival involving citizens in its creation and realisation. It bridges different spheres to allow for a more imaginative approach, coming from the artistic sphere and from more NGO or political background, involving migrants and excluded groups such as the Roma and homeless people. It proposes creative ways to think about Europe and become active to make citizens voices heard. You can read more on the Festival as a transnational mobilisation in an article written as an edito of Transeuropa Journal in May 2012. Are you interested to learn more about the 2012 edition of the Festival? Do watch the video of the Festival. It shows images of the Festival from throughout Europe and presents its approach and main realisations in 2012. You can also still consult the transnational programme on the 2012 Festival website. In 2013, the Festival moves to October to build on the programme of activities of European Alternatives and its results For the last three years the festival took place in May. This year we decided to move the Festival to October, right at the core of the European Year of Citizens. This will allow us to involve even more actors than before. It will also be 6 months before the European Parliament and we'll be then in a position to set the tone for a more creative, inclusive and transnational Europe. We will be in a position to share most of the outcomes of our projects. The Citizens Pact, a process launched in December 2012, will have been lead to the drafting of a Citizens Manifesto that will be discussed all over Europe during the Festival during public, parrticipative and fun activities. The European Initiative for Media Pluralism will be strong of 8 months of signatures collection all around Europe. It will be the right time to shed light on its achievements and invite even more people to join it! We will have prepared a creative and high quality programme that includes a cool transnational action in the form of a radio ballet we are building up with artists from 10 European countries. This project entitled SHARES started with an exhibition in Istanbul in January-February 2013 with the main thematic 'How to tell a story', with the participation of artists such as Dan Perjovschi and Imogen Stidwothy. If you like Transeuropa Festival, we invite you to also like its Facebook page on which we are going to publish regular updates! And if you would like to join its preparation, do join European Alternatives and come along to one of the local group meetings if there is one in your city or get in touch with your member representatives! Ségolène Pruvot Transeuropa Festival Coordinator
Migrant Camps in Europe: Open the doors! We have the right to know!
Migrant Camps in Europe: Open the doors
Le puzzle italien : austérité, corruption, et citoyen lambda
Par Lorenzo Marsili and Alessandro Valera, Alternatives Européennes Traduction par Méryl Marcer Le plus souvent, la presse internationale a associé les résultats des élections en Italie à un vote contre l’austérité. Nous trouvons cette analyse inexacte ; nous nous en expliquons dans cet article, et présentons quelques scénarios plausibles. Le message envoyé par l’électorat est qu’avant d’envisager toute modification macroéconomique ou financière, il faut d’abord réformer les institutions italiennes et leurs représentants, et s’occuper du problème de l’appauvrissement du pays. 1. Les singularités italiennes Les faits d’abord : l’Italie est organisée selon un système bicamériste. L’Assemblée nationale et le Sénat jouent un rôle d’égale importance dans tous les débats, y compris dans la nomination du gouvernement. Berlusconi et ses alliés ont modifié la loi électorale en 2005 afin de rendre presque obligatoire la victoire en Lombardie et Vénétie – régions les plus peuplées et traditionnellement de droite – pour pouvoir gagner les deux chambres. Autre scandale, les Italiens de moins de 25 ans n’ont toujours pas le droit de voter pour le Sénat, ce qui explique que celui-ci soit traditionnellement plus à droite. Bien que la coalition de centre-gauche n’ait gagné que d’un cheveu dans les deux chambres, elle dispose à présent d’une majorité de plus de 200 députés à l’Assemblée, et d’une majorité relative de 121 sièges au Sénat, ne parvenant pas à atteindre les 158 sièges nécessaires pour soutenir un gouvernement. Cette loi électorale fut pensée dans le cadre d’un système bipolaire où s’affrontaient deux coalitions. Mais les résultats de cette élection montrent que l’Italie évolue vers un système à trois ou quatre partis : la coalition de centre-droite de Berlusconi, la coalition de centre-gauche de Bersani, et le MoVimento 5 Stelle de Grillo (M5S, le Mouvement 5 Etoiles) séduisent environ un quart de l’électorat chacun, le reste se tournant vers une coalition centriste décevante emmenée par Mario Monti (10%), et vers d’autres partis secondaires. 2. La droite et la gauche impuissantes Le score obtenu par Berlusconi est en nette baisse par rapport à celui obtenu cinq ans auparavant. Néanmoins, quiconque n’étant pas italien est surpris qu’il ait pu gagner ne serait-ce qu’une seule voix. Même en Italie, aucun des 200 sondages effectués le mois dernier ne voyait Berlusconi et ses alliés obtenir un score approchant les 29% qu’ils ont effectivement atteint. Cela peut s’expliquer par différents facteurs. Le plus important est le clientélisme, à divers degrés, et qui souvent coïncide dangereusement avec les réseaux mafieux. Ces 29% ont été obtenus par une coalition de neuf partis, dont la plupart n’existaient même pas quelques mois plus tôt. Neuf partis, chacun doté de vingt listes régionales pour chacune des deux chambres, chaque liste constituée de quelques douzaines de candidats, ce qui crée un réseau de plusieurs milliers de candidats à travers tout le pays, chacun conquérant les voix de ses associés. La campagne de Berlusconi, qui s’appuyait sur un programme anti-taxe et anti-Europe, a surtout séduit la population rurale, peu diplômée et vieillissante. Même dans les régions plutôt de droite, Berlusconi n’est pas arrivé en tête dans les grandes villes. Il est toujours difficile de comprendre comment les personnes qui ont voté pour lui ont pu croire à ses promesses. Le cas des Abruzzes, où un séisme a détruit la capitale de la région, L’Aquila, est un parfait exemple. Le tremblement de terre s’est produit durant le mandat de Berlusconi, et aucune réponse politique sérieuse n’a été apportée (le centre-ville est toujours inaccessible et rempli de décombres) ; pourtant, le parti de Berlusconi a gagné dans cette région traditionnellement sujette au basculement politique. Ce scénario inconcevable pour beaucoup est pourtant réalité. La détérioration du discours public en Italie ces quinze dernières années sous le mandat de Berlusconi, comme le prouve le contrôle de longue date des médias et la nomination de journalistes dociles, y joue un rôle primordial. De son côté, la coalition de centre-gauche a répété presque à l’identique les erreurs de 1994 et 2006. Alors qu’elle jouissait d’une avance à deux chiffres dans les sondages, elle n’a pas réussi à mener une campagne convaincante. Le chef de la coalition et secrétaire du Partito Democratico (PD) Pierluigi Bersani, bien qu’ayant été désigné candidat par plus de trois millions de personnes au cours d’élections primaires ouvertes à tous les citoyens, s’est révélé faible. Matteo Renzi, le maire de Florence, beaucoup plus jeune et charismatique (mais légèrement plus centriste), a perdu au dernier tour des primaires contre lui. Comme d’habitude, les militants de gauche ont choisi leur candidat pour sa capacité à rassembler toutes les sensibilités de gauche, plutôt qu’un candidat charismatique qui pourrait séduire un électorat plus large. Nichi Vendola, un ex-communiste ouvertement gay qui a terminé troisième des primaires, a lui aussi échoué à mener une campagne convaincante, et son parti de gauche écologique Sinistra, Ecologia, Libertà (SEL) (membre de la coalition) n’a récolté qu’un décevant 3% dans le scrutin. Mais le parti de Bersani est le vrai perdant, avec un score tombé à 25% au lieu des 34% attendus ou des 33% obtenus en 2008. La coalition de centre-gauche, à la tête de la plupart des villes italiennes et de certaines régions, n’a pas réussi à gagner le soutien de ceux qui en avaient marre de Berlusconi et de l’austérité de Monti. Au contraire, elle a été perçue comme faisant partie de la même classe politique qui a gouverné l’Italie et ses institutions et qui a provoqué leur déclin actuel. Ainsi, le mouvement politique (ils ont évité le mot « parti ») qui a capitalisé sur le mécontentement général, d’une manière qui entrera probablement dans les manuels de politique à l’avenir, a été le MoVimento 5 Stelle de Grillo. 3. MoVimento 5 Stelle et résistance à l’austérité Fondé par Beppe Grillo, un comique millionnaire habilement guidé par un obscur gourou de la communication, le M5S est la véritable nouveauté de la politique italienne depuis l’apparition de Berlusconi en 1994. Le M5S a connu une croissance constante depuis le milieu des années 2000 et a réussi à atteindre un niveau de mobilisation…
The Italian puzzle – austerity, corruption, and the man next door
by Lorenzo Marsili and Alessandro Valera, European Alternatives Most international press has identified the results of the Italian elections as a vote against austerity. We find this analysis inaccurate, and with this article we explain why and present some likely scenarios. The message of the electorate is that before any macroeconomic or financial change can be considered, Italy's institutions and their representatives need to be reformed and the impoverishment of the country must be addressed. 1. Italian oddities Homework first. Italy enjoys a bi-chamber system: the lower Chamber and the Senate have an equal say on all matters including the appointment of the government. The electoral law was changed in 2005 by Berlusconi and his allies to make it very difficult for whoever does not win Lombardy and Veneto, the most populous and traditionally right-leaning regions, to win both chambers. Italians under the age of 25 are still shockingly not allowed to vote for the upper house, making it traditionally more conservative. Although the centre-left coalition won by a whisker the share of votes in both chambers, it now enjoys a majority of more than 200 MPs in the lower Chamber alone, while gaining only a relative majority of 121 seats in the Senate, short of the 158 needed to back a Government. This electoral law was created with a bi-polar system of two competing coalitions in mind. The results of the latest election show Italy moving towards a three or four party system: Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition, Bersani’s centre-left coalition and Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, “five start movement”) are each appealing to roughly a quarter of the electorate, with the rest going towards a disappointing centrist coalition led by Mario Monti (10%) and other minor parties. 2. Right and left converge to impotency Berlusconi’s actual share of the votes dropped dramatically compared to five years ago. Nevertheless, everyone outside of Italy is surprised that he received a single vote. Even within Italy, none of the 200 or so surveys that were polled in the last month put Berlusconi and his allies remotely close to the 29% it reached. This can be explained by a variety of factors. The main one is clientelism in different nuances, often dangerously coincident with mafia networks. This 29% was reached by a coalition of nine parties, most of which did not exist a few months ago. Nine parties, each with twenty regional lists for each of the two chambers, each with a few dozen candidates in turn, makes a good network of thousands of candidates spread around the country, each capturing the vote of their affiliates. Berlusconi’s campaign, played on an anti-tax and anti-Europe basis, had an appeal mostly to the rural, low-educated, older population. Even in right-leaning regions, all major cities did not vote for Berlusconi as their first choice. It is still hard to piece together how even these people could find his promises believable. The case of Abruzzo, where an earthquake destroyed the regional capital L’Aquila, is a case in point. The earthquake occurred under Berlusconi’s government and no serious political response was taken (the town’s centre is still inaccessible and full of rubble), yet Berlusconi’s party won this traditionally swing region. It is unconceivable to most, yet it happened. The degeneration of Italian public discourse over the last fifteen years of rule by Berlusconi, corroborated by long-standing control of the media and the appointment of docile journalists, plays a strong part. The centre-left coalition, on the other hand, repeated almost exactly the mistakes of 1994 and 2006. Despite enjoying a double digit lead in the polls, it has failed to run a convincing campaign. The coalition leader and secretary of the Partito Democratico (PD), Pierluigi Bersani, despite having been endorsed by a process of primary elections open to all citizens that saw over three millions choosing him as a leader, proved to be a weak candidate. Matteo Renzi, the much younger and much more charismatic (but slightly more centrist) mayor of Florence, lost the final round of primary elections against him. As usual, the left militants chose a candidate for his ability to keep together all the different souls of the left, rather than a charismatic one that would appeal to a broader electorate. Nichi Vendola, an openly gay former communist who won third place in the primary elections, also failed to run a convincing campaign, and his green-left party Sinistra, Ecologia, Liberta (SEL) (part of the coalition), received a disappointing 3% in the polls. Bersani’s party, however was the real loser, with support collapsing to 25% from the expected 34% and from the 33% received in 2008. The centre-left coalition, which rules most Italian cities and some of its regions, failed to gain support of those who were fed up with Berlusconi and with Monti’s austerity. Rather, it was perceived to be part of the same political class that governed Italy and its institutions and brought it to its current state of decline. However, the political movement (they shun the word party) that capitalized on the general discontent, in a manner that is likely to become part of the manuals of electoral studies of the future, was Grillo’s Movimento 5 Stelle. 3. Movimento 5 Stelle and resistance to austerity Started by Beppe Grillo, a milionaire comedian ably guided by an obscure communication guru, the M5S is the real game-changer of Italian politics since Berlusconi’s appearance back in 1994. Steadily growing since the mid-2000s, the M5S has been able to achieve a level of popular mobilisation – chaotic, contradictory, and mostly destructive – unseen in Italy since… Berlusconi’s appearance back in 1994. The movement is allegedly run on radically “horizontal” bases, with parliamentary candidates chosen online and, in a move reminiscent of the German or Nordic pirates, political decisions taken after online consultation with voters. However, the M5S has a strong reliance on its comedian-leader, who really calls the shots and owns the legal rights to the logo and party name. Worringly, the M5S appears to have no intermediate…
Doina Elena Craciun
Doina is one of the candidates standing for elections of European Alternatives members’ representatives.. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from March 1st to 8th 2013: sign up to become a member and vote! Dear European Alternatives fellow members, As you all probably know, the mandate of our ancient spokespeople of members is about to come to an end because this is an association that kicks out even the nicest people for the sake of democratic periodical vote. That is why we are invited to elect a new person who will stand for members on the Board, who will make our opinions, initiatives and concerns be considered at that level, jeopardizing his life, family, lovers, neighbors, pets and friends to make our voice be heard. Because I love talking (and screaming if necessary) for a good cause, I would like to candidate for this position within European Alternatives. I am Doina, a 27 years old Romanian studying in Paris who has decided this year to freshen up her life by participating to projects this association is organizing all over Europe. The rest of my days are made out of long hours in the National Library and walking around to conferences trying to become smart. My best friend is my computer when it does not shut down in the middle of a paper I am trying to write, or in the middle of yet another new plan for the thesis I’m preparing in medieval History. My next best friend is a Russian, but we’ll talk about it around a small vodka, some other day. All I wanted to say – but I already said too much – is that this association is like a mouthful of reality for me, it pulls me out of my wonderful Middle Ages that I can only understand but not change, into contemporary issues that can still be fought for. And because there is a lot of work to do before the world becomes as nice as my friends are I want to make good use of the chance European Alternatives gives us all, a chance to really do something for the world we live in. That is why I will try to get involved as much as the National Library allows me in this transnational guardian of real democracy. And I will do it as a simple member or as a spokespeople member if this will be the position bestowed upon me. Thank you for your time and consideration, Cheers! Doina
Dounia Mahfoufi
Dounia is one of the candidates standing for elections of European Alternatives members’ representatives. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from March 1st to 8th 2013: sign up to become a member and vote! Hi! I am Dounia Mahfoufi, I am 24 and engaged in European Alternatives since the last summer. I started in European Alternatives a bit randomly. Several friends of mine were more or less interested and engaged in the organization and I wanted to do something. I didn’t know what exactly but I just felt I had a little time and wanted to finally take my worries and preoccupations concerning social and political issues seriously. At the same time I was convinced that a creative and intelligent answer could be organized to those issues. I study Cultural Sciences, and since then got extremely sensitive to cultural, polical and social thematics that are impossible to avoid in nowadays society. I was looking for a meaningful way and form to get involved, to start being part of a solution and I found it! I am now coordinating a transnational project from Berlin while I study and work. I am convinced of the necessity of the member representant who aims to gather opinions, ideas but also doubts and critics within European Alternatives. I hope I will be able to manage to give the best to answer everybody’s expectations at this position. The communication between board and members should be correctly assured. Wishing everybody a nice election-time! Hope to seeing you soon. Dounia Mahfoufi
Elections transnationales! Vote des membres dAlternatives Européennes pour leurs représentants
Pour la deuxième fois dans l’histoire d’Alternatives Européennes, les membres participeront prochainement aux élections transnationales, du 1er au 8 mars, afin d’élire leurs représentants au conseil d’administration de l’organisation. Mettant en pratique notre engagement pour la démocratie participative transnationale, les membres d’Alternatives Européennes sont au cœur du processus de décision au sein de l’organisation. L’année dernière, nous avons élaboré ensemble une Constitution qui définit la structure de notre organisation, basée sur les idées fondamentales de coopération, de transparence, de responsabilité et sur l’idée centrale de démocratie. Notre Constitution définit notamment le rôle des représentants des membres: « Les représentants des membres garantissent le rôle des membres comme acteur central dans les processus de prise de décision. Ils sont en charge d’assurer une communication interne efficace concernant les activités et positions d’Alternatives Européennes, et d’améliorer les structures participatives en ligne et hors ligne. Ils travaillent à l’extension du réseau des membres, et les représentent publiquement. » Constitution d’Alternatives Européennes, article 6.2.3 Comment voter? Du 1e au 8 mars, les membres d’Alternatives Européennes recevront un email les invitant à voter en ligne pour deux représentants. Vous n’êtes pas encore membre? Inscrivez-vous avant le 7 mars pour pouvoir voter! Qui sont les candidats ? Apprenez-en plus sur les candidates et entrez en contact avec eux en cliquant sur leurs noms ci-dessous ! Doina Elena Craciun Dounia Mahfoufi Monica Marquez Marilli Mastrantoni Louise Métrich
Transnational elections! European Alternatives members vote for their representatives
For the second time in European Alternatives history, members will soon participate in transnational elections to elect their representatives on the Board of the organisation, from March 1st to 8th. Putting in practice our commitment to bottom-up and transnational democracy, members of European Alternatives are at the core of the decision-making process. Last year, we devised and agreed on our Constitution, which sets up the structure of the organisation, based on the fundamental ideas of participation, transparency, accountability and most importantly democracy, and notably defines the role of members’ representatives: “Members’ representatives are responsible for ensuring the role of the Membership as a central actor and decision-maker by ensuring efficient internal communication of activities and positions of European Alternatives, improving online and offline participatory structures, and working to expand the membership and represent it publicly.” European Alternatives Constitution, article 6.2.3 How can I vote? On March 1st and until March 8th, registered members of European Alternatives will receive an email inviting them to vote online for two members’ representatives. Not yet a member? Sign up before March 7th to take part in the vote! Who are the candidates? Learn more about the candidates and engage in a dialogue with them by clicking on their names below! Doina Elena Craciun Dounia Mahfoufi Monica Marquez Marilli Mastrantoni Louise Métrich
Elezioni transnazionali! I membri di Alternative Europee chiamati a votare i loro rappresentanti
Per la seconda volta nella storia di Alternative Europee, i membri parteciperanno a breve alle elezioni transnazionali per eleggere i rappresentanti del Consiglio dell’organizzazione, dall'1 all’8 Marzo. Interpretando il nostro interesse per una democrazia dal basso e transnazionale, i membri di Alternative Europee sono il centro del processo decisionale. L’anno scorso abbiamo ideato e siamo giunti ad un accordo sulla nostra Costituzione, che stabilisce la struttura dell’organizzazione, basata sui concetti fondamentali della partecipazione, della trasparenza, della responsabilità e soprattutto della democrazia e definisce nello specifico il ruolo dei rappresentanti dei membri: “I rappresentanti dei membri hanno la responsabilità di rendere centrale e decisiva l'Adesione all’organizzazione, garantendo una comunicazione interna efficace delle attività e delle posizioni di Alternative Europee, migliorando le strutture partecipative online e offline e lavorando al fine di estendere l'adesione e rappresentarla pubblicamente.” La Costituzione di Alternative Europee, articolo 6.2.3 Come si vota? Dal'1 all’8 Marzo i membri registrati di Alternative Europee riceveranno una email che invita ad esprimere il proprio voto online per due rappresentanti dei membri. Non sei ancora iscritto? Registrati entro il 7 Marzo per prendere parte alle elezioni! Chi sono i candidati? Scopri chi sono i candidati ed entra in contatto con loro cliccando sui loro nomi! Doina Elena Craciun Dounia Mahfoufi Monica Marquez Marilli Mastrantoni Louise Métrich
Marilli Mastrantoni
Marilli is one of the candidates standing for elections of European Alternatives members’ representatives.. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from March 1st to 8th 2013: sign up to become a member and vote! Ι’m Performer & Director, Artistic Director/CEO of Theatre ENTROPIA based in Athens, also involved in international interdisciplinary projects examining current issues. Our work develops within a political context, always informed by societal realities, trying to explore the politics of theatre and theatre as politics. We’re connected with grass-root organizations and alliances within wider society, attempting creative ways of political engagement, initiating practices of self-empowerment and solidarity and developing synergies for effective changes, lately within the frame of an extreme financial, political and social crisis. I’d be really keen in promoting European Alternatives’ agenda in Greece and it’s also a great timing, since we’re about to launch our new international project, focusing on the European crisis and raising questions about the quality of our democracies. The project includes an open platform of debates and a public forum concerning our role and responsibilities as artists, thinkers and cultural operators living and creating in crucial times in relation with our audiences. As a member of European Alternatives, I follow with great interest the events and the dialogue concerning the “Citizens Pact for European Democracy”, which I consider urgent and of vital importance. With my candidateship I wish to contribute to this dialogue, as well as to initiatives for the citizens’ mobilization towards more authentic and direct democratic structures. Sincerely yours, Marilli Mastrantoni
Louise Métrich
Louise is one of the candidates standing for elections of European Alternatives members’ representatives. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from March 1st to 8th 2013: sign up to become a member and vote! Dear fellow members, I hereby present you my candidacy to the position of members’ representative. Few words about my background : I graduated in political sciences (European studies) and studied then an MA degree in socalled “East European studies” where I focused in particular on anthropology, social history, and nationalism studies in the Balkan area. My main interests are Roma rights and Roma civil society, gender equality, migration-related issues, and in general human rights. I have been first involved in European Alternatives in the Cluj-Napoca local group, which I then left to join the Prague local group when I moved to this city. For me, European Alternatives is mainly about fostering citizens’ participation in decision-making processes in Europe and I attach a lot of importance to the grassroots perspective. This is one reason why I have decided to be a candidate to the position of members’ representative. Two years at European Alternatives as a volunteer and a local coordinator have made me realize how important it is to strengthen members’ participation in the organization: not so much as active volunteers, since they already are, but in the decision-making process. I believe there is a big need to improve the way information is shared and spread from the various formal and informal bodies of EA (boards, cooperative, staff) to the members. On the other side, there is also a big need to improve the way members’ concerns, questions, and ideas, are reported to these bodies. All of us know that the question of communication is crucial, and I believe we are all hardly working on it. I would like to contribute to the positive evolution of EA and I have several ideas which I would like to put in practice if I become a members’ representative, in addition to the usual commitment of being the members’ “voice” during board meetings. For instance I would like the members to have more impact on the agenda of board meetings; this could be done in sharing this agenda early enough and asking for suggestions. For sure, results of board meetings should be also shared systematically, directly with the members and not via the coordinators. Same for the annual financial report which, I believe, should be public. I think it is also crucial to gather on a regular basis, perhaps thanks to a questionnaire, opinions, concerns and ideas of members. Creating a forum of discussion where members could discuss both content-related issues and logistical issues (related to the functioning of EA) would be certainly a great way to enhance the communication among members, staff, boards, cooperative, and perhaps external people. Creating a kind of database or archive file to gather all grievances, ideas and questions could also help us remember what has already been done and what is still to be done, what are the recurrent problems, and which solutions have been found. Last but not least, I believe the role of members’ representative is also to support local coordinators, who are often overwhelmed by too many issues to manage at the same time, alone. Since I am now leaving Prague and hence my position as Prague local coordinator, I am ready to commit to represent all members, and hopefully bring a positive contribution to the life of our great network! 🙂
Progrès en cours sur lharmonisation des droits LGBT en Europe
Traduction : Maxence Salendre Cette semaine, deux décisions majeures ont été prises en faveur de l’égalité pour les personnes LGBT en Europe. Le 13 mars, le Parlement Européen a adopté son rapport annuel sur la parité homme-femme dans l’Union Européenne. Le texte résume les différentes avancées réalisées en faveur de l’égalité des sexes et inclut quelques recommandations pour les droits LGBT. Le rapport rédigé par Sophie in’t Veld, députée européenne, reconnaît que « les familles de l’Union Européenne sont diverses » et inclut que « les parents de même sexe et les parents de sexe opposé […] ont droit à la même protection dans le droit national et le droit européen ». Le Parlement « regrette également la mise en œuvre par des Etats membres de définitions restrictives du terme ‘famille’ dans le but de refuser une protection légale aux couples de même sexe et à leurs enfants ». La Lituanie, la Roumanie et la Hongrie (entre autres) ont récemment adopté des lois qui visent à restreindre la définition du terme « famille ». Sophie in’t Veld, l’auteur du rapport et vice-présidente de l’Intergroupe pour les droits LGBT au Parlement a déclaré : « Je ne sais pas ce qui, en Europe, nous permet de reconnaître le pain et le fromage comme du pain et du fromage lorsqu’ils passent des Pays-Bas à l’Allemagne et nous empêche de reconnaître l’amour comme de l’amour. Mes collègues conservateurs essaient de restreindre les droits des familles de même sexe dans leurs pays. La liberté de mouvement est un droit garanti par l’Union Européenne et l’égalité devra donc s’appliquer ». En ce qui concerne les crimes haineux, le Parlement a également enjoint la Commission « d’inclure les violences homophobes et transphobes ainsi que le harcèlement dans ses programmes d’action contre la violence à caractère sexiste ». Le Parlement a demandé au Danemark (qui assurera la prochaine présidence de l’Union) de débloquer la directive horizontale anti-discrimination proposée et a suggéré de développer une coopération renforcée entre les pays ayant adopté le mariage pour les personnes de même sexe afin de faciliter le mouvement des couples sur ces territoires ; une proposition défendue par Alternatives Européennes depuis des années (cliquez ici pour voir notre vidéo à ce sujet). Enfin l’appel à la création d’une carte européenne de l’égalité des sexes et de l’orientation sexuelle a été réitéré. Le même jour, le Parlement Européen adoptait une résolution s’assurant que les lois nationales relatives aux successions étaient respectées dans toute l’Union. Le Parlement a fait savoir que cette nouvelle loi européenne devait respecter les droits relatifs aux époux de même sexe et à leurs partenaires existants. Le rapport sur la juridiction, le droit applicable, la reconnaissance et la mise en œuvre du Certificat Européen de Succession, rédigé par le député européen Kurt Lechner, a été adopté à une large majorité par le Parlement aujourd’hui. Selon le considérant 24, les Etats membres qui ne reconnaissent pas les mariages entre personnes du même sexe ne seront pas autorisés à rejeter les décisions de succession légales dans les états membres le reconnaissant. Selon le texte, il ne devrait pas être possible pour les tribunaux et les autorités compétentes d’appliquer l’exception d’ordre public qui permet de rejeter la loi d’un autre état ; de refuser de reconnaître, d’accepter (selon les cas) ou d’appliquer une décision, un acte authentique ou une transaction provenant d’un autre Etat membre lorsque cette exception est contraire à la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux de l’Union et, en particulier, à l’article 21 qui interdit toute forme de discrimination. Au titre du présent règlement, un citoyen espagnol marié à un italien du même sexe par la loi espagnole peut hériter de ses possessions en Italie et ce bien que l’Italie ne reconnaisse pas le mariage entre personnes du même sexe. Le texte de loi a été proposé en utilisant la procédure législative ordinaire qui met le Parlement Européen sur un pied d’égalité avec les gouvernements nationaux. Le projet a été accepté lors de la première lecture d’un processus décisionnel qui en comprend trois. Toutefois, le Royaume-Uni, l’Irlande et le Danemark se sont désengagés de ce type de législation. (Source : communiqué de presse de l’Intergroupe pour les droits LGBT au Parlement Européen)
Progress towards harmonising LGBT Rights in Europe
This week has witnessed two important steps towards equality for LGBT people in Europe. On March 13, the European Parliament has adopted its annual report on equality between women and men in the European Union. The text looks at recent advances in gender equality, and includes several recommendations for LGBT rights. The report, drafted by Sophie in ‘t Veld MEP,acknowledges that “families in the European Union are diverse” and include “different-sex and same-sex parents […] who deserve equal protection under national and European Union law”.The Parliament also “regrets the implementation by some Member States of restrictive definitions of ‘family’ in order to deny legal protection to same-sex couples and their children”. Among other countries, Lithuania, Romania and Hungary recently adopted laws that seek to define ‘family’ in a discriminatory way. Sophie in ‘t Veld, author of the report and Vice-president of the LGBT Intergroup, explained: “I don’t know what it is about Europe that allows us to recognise bread as bread and cheese as cheese when they go from the Netherlands to Germany, but not love as love. Conservative colleagues keep trying to cage same-sex families in their own country. But freedom of movement is for everyone in the EU, and equality will prevail.” In the field of hate crime, the Parliament has also urged the Commission “to include homophobic and transphobic violence and harassment in its action programmes against gender-based violence”. Finally, the Parliament has called on the Danish Presidency of the EU to unblock the proposed horizontal anti-discrimination Directive; suggested enforced cooperation between countries who have same-sex unions to facilitate the free movement of couples within their territory, as European Alternatives has advocated for years (see our video on this topic here); and repeated its call for an EU Roadmap for Equality on Grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. On the same day, the European Parliament adopted a resolution to ensure national laws on successions are respected throughout the European Union. The Parliament said this new European law must respect the existing rights of same-sex spouses and partners.Drafted by Kurt Lechner MEP, the report on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and authentic instruments in matters of succession and the creation of a European Certificate of Succession was adopted with a wide majority in the European Parliament today. According to recital (24), Member States who do not recognise same-sex unions will not be allowed to reject succession decisions that are legal under Member States that do. The text explains that the courts or other competent authorities should not be able to apply the public-policy exception in order to set aside the law of another State or to refuse to recognise , or, as the case may be, accept, or enforce a decision, an authentic instrument, or a court settlementfrom another Member State when doing so would be contrary to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and in particular Article 21, which prohibits all forms of discrimination. Under this regulation, a Spanish citizen married to an Italian of the same-sex under Spanish law could inherit his or her possessions in Italy, even though Italy does not recognise same-sex marriage. The text is proposed according to the ordinary legislative procedure, in which the European Parliament has an equal say to European governments. This text was the European Parliament’s first reading out of potentially three readings. However, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark have opted out of this type of legislation. (Source: Press release from European Parliament’s Intergroup on LGBT rights)
Alternatives Européennes partenaire de la Queer Week à Paris
Malgré l'existence de nombreuses bases légales dans le droit communautaire censées garantir la non-discrimination en raison de l'orientation sexuelle, nombreux sont les pays de l'Union Européenne dans lesquels ils ne fait pas bon être lesbienne, gay, bisexuel, transsexuel, ou queer. Depuis plusieurs années, Alternatives Européennes s'engage pour la défense des droits des personnes LGBT au nom de l'égalité et des droits fondamentaux, à travers la publication d'articles et brochures, la réalisation de films de campagne (“It gets better“, écho européen au projet américain du même nom, et “Recognise our marriage now!“, pour la reconnaissance mutuelle des mariages et partenariats civils des personnes de même sexe à travers l'Union européenne). Nous avons également organisé une série de consultations citoyennes sur les droits des personnes LGBT (à Cluj-Napoca, Sofia, Bologne et Brighton) qui se poursuit en mai par une consultation à Paris pour la journée internationale contre l'homophobie. Pour contribuer ou recevoir plus d'information sur cet événement, vous pouvez nous contacter à e.dalibot(@)euroalter.com. Du lundi 11 mars au jeudi 14 mars, Alternatives Européennes est partenaire de la Queer Week, organisée pour la 4e édition par des étudiants de Sciences Po Paris. Elle fut la première semaine de réflexion sur les questions de genres et sexualités dans une université française. Au-delà de la réflexion, la Queer Week est un moment de débats et festivités autour des genres et sexualités. L’édition 2013 de la Queer Week porte sur la représentation Queer dans les arts, notamment la bande dessinée, le cinéma, la littérature et les arts scéniques. Projections, ateliers de danse, débats, conférences… : retrouvez le programme alléchant de cette semaine d’événements sur Facebook ou en cliquant ici.
Crimes contre lenvironnement
Par Rosen Dimov Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin Le terme de « crime contre l’environnement » au sens le plus large fait référence à tout dégât causé, délibérément ou non, par l’homme à la nature environnante. Il désigne donc des problèmes aussi divers que la protection des espèces en voie de disparition, la diminution de la couche d’ozone, la pollution des sols ou encore le trafic de déchets nucléaires. Le traité international le plus important sur la question est la Convention d’Aarhus des Nations Unies. Un des principaux outils de la lutte contre le crime environnemental organisé est l’accès à la justice, le troisième pilier de la convention. Cela signifie que l’UE va développer et renforcer un ensemble de mesures pour faire face aux crimes contre l’environnement qui permettront aux citoyens ou à des communautés de demander justice, en particulier pour les crimes dont l’étendue est transnationale. Après que chaque membre a adopté la Convention d’Aarhus, l’UE, en tant qu’institution, a approuvé le traité, permettant ainsi aux personnes physiques (les citoyens de l’UE) mais aussi aux personnes morales de faire appel à la justice pour des affaires de crimes contre l’environnement. Un effet suspensif (c.à.d. une mesure qui fait cesser le crime ou la source des dégâts environnementaux) ainsi que des ordonnances de référé (c.à.d. des sanctions provisoires) peuvent être appliqués en réparation pour la partie lésée. Cependant, les réseaux plus complexes d’organisations criminelles impliquées dans des activités nuisibles à l’environnement, aujourd’hui appelées écomafias, conservent une grande marge de manœuvre. Ce phénomène reste peu connu et les pouvoirs de l’UE pour le combattre sont encore limités. Mais tandis que les mafias ont rapidement appris à profiter pleinement du marché commun européen, l’UE et la société civile peinent toujours à trouver une approche collective pour lutter contre le crime organisé, surtout en ce qui concerne la gestion des déchets et des déchets toxiques en particulier. L’UE a fait quelques progrès en ce sens mais cela reste insuffisant. En janvier 2003, le Conseil a adopté une décision-cadre relative à la protection de l’environnement par le droit pénal. En 2007, la Cour de justice a affirmé que la Commission avait le droit de réclamer des sanctions pénales en cas de dégâts causés à l’environnement, mais elle a aussi rappelé qu’il n’était en revanche pas du ressort de la Commission de déterminer le type et le niveau de ces sanctions. Harmoniser le droit pénal en Europe serait une première étape mais il faut aller plus loin encore. Puisque l’environnement et ses cycles n’ont pas de frontières, les effets de la pollution par les activités humaines constituent bien un phénomène transnational. Les exemples sont nombreux. Le scandale de la mozzarella qui a éclaté en Europe en 2007 a été provoqué par les écomafias. Les déchets toxiques industriels que les Camorra enterraient en Campanie depuis des dizaines d’années avaient contaminés l’herbe et par conséquent le lait des vaches. Des tonnes de mozzarella consommées en Europe avaient dû être retirées du marché. La gestion des déchets est un problème auquel toutes les autorités locales et nationales doivent faire face. Un large réseau d’écomafias agissant à travers toute l’Europe ont tiré profit du marché unique et de l’accord de Schengen pour faire du traitement des déchets une activité communautariste. Les organisations criminelles locales trouvent des décharges légales et illégales où se débarrasser des déchets après avoir soudoyé ou menacé les fonctionnaires locaux. Ce réseau étendu déplace les déchets de pays en pays, du Nord vers le Sud et de l’Ouest vers l’Est. Alors que les autorités nationales hésitent ou se montrent réticentes à respecter l’obligation de poursuivre les responsables de ces crimes, conformément à la modeste législation de l’UE sur l’environnement, l’écomafia, elle, est déjà devenue un phénomène transnational. Étant donné que les États membres ne parviennent pas à maîtriser seuls le crime environnemental organisé et qu’ils ne sont pas disposés à céder une plus grande part de leur souveraineté nationale aux institutions européennes, les résultats de ce combat sont mitigés. Une première étape serait d’utiliser les outils existants de façon efficace. L’importance et l’efficacité des instruments de l’UE dans le domaine du droit pénal, tels que la Convention relative à l’entraide judiciaire en matière pénale entre les États membres de l’Union Européenne, le Mandat d’arrêt européen ou la décision-cadre relative aux décisions de confiscation, pourraient s’étendre de façon bien plus large aux crimes contre l’environnement. De même, les agences de l’UE comme Eurojust, Europol et l’éventuel parquet européen pourraient accorder une plus grande attention aux méfaits liés à l’environnement dans leur travail. La coopération entre les États membres devrait aussi être encouragée. Pour le moment, la représentation actuelle que l’on peut se faire des crimes contre l’environnement en Europe rappelle la parabole que l’esprit philosophe de Rousseau donnait dans son saisissant Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (1754), où les États membres de l’UE seraient les chasseurs de cerf contemporains. « S'agissait-il de prendre un cerf, chacun sentait bien qu'il devait pour cela garder fidèlement son poste; mais si un lièvre venait à passer à la portée de l'un d'eux, il ne faut pas douter qu'il ne le poursuivît sans scrupule, et qu'ayant atteint sa proie il ne se souciât fort peu de faire manquer la leur à ses compagnons. » Pour en apprendre plus à ce sujet, vous pouvez vous reporter aux articles et vidéos suivantes : Anesi, C., Rubino, G. and Reuter D. (2011) Toxic Europe : Documentaire sur les mécanismes et les flux du trafic illégal de déchets dangereux à travers l’Europe. Bandes-annonces disponibles ici et là (en anglais). GreenPeace (2000) A fifteen year toxic scandal: Italian Hazardous Waste in Sinop and Samsun, Turkey. McCarthy, M. et Philips, J. (2008) Italy's toxic waste crisis, the Mafia – and the scandal of Europe's mozzarella, The Independent. Disponible ici (en anglais). Colombo, F. (2011) Mafia dominates garbage industry, Tierramerica. Disponible ici (en anglais). Mafia Today (2011) Mafia earning €20bn from dumping toxic waste. Disponible ici (en anglais). Ciotti, S. (2008) The dangerous and toxic waste management…
Environmental crimes
Environmental crimes in the broadest sense refer to any man-made harm (deliberate or careless act) caused to the surrounding nature. This includes diverse issues such as protection of endangered species, ozone layer depletion, earth and soil pollution and smuggling of nuclear materials. The most important international treaty on these matters is the Aarhus Convention of the United Nations.
Quest-ce quun crime contre lenvironnement ?
Par Cecilia Anesi et Giulio Rubino Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin Le concept de « crime contre l’environnement » englobe tout un ensemble d’infractions pénales, allant de l’abandon au trafic de déchets, en passant par le trafic d’animaux et l’exploitation non règlementée des forêts. Toutes ces infractions sont rangées sous la même étiquette et, même si la gravité du crime varie, il arrive trop souvent qu’aucune différence ne soit faite entre ces comportements délictuels. L’abandon de déchets est sans aucun doute une mauvaise habitude et le trafic d’animaux est un commerce déplorable, mais comparés aux dégâts terribles et aux profits financiers considérables occasionnés par des pratiques telles que le trafic de déchets ou, de façon plus générale, par l’échec des gouvernements à imposer des accords de protection aux industries dans le monde, il faut de toute évidence faire certaines distinctions. Le trafic de déchets, en particulier, est devenu au cours des vingt dernières années une des activités les plus lucratives pour les organisations criminelles. En Italie, le trafic de déchets a remplacé le trafic de drogue en devenant la première source de revenu pour la Mafia. Après avoir pris le contrôle des compagnies de transport et des territoires, la Mafia est parvenue à proposer aux entreprises dans le besoin une façon peu coûteuse de se débarrasser de leurs déchets. D’après Legambiente, l’une des plus importantes organisations environnementales en Italie, le bénéfice de la Mafia s’élèverait à 20 milliards d’euros par an. En plus d’être nocif pour l’environnement et la santé publique, le trafic de déchets représente un réel danger pour notre système économique. Les conséquences de ce phénomène sont multiples : perte de compétitivité pour les entreprises respectueuses de la loi qui paient le prix réel pour l’enlèvement de leurs déchets ; augmentation des dépenses de santé publique ; détérioration irréversible de ressources précieuses et infiltration accrue de la Mafia dans le marché légal et dans toutes les couches de la société. Plus les entreprises font appel aux services des Mafias – le problème de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises devrait d’ailleurs être étudié – plus les Mafias se renforcent et s’enracinent dans la société. De fait, ils ont dû changer radicalement leur image, laissant de côté le vieux stéréotype « chapeau et fusil », pour devenir des criminels en col blanc, des hommes d’affaire fiables, de riches entrepreneurs. Ce sont en fait les seuls apporteurs d’affaires pourvus de liquidités, surtout en ces temps de crise financière. Ainsi, les écarts financiers deviennent un aspect qu’il faut absolument garder à l’esprit lorsque nous comparons les différents crimes contre l’environnement. Ce n’est pas le montant du profit en lui-même qui importe mais plutôt l’information que nous pouvons tirer de l’aspect financier du crime. Plus le bénéfice est important, plus l’activité et le crime le sont et, par conséquent, plus graves sont les dégâts causés à l’environnement. Cela nous mène à une autre réflexion capitale : tandis que nous, en tant que société, n’avons pas besoin du trafic d’animaux, notre système de production, lui, semble avoir besoin du trafic de déchets, au moins en termes de compétitivité. Alors qu’un travail efficace des forces de polices pourrait mettre fin au premier délit, il serait nécessaire de repenser en grande partie notre système économique si nous voulions enrayer le second. Il existe pourtant une particularité qui lie peut-être toutes ces formes de crimes contre l’environnement : ils sont associés à un genre de criminalité qui est rarement dénoncé. Lorsque nous l’avons interviewé pour le documentaire « Toxic Europe », Frans Geysels, chef du service environnement de la police fédérale belge et responsable du projet Augias pour Interpol, l’a expliqué ainsi : « C’est un type de crime que nous, la police, devons rechercher. Si nous n’avons pas la volonté de le faire, nous ne le trouverons pas. » En général, le gravité de ce genre de crimes est sous-estimée et souvent, leurs effets ne sont visibles que des années plus tard. C’est donc chose facile pour les organisations criminelles ou les entreprises de polluer l’environnement sans que nous nous en apercevions. De fait, des entreprises européennes et nord-américaines s’arrangent avec les usines des pays en développement pour produire des biens au mépris de l’environnement et ce, sans risque pour elles puisqu’aucun pays du tiers-monde n’a de législation adéquate en matière d’environnement. La Biélorussie illustre bien cette situation puisque le pays a récemment ouvert une nouvelle zone de développement industriel où les entreprises étrangères peuvent s’installer et produire sans la moindre limite ou surveillance de la pollution locale. Il va sans dire que les entreprises économisent beaucoup d’argent grâce à cette pratique déplorable mais, malheureusement, légale. Il faut donc concevoir une autre stratégie pour empêcher les crimes contre l’environnement, puisque ce qui se passe d’un côté de la planète finira par se répercuter de l’autre côté. Le système criminel mondial qui se livre à des crimes contre l’environnement est composé à la fois du monde financier et des Mafias. Plus que jamais, la société civile doit unir ses forces pour s’y opposer à l’échelle mondiale.
What are environmental crimes?
Environmental Crime’ is a concept that relates to a broad range of criminal offences. From littering to waste trafficking, from wildlife smuggling to unregulated logging. Several offences fall under a same label, and although the gravity of crime changes, too often different criminal behaviours are put on the same line.
Les membres d’Alternatives Européennes ont élu leurs représentants
À l’issue de cette semaine consacrée aux élections transnationales en ligne, les membres d’Alternatives Européennes ont élu deux nouvelles représentantes au sein du conseil d’administration : Louise Métrich et Monica Marquez. Félicitations aux deux élues, ainsi qu’aux autres candidates pour leur implication et contribution à ces élections, ainsi que pour leurs idées pour faire avancer l’organisation ! Louise Métrich et Monica Marquez Selon notre Constitution, qui a été élaborée en commun par les membres et établit la structure de l’organisation, « les représentants des membres garantissent le rôle des membres comme acteur central dans les processus de prise de décision. Ils sont en charge d’assurer une communication interne efficace concernant les activités et positions d’Alternatives Européennes, et d’améliorer les structures participatives en ligne et hors ligne. Ils travaillent à l’extension du réseau des membres, et les représentent publiquement. » Vous trouverez ci-dessous un message des nouvelles représentantes : Chers membres d’Alternatives Européennes, Tout d’abord, merci à tous pour votre participation aux élections, pour votre soutien et votre confiance, et pour nous donner la chance de faire partie des relais de l’action. Laissez-nous vous donner un bref aperçu des principaux points que nous souhaitons ajouter au plan d’action des représentants des membres, afin d’atteindre nos objectifs communs. Notre liste comprend nos propositions respectives, mais nous avons également essayé de reprendre des idées de tous les autres candidats : Mettre en place des forums de discussion traitant de questions de logistique et de contenu. Nous souhaitons pour cela passer en revue les moyens de le faire, et essayer de trouver de nouveaux logiciels qui pourraient améliorer ce que nous avons déjà. Créer/réorganiser une base de données commune avec des documents utiles, des liens, etc. Elaborer un plan d’action pour collaborer plus étroitement encore avec les différents membres (coordinateurs locaux, membres actifs, membres passifs, membres potentiels). Renforcer l’importance des questions consacrées aux membres dans l’agenda des réunions du conseil d’administration. Améliorer nos stratégies de promotion afin d’accroître l’importance de la participation interne aux projets et d’être plus attractifs pour les nouveaux membres. Nous pensons que travailler avec vous sera un défi stimulant et enrichissant. Nous avons une année entière devant nous, avec de nombreux événements passionnants en perspective, comme le Festival ! Tous les candidats ont déjà fait part de leurs idées pour améliorer le fonctionnement d’Alternatives Européennes du point de vue des membres, et nous sommes persuadées que beaucoup d’autres membres ont également des idées intéressantes à partager. C’est pourquoi nous vous invitons tous à nous écrire, à nous les représentants, afin de partager vos idées et poser vos questions, aussi souvent que vous en avez besoin ou envie ! Nous attendons avec impatience de recevoir vos commentaires et suggestions 🙂 Vous pouvez contacter Louise et Monica à l’adresse suivante : members@euroalter.com.
Members of European Alternatives elected their representatives
Following a week of online transnational elections, members of European Alternatives have elected two new representatives on the Board: Louise Métrichand Monica Marquez. Congratulations to them but also to the other candidates for their involvement and contributions to the elections and for their ideas to move the organisation forward! Louise Métrich and Monica Marquez According to our Constitution, which was drafted and agreed upon by members and which sets up the structure of the organisation, “members’ representatives are responsible for ensuring the role of the Membership as a central actor and decision-maker by ensuring efficient internal communication of activities and positions of European Alternatives, improving online and offline participatory structures, and working to expand the membership and represent it publicly.”Please find below a message from the new members’ representatives (MR): Dear fellow members, First of all, many thanks to all of you for your participation in the elections, for your support and trust, and for giving us this great opportunity to be part of the action bridges. Let us share with you a short sight of the main points we would like to enclose in the MR working plan, in order to accomplish our joint outlines. We have included not only our respective proposals but also tried to include the ideas from all other MR candidates: Implement open discussion forums for both, content and logistical issues. For this first we would like to make a review of the way it´s being done and try to find some new software that may improve what we have. Create/reorganize a common open database with useful documents, links, etc. Make an action plan to collaborate closer with the diverse kinds of members (local coordinators, active members, passive members, potential members). Strengthen the members issues in the board meetings agenda. Improve our promotion strategies to have more internal participation in the projects and also be more attractive for new members We believe it will be a very exciting and enriching challenge to work with all of us. We have a full year ahead of us, with many exciting things awaiting us, such as the Festival! All candidates have already shared many ideas on how to improve the functionning of EA from the perspective of the members, and we are sure that many other members have also great ideas to share. This is why we invite all of you to write us, the MR, to share your ideas and questions, as often as you need and feel like! We are looking forward to all your comments and suggestions 🙂 You can contact Louise and Monica at members@euroalter.com.
I membri di Alternative Europee hanno eletto le loro rappresentanti
Tradotto da Marta Molino Dopo una settimana di elezioni transnazionali online, i membri di Alternative Europee hanno eletto le loro due nuove rappresentanti presso il Consiglio: Louise Métriche Monica Marquez. Complimenti a loro e alle altre candidate per l’impegno e il contributo alle elezioni e per le idee volte al rinnovamento dell’organizzazione! Louise Métrich and Monica Marquez Secondo quanto previsto dalla nostra Costituzione, che è stata scritta e approvata dai membri e che stabilisce la struttura dell’organizzazione, “I rappresentanti dei membri hanno la responsabilità di rendere centrale e decisiva l'Adesione all’organizzazione, garantendo una comunicazione interna efficace delle attività e delle posizioni di Alternative Europee, migliorando le strutture partecipative online e offline e lavorando al fine di estendere l'adesione e rappresentarla pubblicamente”. Di seguito, un messaggio delle due nuove rappresentanti dei membri: Cari amici membri, innanzitutto, grazie infinite a tutti voi per la vostra partecipazione alle elezioni, il vostro supporto e la vostra fiducia, ma anche per averci dato l’opportunità unica di divenire il tassello di una vera e propria azione di collegamento. Vorremmo condividere con voi un breve abbozzo dei punti principali che intendiamo inserire nel piano di lavoro dei rappresentanti dei membri, delineando quindi delle linee guida comuni. Non abbiamo soltanto incluso le nostre rispettive proposte, ma abbiamo anche provato a fare riferimento alle idee delle altre candidate alla rappresentanza: Migliorare i forum di discussione aperta sia dal punto di vista del contenuto che per quanto riguarda le questioni logistiche. A questo proposito, vorremmo rivedere le modalità attuali di svolgimento e tentare di trovare un nuovo software che possa migliorare il lavoro svolto. Creare/riorganizzare un database aperto e in comune, con documenti utili, link, ecc. Formulare un piano d’azione per collaborare più a stretto contatto con i diversi tipi di membri (coordinatori locali, membri attivi, membri passivi, potenziali membri). Dare alle istanze dei membri una posizione centrale nell’ordine del giorno delle riunioni del Consiglio. Migliorare le nostre strategie di promozione per ottenere una maggiore partecipazione dai progetti dall’interno, ma anche per attirare nuovi membri. Siamo sicure che lavorare tutti insieme sarà una sfida molto appassionante e arricchente. Abbiamo un anno intero davanti a noi, pieno di cose bellissime, come il Festival! Tutte le candidate hanno già condiviso numerose idee sui possibili modi in cui migliorare il funzionamento di AE partendo dalla prospettiva dei membri, e confidiamo nel fatto che molti altri membri avranno altre buone idee da condividere. Per questo motivo, invitiamo tutti voi a scrivere a noi, vostre rappresentanti, e a condividere le vostre idee e domande tutte le volte che vorrete! Saremo felici di ricevere i vostri commenti e suggerimenti 🙂 Per contattare Louise e Monica, scrivete a: members@euroalter.com.
EU Conference on Migrants’ Rights and Free Movement of Citizens
Thank you! The LasciateCIEntrare Campaign, European Alternatives and the local organising committee would like to thank all participants, speakers, MEPs, institutions, sponsors, partner organisations involved and volunteers for helping to make “The Routinisation of Administrative Detention of Migrants and Free Movement of Citizens: Time to Explore Alternatives” conference held yesterday in Brussels, European Parliament, such a success. In the context of a renewed concern and involvement by citizens across Europe in the issue of migrants’ rights, the review of the “Returns Directive” as well as the run-up to the European Elections, the conference brought together a very diverse group of activists, journalists, legal experts, NGOs representatives as well as representatives of national governments, and researchers from across the world who presented, discussed, and exchanged a broad range of ideas on topics related to the detention of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees and its alternatives. Post-Conference Information: The final agenda and meeting materials Event concept Conference Flier Press Review Highlights: Welcome by Silvia Costa (S&D), Marie-Christine Vergiat (GUE NGL), Hélène Flautre (Greens/EFA), Members of the European Parliament Opening and keynote from Dr. Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, Minister for Integration, Italy Session 1: “The administrative detention of migrants: Normative and critical perspectives on European policies” with Costanza Hermanin (Open Society Foundations) and Jerome Phelps (Detention Action, IDC Regional Representative for Western Europe); chair: Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives). Session 2: “The right of access to detention centres in Europe: The experience of citizens campaigns in Europe” with Damienne Martin (CIRÉ / Open Access Now), Gabriella Guido (LasciateCIEntrare Campaign) and Mikel Araguás Cerezo (Federación Andalucía Acoge / PICUM / Migreurop); chair: Ségolène Pruvot (European Alternatives / Alternatives Européennes). Session 3: “Beyond Access: The active role of civil society in contrasting detention and proposing solutions and campaigns for a new European migration policy” with Philip Amaral (Jesuit Refugee Service), Ulrich Stege (International University College of Turin / ASGI – Immigration Law Studies Association), Pietro Soldini (CGIL – Italian General Confederation of Labour / LasciateCIEntrare), Conny Reuter (SOLIDAR); chair: Niccolo Milanese (European Alternatives). Social Media: Storify STORY with embedded videos and tweets Photo gallery available on our Facebook Page / Event Page More info: If you wish to request images for editorial usage, videos and other press related resources, please send an email direct to our Press Office: press@euroalter.com. We are also happy to answer any questions you may have about the ongoing campaigns / migration area proposals. In this case, please write to: rome@euroalter.com. If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact: europa@lasciatecientrare.it.
European Alternatives recruits for Transeuropa Festival!
You support European Alternatives and believe in its objectives and mission? There are at the moment great opportunities to join our transnational experience and contribute to the success of TRANSEUROPA Festival 2013. TRANSEUROPA Festival is the annual festival of arts, culture and politics taking place simultaneously in many European Cities every year. It is organised by volunteers all around Europe, supported by European Alternatives Team. This’ year the Festival will invite all participants to IMAGINE, DEMAND and ENACT an Alternative Europe. We are offering three positions: Festival communication officer, foreseen as full time position, based in Paris, from July until Mid-November Festival coordination assistant, foreseen as full time position, based in Paris preferably , from July until Mid-November Festival Public Relations officer, part-time, free-lance, based in Europe, from September until Mid-November If you are interested, please send us your CV and a motivation letter at transeuropafestival@euroalter.com before the 8th of July for Festival Communication Officer and for Festival coordination assistant and before the 15th of July for Public Relations officer. More detailed description of all positions available below. Festival Coordination assistant You will be responsible for coordinating the EA Local Groups and coordinating the programme of TRANSEUROPA Festival. You will be required to have strong project management skills. The dates of the festival are 5th of October – 27th of October. A peak of workload is to be expected in this period. Employment is offered for 5 months from July 1st until November 30. You will be working under the lead of the festival coordinator. You will be working closely with the communication officer, the part time communication officer based in Rome and at the time of the festival with a part time public relations responsible. You would be based in Paris (preferably) or Rome. This is foreseen as a full time position. Remuneration offered is 7500 euros NET (after-tax) for 5 months (freelance contract). Tasks Ensure regular contact with the local groups Support Local Groups in their setting up of the Festival programme Building partnerships with NGOs, cultural and artistic actors Follow existing partnership and provide regular updates to funders and partners Assist the Festival coordinator in all tasks required Follow expenditures Ensure logistics are on track Follow up logistics for the festival and festival preparation meetings (notably in Paris in September 2013) Person: Similar experiences Initiative Flexibility Capacity to work with volunteers Capacity to work with people located in offices abroad Flexibility of working times Fluency in English, good knowledge of other European languages (notably French, Italian, German) would be an asset Project management track record Festival Communication officer You will be responsible of defining and implementing the communication strategy around TRANSEUROPA Festival The dates of the festival are 5th of October – 27th of October. You would be based in Paris (preferably) or Rome. You will be working under the lead of the festival coordinator. You will be working closely with the part time communication officer based in Rome and at the time of the festival with a part time public relations responsible. This is foreseen as a full time position, from July until End of November 2013. Remuneration offered is 7500 euros NET (after tax) for 5 months (freelance contract). Tasks Improve existing communication plan and implement the communication plan Overview and follow the production of the festival communication tools : programme, cities programme, catalogue Lead the work of the graphic designers about the festival communication Build Media partnerships at the European level for the festival Accompany the cities local group and ensure they receive all communication material on time for the festival Collect the relevant information from the festival cities local groups of volunteers Keep up to date the content on the Festival of European Alternatives website and of Transeuropa Festival website Ensure the regularity of communications on social media for Transeuropa Festival Keep up to date the contact list for the Festival using CiviCRM* Organise dissemination and information events and follow up local groups for the organisation of such events in their cities Write briefs and presentations for targeted audiences, communication to key targeted audiences Person: Qualification and/or experience in communication Similar experiences of cultural events communications welcome Experience in working with other offices abroad would be an asset Fluent in English and French. Italian would be a strong asset. Other European languages would also be an asset Public Relations You will be responsible for press relations about the festival around the festival period. You will be working closely with the festival coordinator and communication responsible. Your role will be to present the festival to the press, notably in Brussels and countries such as France, Italy and Germany. You will work preferably as a freelance for the equivalent of two days a week between September and November 15. Remuneration offered is calculated pro-rata based on agreed number of work-days with an indicative full-time equivalent of €1600 NET / month. Your role: Redaction of a press pack Overview the translation process of the press pack with EA offices Contacts the press to introduce the festival and arrange interviews with key invitees of the festival with the press and with European Alternatives Directors with the press Keep up to date a contacts database of the press Keep in touch with the press responsible in each European Alternatives Local Group and provide them with the relevant material to be in contact with the press Track and collect press clippings Write a report of press coverage You Good knowledge of European media and press Good knowledge of the press Availability on the phone and good communication skills Languages: English, French, Italian. German would be an asset
Alternatives Européennes recrute pour le Festival Transeuropa !
Vous soutenez Alternatives Européennes et croyez en nos objectifs et en notre mission ? En ce moment, c’est l’occasion rêvée pour vous de rejoindre une expérience transnationale et de contribuer au succès du Festival TRANSEUROPA 2013. Le Festival TRANSEUROPA est un festival annuel d’art, de culture et de politique, organisé par une équipe de bénévoles (soutenue par Alternatives Européennes) à travers l’Europe, et qui se déroule cette année simultanément dans de nombreuses villes européennes. En 2013, le festival invite tous les participants à IMAGINER, EXIGER et CONSTRUIRE une autre Europe. Pour cette occasion, nous offrons trois postes : Assistant(e) de coordination : poste à plein temps, basé de préférence à Paris, de juillet à mi-novembre ; Chargé(e) de communication : poste à plein temps, basé à Paris, de juillet à mi-novembre ; Attaché(e) de presse : poste à temps partiel, en free-lance, basé en Europe, de septembre à mi-novembre. Si vous êtes intéressé(e), merci d’envoyer votre CV et lettre de motivation à l’adresse suivante : transeuropafestival@euroalter.com, avant le 8 juillet pour les postes de chargé(e) de communication et d’assistant(e) de coordination ou avant le 15 juillet pour le poste d’attaché(e) de presse. Voir ci-dessous pour plus d’informations sur les différents postes. Assisant(e) de coordination : Vous êtes chargé(e) de la coordination des activités des différents groupes locaux d’Alternatives Européennes et du programme du Festival TRANSEUROPA. Bonne capacité de gestion de projets exigée. Le festival aura lieu du 5 au 27 octobre. Pendant cette période, la charge de travail sera particulièrement importante. CDD de 5 mois, du 1° juillet au 30 novembre. Vous travaillez sous la direction du coordinateur du festival, en proche collaboration avec le chargé de communication et le chargé de communication à temps partiel basé à Rome, ainsi qu’avec un(e) attaché(e) de presse à temps partiel (pour la durée du festival). Poste à plein temps basé de préférence à Paris, éventuellement Rome. Rémunération : 7500 euros pour 5 mois (contrat freelance). Missions : Suivi régulier des groupes locaux Soutien des groupes locaux dans la préparation du programme du Festival Développement de partenariats avec des ONG et des associations artistiques et culturelles Suivi des partenariats existants et mise au point régulière auprès des sponsors et des partenaires Assistance du coordinateur du Festival, selon ses besoins Suivi des dépenses Vérification du bon fonctionnement logistique Suivi logistique pour le festival et les réunions de préparation (notamment à Paris en septembre 2013) Profil : Expérience dans un poste similaire Esprit d’initiative Bonne capacité d’adaptation Capacité de travailler avec des bénévoles Capacité de travailler avec des collaborateurs basés à l’étranger Flexibilité des horaires de travail Langues : anglais courant exigé ; une bonne maîtrise d’autres langues européennes (notamment le français, l’italien ou l’allemand) serait un atout De bonnes références en gestion de projet Chargé(e) de communication : Vous êtes chargé(e) de définir et d’implémenter la stratégie de communication du Festival TRANSEUROPA. Le festival aura lieu du 5 au 27 octobre. Poste basé de préférence à Paris, éventuellement Rome. Vous travaillez sous la direction du coordinateur du festival et en proche collaboration avec le chargé de communication à temps partiel basé à Rome, ainsi qu’avec un attaché de presse à temps partiel (pour la durée du festival). Poste à plein temps, de début juillet à fin novembre 2013. Rémunération : 7500 euros pour 5 mois (contrat freelance). Missions : Amélioration et implémentation de la stratégie de communication du festival Revue et suivi de la production des outils de communication du festival : programme général, programme pour chaque ville, catalogue Supervision du travail des graphistes chargés de la communication autour du festival Développement de partenariats entre médias au niveau européen autour du festival Accompagnement des groupes locaux dans chaque ville afin de s’assurer qu’ils reçoivent tous les supports de communication à temps pour le festival Recueil d’informations auprès des groupes bénévoles locaux dans les villes du festival Mise à jour du contenu des sites Internet du Festival des Alternatives Européennes et du Festival Transeuropa Assurer une communication régulière à-propos du festival Transeuropa sur les réseaux sociaux Mise à jour de la liste de contacts du Festival, avec CiviCRM (programme informatique open source) Organisation de campagnes de diffusion et d’information et suivi des groupes locaux pour l’organisation de telles campagnes dans leur ville Rédaction de résumés et de présentations visant différents publics, communication auprès de secteurs-clé Profil : Diplôme et/ou expérience en communication Une expérience sur un poste similaire (communication pour un événement culturel) serait la bienvenue Une expérience professionnelle en collaboration avec des bases situées à l’étranger serait un atout Langues : anglais et français courant exigés ; l’italien serait un grand atout, d’autres langues européennes seraient également un atout Attaché(e) de presse : Vous êtes chargé(e) des relations avec la presse pour le festival, au cours de la période entourant celui-ci. Vous travaillez en proche collaboration avec le coordinateur du festival et le chargé de communication. Votre rôle est de présenter le festival à la presse, notamment à Bruxelles, en France, en Italie et en Allemagne. Vous travaillez de préférence en freelance. Votre temps de travail est équivalent à deux jours par semaine, du 15 septembre au 15 novembre. Missions : Rédaction d’un dossier de presse Supervision du processus de traduction du dossier de presse par les différentes bases d’Alternatives Européennes Relations avec la presse : présentation du festival, prise de rendez-vous pour des interviews avec les personnalités présentes et les directeurs d’Alternatives Européennes Mise à jour d’une base de données de contacts dans la presse Relations avec les attachés de presse des groupes locaux d’Alternatives Européennes, auxquels vous fournirez les ressources dont ils auront besoin Collection de coupures de presse Rédaction d’un rapport sur la couverture médiatique du festival Profil : Bonne connaissance des médias et de la presse européenne Bonne connaissance de la presse Disponibilité téléphonique et bonne capacité de communication Langues : anglais, français et italien exigés. L’allemand serait un atout
Creating imaginary characters
We know that identifying different types of unmet needs and capabilities can make use of customer segmentation techniques. But how about combining the data to reveal new needs & patterns, could these help create personas or characters people could relate to? People naturally look for characters they can identify with. They have the power to personalize the story and deepen our connection with a particular issue. The battle of the story is often the battle over who gets to speak for the characters that are the most sympathetic. But the people most affected by an issue get to speak for themselves? This is why social reporting is so important, not only because it enables everyone to be able to develop their journalistic skills without needing to spend big money on equipment or having the old boys networks to get an internship at a newsdesk, but because if done well, makes it easier for those affected to have a voice and report on their own lives. When the people affected by an issue are cast as characters by those in power, the fight often becomes a contest to assert who the people really affected are, and which side they are on. None more so than during the London riots – from local businesses to the tourism industry, through to the rioters themselves. But what about putting a more positive spin on creative disruptors as characters? It is shown that people who display eccentric behaviours defy all the stereotypes assigned to them – they are less likely to need to visit the doctor and are happier. “Eccentrics tend to be optimistic people with a highly developed, mischievous sense of humour, childlike curiosity and a drive to make the world a better place.” From the Kindness Offensive (@kindoffensive) to Militant Optimists (@davidbarrie), could we apply these eccentric behaviours to community organisers to use creative techniques to bring communities together? We’re looking to see how we could create imaginary characters to help better design a festival. In Japan they use manga characters (@hannahfearn) as a way to invest in local identities, what characters would best embody your local area? That’s why we’ve developed different imaginary characters from Invisible Citizens toMilitant Optimists via Zombie Generation and Lifestyle Hackers, which we’ll reveal during the Festival on 12-20th October. That’s why we want to introduce the work that @thisiskyramaya through her research on the @misfiteconomy. Kyra tells the story of how in an era where autocracy was the way society and the economy was organising, pirates emancipated themselves from the merchant sailors to create new forms of democracy where “every pirate had a say in how that ship should be run” and even had social insurance in case they got ill. As she says, sometimes you’ve got to look to your dark side to better understand yourself, the world you live in and the seeds of creativity. Maybe through having to cope with uncertain and precarious situations, can we create new ways of making a living like the pirates did?
Create a fictional feed
From the first 100 days of Barack Obama in office to having an online chat with your boss, to just about every historical moment on this planet, fictional Facebook feeds are a fun way to tell stories. After telling you about imaginary characters, for our latest challenge, we would like you to create a fictional feed featuring European leaders trying to solve the crisis. It can be creating a new democratic method – like liquid gold democracy – or quantitative easing through printing chocolate euros – or regularising birds who’ve migrated illegally across borders. Make it as fun as possible! We’ll publish the best feeds on this website. If you want to check out our other challenges, you can share your story, host a workshop, observe your neighbourhood, write a poem, imagine a day in the life of our imaginary characters…and perhaps most importantly, join our festival team! We’ll even give you a tip to make it easier, through this Facebook Wall Creator.
Europe after Europe: the other Europe in waiting
Niccolo Milanese This text was originally published on Opendemocracy.net as part of their ‘Can Europe Make It?’ Series There is a tendency when speaking of ‘things European’ to speak almost exclusively in what we could call ‘vertical’ terms, as if the ‘question’ of Europe is all about the formal institutions – the parliament, the Commission etc. – the agreements amongst member states, or even the relationship between the citizens and the institutions. This tendency is particularly strong in the United Kingdom, where ‘the European question’ is indeed being boiled down to a simple ‘in or out?’ But it is present in all European countries and is in part the inevitable consequence of the European Union itself being very young and continuously under construction. We could also say that it is the consequence, in some ways, of the idea of Europe itself being captured by the European Union and its institutions in their present form. As important as the ‘vertical’ questions about Europe are, there are also a set of arguably more important questions which could be called ‘horizontal’ : how do Europeans relate to one another, as individuals and as groups? How do they treat each other? How do they express solidarity or conflict? How do they do things together? Refocusing on these questions seems to me an important part of constructing a Europe from below, or an attempt at ‘refoundation’. We know that the formal institutions and elected leaders have a very great influence in determining the way people relate to one another: if leaders from the North propagate the idea that people in the South of Europe are inefficient and lazy, for example, or that a ‘moral’ fault has been committed in the south that needs to be ‘punished’ by austerity, and indeed if the policies of the European Union become based on this kind of premise, then it is of course more likely that people in the North of Europe will think this way of people in the South, and that social relations will change in this direction. But the attitudes and behaviours of people are thankfully not totally determined by leaders or institutions, and the changes in public attitudes induced by public policies are not unidirectional. Without speaking of civil disobedience, there are alternative forms of social organisation which can be promoted which effectively resist the ‘logic’ of both the market and also the institutions. Many recent examples are well known, from people’s supermarkets to bitcoin to occupied theatres. In the context of the economic crisis, many of the most discussed of such initiatives are understandably focussed on alternative economies. We do not yet have many examples of such initiatives on a European scale, or with Europe as a focus, even if they have been emerging, notably with regard to solidarity with migrant populations. Such initiatives arguably would have a tough task: they would challenge not only dominant opinion, but also institutional logics as profound as the ordering of our societies according to the form of nation states. They would have on their side the increasingly ‘transnational’ dimension of our lives, social relations and outlooks, which now largely go beyond anything that could be circumscribed in one national polity. Such initiatives would not necessarily be making political demands directed towards formal institutions of democracy, but rather enacting new ways of being European. The creation of such initiatives seems to me essential for the development of an alternative Europe. Historically, the left in Europe has been built through such initiatives as cooperatives, working men’s clubs, and trade unions. These are some of the ways that the values of solidarity, for example, have been anchored, protected and promoted in our social fabric. If we want to build a European left, it is naïve to think it can or will be done by conquering power in the institutions. It will be done through a decade-long process of creating alternative social institutions. Holding power in the institutions may be a desirable thing to facilitate this social process – but it would be power in the long-term service of the people, as it were, and not the other way around. As Bo Strath and many others have argued, the reinforcing and the politicisation of the European Parliament are essential components of creating a functioning European public sphere which allows for the feedback between representatives and represented to correctly function. At the moment we have a situation where the national public spheres in Europe reinforce national divergence and competition through a well-established feedback loop between national public opinion and national leaders, which is rushing us towards forms of nationalist populism. A European Parliament which found its place in the institutional system of Europe would interrupt this national feedback loop by introducing a European perspective focussed on the European common good. But a functioning European Parliament in this sense cannot be created by fiat. Nor can genuinely transeuropean political parties, which would incarnate competing visions of the European common good, be created by the elites or by recomposing national political parties into ‘groups’ at the European level: the creation of political parties will be based on and emerge from the structuration of people’s movements in European society, through social initiatives. Forgetting this anchoring in the fabric of society – it seems to me – is part of what many people are getting at when they say that political parties seem increasingly disconnected from everyday life and seem only to represent professionalised politicians or hidden interests. The ‘European’ political groupings seem only to accentuate this feeling. It is also possible to resist dominant logics in actions as simple and everyday as the way that we interact in social settings with others, behaviour that we accept and behaviour that we condemn, the jokes we repeat or refuse to laugh at… All of this is well known and quite obvious to many of us from other experiences: more or less successful battles have been won by progressive forces to change social behaviours when it comes to gender relations, for example, or race relations. This…
L’Europe après l’Europe : l’autre Europe en attente
La carte du monde surréaliste (1929) Par Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Ce texte a initialement été publié sur Opendemocracy.net dans le cadre de leur série « L’Europe peut-elle s’en sortir ? ». Lorsque nous parlons de « questions européennes », nous avons tendance à parler presque exclusivement en ce que nous pourrions appeler des termes « verticaux », comme si la « question » de l’Europe ne concernait que les institutions officielles (le Parlement, la Commission…), les accords entre les Etats-membres, ou même la relation entre les citoyens et les institutions. Cette tendance est particulièrement forte au Royaume-Uni où la « question européenne » est en effet réduite à un simple « oui ou non » à l’Union européenne. Mais elle est présente dans tous les pays européens et est en partie la conséquence inévitable du fait que l’Union européenne est très jeune et en perpétuelle construction. Nous pourrions également dire que c’est la conséquence, d’une certaine manière, de l’idée que l’Europe elle-même est capturée par l’Union européenne et ses institutions sous leur forme actuelle. Aussi importantes que sont les questions « verticales » sur l’Europe, il existe également un ensemble de questions sans doute plus importantes qui pourraient être appelées « horizontales » : comment les Européens se comprennent-ils entre eux, en tant qu’individus et en tant que groupes ? Comment se traitent-ils entre eux ? Comment expriment-ils la solidarité ou le conflit ? Comment agissent-ils ensemble ? Se re-concentrer sur ces questions me paraît être une part importante de la construction d’uneEurope par le bas, ou une tentative de « refondation ». Nous savons que les institutions officielles et les dirigeants élus ont une très grande influence dans la détermination de la façon dont les gens communiquent entre eux : si les dirigeants du nord propagent l’idée que les habitants du sud de l’Europe sont inefficaces et paresseux, par exemple, ou qu’une faute « morale » a été commise dans le sud qui nécessite d’être « sanctionnée » par l’austérité, et si, en effet, les politiques de l’Union européenne deviennent basées sur ce type de postulats, alors il est évidemment plus probable que les personnes dans le nord de l’Europe vont avoir cette image des personnes dans le sud, et que les rapports sociaux vont changer dans ce sens. Mais les attitudes et les comportements des gens ne sont heureusement pas totalement déterminés par les dirigeants ou les institutions, et les changements de comportement de la population entraînés par les politiques publiques ne sont pas unidirectionnels. Sans parler de désobéissance civile, il existe des formes alternatives d’organisation sociale qui peuvent être promues et qui résistent efficacement à la fois à la « logique » du marché et àcelle des institutions. Plusieurs exemples récents sont bien connus, des supermarchés du peuple aux bitcoins et aux théâtres occupés. Dans le cadre de la crise économique, un certain nombre de ces initiatives les plus discutées sont tout naturellement concentrées sur des économies alternatives. Nous ne possédons pas encore beaucoup d’exemples de telles initiatives à l’échelle européenne ou qui se concentrent sur l’Europe, même si elles ont vu le jour, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la solidarité avec les populations immigrées. De telles initiatives devraient sans aucun doute assumer une lourde tâche : elles mettraient au défi non seulement l’opinion dominante, mais également les logiques institutionnelles aussi profondes que le classement de nos sociétés selon la forme des Etats-nations. Elles auraient de leur côté la dimension de plus en plus « transnationale » de nos vies, nos relations sociales et nos perspectives, qui sont à présent largement au-delà de tout ce qui pourrait être limité en une seule politique nationale. De telles initiatives n’auraient pas nécessairement d’exigences politiques orientées vers les institutions officielles de la démocratie, mais elles mettraient plutôt en œuvre de nouvelles manières d’être Européen. La création de telles initiatives me paraît essentielle pour le développement d’une Europe alternative. Historiquement, la gauche européenne a été bâtie grâce à des initiatives telles que les coopératives, les clubs pour les ouvriers et les syndicats. Ce sont là certaines des façons dont les valeurs de solidarité, par exemple, ont été ancrées, protégées et promues dans notre corps social. Si nous souhaitons bâtir une gauche européenne, il est naïf de croire que cela peut ou va être fait en obtenant le pouvoir dans les institutions. Ce sera fait grâce à un processus d’une dizaine d’années à créer des institutions sociales alternatives. Détenir le pouvoir dans les institutions peut sembler souhaitable afin de faciliter ce processus social, mais il faudrait que ce soit le pouvoir au service du peuple à long terme, en quelque sorte, et non l’inverse. Comme Bo Strath et beaucoup d’autres l’ont affirmé, le renforcement et la politisation du Parlement européen sont des éléments essentiels à la création d’une sphère publique européenne qui fonctionne et qui permette au système de commentaires entre les représentants et les représentés de fonctionner correctement. A ce jour, nous sommes dans une situation où les sphères publiques nationales en Europe renforcent la divergence nationale et la compétition, grâce à une boucle de rétroaction bien établie entre l’opinion publique nationale et les dirigeants nationaux, qui nous précipite vers des formes de populisme nationaliste. Un Parlement européen qui a trouvé sa place dans le système institutionnel européen interromprait cette boucle de rétroaction nationale, en introduisant une perspective européenne concentrée sur le bien commun européen. Mais un Parlement européen qui fonctionne dans ce sens ne peut être créé par décret. Ni ne peuvent être réellement créés des partis politiques transeuropéens, qui incarneraient une vision différente du bien commun européen, par les élites ou par des partis politiques nationaux en recomposition, sous forme de « groupes » au niveau européen : la création de partis politiques sera basée sur et émergera de la structuration des mouvements populaires dans la société européenne, à travers des initiatives sociales. Oublier cet ancrage dans le corps de la société, il me semble, fait partie de ce que beaucoup de personnes veulent dire lorsqu’elles disent que les partis politiques paraissent de plus en plus déconnectés de la vie de tous les jours et semblent représenter uniquement les hommes politiques professionnels ou des intérêts cachés. Les groupes politiques « européens » ne semblent qu’accentuer ce sentiment. Il…
Meet and two veg
In our workshop on helping young people how to make a festival, one of the themes that kept coming back was how to make a living through the crisis. What came out of this discussion was that: “People wanted to go back to what really mattered – like valuing where we live and what we make. People wanted to explore ways to value the places we live in – whether it’s encouraging people to recycle, grow community gardens, replant playgrounds or host craft markets. Could food could be at the heart of linking up people from different cultures and cities in Europe? Should we teach children to fix and make things rather than spend to buy?” Perhaps, it’s not that buying is bad, because after all there is a need to reward people who fix and make things so they can pay the bills. That’s why it’s really important to buy local. The video above by @liveshoplocal gives you the lowdown on why it’s a damn good idea, for me though, there is one overriding factor – it gives you the chance to directly impact the economy and community around you. Want to make sure that your friend’s dad who’s a butcher doesn’t go bust? Buy some sausages from him and you can ask him where he got the meat from! Want to make sure you can get fresh veg which doesn’t cost a bomb, go to your local market and the grocer will give you the latest gossip on the neighbourhood as a bonus! As a way of nudging people to discover local markets to encourage them to buy local, we developed a treasure hunt around markets to discover how we experience a space like a market. What also came out of this is our new project looking at how young people cope creatively with trying to make a living. If you’re a young person or work with young people, we’d love to hear from you!
STITCH AND BITCH – MAKING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN IDEAS
We’ve been building on our experience of developing the Transeuropa Festival throughout this year from striking up relations to prototyping social markets. For the Festival in 2012, we asked the same question we asked ourselves last year “if you could create a festival, what would it look like?”. This time round, we’ve created a cooperative bringing together all the coordinators of the citygroups so that we could share ideas and join up the dots between the activities. London Work Programme London Work Programme from Noel Hatch We organised a session using techniques from silent brainstorming to mapping issues to encourage people to come up with ideas. Our next session creatively challenged people taking part to identify the following trends between the issues and between the activities: Discover different cultures through creating and sharing new experiences with people Observe how neighbourhoods can provoke new thoughts and ideas on democratic and economic alternatives Create activities together that express the way we collectively feel about the issues we face and the wishes we dream about Create the spaces to challenge the way we’ve been brought up to think and act From this, we came up with new keywords such as the multitude, emotions, intergenerational and displacement Slideshow here What issues did we agree on? What activities were filtered through to the final selection? Watch this space! If you want to find out more about what we do go to our group page or to tell us how you’d like to be involved, fill in our survey.
Beyond the Battle of Alexandria
Beyond the Battle of Alexandria,two years after the revolution, everything began again in Alexandria…
Après la bataille d’Alexandrie
Deux ans après la révolution, tout a recommencé à Alexandrie…
OneEurope and European Alternatives are now partners!
OneEurope and European Alternatives are now partners! OneEurope is a successful and innovative platform, which aims to increase the debate on Europe, by providing inspiring articles, infographics, opinions, statistics, and analysis, as well as a space for discussion and debate. Check out their website and social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter) and get involved in the debate on European democracy, culture, economics, politics, society and much more. OneEurope will notably attend London citizens’ consultation on May 8th, on democracy and citizens’ participation in Europe, run by European Alternatives as part of the Citizens Pact. Find out how you too can take part, like many other individuals, local authorities and organisations !
Paths beyond precarity
Interview by Gian Paolo FaellaI met Professor Bob Blackburn in his studio as part of our project on how young people cope with making a living. We talked about many things, among which, above all, the relationship between precarity and inequality and the problems affecting the younger generation nowadays. Professor Blackburn, throughout your work, you have suggested the relevance of inequality as a social mechanism that reproduces itself from one generation to another. This aspect of inequality marks a difference with the current discourse on precarity, that is now become a very serious issue in Europe. The fight against precarity, in fact, seems, for the younger generation, something new and different, because it is felt by the young people excluded from the labour market as something unique and peculiar to their particular condition linked to the crises. In your opinion, to what extent precarity is really an unprecedented condition? I don’t see why it should be an unprecedented condition. I think each generation that comes along finds different conditions from those of of other generations. Society is constantly changing and so situations that people face are radically different. The present situation, then, is different from the past but in general terms not particularly new. Nonetheless I don’t think there was the same sense of insecurity when I started my career. When I was unemployed, I didn’t think about a short contract and I didn’t think that I wouldn’t get a job. I actually took the chance of buying a house and didn’t worry about it, because my income was sort of sufficient. Looking back at it, I don’t think somebody in the same situation would be able to take it these days. Until the 1960’s and 70’s people were more optimistic, more hopeful. Now there are policies that generate insecurity, so precarity is an important subjective experience but it is based on changes in social reality. On certain issues, graduates in precarious situations are often struggling together with other disadvantaged categories like migrants, like for example for social housing, and this happens in particular in urban environments, like London. Do you think the distribution of property is an issue in Britain, now? Yes, it always has been. At one extreme you’ve got people living in huge mansions, only a few people but owning accommodation that many people could live in, with enormous tracts of land attached to them. On the other extreme you’ve got waiting lists for housing, you’ve got people without home, people living in overcrowded conditions, and people living in houses that are sub-standard. For as long as I could remember there has been a waiting list for people to get a council house that used to be publicly financed housing – which they can afford, whereas the expensive housing on the market are so expensive that there are many people that can’t afford that sort of housing. This is a significant element of inequality that has existed for many years, and it is probably greater now than it was when I was young, when there was a serious attempt to ameliorate the situation, like after the second world war. At that time the struggle against this component of inequality was more successful? At that time there was a more egalitarian society, there was more concern to be fair, that everybody as far as possible had what was needed. There were problems about that, but there was a general acceptance that there should be a serious effort to provide adequate housing. That wasn’t completely succeeding but at least the effort was there. The coalition government in Britain says that new restrictions are needed to avoid immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria accessing the benefits of the British welfare state too easily. How can we keep a social model that is, on the contrary, inclusive? The simple answer would be: “I don’t know!” There is a key problem, which is that we have been just discussing the shortage of housing, but there is actually also a shortage of jobs for less skilled people and in fact at present time probably for everybody, so although the attraction of coming to Britain may exist for people from some countries, it’s not really a terribly good time for moving there. If you take a large scale view at present time we really don’t need lots of immigrants, whereas, say, in 1950’s we were actually welcoming immigrants because we were short of workers so it’s a good thing and it can be beneficial to have an open society policy, which is obviously a much more humane way of approaching things, but it also can create genuine problems. Apart from the fact that we now have many illegal immigrants into the country, which obviously heightens the problems, there is no simple solution except creating a fairer world all around. In your work you stressed the importance of a shared experience between manual workers and white-collar workers as a way to overcome their relative differences and to find a common ground for their social identity. Many people think that part of the so-called “lost generation”, which is often both educated and disillusioned, is too self-indulgent and should look at the wider picture of social inequality which goes beyond them. Do you think there is enough attention on the importance of these shared experiences between manual and non manual workers in the post-industrial economy? No, there isn’t. The shared experience is something that is differentiated, even if there are some elements that are common. In unequal societies like ours the experiences are going to be different, but what is largely not sufficiently appreciated is that athough the experience might be different, the majority of population has more in common and are excluded from the advantages and benefits that are accrued just to minorities. At present times all types of workers are suffering from cutbacks, shortage of jobs, decline of the living standards, except the two percent of them, who are getting richer, maximising their own position at the…
La corruption et les forces de police
Introduction par Rosen Dimov Traduction par Adeline Monnin Un rapide coup d’oeil à l’origine du terme « corruption » donne un indice sur sa signification réelle. La racine latine désigne une « détérioration morale, putréfaction », termes plutôt appropriés à la description de ce phénomène largement répandu. Même si pour beaucoup de personnes le terme « corruption », au sens assez vaste, inclut un large éventail de méfaits, on pense également très souvent à l’expression « pot-de-vin ». Michael Johnston, professeur à Colgate University, affirme que « dans des sociétés en perpétuel changement, dont la plupart font aujourd’hui partie du monde hyper mondialisé et numérisé, la limite entre ce qui est corrompu et ce qui ne l’est pas est parfois floue ». Afin de dresser un tableau structuré de ce phénomène complexe, il identifie des modèles généraux d’intégrité (ou de non intégrité) et s’en sert pour construire des hypothèses et des classifications portant sur des syndromes de corruption, en fonction du contexte (politique, économique, social et institutionnel). On distingue également fréquemment le niveau de corruption : la grande corruption (comprenant les hauts fonctionnaire et les chefs de gouvernement), par opposition à la petite corruption (officiers de police, personnel scolaire, administrations fiscales, etc.), aussi appelée « basse » corruption ou corruption « de rue ». Certains, comme le chercheur Robert Klitgaard, définissent la corruption avec une précision mathématique. Klitgaard a élaboré l’équation suivante : Corruption = Monopole + Discrétion – Responsabilité. Ou encore, la formule du programme des Nations Unies pour le développement, qui équivaut à Corruption = Monopole + Discrétion – (Responsabilité + Intégrité+ Transparence). Cependant, Transparency International en donne une explication plus courante et plus pragmatique : la corruption est « l’abus de pouvoir reçu en délégation a des fins privées ». La plupart des pays (140) adhèrent à la définition et aux actions contre la corruption émises par la Convention des Nations Unies contre la corruption, bien qu’il existe des spécificités régionales, comme le mentionne le Conseil de l’Europe dans la Convention civile sur la corruption et dans la Convention pénale sur la corruption. Les signataires de ces accords multilatéraux conservent une marge de manœuvre, et lorsque ces accords sont adoptés, leur internalisation dans le domaine légal de chaque signataire renforce les inégalités. Il est probable que ce soit au niveau de l’Union européenne qu’existent les dernières divergences pour les normes relatives à la corruption. En effet, les instruments dont disposent l’UE sont encore faibles, ceci à cause d’une coopération limitée entre les États membres dans le domaine de la justice et des affaires intérieures. La définition et les actions concernant l’intégrité sont comprises dans des champs plus vastes de la lutte contre le crime organisé, qui relève de la responsabilité de plusieurs organismes : l’Office européen de la lutte antifraude (OLAF), Europol, Eurojust et les États membres de l’UE. La stratégie pour la prévention et le contrôle de la criminalité organisée pour le prochain millénaire permet de concrétiser les deux conventions visant à protéger les intérêts financiers de la Communauté européenne. Elle permet aussi de concrétiser la lutte contre la corruption incluant des fonctionnaires de la Communauté européenne ou des États membres de l’UE. Comment mesurer le niveau de corruption ? Notre manière de mesurer la corruption est ambiguë, ce qui constitue un obstacle majeur à son éradication. Si les différentes parties cherchant à contrer ce phénomène néfaste, qu’il s’agisse des gouvernements, des entreprises, des associations civiques ou même des individus, ne parviennent pas à se mettre d’accord sur les mêmes méthodes d’estimation, les inégalités prendront le dessus sur les efforts communs et empêcheront tout succès. Transparency International (TI) et la Banque mondiale (BM) se servent d’outils couramment utilisés. TI a créé un Baromètre mondial de la corruption, régulièrement mis à jour, et la BM se sert d’indices mesurant la corruption d’entreprises et l’éthique, ainsi que d’indicateurs de gouvernance mondiale. Néanmoins, ces indices de perception restent contestables. Pour Erlend Berg, un bon indicateur de corruption doit présenter les caractéristiques suivantes : fiabilité, validité, exactitude et précision. Selon lui, les indicateurs mentionnés ci-dessus ne remplissent pas correctement ces critères : il s’agit d’une « mesure imparfaite de la transformation linéaire d’une quantité de pots-de-vin sous-jacents et passés inaperçus ». Ainsi, la subjectivité de ces indicateurs est souvent négligée et bien qu’ils aboutissent à des hypothèses basées sur des recoupements, leur utilisation est largement répandue. Dilyan Donchev et Gergely Ujhelyi remettent encore plus en question les résultats de TI et de la BM. D’après leurs études, les comparaisons effectuées entre plusieurs pays sont contradictoires : la perception a tendance à être biaisée à la hausse dans les plus grands pays. De plus, plusieurs aspects de la corruption ne peuvent pas être facilement mesurés sur une échelle. Ils se servent également de formules et d’estimations pour prouver que la fiabilité d’ensembles de données recueillies à partir d’une perception est altérée par des facteurs économiques, institutionnels et culturels, ainsi que par les différents types de corruption (et d’autres facteurs). L’école de pensée du monde musulman adopte un point de vue similaire : Zaman Asas et Rahim Faizur, d’éminentes personnalités de l’Université islamique internationale d’Islamabad, mettent en doute la crédibilité des indices de perception servant à mesurer la corruption. Ils affirment qu’au premier coup d’œil, on s’aperçoit que la corruption est quasiment impossible à estimer. Les indicateurs dont l’on dispose ne sont ni correctement mesurables, ni suffisamment exacts. L’index TI est considéré comme « induisant fortement en erreur » parce qu’il dévie considérablement de la réalité. De plus, il est indispensable de déterminer qui bénéficie de la corruption, quelle est la gratification reçue et pourquoi (qui profite des résultats, ou les sollicite). Les auteurs se servent de résultats issus d’études transversales et fournis par d’autres organisations pour illustrer ces fluctuations. Les experts des Nations Unies et de Global Integrity soutiennent les critiques émises à l’encontre des indices de perception. Ils reconnaissent qu’il faut prendre en compte beaucoup de sources de données différentes si l’on veut obtenir des mesures plus plausibles. Parmi tous les outils dont nous disposons pour mesurer la corruption, certains ont peut-être des appellations similaires mais ils concernent différentes cibles. Même…
Corruption and the police forces
A glimpse into the origin of the term “corruption” gives an initial clue to understand the meaning behind it. The Latin root stands for “moral decay, rottenness”,, appropriate to describe this wide-spread phenomenon. While the broad term “corruption” may include a diverse set of wrongdoings for most people “bribery”is the first one to come to mind.
Mafia et finance : introduction
Par Alessandro Valera Traduction par Adeline Monnin À l’évocation du mot mafia, des images presque romantiques, dignes du Parrain ou de la série Les Sopranos, nous viennent en tête. On se représente les voyous mafieux comme des Siciliens traditionnellement vêtus, parlant avec un accent et portant une arme. Beaucoup d’Européens croient que le problème mafieux ne sort pas des frontières de l’Italie ou de pays éloignés comme la Russie ou le Japon. Malheureusement, la réalité est tout autre : les mafias se sont mondialisées en même temps que les marchés et les échanges. On ne parle pas simplement du trafic international d’armes ou de drogues, mais surtout de « l’argent sale » provenant des activités illicites, qui est « blanchi » pour ensuite être investi. Au cours des dernières décennies, la libéralisation des marchés de capitaux a énormément profité à ce procédé, appelé blanchiment d’argent. Même si les organisations criminelles de différents pays conservent certaines de leurs traditions, elles tendent de plus en plus à se constituer en une société. Le mafioso européen du 21ème siècle n’est plus seulement un Sicilien coiffé d’un chapeau folklorique : il est devenu un élégant homme d’affaire, vêtu d’un costume et déambulant dans les rues de Londres, Francfort ou encore Milan. En 1991, le Conseil européen a approuvé la directive portant sur « la prévention de l’utilisation du système financier aux fins du blanchiment de capitaux ». L’objectif de cette directive est de réguler les transactions financières effectuées en Europe, afin que les groupes du crime organisé ne puissent pas s’en servir. Néanmoins, et ce à de nombreux égards, cette réglementation se révèle surannée et des mesures plus sévères risquent de s’avérer indispensables. Depuis quelques années, les produits financiers, les intermédiaires et les institutions se multiplient. Par conséquent, les mafias ont de moins en moins de mal à diversifier leurs investissements. C’est en Italie que les groupes mafieux opèrent depuis le plus longtemps, mais ce pays est également le plus avancé en matière de lutte anti-mafia. Adopter à une échelle européenne certaines de leurs réglementations, particulièrement adaptées, pourrait être très profitable. Dans les semaines à venir, Alternatives Européennes organisera des ateliers participatifs sur ces thèmes. Ils se tiendront à Otranto (Italie), Bucarest (Roumanie), Londres (Royaume-Uni) et Sofia (Bulgarie). Plus de détails sur ce thème Afin de mieux comprendre ce problème, vous pouvez consulter cette « médiagraphie » (composée de quelques rares documents anglais consacrés à cette question). Vous y trouverez des travaux universitaires, des articles de journaux, des documentaires et des enregistrements d’une conférence qui avait été tenue sur ce sujet. Circolo SEL Radio Londra (2011) London: the city of Mafia www.sinistraeliberta.co.uk/i-nostri-eventi.php Santino, U. (1988) Business, Finance and Organized Crime: Proposing a Risk-Based Approach for Governance in a Law and Economics Perspective Centro Peppino Impastato Disponible ici www.centroimpastato.it/otherlang/finmafiaen.php3 Schneider, F. (2008) Money Laundering and Financial Means of Organized Crime: Some Preliminary Empirical Findings http://ssrn.com/abstract=1263868 Alessandri, A., Fiandaca, G., Masciandaro, D and Vigna, P.L. (2008) Business, Finance and Organized Crime: Proposing a Risk-Based Approach for Governance in a Law and Economics Perspective (the 'Vigna Code') http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1136149 The Economist (2007) The toughest job in finance: a new man to tackle economic crime in Sicily www.economist.com/node/9308096 AFP (2008) Italian writer Saviano assails EU over mafia money-laundering www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSIU7gn_i4 La directive 91/308/EEC approuvée par le Conseil le 10 juin 1991 à Bruxelles, sur la prévention de l’utilisation du système financier aux fins du blanchiment de capitaux. (en particulier les pages 14- 20) http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/other/l24016_en.htm
Mafia and finance: an introduction
The word mafia often evokes quasi-romantic images from The God Father or The Sopranos. Mafia thugs are imagined as Sicilian men wearing traditional clothes, speaking with accents and carrying guns. Many in Europe think that the mafia is a problem confined to parts of Italy and maybe to remote places like Russia or Japan. Unfortunately, this assumptions are widely inaccurate.
Stop à la précarité des jeunes : agissez démocratiquement !
Article par Ségolène Pruvot et Alice Michelini, Alternatives Européennes Alternatives Européennes a le plaisir d’annoncer les prochaines étapes du projet « Stop Youth precarity: Act Democratic ». Pendant une semaine en avril, Alternatives Européennes invite de jeunes activistes et acteurs culturels d’Égypte, d’Espagne et de France à un séminaire d’une semaine pour échanger et bâtir ensemble des solutions aux problèmes de précarité et de démocratie. Des deux côtés de la Méditerranée, la jeune génération peine à accéder au travail et à avoir son mot à dire dans les processus décisionnels. Sa voix n’est toujours pas entendue dans les débats politiques. Des deux côtés de la Méditerranée, cette génération est active dans la contestation de l’établissement et du fonctionnement du système politique, par exemple avec les révolutions en Afrique du Nord et les mobilisations citoyennes en Europe (comme les Indignés ou Notre-Dame-des-Landes). Deux débats publics préparatoires En France, deux débats ont déjà eu lieu dans ce cadre. Ils ont réuni des activistes des deux côtés de la Méditerranée lors d’événements publics. Le premier date de mai 2012, dans le cadre du TRANSEUROPA Festival, appelé Quand le peuple descend dans la rue, est-ce la démocratie qui l’emporte? avec Imad Houssari, membre du Conseil National Syrien et porte-parole en France des comités locaux de coordination ; Jade Lindgaard, journaliste pour Mediapart, qui a suivi les mouvements Les Indignés et Occupy ; et, via Skype, Bassem Samir, directeur de l’ONG Egyptian Democratic Academy. Le débat était organisé en partenariat avec l’Institut des Cultures d’Islam. Vous pouvez en voir plus dans cette courte vidéo. En février 2013, nous avons organisé un débat sur l’état de la mobilisation en Europe et en Égypte dans le cadre du Festival International du Film des Droits de l’Homme, avec Sarah Anne Rennick, étudiante en doctorat qui travaille sur les mouvements en Afrique du Nord ; Shahinaz Abdel Salam, bloggeuse égyptienne et auteure d’Égypte, les débuts de la liberté ; Hicham Ezzat, activiste Franco-Égyptien ; Francois Pradal, journaliste, ex-directeur de l’institut français de la culture à Héliopolis (2001-2005) ; et Laura Enchemin, activiste espagnole. Le débat était animé par Guilhem Delteil, membre d’Alternatives Européennes et journaliste. Vous pouvez trouver plus d’informations et des photos sur la page Facebook d’Alternatives Européennes à Paris et sur la page Facebook de l’événement. Les débats se sont focalisés sur les jeunes manifestants d’Égypte, d’Espagne et de France et sur leurs espoirs, leurs déceptions et leurs plans d’action dans le contexte de la contestation du pouvoir. De nombreuses questions ont surgi lors de ces débats, relatives notamment à l’amélioration éventuelle des chances des activistes de voir leur mobilisation mener à une nouvelle relance démocratique, et concernant une comparaison possible entre l’Égypte et l’Europe, malgré les grandes différences de leur situation. En avril, le point de départ des discussions sera l’article de Sarah Anne Rennick, De la place Tahrir à la Puerta del Sol : ce qui unit les mouvements sociaux arabes et européens, écrit suite au débat de février. D’autres débats sur ce sujet ont eu lieu à Prague, Londres, Bratislava et Barcelone en mai 2012, dans le cadre du Transeuropa Festival 2012 et de la projection de films sur l’engagement politique en Afrique du Nord avant la révolution, sélectionnés par la Cinémathèque de Tanger dans toutes les villes du Transeuropa Festival. Une semaine d’échanges en avril à Paris et à Strasbourg En avril, pendant une semaine, le projet réunira des activistes et des acteurs culturels qui apprendront les uns des autres, et échangeront des solutions sur la poursuite de l’action et la mise en route du changement en politique. En partageant au sein d’un petit groupe pendant toute une semaine, les participants pourront créer des liens durables et continuer de travailler ensemble à l’avenir. La question de la démocratie et de la transition démocratique sera centrale à l’échange, tout comme celle des solutions créatives pour trouver des moyens pour vivre et se maintenir dans un environnement de l’emploi en évolution. À Paris et à Strasbourg, des rendez-vous seront pris avec des organisations civiles, des universitaires et des membres du Parlement Européen qui travaillent dans ces domaines. Les medias sociaux joueront un rôle-clé dans ce projet. C’est pourquoi nous vous invitons à nous suivre sur Facebook et sur Twitter (@Euroalter). De courtes interviews vidéo des participants seront également mises en ligne sur la chaîne YouTube d’Alternatives Européennes au cours du projet. La révolution égyptienne et la question des Indignés en Espagne sont apparemment très différentes l’une de l’autre, et la France semble éloignée de ces événements, mais en y regardant de plus près, ces mouvements peuvent apprendre beaucoup l’un de l’autre, et se renforceront s’ils sont en dialogue. Vers des résultats concrets Pour conclure, à travers cette semaine d’échange, nous voulons que les participants trouvent ensemble certaines des clés qui les aideront à accompagner ou même à mener les processus de transition démocratique, ou l’amélioration du système démocratique dans leur pays, qu’il s’agisse de l’Égypte, de la France ou de l’Espagne. Nous cherchons toujours des participants: si vous êtes intéressés, vous trouverez plus d'information sur le programme de l'événement sur notre site. Merci de nous envoyer une lettre de motivation et un court paragraphe sur vous et vos activités en écrivant à a.michelini(@)euroalter.com.
Stop Precarity: Act Democratically!
by Ségolène Pruvot and Alice Michelini, European Alternatives European Alternatives is pleased to announce the next steps of the project « Stop Youth precarity: Act Democratic ». For one week in April, European Alternatives invites young activists and cultural producers from Egypt, Spain and France to a one week seminar to exchange and build solutions together on the issues of precarity and democracy. On both sides of the Mediterranean the younger generation struggles to access to jobs and to have a say in decision making processes. Its voice remains unheard in the political debate. On both sides of the Mediterranean this generation has been active in the contestation of the establishment and the functioning of the political system: the revolutions in Northern Africa and the citizens’ mobilisations in Europe (Indignados, Notre Dame des Landes in France). Two preparatory public debates Two debates have already taken place in France in this framework, they brought together, during public events activists from the both side of the Mediterranean. In May 2012 in the framework of TRANSEUROPA Festival entitled: When people demonstrate in the Streets: is Democracy winning? with Imad Houssari, member of the Syrian National Council and Speaker in France of the local coordination committees and Jade Lindgaard, journalist for Mediapart, who has followed Indignados and Occupy movements and via Skype, Bassem Samir, director of the NGO Egyptian Democratic Academy. The debate was organised in partnership with the Institut des Cultures d’Islam. You can see more in this short video (in French). In February 2013, we organised a debate providing a reading of the state of mobilisations in Europe and Egypt in the framework of the International Festival of Human Rights Films, with Sarah Anne Rennick, PhD student working on social movements in Northern Africa, Shahinaz Abdel Salam, Egyptian cyber blogger, author of ‘Eypte, les débuts de la liberté’, Hicham Ezzat, Franco-Egyptian activist, Francois Pradal, journalist, ex-director of the French cultural institute in Heliopolis (2001-2005) and Laura Enchemin, French activist in the Indignados movement. The debate was moderated by Guilhem Delteil, Member of European Alternatives and journalist. More information and photos can be found on the Facebook page of European Alternatives in Paris and on Facebook page of the event. The debates focussed on young demonstrators from Egypt, Spain and France and focused on their hopes, disappointments and plans for action in the context of contestation of power. Numerous questions arose from the debates, in particularly those regarding the eventual improvement of activists’ chances to see their mobilization lead to a democratic re-launch and those concerning a possible comparison, despite the profound differences of situations, between Egypt and Europe. The starting point for the discussions in April will be the article From Tahrir Square to Puerta del Sol: what unites Arab and European social movements by Sarah Anne Rennick written after the February debate. There were also debates on this topic in Prague, London, Bratislava and Barcelona in May 2012 as part of Transeuropa Festival 2012 and the projection of movies on Political Engagement in Northern Africa before the revolution selected by Cinémathèque de Tanger in all Transeuropa Festival cities. One week of exchanges in April in Paris and Strasbourg In April, the project will bring together for one week activists and cultural actors who will learn from each other and exchange solutions on how to pursue action and activate change in politics. By sharing in a small group for a whole week, the participants will be able to create long lasting relationships and continue working together in the future. The question of Democracy and of democratic transition will be central to the exchange, as will be the one of creative solutions to find means of living and sustaining oneself in a changing employment environment. Appointments will be made both in Paris and Strasbourg with civil organizations, academics and Members of the European Parliament who work in these areas. Social media will play a key role in this project. That is why we invite you to follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@Euroalter). Short video interviews of the participants will also be made available on European Alternatives You Tube Channel in the course of the project. Egyptian Revolution and the question of Indignados in Spain are apparently very different from each other’s and France seems far away from these events, but if we look closely the movements can learn quite a lot from each other and will be reinforce each other if they are in dialogue. Looking forward to the results In conclusion, through this week of exchanges, we want the participants to find together some of the keys that will help them accompany or even lead the democratic transition processes or improvement of democratic systems in their countries, may it be in Egypt, France or Spain. We are still looking for participants, if you are interested check the event and the program and send us a motivation letter and a short paragraph about you and your main activities at a.michelini(@)euroalter.com This project is co-financed by the European Union, within the programme Youth in Action.
Stop al precariato dei giovani, si all’azione democratica!
Di Ségolène Pruvot e Alice Michelini European Alternatives ha il piacere di annunciare quelli che saranno i prossimi step del progetto “Stop Youth precarity: Act Democratic”. Ad aprile, European Alternatives invita infatti giovani attivisti, artisti e intellettuali provenienti da Egitto, Spagna e Francia a un seminario della durata di una settimana, al fine di promuovere mutualmente lo scambio e l’elaborazione di soluzioni possibili sulle tematiche della precarietà e della democrazia. Su entrambi i versanti del Mediterraneo, i giovani lottano infatti per trovare lavoro e per avere un ruolo nei processi decisionali nazionali. La loro voce tuttavia, rimane perlopiù inascoltata nel dibattito politico. Su entrambi i versanti del Mediterraneo, questa generazione è stata attiva nella contestazione verso la struttura e il funzionamento del sistema politico: un esempio è dato in questo caso dalle rivoluzioni in Nord Africa e dalle mobilitazioni cittadine in Europa (come quelle degli Indignados e quelle di Notre Dame des Landes in Francia). Due dibattiti pubblici preparatori In Francia, sono stati a questo proposito, giá organizzati due dibattiti, che sono riusciti a congiungere gli attivisti di entrambi i versanti del Mediterraneo nel contesto di due eventi di carattere pubblico. Il primo, nel maggio 2012, durante il TRANSEUROPA Festival, intitolato: Quando la gente scende in piazza, la democrazia ha la meglio? Che ha visto la presenza di Imad Houssari, membro del Consiglio Nazionale Siriano e portavoce in Francia dei comitati locali di coordinamento e di Jade Lindgaard, giornalista di Mediapart, che si è occupato della situazione degli Indignados e dei movimenti di occupazione e infine, tramite Skype, di Bassem Samir, direttore dell’ONG Egyptian Democratic Academy. Il dibattito è stato organizzato in collaborazione con l’Istituto Culturale Islamico. Per saperne di più è disponibile online questo breve filmato (in francese). A febbraio 2013, abbiamo invece organizzato un dibattito sul tema della mobilitazione in Europa e in Egitto, all’interno del contesto dell’International Festival of Human Rights Films, con Sarah Anne Rennick, dottoranda che si occupa dei movimenti sociali in Nord Africa, Shahinaz Abdel Salam, blogger egiziana e autrice de ‘Egypte, les débuts de la liberté’ (“Egitto, l’inizio della libertà”), Hicham Ezzat, attivista franco-egiziano, Francois Pradal, giornalista e ex-direttore dell’Istituto Culturale Francese a Heliopolis (2001-2005) e Laura Enchemin, attivista francese impegnata nel movimento degli Indignados. Il moderatore del dibattito è stato Guilhem Delteil, membro di Alternative Europee e giornalista. Ulteriori informazioni e fotografie possono essere trovate nella pagina Facebook di Alternative Europee a Parigi e nella pagina Facebook dell’evento. I dibattiti hanno avuto come protagonisti i giovani dimostranti egiziani, spagnoli e francesi e si sono incentrati sulle loro speranze e delusioni e sui loro piani di azione, all’interno della tematica della contestazione. Numerose questioni sono state sollevate durante i dibattiti, in particolar modo quelle riguardanti il possibile margine di miglioramento delle prospettive degli attivisti nel vedere la loro mobilitazione come portatrice di un nuovo rilancio democratico e inoltre quelle riguardanti una possibile comparazione, nonostante le profonde differenze, tra l’Egitto e l’Europa. Il punto di partenza per il dibattito di aprile avrà invece come fulcro l’articolo di Sarah Anne Rennick, From Tahrir Square to Puerta del Sol: what unites Arab and European social movements, scritto in seguito al dibattito tenutosi in febbaraio. Dibattiti sulle medesime tematiche sono stati tenuti ugualmente a Praga, Londra, Bratislava e Barcellona a Maggio 2012 come parte caratterizzante del Transeuropa Festival 2012 e, sempre all’interno del medesimo Festival e delle città in cui si è svolto, si è effettuata inoltre la proiezione di una serie di film selezionati dalla “Cinémathèque de Tanger”, riguardanti l’impegno politico in Nord Africa prima dell’inizio della rivoluzione. Una settimana di dialogo a Parigi e Strasburgo in aprile Ad aprile, il progetto unirà insieme per una settimana giovani attivisti, artisti e intellettuali in un reciproco apprendere e scambio di soluzioni possibili per la realizzazione di un cambiamento all’interno del mondo della politica. Tramite la condivisione delle proprie esperienze e prospettive all’interno di un piccolo gruppo di lavoro per una settimana, i partecipanti saranno in grando di creare relazioni di lunga durata che potranno eventualmente evolversi in futuro in una possibile collaborazione lavorativa insieme. Un ruolo centrale nel dibattito sarà giocato dalla questione della democrazia e della transizione democratica, come pure dalle soluzioni creative che emergeranno al fine di trovare possibili modi di vivere e sostenersi in un mondo del lavoro in continua evoluzione. Sia a Parigi che a Strasburgo avranno luogo incontri diretti con membri di organizzazioni civili, figure academiche e Membri del Parlamento Europeo che si occupano delle già citate tematiche. I social media giocheranno un ruolo fondamentale nel progetto. Per questa ragione vi invitiamo a seguirci su Facebook e Twitter (@Euroalter). Durante lo svolgimento del progetto, brevi video con le interviste ai partecipanti saranno inoltre disponibili online su European Alternatives You Tube Channel. Sebbene la rivoulzione egiziana e la questione degli Indignados in Spagna possano sembrare apparentemente molto diverse l’una dall’altra e la Francia risulti anni luce distante da questi eventi, uno sguardo più attento ci rivelerà che ciascuno di questi movimenti può apprendere molto l’uno dall’altro e rafforzarsi reciprocamente attraverso lo strumento del dialogo. In attesa dei risultati Per concludere, attraverso questa settimana di dialogo, ci auguriamo che i partecipanti possano trovare insieme le soluzioni chiave che possano aiutarli ad accompagnare, o addirittura a condurre, i processi di transizione democratica o il miglioramento dei sistemi democratici nei loro paesi, che siano questi l’Egitto, la Francia o la Spagna. Stiamo attulmente cercando ulteriori partecipanti, se siete interessati a questo tipo di esperienza potete trovare maggiori informazioni nell'evento e nel programma e mandarci una lettera motivazionale e una breve descrizione su di voi e sulle vostre principali attività a.michelini(@)euroalter.com Questo progetto é co-finanziato dall’Unione Europea, all’interno del programma Youth in Action.
Les Roms à Rome : notre vote nest pas à vendre
Traduction : Murielle Louail La journée instituée pour célébrer la Journée Internationale des Roms et Sintis, telle que reconnue par les Nations Unies depuis 1979, n’a pas vraiment été un « Bathalo roman dives » ou « bon jour du peuple Roms ». À Rome, des controverses et des débats entourent la décision de quelques « Roms romains » d’exprimer clairement leur droit de citoyens européens à participer aux élections de la capitale afin de voter aux élections municipales des 24 et 25 mai prochains. La question des droits des Roms, Sintis et autres peuples itinérants d’Europe a toujours été importante pour Alternatives Européennes. En tant que partisan du droit à une pleine expression de la citoyenneté pour chacun, nous soutenons les déclarations faites par ARCI Solidarité, organisation partenaire en Italie, qui s’engage à la protection de ces minorités, non seulement à travers cette journée internationale, mais aussi tout au long de l’année. Rome, 8 avril 2013 Aujourd’hui, c’est la journée internationale des Roms et du peuple Sinti. Le 8 avril 1971, à Londres, fut fondée l’Union Romani Internationale autour de la mesure législative relative à la participation de la communauté rom à la vie publique. Cependant, plutôt que de célébrer cette date, nous sommes à nouveau obligés de dénoncer un nouvel acte raciste commis avec l’habituelle excuse du légalitarisme. Ce qui est le plus attristant et inquiétant est que l’attaque soit venue d’une dirigeante du parti démocratique, le plus grand parti italien de centre gauche, qui a accusé de copinage les Roms ayant participé aux primaires pour le choix du candidat à la mairie de Rome, et ainsi qui a également avancé des accusations d’achats de voix. Cristiana Alicata a fait une sérieuse erreur et devrait s’en excuser. Pour commencer, la communauté rom, comme tous les Italiens et citoyens étrangers, possède le droit à la citoyenneté, qu’il faut promouvoir et améliorer, plutôt que simplement réprimer au travers de préjugés et accusations infondés. Les mots prononcés hier déprécient tout le travail réalisé par ceux qui se sont battus durant des années pour l’affirmation d’un droit de participation pour tous, à commencer par le peuple qui a été victime durant cinq ans de la junte Alemanno. Hier, au travers d’un acte actif de citoyenneté, un processus de changement a été amorcé. Cette information fait l’actualité car elle suscite des controverses et offre une information journalistique « forte » qu’elle suggère, rappelant l’image rassurante du Rom escroc; par nature injuste, avide, évoquant de désagréables fantômes. Nous sommes incapables de comprendre comment les principaux journaux ont pu contribuer à ce non-sens, avec une intolérance systématique, tandis que le silence est gardé sur de sérieux et nombreux actes de discriminations dont les Roms ont été victimes à Rome récemment. Évoquer « l’habituelle file d’attente des Roms » est une déclaration véritablement raciste, qui en plus d’être dédaigneuse, repose sur une trahison, un triste renversement d’éthique. Ca ne semble pas plaire beaucoup à Mme Alicata. Nous préférons voir des gens s’aligner pour voter, pour exprimer un point de vue, pour essayer d’influencer la vie politique de la ville. Ca nous plaît, à nous ; c’est là une conquête de la civilisation.
Roma in Rome : Our Vote is not For Sale
Translation: Rebecca HiltonThe day set out to mark the International Dayof the Roma and Sinti People, as recognised by the UN since 1979, cannot be truly be regarded as a “Bahtalo Roman dives” or “good day of the Roma people”. In Rome, controversy and disputes surround the decision of some “Roman Roma” to fully express their right to European citizenship and participate in the elections being held in the capital to choose the mayoral candidate of the center in the upcoming elections on 24 and 25 May. At European Alternatives, we are continuously involved with issues concerning the human rights of Roma, Sinti and other traveling people in Europe, and as supporters of the each individual’s right to full and conscious expression of citizenship we therefore stand by the statements made by ARCI Soliderietà, our partner organisation in Italy, who have a direct commitment to the protection of these minorities, not only through this international day but extensively throughout the year.Rome, 8 April 2013 Today is the International Day of the Roma and Sinti People. In London on 8 April, 1971 the International Romani Union was founded, with the official act relating to participation in the public life of the Roma community. Rather than celebrate however, we are forced to denounce yet another racist rant dispensed with the usual excuse of legalitarianism. What is both saddening and worrying about this is that the attack has come from a leader of the Democratic Party, the largest Italian center-left party, whereby he has accused those Roma who have participated in the primaries for the selection of the next candidate for mayor of Rome of cronyism and put forth similar accusations of vote buying. Cristiana Alicata has made ??a serious mistake and should apologise for this. First of all the Roma community, like all Italian and foreign citizens, possess rights of citizenship that it would be conducive to promote and enhance, instead of simply stifling through these prejudices and unfounded accusations. His words from yesterday devalue all the work done by those who have fought over the years for the affirmation of the right of participation for all, starting with a people who have been the victim of five years of junta Alemanno and that, through an act of active citizenship, yesterday gave its contribution to start a process of change. With regard to this information; it is making the news because it has sparked controversy and because it is offers a “strong” journalistic affirmation and it brings back the reassuring image of the cheating Roma ; inherently unfair, greedy, evoking old uncomfortable ghosts. Still we are unable to comprehend how they tested the main national news to contribute to this nonsense with such systematic intolerance, while remaining silent on the many, serious acts of discrimination that the Roma have been victims of in Rome recently. To say, then, “The usual queues of Roma”, is a genuinely racist statement. As well as being a dismissive racist statements therein lies a betrayal, a sad reversal of ethics. Alicata seems to not like this. We rather like to see people lined up to vote, to express a point of view, to try to influence the political life of a city. We like it very much; it is an achievement of civilization. Arci Solidarietà Onlus
I rom romani non vendono: votano
Il giorno in cui ricorre la Giornata Internazionale di Rom e Sinti, riconosciuta dall’Onu nel 1979, non può pienamente definirsi un “Bahtalo romano dives”, ovvero “buona giornata del popolo rom”. A Roma, polemiche gratuite e sproporzionate gettano dispiacere sulla partecipazione alle primarie tenutesi nella capitale per scegliere il candidato sindaco del centrosinistra alle prossime elezioni del 24 e 25 maggio in occasione delle quali alcuni “rom romani” hanno deciso di esprimere in pieno il proprio diritto di cittadinanza europea parteicpando al voto. Come European Alternatives, da sempre vicini ai diritti umani di rom, sinti e popolazioni viaggianti in Europa e sostenitori della piena espressione di cittadinanza consapevole da ogni individuo, ci uniamo alle dichiarazioni espresse da ARCI Soliderietà, nostra organizzazione partner in Italia che si contraddistingue per un impegno diretto a tutela di queste minoranze non soltanto nella giornata in cui ricorre a livello internazionale, ma tutto l'anno con un lavoro intenso e quotidiano sul territorio. Roma, 8 aprile 2013 Oggi è la Giornata Internazionale dei rom e sinti. L’8 aprile del 1971, a Londra, venne fondata l’International Romanì Union, l’atto ufficiale di partecipazione alla vita pubblica delle comunità rom. Anziché celebrare, ci troviamo costretti a denunciare l’ennesimo sproloquio razzista erogato con la solita scusa del legalitarismo. Quello che rattrista e allo stesso tempo preoccupa è che tale attacco sia arrivato da una dirigente del PD, il più grosso partito del centrosinistra italiano, che ha accusato di clientelismo i rom che hanno partecipato alle primarie per la scelta del prossimo candidato sindaco di Roma, e su queste parole aleggia lo spettro del voto di scambio. Cristiana Alicata ha commesso un gravissimo errore e per questo dovrebbe chiedere scusa. Prima di tutto alla comunità rom in quanto portatrice, come tutti i cittadini italiani e stranieri, di diritti di cittadinanza che sarebbe opportuno promuovere e valorizzare, anziché mortificare attraverso pregiudizi e accuse infondate. Le parole di ieri deprimono il lavoro svolto da quanti si sono battuti negli anni per l’affermazione del diritto alla partecipazione di tutti, a cominciare da un popolo che è stato vittima di cinque anni di giunta Alemanno e che, attraverso un gesto di cittadinanza attiva, ieri ha dato il proprio contributo per avviare un processo di cambiamento. A proposito dell’informazione: tutto questo fa notizia perché ha scatenato una polemica, perché è un’affermazione giornalisticamente “forte”, e perché restituisce quella rassicurante immagine del rom furfantello, intrinsecamente scorretto, avido, che evoca vecchi scomodi fantasmi. Ancora non capiamo come facciano le principali testate dell’informazione nazionale a contribuire a questo tam tam dell’intolleranza con tale sistematicità, tacendo invece sui tanti, gravi atti di discriminazione di cui i rom sono stati vittima negli ultimi anni a Roma. Affermare, poi, “Le solite file di rom”, oltre a essere un’affermazione genuinamente razzista, sbrigativa come solo le affermazioni razziste sanno essere, tradisce anche un desolante capovolgimento etico. Alla Alicata sembra non piacere questa immagine. A noi invece piace vedere le persone in fila per votare, esprimere un punto di vista, cercare di incidere sulla vita politica di una città. A noi piace moltissimo, è una conquista di civiltà. Arci Solidarietà Onlus
3 Domande a Sandro mezzadra
di Giampaolo Faella Sandro Mezzadra, professore all’Università di Bologna, studioso dei rapporti tra globalizzazione, cittadinanza e migrazione, parteciperà al Transeuropa Festivala Bologna, in 12 maggio, in una tavola rotonda sulla Carta europea dei beni comuni. Lo abbiamo intervistato sulle sfide attuali dell’Europa. Quest’anno il Transeuropa Festival, nelle quattordici città coinvolte, affronta tre temi: nuove forme di partecipazione politica, migrazioni, alternative economiche. Avendo seguito il Festival nelle precedenti edizioni, come vedi il ruolo di questo evento in un simile momento di transizione e incertezza per tutta la zona-euro e oltre? Più che di incertezza e di transizione parlerei, certo con un termine un po’ abusato, di crisi del progetto europeo. Da questo punto di vista penso che ci sia una sfida per tutti noi, e per voi che organizzate il festival, e per chi, come me, ormai da diversi anni cerca di pensare la politica dentro uno spazio europeo. Questa sfida consiste, per dirla in due parole, nel pensare radicalmente questa crisi. Voglio essere meno generico: il problema è che molti di noi, e credo anche il festival, hanno collocato il proprio ragionamento sull’Europa e le proprie pratiche europee “dentro e contro” – per usare un’altra formula molto diffusa – uno spazio istituzionale europeo. Per me il problema che si dovrebbe discutere nel prossimo festival è il seguente: è ancora possibile far ciò, oppure dobbiamo aggiornare i nostri ragionamenti e prendere congedo, in fondo, da quello spazio istituzionale per ripensarlo radicalmente? E’ una domanda che pongo che credo debba essere al centro delle discussioni del prossimo festival. Il candidato dell’estrema destra alle presidenziali francesi, recentemente, ha riproposto di mettere in discussione il diritto di libera circolazione all’interno dell’Unione. Nel frattempo, in tutta Europa la detenzione amministrativa dei migranti irregolari è la risposta più diffusa ai movimenti migratori. Si può dire che le migrazioni non sono ancora accettate come un grande fenomeno europeo con cui relazionarsi senza isterie? E, se sì, come le opinioni pubbliche possono uscire da questa impasse? Anche qui credo che si debba ragionare sulla congiuntura specifica che stiamo vivendo. La crisi economica non è priva di ricadute sulla condizione dei migranti, sui modi in cui l’Europa si rapporta alle migrazioni, e sugli stessi movimenti migratori. Per quel che riguarda la prima parte della domanda ricordo che già lo scorso anno c’era stato un tentativo di mettere in discussione lo spazio di libera circolazione, in occasione dell’arrivo di alcune migliaia di migranti tunisini dopo l’avvenuto cambiamento di regime. Fu allora proprio Sarkozy, il presidente francese, a farsi portavoce di una proposta di riforma in senso puramente restrittivo del regime di Schengen. Non dimentichiamo, inoltre, quanto era successo in Danimarca, dove c’era stata una sospensione della libera circolazione. Questo fa capire come sia radicalmente in discussione il progetto europeo. Dal punto di vista simbolico i due elementi fondamentali del progetto europeo, in questi anni, sono stati Schengen, come abolizione dei confini interni, e l’Euro; il fatto che entrambi questi elementi di grande valore simbolico siano stati duramente messi in discussione ci fa capire quanto sia profonda la crisi del progetto europeo. Nel tuo lavoro proponi di considerare la migrazione come un movimento sociale in senso pieno, una forza creativa e dirompente all’interno delle strutture economiche, sociali, culturali. Una forza che è diventata particolarmente evidente nel panorama Europeo degli ultimi anni, a partire dalle tante “rivolte migranti” che sono scoppiate in Europa, dalla rivolta di Rosarno e i migranti sulla gru nel 2010 in Italia, alle rivolte di Vincennes in Francia. Come descriveresti queste soggettività emergenti? Come ci portano a ripensare il significato stesso di cittadinanza europea? Qui i discorsi vanno contestualizzati. Io ho cominciato, insieme ad altri, a parlare di migrazione come movimento sociale una decina di anni fa, nel tentativo di costruire uno spazio di azione politica che fosse all’altezza della dimensione transnazionale dei movimenti migratori e delle sfide che a me sembrava i movimenti ponessero rispetto alla cittadinanza. In quel momento parlare di cittadinanza significava parlare di cittadinanza europea in un senso molto determinato. Dopo l’istituzione della cittadinanza europea gli anni ’90 testimoniano un periodo di grande vivacità della discussione tanto accademica e intellettuale, quanto politica e mediatica sui temi della cittadinanza, e in particolare della cittadinanza europea che stava destando grande aspettativa. Cittadinanza transnazionale significava uno spazio che sembrava in qualche modo affrancarsi dalla rigidità e dalle eredità più pesanti del nazionalismo, che aveva comunque rappresentato una sorta di ombra, di rovescio nella storia della cittadinanza in Europa. Come dicevamo e come scrissi, la cittadinanza non è un obiettivo, ma un terreno di conflitto. Tuttavia, dicendo questo, identificavamo alcuni passaggi che ci sembravano, da un punto di vista pratico, importanti da forzare, come ad esempio la campagna sulla cittadinanza di residenza. Io avevo le mie riserve, ma riconoscevo quella campagna come un elemento importante che qualificava e arricchiva quel campo conflittuale che mi sembrava essere la cittadinanza europea. Senza dimenticare la riflessione sul superamento della caratteristica giuridica fondamentale della cittadinanza europea come cittadinanza di secondo grado, e dunque sulla possibilità di una naturalizzazione diretta, come acquisizione diretta della cittadinanza europea, senza passare attraverso una cittadinanza di uno degli stati membri. Tutti discorsi che oggi mi sembra un po’ difficile riproporre, e che infatti mi sembra nessuno attualmente riproponga con l’enfasi, con la convinzione e con la passione con cui emergevano alcuni anni fa. E allora torno alla questione da cui sono partito: l’esigenza di un momento di riflessione radicale su che cosa è cambiato, e sui nuovi strumenti, sui nuovi linguaggi di cui abbiamo bisogno oggi per far fronte alla crisi alla quale ci troviamo di fronte. Dal Nordafrica molti giovani guardano all’Europa come a un modello democratico, mentre, dall’Europa, diversi più o meno apertamente sperano in un rivolgimento sociale qui da noi che sia paragonabile per intensità a ciò che sta avvenendo lì. Si illudono entrambi o questa generazione ha davvero qualcosa per cui lottare insieme? Partiamo intanto dal fatto che le illusioni, l’immaginazione, le fantasie, spesso hanno effetti reali importanti, i quali non sono meno…
3 questions à Sandro Mezzadra
Sandro Mezzadra participera au Festival Transeuropa qui se tiendra à Bologne le 12 mai, dans le cadre de l’événement suivant : Vers une Charte européenne des droits communs. Nous l’avons interviewé à propos des défis auxquels l’Europe est actuellement confrontée. Par Giampaolo Faella Traduction par Adeline Monnin Professeur Mezzadra, vous avez participé aux précédentes éditions du Festival : à votre avis, quel est le rôle de cet événement au sein d’une période aussi incertaine, qui est également une période de transition, pour les Européens ? À mon avis, il ne s’agit pas simplement d’une période de transition ou d’incertitude. Je dirais plutôt, d’une manière beaucoup plus banale, que le projet européen traverse une période de crise. Par conséquent, je crois que nous sommes tous confrontés à un défi : vous, tout autant que ceux qui, comme moi, réfléchissent depuis plusieurs années à une politique se situant au cœur d’un espace européen. Ce défi est le suivant : il faut envisager la crise de façon radicale. Cependant, il ne faut pas se cantonner aux généralités, le problème étant que beaucoup d’entre nous envisagent l’Europe et les pratiques européennes « à l’intérieur mais contre » un espace institutionnel européen. C’est pourquoi je pense que le prochain Festival devrait aborder la question suivante : « Cette conception est-elle toujours valable, ou devons-nous finalement modifier notre raisonnement et sortir de cet espace institutionnel pour en changer radicalement notre conception ? ». Je crois que lors du prochain festival, cette question doit être au cœur des débats. Dans vos travaux, vous présentez l’immigration comme une force créative ancrée dans les structures économiques, sociales et culturelles ; cette force ayant réellement commencé à poindre lors des nombreuses émeutes liées à l’immigration qui ont éclaté en Europe, par exemple à Rosarno et à Vincennes. Comment décririez-vous cette opinion émergente ? Qu’apporte-t-elle au sens que revêt la citoyenneté européenne ? Il faut replacer cette question dans son contexte. D’autres ont commencé, comme moi, à comparer l’immigration à un mouvement social il y a environ dix ans. Le but était d’initier des actions politiques adaptées à la dimension transnationale des mouvements de migration et aux problèmes que cela poserait, selon moi, à la citoyenneté. À l’époque, parler de citoyenneté revenait précisément à parler de citoyenneté européenne. Les années 1990 se sont révélées être une période faste en débats autour de ce thème, que ce soit d’un point de vue intellectuel, politique, ou même au niveau des médias. En effet, la citoyenneté européenne était alors l’objet de grandes attentes. Une citoyenneté transnationale offrait la chance de se libérer d’un héritage national extrêmement lourd et on avait le sentiment que de nouvelles bases pour le combat social venaient de naître. Comme je l’avais écrit à ce moment-là, la citoyenneté n’était pas une fin, mais plutôt le point de départ d’une contestation. Nous avions réussi à identifier quelques étapes que nous pensions cruciales à mettre en place, comme nous l’avions fait avec la campagne consacrée à la citoyenneté, acquise de naissance ou par droit du sol. Il est vrai que j’étais quelque peu dubitatif, mais j’ai admis qu’il s’agissait d’un élément essentiel à l’enrichissement d’un sujet source de conflits. De plus, nous ne pouvons pas oublier la réflexion concernant une caractéristique juridique qu’il convenait de dépasser : la citoyenneté européenne était considérée comme une citoyenneté de second ordre. Par voie de conséquence, cela se rapportait également à la possibilité d’une naturalisation directe. Quoi qu’il en soit, j’ai le sentiment que ces questions ne sont plus d’actualité. C’est pour cette raison que je reviens au point précédent : le temps est venu d’examiner en détail ce qui a changé, ainsi que les nouveaux outils et moyens de communications dont nous avons désormais besoin. Pour beaucoup de jeunes vivant au nord de l’Afrique, l’Europe est un modèle. Inversement, beaucoup en Europe espèrent plus ou moins ouvertement un bouleversement social, d’une intensité similaire à ce qu’il se passe en Afrique. Sommes-nous tous en train de nourrir des illusions, ou cette génération a-t-elle réellement une cause commune pour laquelle elle doit se battre ? Ne perdons pas de vue que les illusions, les rêves ou tout autre produit de notre imagination ont souvent un impact sur la réalité, et cet impact est aussi concret qu’un autre, même s’il est le fruit d’un rêve. J’ai l’impression d’avoir observé exactement la même dynamique l’année dernière, où les jeunes ont été l’intérêt commun des banques de part et d’autre de la Méditerranée. Je crois qu’il y a encore quelques « soubresauts » de temps à autre, au Maghreb et au Machreq tout autant qu’en Europe. Néanmoins, il faut aussi tenir compte du fait que les illusions gardent un degré de fiction. Il me semble qu’ici se pose un problème fondamental : à nouveau définir un espace euro-méditerranéen ne se résume pas à le mettre en place au sein des partenariats ou accords actuellement en vigueur. Si l’on veut que la liberté et l’égalité aient leur place, il est nécessaire de rétablir un équilibre entre le nord et le sud de la Méditerranée en matière de libre circulation. Sandro Mezzadra est agrégé en théorie politique à l’université de Bologne. Il fait partie du Comité de rédaction de Studi Culturali, Scienza & Politica et de Filosofia Politica. Il est coéditeur de l’ouvrage The Borders of Justice, avec Étienne Balibar et Ranabir Samaddar (Temple University Press 2011). Il est en train d’écrire un livre, Border as Method, avec Brett Neilson. Ce livre sortira en 2012, chez Duke University Press. Sandro Mezzadra a beaucoup écrit à propos de l’immigration, du capitalisme, du colonialisme et du post-colonialisme, de l’opéraïsme italien et du marxisme autonome.
3 Questions to Sandro Mezzadra
Sandro Mezzadra will participate in the Transeuropa Festival in Bologna on the 12th May, in the event Towards a European Charter of the Commons. We interviewed him on the current challenges Europe is facing. by Giampaolo Faella Professor Mezzadra, having witnessed the previous editions of the Festival, how do you see this event’s role in a period of so much uncertainty and transition for European people? I would suggest – of course with a much overused expression – that it is a moment of crisis for the European project, rather than simply a transition or a period of uncertainty. Therefore I think there is a challenge for all of us; for you and for those like me, who have been now for several years trying to imagine politics inside a European space. This challenge lies in thinking radically about this crisis. But I do not want to stick to generalities: the problem is that many of us put their reasoning about Europe and their European practices ‘inside but against’ a European institutional space. Consequently, in my opinion the issue that should be addressed during the next festival is the following “Is it still possible to do so, or shall we adjourn our ways of reasoning and take leave, eventually, of that institutional space, in order to rethink it radically?” I believe this should be at the very core of next festival’s debates. In your work you depict migration as a creative power that lies inside economic, social and cultural structures. A force that emerged particularly starting from the many migrants’ riots exploded in Europe, from Rosarno to Vincennes’ turmoil. How would you describe these outcropping subjectivities? What do they bring to the meaning of European citizenship? This issue should be contextualized. I began to speak, among others, of migration as a social movement about ten years ago, in an effort to make room for a political action able to match up to the transnational dimension of the migratory movements, and the challenges that I believed they were raising to citizenship. Back then to talk about citizenship meant referring to European citizenship in a very precise way. The 1990s proved to be a period of great vitality in the intellectual, political and even media debate on the theme, because at that time, European citizenship aroused great expectations. Transnational citizenship evoked the chance to free oneself from the heaviest of nationalism’s heritage. It looked like a new ground for social fight had emerged. As I wrote then, citizenship was not a goal, but rather the ground for a contestation. We managed to identify, then, a few steps that we thought were crucial points to be forced through, as we did with resident citizenship campaign. Though I had my reservations about it, I recognised it as an important element in order to enrich a conflictual field. We can’t forget, moreover, the reflection about overcoming the juridical feature of European citizenship as a second level citizenship, and therefore about the possibility of a direct naturalization. Anyway those issues seem to me, today, unlikely to come up again. That’s why I go back to the previous point: the need of a moment for a radical thinking on what is changed, on the new tools and languages that we need today. Many young people in North Africa look at Europe as a model, while, here in Europe, many, more or less overtly, hope in a social upheaval, comparable in intensity to what is happening there. Are both of them cherishing illusions or has this generation really a common cause to fight for? Let’s start from recalling that illusions, imagination and fantasies, often have real effects that are not less concrete for the mere fact that they were originated by illusions or fantasies; it seems to me that last year we saw exactly this kind of dynamics, in which young people played off the cushion between the two Mediterranean banks. I think there are still “rebounds” going on, in Maghreb and in Mashrek as well as in Europe. Notwithstanding we should also analyze how fictitious illusions can be. Here it seems to me that there is a real fundamental issue: shaping a Euro-Mediterranean space once again can’t be simply casting it in the current partnerships or agreements. Room for freedom and equality asks for a correction of the deep imbalance between the North and South of the Mediterraneanin terms of freedom of circulation. Sandro Mezzadra is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bologna. He is on the editorial boards of Studi Culturali, Scienza & Politica and Filosofia Politica. He is the co-editor of The Borders of Justice with Étienne Balibar and Ranabir Samaddar (Temple University Press 2011). Border as Method, a book he is currently writing with Brett Neilson, will come out in 2012 from Duke University Press. He has written widely on the areas of migration, capitalism, colonialism and post-colonialism, Italian operaismo and autonomist Marxism.
Hongrie : Le gouvernement doit mettre fin aux réformes totalitaires de la constitution
Par István Heged?s et la “Hungarian Europe Society” Traduction par Julie Jarnoux Profitant de leur majorité parlementaire, Viktor Orbán et son gouvernement se lance dans une nouvelle série d’amendements, aux airs de coup d’Etat, de la Constitution et souhaite élever au statut constitutionnel certaines lois auparavant bloquées par la Cour constitutionnelle. L’alliance Fidesz-KDNP souhaite introduire pour toujours ses idées anti-démocratiques et contraires aux valeurs européennes et même universelles, qui il n’y a pas si longtemps, elle était pourtant forcée de retirer sous la pression des institutions européennes. Avec ses mesures, le gouvernement hongrois prive ses citoyens de leurs libertés et met à nouveau à l’épreuve les acteurs internationaux publics et démocratiques qui défendent nos droits. La définition discriminatoire de la famille, la possibilité d’expulsé les sans-domiciles des lieux publics, la non reconnaissance de certaines églises à cause de leurs éventuelles affiliations politiques, la réduction du cadre de juridiction de la Cour constitutionnelle, l’obligation pour les étudiants d’universités d’état de rester sur le territoire hongrois une fois leurs études terminées, ce qui n’est autre qu’une atteinte brutale à la liberté de circulation des populations, et la réduction de l’égalité des chances entre les différents candidats sont à nouveau suggérés par des projets de lois d’initiative parlementaire. Les amendements prévus et les démarches inacceptables ont à raison entrainé une réponse négative de la part de l’UE et de bien d’autres. Nous ne devrions pas être surpris par l’indignation de l’opinion publique européenne, par le ton extrêmement dur des articles de presse internationaux et par les signes d’alerte et d’inquiétude des plus importants politiciens étrangers. En effet, le gouvernement hongrois joue avec le feu car la suspension du droit de vote de la Hongrie au Conseil de l’Union européenne et la retenue des fonds européens ont été clairement et sans ambigüité évoquées comme éventuelles conséquences. Tous ces projets de lois mener à bien à une vitesse éclair malgré les protestations des forces politiques démocratiques hongroises, des nombreux groupes civiques, des spécialistes et des critiques internationales accentuent la tension politique en Hongrie et isole de plus en plus le pays du reste du monde. Personne ne peut sérieusement croire que les citoyens hongrois aient autorisé le gouvernement hongrois à aller dans cette direction. L’alliance Fidesz-KDNP n’a tirée aucune leçon de ces trois dernières années : l’image du régime politique hongrois rivalise avec celle des pays où la limitation des droits de l’Homme et la violation des droits démocratiques de base servent à sécuriser le pouvoir d’une mince élite. Ne laissons pas l’alliance Fidesz-KDNP user de son pouvoir pour démanteler entièrement l’Etat de droit, afin que l’Europe dénonce à juste titre le manque de démocratie de la Hongrie. Ne laissons pas le Hongrie tourner le dos à L’Europe. Budapest, le 10 mars 2013
Hungary: Government Should Stop Its Totalitarian Changes to the Constitution
by István Heged?s and the Hungarian Europe SocietyAbusing their two-third parliamentary majority, Viktor Orbán and his government in a new wave of “coup-like” amendments to the constitution wants to elevate to constitutional status a number of laws that were previously struck down by the Constitutional Court. Fidesz-KDNP wishes to cement for ever such anti-democratic ideas contradictory to European, even, universal values, which not so long ago it was forced to revoke under the pressure of the European institutions. By doing so, the government is depriving Hungarian citizens of their liberties, and again challenging international, public democratic players defending our rights.The discriminatory definition of family, the criminalisation of the homeless, the restrictions on the recognition of churches based on potential party political aspects, the narrowing of the framework of jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court, the binding state-funded university students to the Hungarian soil after their studies which is a brutal restriction in the area of the liberty of free movement of people, and reducing equal opportunity at the elections amongst competitors are being submitted by way of a private member bill once again. The planned amendments and the unacceptable procedure have with reason provoked a negative response within the EU and elsewhere. We should not be surprised by the outrage of European public opinion, by the articles in the international press written in an unprecedentedly harsh tone, and by the expressions of concern and warnings by prominent foreign politicians. The government is indeed playing with fire now: the suspension of Hungary’s voting rights at the Council of the European Union and the withholding of EU funds have been suggested in strong and unambiguous terms as a consequence. The rapid law-making process carried out despite the protests of Hungarian democratic political forces, numerous civic groups and experts, as well as international criticism is increasing political tension in the country and Hungary’s isolation in the world. Nobody can think seriously that Hungarian citizens have authorised the government to take this political course. The Fidesz-KDNP alliance has not learnt from the last three years: the perception of the Hungarian political regime competes with countries where a limitation of human rights and an infringement of basic democratic rights serve to secure the power of a narrow elite. Let’s not allow Fidesz-KDNP to use its power for the full dismantling of the rule of law, so that Europe rightly denounces Hungary as undemocratic. Let’s prevent Hungary from turning its back on Europe. Budapest, 10 March 2013
Shares: Discussione col collettivo LIGNA
Presentazione del collettivo di artisti LIGNA (Germania) 21 Aprile – Ore 17 MACRO (Roma, Via Nizza 138) SHAREs – Informing Transnational Action e Joan of Art – Towards a Free Education. Domenica 21 Aprile alle ore 17 presso il Macro di Roma, si terrà un incontro con Ligna – il collettivo fondato nel 1997 in Germania dagli artisti Ole Frahm, Michael Hueners e Torsten Michaelsen – affronta gli aspetti educativi e comunicativi della radio. Il talk, organizzato da European Alternatives in collaborazione con Joan of Art – Towards a Free Education, introduce un workshop di tre giorni che avrà luogo al MACRO e a Nomas Foundation, aperto a dieci artisti che sono stati selezionati in tutta Europa e fa parte del progetto SHARES, curato da Emanuele Guidi per European Alternatives. I partecipanti al workshop sono: Charlotte Rooijackers and Anna Hoetjes (Amsterdam), Jordi Ferreiro (Barcelona,) Joanna Von Mayer (Berlin), Flaviu Rogojan (Cluj Napoca), Morgan Quaintance (London), Alexandre Poisson (Paris), Roman Stentina (Prague), Elisa Abela (Roma), Nataliya Todorova (Sofia), Wojciech Tymicki (Warsaw). I partecipanti sono stati invitati da: If I Can’t Dance (collettivo curatoriale; Amsterdam), Latitudes (collettivo curatoriale; Barcellona), Sigrid Gareis (Curatore and Direttore presso Academy of the Arts of the World Köln; Berlin), Ciprian Muresan (Artista; Cluj Napoca), Grant Watson (Curatore, Iniva; Londra), Tania Bruguera (Artista, Cuba), Marketa Stara (Curatore, DOX; Prague), Mike Watson (Curatore, Roma), Boyan Manchev (Filosofo, Sofia), Grzegorz Kowalski (Artista e Professore presso Academy of Arts, Warsaw). LIGNA LIGNA esiste dal 1997 ed è composto dagli artisti Ole Frahm, Michael Hueners and Torsten Michaelsen che dai primi anni ’90 anno iniziato a lavorare presso la Freies Sender Kombinat (FSK), una radio pubblica non profit di Amburgo. Ciò che le opere di LIGNA hanno in comune è il ruolo del pubblico che è considerato come un collettivo di produttori: in quanto associazione temporanea può produrre effetti imprevedibili ed incontrollabili che sfidano la regolazione dello spazio. I progetti di Ligna includono formati come; Radio Ballet (dal 2002) che mobilita i partecipanti (radio ascoltatori) attraverso una coreografia di gestualità e azioni che sono proibite in spazio pubblico; Radio concert for 144 Mobile Phones, in cui i radio ascoltatori partecipano ad una composizione collettiva; The New Man, una pièce teatrale senza attori, che coinvolge il pubblico in una complessa interazione gestuale. Ligna ha partecipato ad importanti mostre, festival di teatro ed arti performative in Germania ed in tutto il mondo, tra gli altri: ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; Depo Istanbul, De Appel arts Center, Amsterdam; Kunstverein Hamburg, Kampnagel Amburgo, HAU Berlin, Schauspielhaus, Zürigo, Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht; Tanzquartier Wien; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Ciudades Parallelas (Berlin, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Zurigo). SHAREs – Informing Transnational Action SHAREs è un progetto organizzato da European Alternatives, organizzazione dedicata a promuovere politiche e culture transazionali in collaborazione con DEPO art gallery, (Istanbul, Turkey), Alternatives Europeennes (France), Allianz Kultur Stiftung (Germany). Attraverso workshop in diversi paesi europei, il progetto prepare una mobilitazione artistica transnazionale che avrà luogo in oltre dieci paesi europei nell'ottobre del 2013. SHARES è stato co-finanziato dal programma europeo Cultura.
Interview avec Tania Bruguera
Par Coralba Marocco et Ségolène Pruvot Traduction par Adeline Monnin Vous dirigez, dans le Queens, le projet artistique Immigrant Movement International (IM International), ainsi que son équivalent PPM (Migrant People’s Party) à Mexico. Il s’agit d’un projet collaboratif qui comprend la direction d’un centre social et le lancement d’un parti pour les immigrants. Comment tout cela a-t-il commencé ? Qu’est-ce qui vous a motivée ? Pourriez-vous décrire le projet et ses développements à venir ? Tout a commencé en 2005, à l’occasion de l’agitation qui s’est propagée dans les banlieues parisiennes. J’étais à Paris à ce moment-là et il était clair que la réaction de l’État n’était vraiment pas la bonne. Même si je ne partageais pas les mêmes expériences culturelles ni le même vécu que les immigrés, je me suis identifiée à eux à ce moment, pour la première fois. Je n’excuse pas la violence, peu importe qui en est responsable et la raison, mais j’ai vu à quel point ces immigrés étaient déçus : manque de représentation, manque de langage « autorisé », manque d’un accès direct au pouvoir politique. Je me suis posé les questions suivantes : pourquoi ne pourraient-ils pas réclamer des droits et pourquoi devraient-ils être sur la défensive s’ils participent tout autant que les autres au développement du pays ? Pourquoi les présente-t-on comme s’ils étaient opposés à quelque chose, ce qui est irrationnel, au lieu de considérer leurs propositions comme de nouvelles voies ? A-t-on réellement besoin de les brutaliser comme s’ils étaient des bêtes féroces, incapables de penser et de dialoguer ? Pourquoi leur relation avec le pouvoir politique a-t-elle besoin d’être arbitrée par des ressortissants ? J’y ai réfléchi pendant quelques jours et il m’a paru clair que les immigrés doivent se représenter eux-mêmes dans la structure politique. De plus, ils ne doivent pas être considérés comme des esclaves modernes mais comme une classe sociale, nouvelle et puissante, du 21ème siècle. Et peu importe votre classe sociale, vous pouvez partagez une expérience, une histoire communes et humaines liées à l’immigration. Une idée s’est alors imposée à moi : un parti des immigrés (Migrant People’s Party). Imaginez comme ce serait bien si un immigré sans-papiers était élu, à une époque où les concepts régissant l’État-nation sont complètement redessinés. Cette idée doit dépasser l’art en tant que pratique à court terme, elle doit faire partie intégrante de la réalité. Elle doit être Arte Útil (de l’art utile). Pour cela, le public doit être préparé à la tâche qui se profile ; il faut créer une communauté qui rassemble des personnes originaires de différentes classes sociales pour les amener à une nouvelle vision commune des immigrés. Je pense que l’art peut résoudre certains problèmes, mêmes politiques ou sociaux. Mais pour cela, il est nécessaire de se servir d’une langue commune à son interlocuteur. Les artistes ne peuvent pas s’installer dans le confort de leur routine artistique et prétendre que s’ils sont incompris, le problème vient de l’autre. S’il s’agit de politique, l’artiste doit trouver un langage commun aux artistes et aux politiques, sinon ce ne sera pas de l’art, ou ce ne sera pas de la politique. L’objectif du Parti international des immigrés est d’être intégré au système et de pouvoir parler aux politiques. Ils doivent cesser de considérer les immigrés comme des délinquants inadaptés, sans éducation, pauvres et sans-papiers, des pions pour l’économie. Les concepts de connectivité, de permanence et de temporalité ont changé et c’est pourquoi le concept d’appartenance à un lieu doit être redéfini. Grâce à la mondialisation culturelle, il est plus aisé de s’adapter à divers endroits du monde. Nous devons changer radicalement notre vision des immigrants : ils sont les acteurs clés d’un plus bel avenir. Mon idée de départ était de créer ce parti politique en Europe. Grâce à l’expérience du Queens et de Mexico, le projet est prêt à devenir une véritable structure politique, gagnant en puissance. Nous appelons ce projet un « parti » afin que les politiques comprennent que nous voulons un réel pouvoir politique, mais que la manière dont cette forme politique fonctionne et définit ses actions est plus excitante que celle des partis politiques non fonctionnels. Le projet doit offrir une autre façon de faire partie de la société, qui elle-même doit être ouverte. Tout le monde devra essayer de trouver une solution pour que cela prenne forme et pour déterminer comment tous peuvent en bénéficier. Pensez-vous que l’art peut être à l’origine du changement ? Comment décririez-vous l’art politique ? La relation entre lutte et changement n’est pas simple. Le changement est un processus long et désordonné comportant beaucoup de négociations, de modifications de vos idées de départ, de compromis, de persévérance ; un travail énorme que beaucoup de personnes ne soupçonnent même pas. Donc ça a l’air d’un conte de fée sorti de nulle part. De plus, les victoires auxquelles vous parvenez ne sont conséquentes que si elles présagent de tout un ensemble d’autres changements. Un changement n’est que le premier pas vers de nouvelles luttes pour le maintenir dans la bonne direction. Changer revient à éduquer les gens. Alors oui, l’art peut participer au changement, il peut aider au niveau de l’éducation, aider à imaginer le changement et lui fournir un espace expérimental, etc.. Mais un changement politique est une négociation complexe comprenant de nombreux points où faire pression et pour moi, l’art est une manière de faire pression. Je crois en l’art politique, c'est-à-dire un art qui fonctionnement d’un point de vue politique, s’il perdure, s’il est réalisé collectivement et s’il fonctionne. Alors ses conséquences peuvent avoir un réel impact. Dans l’univers de l’art, il n’existe aucune structure institutionnelle viable pour ce type d’art qui nécessite que l’artiste endosse divers rôles à différents moments du projet. Tout d’abord, l’instigateur (celui qui propose l’idée), puis le relayeur d’information (éduquer le groupe et lui expliquer le projet, ouvert à de nouveaux développements générés par les idées du groupe), ensuite le conseiller (pour les directions que le projet doit prendre), et pour finir, il disparaît (pour devenir un…
Interview with Tania Bruguera
by Coralba Marocco and Ségolène Pruvot You are running in Queens the art project Immigrant Movement International (IM International) and in Mexico its version PPM (Migrant People’s Party). It is a collaborative process that includes the running of a social centre and the launch of an immigrants’ party. How did it start? What was your motivation? Could you describe the process and its future developments? It started during the 2005 civil unrest in the suburbs of Paris. I was in Paris at the time. It was so clear that the state reaction was wrong, very wrong. Even when I did not have the same cultural nor the same live experiences, through this moment I identified myself for the first time with immigrants. I do not justify violence no matter who initiate it, no matter what the justification is, but I saw the frustration those immigrants had, the lack of representation, the lack of ‘authorized’ language, the lack of direct access to political power. I asked myself why they can’t ask for their rights and are forced to be defensive if they are building this country as anyone else? Why they are portrayed as if they are irrationally against something instead seeing their proposals as new avenues? What is the need to brutalize them as if they could not think and dialogue, as if they were fierce animals? Why their relationship with political power has to be mediated by nationals? After thinking about this for the next day or so it was clear that immigrants need to represent themselves in the political structure; that they should not be seeing as modern slaves but as a powerful new social class for the 21st century; that no matter where you come from, no matter your social class, you share a human common immigrant experience and narrative. An idea became clear: a Migrant People’s Party. Imagine how great it would be if an undocumented migrant was elected in the era of the redefinition of nation-state concepts. This idea has to go beyond art as a short-term practice; it has to be art implemented into reality; it has to be Arte Útil (Useful Art). The audience for this have to be prepared to receive the work; you need to create a community, bringing together people from different social classes to a common and new understanding of immigrants. I believe art can solve problems, even political and social problems, but for this they need to use a language that is shared with the people they are dialoguing with. Artists cannot be in the comfortable space of their art routine and pretend that it is the other’s problem if they are not understood. If it is about politics the artist needs to find a language that is shared by artists and by politicians, otherwise it will not be art or it will not be politics. Im International’s Party of Migrant People’s goal is to infiltrate the system and speak to the politicians. They need to stop seeing immigrants as inadequate, uneducated, poor, undocumented, delinquents that are tokens for the economy. The concept of belonging to a place also needs to be redefined; the ideas around connectivity, permanence and temporalities have changed. Places in the world are easier to adapt to, it is one outcome of the cultural globalization. The way we envision an immigrant needs to be radically changed, they are an active part of a better future. My original idea was to do this political party in Europe, after the experience in Queens and in Mexico the project is ready to become a real political structure acquiring power. We call it a ‘party’ so politicians understand that we want to have real political power but the ways in which this political form works and defines its actions should be more exciting than the non-functional political parties. The project should propose another way to be in society, an open society. It will be the role of all to figure out how this can exist and how can it work for the benefit and advancement of all. Do you think art can trigger change? How would you describe political art? The relation between struggle and change is not simple. Change is a process, a messy slow process with a lot of negotiations, readjustments of your original ideas, compromises, persistence, a lot of hard work that most people never know about so it looks like a fairytale coming from out of the blue. Then the victories you achieve are big only because and when they prefigure the array of new further changes. A change is just the beginning of your new struggles to keep that change in the right direction. Change is all about educating people. Yes, art can be part of change, it can help in the educational part, it can help imagining the change, it can provide an experimental space to try out change and so on. But political change is a complex negotiation with many pressure points and I see art working as one of them. I believe in political art -art that works politically- if it is long lasting, made collectively and works with the consequences it can have a real impact. For such political art there are no sustainable institutional structures in the art world. Political art demand various roles from the artist at various moments in the project: from initiator (the one that proposes the idea), to information conduit (educating and sharing with the group the explanation of the project open to new developments of the idea from the group), to facilitator (of the directions of the project), to disappear (becoming another member of the group. Do you think European Alternatives would be a good partner to develop your project in Europe? Yes, I do. We’ll propose a first presentation of the project in the frame of the Transeuropa Festival in Paris. With European Alternatives, we share the understanding that the language can be renewed to advance different political results, that as an…
Transférabilité du mariage et de lunion civile en Europe.
Traduction : Adeline Monnin (Estapáginaestá disponible en español) « Je vais éclaircir un point. Si votre mariage ou union civile est reconnu par la loi dans un pays A, vous avez le droit, et on parle ici d’un droit fondamental, de transférer ce statut ainsi que celui de votre partenaire dans un pays B. Dans le cas contraire, il s’agit d’une violation de la législation de l’UE, alors il n’y a aucune discussion possible à ce sujet. C’est tout à fait clair et nous ne devons pas avoir la moindre hésitation.» Viviane Reding, membre de la Commission européenne. Contexte Pendant toute l’année 2011, Alternatives Européennes organise des consultations dans le but de délibérer avec les citoyens et les investisseurs de pays de l’UE sur des questions transeuropéennes, dans les domaines de la justice, de la sécurité et de la liberté, abordés par le Programme de Stockholm (2010-2014). Ces consultations se tiendront dans les pays suivants : Royaume-Uni, France, Italie, Bulgarie, Espagne et Roumanie. Cependant, des citoyens de l’Europe entière y participeront. Les droits LGBT, et particulièrement la reconnaissance mutuelle des formes existantes de partenariat (y compris pour les couples hétérosexuels) dans toute l’UE constituent l’un des six sujets autour desquels des tables rondes composées de citoyens seront organisées. Le but de ces consultations est de définir un ensemble spécifique de requêtes communes au niveau européen, en ce qui concerne les droits des citoyens. Ainsi des actions spécifiques auront l’opportunité de voir le jour, comme éventuellement une initiative citoyenne. Cadre institutionnel et politique Dans la plupart des pays de l’UE (17 sur 27), les couples homosexuels ont droit à une union permanente, ou peuvent légaliser leur cohabitation. Cela revêt plusieurs formes : égalité totale du mariage, union civile, ou réglementation des droits de cohabitation. En raison de l’interdépendance économique des pays de l’UE, de plus en plus de couples homosexuels doivent s’installer dans des pays où leur union n’est pas reconnue. La Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’Union européenne ne laisse aucune place au doute : « le droit de se marier et le droit de fonder une famille sont garantis selon les lois nationales qui en régissent l’exercice ». Néanmoins, la fragmentation actuelle des droits homosexuels en Europe viole au moins quatre articles de cette même Charte : article 7 : « Toute personne a droit au respect de sa vie privée et familiale » ; article 15.2 : « Tout citoyen ou toute citoyenne de l’Union a la liberté de chercher un emploi, de travailler, de s’établir ou de fournir des services dans tout État membre » ; article 24.3 : « Tout enfant a le droit d’entretenir régulièrement des relations personnelles et des contacts directs avec ses deux parents, sauf si cela est contraire à son intérêt » ; article 33.1 : « La protection de la famille est assurée sur le plan juridique, économique et social ». De plus, le traité sur l’Union européenne (récemment amendé par le traité de Lisbonne) établit que : article 3.2 : « L’Union offre à ses citoyens un espace de liberté, de sécurité et de justice sans frontières intérieures, au sein duquel est assurée la libre circulation des personnes […] ». Actuellement, ce droit n’est pas totalement respecté en ce qui concerne les personnes en union civile : si elles partent dans d’autres pays de l’UE pour chercher du travail, elles risquent de perdre leurs droits si leur union n’est pas reconnue. Cela peut s’avérer extrêmement grave si l’un des partenaires tombe malade ou décède, ou dans le cas d’un litige au sujet des biens, par exemple. C’est pourquoi, même si une réglementation des unions homosexuelles dans l’UE entière est souhaitable mais au-delà de ses compétences, parvenir à la reconnaissance mutuelle de tous les types d’union (un problème relativement mineur) constituerait une première étape plus à notre portée. Cela dit, l’histoire de l’UE est marquée par plusieurs petites étapes vers l’intégration, qui ont conduit inévitablement à une plus grande intégration. . Les efforts que nous mettons dans cette campagne (ne concernant qu’une seule question) ont une motivation simple : il s’agit ici d’un point de départ et non d’un but ultime. Le programme de Stockholm La Section 2.3 du programme de Stockholm précise que la lutte contre la discrimination et l’homophobie doit être « poursuivie avec détermination ». De plus, la section 3.1.2 insiste sur le fait que « la reconnaissance mutuelle devrait être étendue à des domaines encore non ouverts mais essentiels pour la vie quotidienne, tels que […] les régimes matrimoniaux ». Le cadre politique et juridique est donc favorable à une campagne visant la reconnaissance de toutes les formes d’union dans l’UE. L’Initiative citoyenne Le traité de Lisbonne introduit l’éventualité d’une initiative citoyenne européenne. Il établit que « au moins un million de citoyens issus d’au moins un quart des États membres peuvent inviter la Commission européenne à présenter des propositions d'actes juridiques dans des domaines relevant de sa compétence, sur lesquels les citoyens estiment qu’un acte juridique de l’Union est nécessaire à l’application des traités ». Les signatures en ligne sont considérées comme valables. Actuellement, il est proposé que les signatures proviennent d’au moins neuf pays de l’UE pour que l’initiative soit valable. Aller de l’avant Alternatives Européennes est ouverte à toute collaboration avec des organisations partenaires et des individus militants, issus de toute l’Europe, pour mettre en place une série de consultations délibératives transnationales, afin de créer une requête européenne unie et de construire une coalition indispensable à la concrétisation de cette requête. Cela peut inclure la présentation d’une initiative citoyenne à la Commission européenne visant l’obtention d’une législation officielle quant à la reconnaissance mutuelle de toutes les formes existantes de mariage, d’union et de droits de cohabitation en vigueur dans toute l’Europe. Nous sommes conscients que le rassemblement d’un million de voix représente un réel défi, mais une excellente coordination entre les 27 États membres et une alliance avec des partis politiques, des eurodéputés, des ONG locales, nationales et transnationales, ainsi qu’une stratégie basée sur les médias sociaux pourraient permettre à ce projet de voir le jour.
Same sex and cohabitation rights
(Esta página está disponible en español) Transferability of marriages and civil partnerships across the EU “Let me stress this. If you live in a legally-recognised same-sex partnership, or marriage, in country A, you have the right – and this is a fundamental right –to take this status and that of your partner to country B. If not, it is a violation of EU law, so there is no discussion about this. This is absolutely clear, and we do not have to hesitate on this.” Vivianne Reding, EU Commissioner Context Over 2011, European Alternatives is organising a deliberative consultation with citizens and stakeholders in a sample of six EU countries on transeuropean issues relating to the area of Justice, Security and Freedom contained in the Stockholm Programme (2010-2014). The consultations will be taking place in the UK, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, but citizens from throughout Europe will be involved. Gay rights and in particular mutual recognition of existing forms of partnerships (including for straight couples) across the EU is one of the six topics around which citizens’ panels will be organised. These consultations are imagined to decline a specific set of shared demands at a European level in the areas of citizens’ rights, leading to specific actions, including the possibility of a Citizens’ Initiative. Political and institutional framework In a majority of EU countries (17 out of 27) gay couples can celebrate their permanent unions or regulate their cohabitation. This takes different forms, including full marriage equality, civil partnerships, or regulation of cohabitation rights. Due to the economic interconnectedness of the EU countries, the phenomenon of same-sex couples needing to relocate to another country that does not recognise their union has become widespread. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights makes it clear that “the right to marry and the right to found a family shall be guaranteed in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of these rights”. However, there are at least four articles of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights that the current fragmentation of gay rights in Europe violates: Article 9: everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life Article 15: every citizen of the Union has the freedom to seek employment, to work, to exercise the right of establishment and to provide services in any Member State Article 24.3: every child shall have the right to maintain on a regular basis a personal relationship and direct contact with both his or her parents, unless that is contrary to his or her interests Article 33: the family shall enjoy legal, economic and social protection Furthermore, the Treaty of the European Union (amended most recently by the Lisbon Treaty) states: Article 3.2: The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured (…) This right is not currently fully respected for people in civil partnerships: if they move to seek work in other countries of the European Union, they may end up losing their rights if their partnership is not recognized. This can be particularly serious if one of the partners becomes ill or dies, or in case of a dispute over property, for example. For this reason, while a call for regulation of gay partnerships in the whole of the EU would be desirable but beyond its competences, focusing on one relatively small issue like the mutual recognition of all types of unions, may be a more achievable first-step. This said, the history of the European Union has been marked by a series of relatively small steps towards integration that have led to inevitable further integration. Our effort toward this specific single-issue campaign is moved by the awareness that this is a starting point and not just a final goal. The Stockholm Programme Section 2.3 of the Stockholm Programme specifies that measures to fight discrimination and homophobia should “be vigorously pursued”. Moreover, section 3.1.2 highlights how “mutual recognition should be extended to fields that are essential to everyday life, e.g. […] matrimonial property rights”. There is therefore a favourable legal and political framework within which to place a campaign for the recognition of all forms of partnerships across the EU. Citizens’ Initiative The Lisbon Treaty introduces the possibility of the European Citizens’ Initiative. The treaty provides that “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”. Online signatures will be considered valid. The current proposals are that signatures will have to come from a minimum of 9 EU countries for the initiative to be valid. The way forward European Alternatives is looking to collaborate with partner organisations and individual activists around Europe to organise a series of transnational deliberative consultations aimed at producing a join European demand and setting up the necessary coalition to carry through that demand. This may include submitting a Citizens’ Initiative to the European Commission, requesting officially legislate over mutual recognition of all forms of existing marriages, partnership and cohabitation rights across the EU. While aware of the challenge that the 1 million figure represents, a well-organised coordination across all 27 member states and an alliance with political parties, individual MEPs, local, national, transnational NGOs as well as a strategy based on social media and viral communication, could make this challenge achievable.
It gets better – Stories from Europe
Eleonora Nestola
Eleonora is one of the candidates standing for elections as member representatives of the Transeuropa Network. Find out more about who she is and why she stands as a candidate. Elections will take place from October 7th to 14th: sign up to vote!
« Quallons-nous devenir sans les Barbares ? » La politique jeunesse dEuro-Med
Traduction par Adeline Monnin Par Niccolo Milanese, grâce aux remarques faites au Forum Méditerranéen Anna Lindh qui s’est tenu le 6 avril 2013, à Marseille. Entre le 15 et le 20 avril, Alternatives Européennes accueillera, en France, des militants égyptiens et espagnols dans le cadre du projet « Stop à la précarité de la jeunesse : agissons démocratiquement » Notre histoire littéraire dépeint la mer Méditerranée comme une mer connue pour être trompeuse. Poséidon et les autres dieux se sont même amusés à y piéger le malin Ulysse. Il existe plus d’une manière, élégante ou attrayante, d’associer les mots « jeunesse » et « Méditerranée », et les dirigeants politiques gravitant autour de cette zone maritime s’affairent à élaborer des projets s’étendant au-delà de la mer, ceci afin d’apaiser une génération angoissée par la perspective du chômage. Il faut également reconnaître qu’au cours de notre histoire, Méditerranée et jeunesse ont été récemment associées de façon cauchemardesque, en particulier à cause de l’idéologie fasciste, qui était bien entendu une invention méditerranéenne. Mussolini rêvait de dominer la Mare Nostrum ; le premier hymne fasciste a d’ailleurs été nommé « Giovinezza », une ode à la beauté et à la force de la jeunesse, italienne, appelée à dominer une mer qui selon Mussolini, lui revenait de droit. Si je veux attirer l’attention sur la menace fasciste, ce n’est pas uniquement parce qu’elle gagne à nouveau du terrain en Europe (l’Aube dorée en Grèce, le parti de l’Union nationale Attaque en Bulgarie, ou encore le Front National en France), mais aussi parce que selon moi, nous sommes chargés d’une responsabilité historique en tant qu’Européens. En effet, nous devons tirer des leçons de notre histoire, éviter de répéter nos erreurs et, en faisant toujours preuve d’humilité, proposer des suggestions et prodiguer des conseils à ceux qui vivent de l’autre côté de la Méditerranée, lorsque nous craignons qu’ils commettent certaines de nos erreurs passées. L’histoire du début du 20ème siècle est simple : les dirigeants et les intellectuels, bien qu’intelligents et bien intentionnés, ont ouvert la voie au fascisme en ne faisant pas assez attention à la manière dont leurs paroles pouvaient être détournées et mal employées dans un contexte de crise, transmettant un message dont le sens d’origine est complètement modifié. Tout en gardant à l’esprit cet avertissement légué par l’histoire, je vais désormais examiner la situation de la jeunesse méditerranéenne. Le déséquilibre démographique : la véritable crise L’ensemble de la Méditerranée est marqué par un réel déséquilibre démographique : environ 20 % de la population de l’UE est constituée de jeunes de moins de 30 ans, tandis que ce taux s’élève à 40 % sur le littoral sud de la Méditerranée. L’Europe manque déjà constamment de jeunes travailleurs qui permettraient de maintenir un certain niveau de bien-être pour la population vieillissante et cette tendance n’est pas près de s’inverser. Cela signifie que nous avons besoin soit d’une arrivée massive de travailleurs issus de l’immigration, soit d’une réduction du niveau de vie des populations les plus âgées, ou encore d’un remaniement du modèle économique. C’est au sud de la Méditerranée que le taux de chômage des jeunes est le plus élevé au monde, et les conditions économiques y sont bien pires qu’en Europe. Ce problème est masqué par la crise économique actuelle : dans tous les cas, il n’y a pas suffisamment de travail pour les jeunes, que ce soit d’un côté ou de l’autre de la Méditerranée. Mais le déséquilibre persiste et en supposant que la crise économique s’atténue et que le marché du travail se porte mieux (on peut supposer que c’est là l’objectif de nos dirigeants politiques), ce déséquilibre deviendra de plus en plus évident. Mais en idéalisant la jeunesse, on prend le risque de contribuer à l’image idéalisée d’une population jeune très productive, à faible coût, extrêmement mobile et précaire, et ce dans toute la zone méditerranéenne. Une population qui peut transférer la plus-value qu’elle a créée aux multinationales ou aux états (au nord de la Méditerranée), qui à leur tour peuvent l’utiliser comme capital pour payer les retraites (dans le meilleur des cas) ou, scénario plus probable, pour renflouer leurs banques ou peut-être spéculer sur les marchés mondiaux via ces banques. Actuellement, la politique autour de la jeunesse est au cœur des préoccupations de l’UE. Mais cette obsession, même si elle est nécessaire et part d’une bonne intention, risque d’alimenter une psychose, en particulier chez la population plus âgée qui recherche le soutien de la jeune génération à la fois pour des raisons altruistes et égoïstes. Si la politique consacrée à la jeunesse n’est pas suffisante, c'est-à-dire si les actions et ressources consacrées aux programmes ne correspondent pas à la rhétorique de l’importance accordée à la jeunesse, alors on prend un plus grand risque de voir émerger un sentiment fasciste en cas de longue crise. On croit (à tort) que les jeunes immigrés partant du sud pour venir en Europe influent négativement sur les taux de main d’oeuvre et s’octroient le travail disponible, et cette idée va se renforcer. Cette idée additionnée au sentiment (généralement correct) que les pays du sud de la Méditerranée sont considérés par les entreprises européennes comme une réserve de main d’œuvre à faible coût, deviendra de plus en plus une source de frustration explosive. Pour l’instant, les signes sont de mauvais augure. Dans son projet de budget pour 2014, bien qu’elle attache une importance symbolique réelle aux programmes jeunesse, l’UE n’y a pas consacré de budget conséquent (par exemple, une initiative pour l’emploi des jeunes équivaut environ à 100 € pour chaque jeune au chômage). Actuellement, des discussions ont été engagées pour créer un programme Erasmus Euro-Med et tenter d’étendre la mobilité des jeunes. En soi, ce projet est excellent, cependant il ne change en rien la situation économique difficile des jeunes qui restent des travailleurs en situation précaire. Au vu des révolutions ayant éclaté en Égypte et en Tunisie, la Politique européenne de voisinage (PEV) n’a pas été suffisamment réformée. Ces révolutions ont démontré que même dans les zones…
What shall become of us without any barbarians?’ Youth Policy in the Euro-Med
Niccolo Milanese, based on remarks given at the Anna Lindh Mediterranean Forum, Marseille, 6th April 2013. Between 15th April and 20th April, European Alternatives will be hosting activists from Egypt and Spain in France as part of our ‘Stop Precarity, Act Democratically!’ project The Mediterranean Sea, as our literary history tells us, is famously deceptive. Poseidon and the other gods loved to fool even clever Odysseus. There are many beautiful or attractive ways of combining the words ‘youth’ and ‘Mediterranean’, and our political leaders around its circumference are busy projecting many dreams across the sea, to calm a generation fearful of prolonged unemployment. There are also, we have to acknowledge, several very ugly dreams which have combined the Mediterranean and youth in recent history. One in particular is expressed in the Fascist ideology which was – of course – a Mediterranean invention. Mussolini dreamed of domination of Mare Nostra – and the first Fascist anthem was called ‘Giovinezza’, a hymn to the beauty and strength of youth, Italian youth, which would dominate a sea Mussolini considered as rightfully theirs. I want to draw attention to the Fascist threat not only because it is gaining ground again in Europe – look at Golden Dawn in Greece, the Bulgarian Attak party, or the Front National in France – but also because I think we have a historical responsibility as Europeans to try to learn from our history, to not repeat them and – in all humbleness – to make recommendations and offer advice also to people on the other side of the Mediterranean, when we fear that they might repeat some of our mistakes. The history of the early 20th century is one of intelligent and well-meaning leaders and intellectuals in Europe preparing the ground for fascism by not being sufficiently attentive to the ways in which their words could be misused and transformed in a context of crisis to quite the opposite of what they intended. With that historical warning in mind, I want to move onto looking at the situation of youth in the Mediterranean. Demographic imbalance is the real crisis There is a significant demographic imbalance across the Mediterranean. Young people under 30 in the European Union make up around 20% of the population, and on the Southern shore of the Mediterranean they make up to 40% of the population. In Europe there is already – and will be for some time to come – a chronic lack of young workers to maintain a welfare state for an aging population, which will mean that there is need either for an influx of migrant workers, for a reduction in living standards for older populations or for a change of economic model. In the southern Mediterranean youth unemployment is the highest in the world and the economic conditions are significantly worse than in Europe. The current economic crisis masks the problem, because in any case there are not enough jobs for young people on either side of the Mediterranean, but the imbalance is still there, and supposing that the economic crisis eases and some more jobs return – which we might suppose is the aim of our political leaders – the imbalance will become more and more apparent. There is a danger, in the idealisation of youth, to contribute to the idealisation of a highly productive, relatively cheap, highly mobile and highly precarious group of young people across the Mediterranean who can transfer the surplus value they create either to multinationals or to the (northern Mediterranean) states, which will use it as capital to – in the best scenario – pay for pensions, or – perhaps more likely – to bail out their banks or perhaps to gamble through their banks on global markets. The obsession with youth policy in the European Union at the moment, as well intentioned as it is and as necessary as it is, risks feeding a psychosis of the older generation in particular which is desperate both for both altruistic and egoistical reasons for a younger generation to support it. If the youth policy is not good enough – if the actions and resources allocated to programs do not match the rhetoric of the importance attached to youth – then there is the strongest risk that in continued crisis fascist sentiment will rise, the (mistaken) idea that young migrants from the south are coming to Europe, forcing down labour rates and taking the jobs will grow, and the (broadly correct) sentiment that the Southern Mediterranean countries are being used as cheap labour supplies for European companies will become more and more of an explosive frustration. The signs so far are not good. The European Union in its draft budget for 2014, despite attaching significant symbolic importance to youth programs – has not allocated a significant budget (a youth employment initiative worth around 100€ per unemployed young person, for example). There is talk of creating a EuroMed Erasmus scheme and endeavouring to extend youth mobility – which is excellent but in itself does not change the economic predicament of young people as highly precarious workers. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has not yet been reformed sufficiently in light of the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, which showed that even in the areas where the ENP was most effective (such as the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Areas with the EU, which Tunisia was the first country to join in 2008) the social sustainability of the reforms was not ensured. The ENP review in 2011 has not adequately addressed the social failures of the previous policy, let alone addressed the systemic economic imbalances between north and south of the Mediterranean. In the crisis-laden and demographically highly imbalanced situation, policy failure is likely to fuel extremist sentiment, and indeed such effects are already being seen. The youth movements – as actors in politics not just objects of it – need to constitute themselves in solidarity across the Mediterranean to reject the logic of global capitalism. This means they need to start…
“Cosa sarà di noi senza i barbari?” Politiche giovanili nell’Euromed
Traduzione di Marco Paparella Articolo di Niccolò Milanese. Osservazioni tratte dall’intervento all’Anna Lindh Mediterranean Forum di Marsiglia del 6 aprile 2013. Tra il 15 e il 20 di aprile, European Alternatives ospiterà attivisti egiziani, spagnoli e francesi nell’ambito del progetto ”Stop al precariato dei giovani, si all’azione democratica!’‘ Il Mar Mediterraneo, come ci insegna la storia della nostra letteratura, è notoriamente ingannevole. Poseidone e gli altri dei amavano prendersi gioco persino dell’astuto Ulisse. Ci sono tanti bei modi di associare le parole “gioventù” e “Mediterraneo”, e i nostri leader politici sono intenti a proiettare sogni al di là del mare nel tentativo di tranquillizzare una generazione preoccupata dal protrarsi della disoccupazione. Nella nostra storia recente, bisogna ammetterlo, ci sono anche stati diversi pessimi esperimenti che hanno associato il Mediterraneo alla gioventù. Tra questi vi è l’ideologia fascista, un’invenzione tutta mediterranea. Mussolini sognava di dominare il Mare Nostrum, e il primo inno fascista si intitolava “Giovinezza”, un inno alla bellezza e alla forza dei giovani italiani, che avrebbero conquistato proprio quel mare che a detta di Mussolini spettava loro di diritto. Voglio attirare l’attenzione sulla minaccia fascista non solo perchè si sta di nuovo affacciando sull’Europa (basti pensare ad Alba Dorata in Grecia, al partito bulgaro Attak o al Front National in Francia) ma anche perchè ritengo che, in quanto europei, abbiamo la responsabilità storica di cercare di imparare dal nostro passato, di non ripetere gli stessi errori e, in tutta umiltà, di offrire consigli e raccomandazioni anche ai popoli dell’altro lato del mediterraneo, affinchè evitino di compiere gli stessi passi falsi. La storia dei primi anni del ‘900 è costellata di leader intelligenti e ben intenzionati che hanno aperto la strada al fascismo trascurando il modo in cui le loro parole, in un contesto di crisi, potevano essere manipolate e stravolte nel loro significato. Tenendo a mente questo monito di portata storica, vorrei considerare ora la situazione dei giovani nei paesi del Mediterraneo. Lo squilibrio demografico è la vera crisi Tra una sponda e l’altra del mediterraneo vi è un grosso squilibrio demografico. Nell’Unione Europea, i giovani sotto i 30 anni costituiscono il 20% della popolazione, mentre nei paesi della costa sud del Mediterraneo sono il 40%. In Europa esiste già (e sarà così per molto tempo) una mancanza cronica di giovani lavoratori, necessari al mantenimento di un welfare state destinato ad una popolazione sempre più vecchia. Ciò significa che ci sarà bisogno di un influsso di lavoratori migranti, di una riduzione degli attuali standard di vita delle popolazioni più vecchie, o in alternativa di un cambiamento del modello economico. Nel mediterraneo del sud la disoccupazione giovanile è la più alta del mondo e le condizioni economiche sono decisamente peggiori che in Europa. L’attuale crisi nasconde il problema, perchè non c’è abbastanza lavoro per i giovani su entrambe le sponde del Mediterraneo, ma lo squilibrio esiste e supponendo che la crisi si affievolisca e vengano creati nuovi posti di lavoro (quello che dovrebbe essere l’obiettivo dei nostri leader politici) questo squilibrio diventerebbe sempre più evidente. Idealizzando la gioventù si rischia di contribuire all’idealizzazione di una forza lavoro giovane, altamente produttiva, relativamente a basso costo, estremamente mobile e precaria, in grado di trasferire plusvalore alle multinazionali o agli Stati (del Mediterraneo del Nord), che nella migliore delle ipotesi lo utilizzeranno come capitale per pagare le pensioni o, più probabilmente, per salvare le banche e scommettere mediante queste ultime sui mercati globali. Attualmente, nell’Unione Europea, l’ossessione per le politiche giovanili, per quanto necessaria e frutto di buone intenzioni, rischia di alimentare una vera e propria psicosi delle vecchie generazioni, alla disperata ricerca del consenso dei giovani per ragioni altruistiche ma anche egoistiche. Se le politiche giovanili non dovessero essere all’altezza – ovvero se i provvedimenti e le risorse stanziate non corrispondessero all’importanza attribuita alla gioventù – si rischierebbe seriamente di assistere, con il protrarsi della crisi, ad una crescita del sentimento fascista; prenderà piede l’idea (sbagliata) secondo la quale i giovani migranti del sud che arrivano in Europa spingono al ribasso i salari e rubano posti di lavoro, e l’impressione (abbastanza corretta) che le nazioni del sud del Mediterraneo vengano utilizzate come bacini di manodopera a basso prezzo per le imprese europee porterà la frustrazione a livelli sempre più esplosivi. Finora, i segnali non sono positivi. Pur attribuendo una grande importanza simbolica ai programmi per la gioventù, nella sua bozza di bilancio per il 2014 l’Unione Europea non ha stanziato fondi sufficienti (ne sia l’esempio l’iniziativa per l’occupazione giovanile, con un totale di circa 100€ per ogni giovane disoccupato). Si discute attualmente della creazione di un progetto Erasmus Euromed e di un aumento della mobilità giovanile, ottime idee che tuttavia non cambiano, di per sè, la difficile situazione di precarietà dei giovani lavoratori. La Politica europea di vicinato (ENP) non è stata sufficientemente riformata in luce delle rivoluzioni in Egitto e in Tunisia, che hanno dimostrato che anche nelle aree in cui la ENP è stata più efficace (come le Zone di libero scambio euro-mediterranee con l’UE, a cui ha aderito per prima la Turchia nel 2008) la sostenibilità sociale delle riforme non è stata garantita. La riforma della ENP del 2011 non ha fornito risposte adeguate al fallimento sociale delle politiche precedenti e non ha affrontato neanche lontanamente gli squilibri economici sistemici tra il nord e il sud del Mediterraneo. Nell’attuale contesto di crisi e di grave squilibrio demografico, il fallimento di queste politiche non può che alimentare la retorica estremista, e le conseguenze sono già sotto i nostri occhi. I movimenti giovanili, in quanto attori della politica e non semplici spettatori, devono unirsi solidalmente da una sponda all’altra del Mediterraneo per opporsi alla logica del capitalismo globale. Ciò significa che dovranno cominciare a pensare ad un nuovo modello economico per il Mediterraneo. Non sono sicuro che tra i movimenti giovanili questa riflessione sia stata portata molto lontano. In molti, all”interno di questi movimenti, pretendono più democrazia e libertà politiche, molti altri pretendono nuovi posti di lavoro. Meno numerosi sono coloro…
État des lieux des mouvements de protestation, Egypte, Europe
Depuis plusieurs années, nous sommes partenaires du Festival International du Film des Droits de l'Homme de Paris (FIFDH). Un beau Festival, porté par une équipe enthousiaste et compétente, qui propose chaque année un très beau programme. L'édition 2013 ouvre dans quelques jours ! Il se déroulera du 5 au 12 février dans plusieurs lieux parisiens, et dans d'autres villes. Cette année, Alternatives Européennes propose une partie du programme lors d'une journée sur 'l'Etat des Lieux des mouvements de Protestation' coorganisée avec Humanity in Action. Pour introduire la journée, de jeunes manifestants venus d’Egypte, d’Espagne et de France viendront échanger avec le public leurs espoirs, déceptions et propositions d’action dans un contexte de contestation du pouvoir sur le thème “Manifestations et transformation des systèmes politiques : Egypte, Europe” entre 14h et 15h30, à la Maison des Cultures du Monde (101 boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris). En effet, en Egypte, les résultats des votes et les nouveaux textes constitutionnels vont à l’encontre des demandes exprimées par la rue. En Espagne, les politiques d’austérité sont contraires aux revendications des « indignés ». En France, le droit de manifester est de plus en plus contesté. Les questions que nous nous posons aujourd'hui sont les suivantes : comment améliorer les chances des manifestants de voir leur mobilisation aboutir à un rebond démocratique ? Malgré les profondes différences des situations vécues quelles comparaisons possibles entre l’Egypte et l’Europe ? Nous espérons bien sûr que nos intervenants, parmi lesquels des militants et chercheurs sur les mouvements sociaux et les révolutions en Egypte et en Europe pourront y répondre et eux même, bénéficier de ces échanges pour la suite de leurs mouvements. Au programme, des extraits des films présentés au cours du FIFDH et des discussions ouvertes avec le public! Ce débat sera poursuivi au mois de mars par une série d'arteliers et de rencontres entre des manifestants de France, Egypte et Espagne.
Les nombreuses vagues de révolution dans la région méditerranéenne
Traduction : Ludmila Nepotu Deux ans après le déclenchement des révolutions en Tunisie et en Egypte, le symbole de changement politique qu’elles représentent, bien que contesté, est toujours actuel tant dans la région qu’en Europe. Alternatives Européennes s’est engagée à cet égard et a suivi les changements dans le Sud de la région méditerranéenne dès le début des révolutions, étant convaincue non seulement que les effets de ces mouvements politiques se répercuteront sur les personnes qui vivent à l’intérieur de l’Europe, mais surtout que ce changement politique progressif au XXIème siècle implique des dimensions transnationales et transfrontalières qui ne doivent pas être négligées. Pour ces raisons, notre engagement a eu une dimension trans -méditerranéenne, en essayant de faire des comparaisons et des connexions – quoique nous ne négligions pas les différences et les diversités significatives – entre les mouvements de protestation et les appels pour le changement politique en Europe et dans le Nord de l’Afrique et la région MENA. C’était le sujet du débat de Paris le 9 février, que vous pouvez lire ici. Les dimensions transnationales et les implications pour l’Europe concernant les événements d’Egypte sont reflétées dans cet article, qui célèbre l’anniversaire de l’éclatement de la révolution ici. L’assassinat politique de Chokri Belaid en Tunisie au début de ce mois ne nous a pas seulement choqué, mais nous a aussi rappelé les sacrifices faits par les militants ayant un rôle moins important tant à l’intérieur de l’Europe que massivement dans la région de MENA. Pour cette raison, nous soutenons la pétition Révolte contre les assassinats politiques. Les futurs projets d’Alternatives Européenne impliquent la rencontre de militants d’Egypte, d’Espagne et de France pour échanger des perspectives en vue de collaborer et de rencontrer des parlementaires européens; un projet sur l’art de la rue et la révolution faisant partie du Réseau des Innovateurs culturels; et l’engagement au travers du Forum Anna Lindt à Marseille à partir du mois d’avril 2013. Articles en lien : De la Tahrir Square la Puerta del Sol: qu’est-ce qui unit les mouvements arabes et européens, Sarah Anne Rennick Au-delà de la Bataille d’ Alexandrie, Gianluca Solera L’hiver bulgare: entre le diable et la mer bleue profonde, Mariya Ivancheva
The many seasons of revolution across the Mediterranean
Two years after the beginning of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the symbol they provide of political change is embattled but still alive both throughout the region and throughout Europe. European Alternatives has been engaging in and following the changes in the South of the Mediterranean since the beginning, and believes not only that the outcomes of those political movements will have important implications for people living inside Europe but most importantly that progressive political change in the twenty first century involves transnational and cross-border dimensions which must not be neglected.For that reason our engagement has been in a trans-Mediterranean dimension, attempting to make comparisons and connections – whilst not neglecting important differences and diversities – between protest movements and calls for political change in Europe and in North Africa and the MENA region. This was the subject of a debate in Paris on 9th February, which you can read about here and the transnational dimensions and implications for Europe of what is happening in Egypt are drawn out in this article marking the anniversary of the beginning of the revolution here. The political assassination of Chokri Belaid in Tunisia earlier this month not only shocked us but also reminded us of the sacrifices made by less high-profile activists both inside Europe and more massively across the MENA region. For that reason we support the petition Revolt against political assassinationsFuture projects at European Alternatives involve bringing together activists from Egypt, Spain and France to exchange perspectives for collaboration and meet with European parliamentarians; a project on street art and revolution as part of the Cultural Innovators Network; and engagement through the Anna Lindt Forum in Marseille in April 2013. Related articles: From Tahrir Square to Puerta del Sol: what unites Arab and European social movements, Sarah Anne Rennick Beyond the Battle of Alexandria, Gianluca Solera The Bulgarian winter: between the devil and the deep blue sea, Mariya Ivancheva
The map of illegal detention of migrants in Europe
Every year in the European Union and neighbouring countries, hundreds of thousands of children, women and men are arrested or detained simply because they do not have a residence permit. Since the 1990s, all Member States have indeed developed legislative, administrative and political frameworks, which materialized through the installation of camps. Since 2002, Migreurop attempts to identify these largely secret and illegal places of detention, of which there is no official census, in order to make their existence in civil society. The “Encampment Map”, whose first edition dates back to 2003, is the cornerstone of the advocacy work carried out by the network. On 30 November, the fifth version of the “Map of camps” in Europe and in the Mediterranean countries was presented to the public. It emerges that there are 420 places of detention, but there is no information available for Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan and Syria, as well as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belarus, countries that benefit from the European Neighbourhood Policy or who have signed a repatriation agreement. Alarming data. Since its generalization, the detention practice and the number of places have dramatically increased. In 2012, 420 places of detention were recorded for a total (official) capacity of 37,000 persons. In 2009, 600,000 people “without papers” were detained within the EU pending deportation to be expelled and 500,000 were detained on arrival in the territory of a European state, waiting to be discharged in the country of origin. Since the last edition of the map, in 2009, the maximum duration of detention has grown well beyond the time necessary for the implementation of expulsions: 32 to 45 days in France, from 40 to 60 days in Spain, 2 to 18 months in Italy, from 3 to 18 months in Greece.However, the data are not complete, because the numbers of persons really detained is often greater than the “official” capacity of these centers. In addition, the authorities use a variety of locations, which are not included in official lists, such as airports, ordinary prisons, boats, merchant navy, etc… and an unspecified number of migrants survive in informal settlements (“jungles” in the region of the Calais region, tranquilos area of Oujda in Morocco or Patras in Greece). Finally, these figures do not reflect the daily inhuman and degrading conditions of detention. The opacity of procedures, the difficulties or lack of access to legal and medical assistance, the violence and self-violence inflicted on the detainees are kept hidden through the barriers to access for press and civil society . Detention camps for only foreigners is the highest and most urgent human rights violation in Europe of the XXI century.Migreurop in partnerships with European Alternatives and the Open Access Now Campaign advocates for the closure of camps, asks the governments of Member States of the EU and the countries on its borders to no longer use administrative detention for immigration. Flore Murard-Yovanovitch
La carte de la détention illégale de migrants en Europe
Article de Flore Murard-Yovanovitch Traduction de Stéphanie Klaczynski Chaque année, au sein de l’Union Européenne ou dans les pays voisins, des centaines de milliers d’enfants, de femmes et d’hommes sont arrêtés ou placés en détention simplement car ils ne possèdent pas de permis de séjour. Depuis les années 90, tous les États-Membres ont en effet développé les cadres législatifs, administratifs et politiques qui se traduisent par l’installation de camps. Depuis 2002, Migreurop essaie d’identifier ces lieux de détention secrets et illégaux, pour lesquels aucun recensement officiel n’existe, afin de les faire exister dans la société civile. La “Carte des Camps”, dont la première édition remonte à 2003, est la pierre angulaire du plaidoyer entrepris par le réseau. Le 30 novembre, la cinquième version de la “Carte des Camps” en Europe et dans les pays méditerranéens a été présentée au public. Il en ressort 420 camps de détention, mais il n’y a aucune information disponible pour l’Algérie, la Tunisie, la Jordanie et la Syrie ainsi que pour l’Arménie, l’Azerbaïdjan, la Russie et la Biélorussie, pays qui bénéficient de la politique européenne de voisinage ou qui ont signé un accord de rapatriement. Données alarmantes. Depuis sa généralisation, la pratique de la détention et le nombre de camps ont augmenté de façon drastique. En 2012, 420 camps de détention étaient recensés pour une capacité (officielle) totale de 37 000 personnes. En 2009, 600 000 individus « sans-papiers » étaient détenus au sein de l’Union Européenne en attente d’expulsion et 500 000 détenus lors de leur arrivée sur le territoire d’un État européen attendant d’être rapatriés dans leur pays d’origine. Depuis la dernière édition de la carte, en 2009, la durée maximum de détention a été portée bien au delà du temps nécessaire à la mise en place des expulsions : de 32 à 45 jours en France, de 40 à 60 jours en Espagne, de 2 à 18 mois en Italie et de 3 à 18 mois en Grèce. Cependant, les données sont incomplètes car le nombre d’individus réellement détenus est souvent supérieur à la capacité officielle de ces centres.De plus, les autorités utilisent d’autres endroits, qui ne figurent pas sur les listes officielles, comme les aéroports, les prisons ordinaires, les bateaux, la marine marchande etc… et un nombre inconnu de migrants survivent dans des installations informelles (“jungles”dans la région de Calais, la zone tranquilosd’Oujda au Maroc ou Patras en Grèce). Enfin, ces chiffres ne reflètent pas les conditions quotidiennes inhumaines et dégradantes de détention. L’opacité des procédures, les difficultés ou le manque d’accès à l’assistance juridique et médicale, la violence et la violence auto-infligée aux détenus sont gardés secrets à l’abri de la presse et de la société civile. Les camps de détention pour de simples étrangers sont la plus grande et la plus urgente violation des Droits de l’Homme en Europe au XXIème siècle. Migreurop en partenariat avec European Alternatives et la campagne Open Access Now défend la fermeture des camps et demande aux gouvernements des États-Membres de l’UE et les pays frontaliers de ne plus utiliser la détention administrative pour l’immigration.
Festival Transeuropa, les membres d’Alternatives Européennes prennent la parole
Traduction : Pierre Leroy Ces jours-ci, les membres d'Alternatives Européennes sont en pleine ébullition. Le festival Transeuropa approche et chaque militant / participant / activiste travaille dur pour organiser des évènements intéressants dans leur propre ville. Ces personnes sont toutes des bénévoles qui dédient une partie importante de leur vie privée à cet effet et à beaucoup d'autres activités menées par Alternatives Européennes tout au long de l'année. Nous leur avons demandé d'expliquer les raisons de leur engagement, pour mieux saisir ce que signifie être membre d'une organisation pour ces personnes issues des quatre coins de l'Europe. Anca de Roumanie, Grégory de France, Daphne d'Allemagne et Tsvetelina de Bulgarie ont gentiment répondu à nos questions. Voici ce qu'ils ont dit : Pourquoi êtes-vous membre d'Alternatives Européennes ? Grégory : “Je souhaite faire l'expérience d'une nouvelle forme de démocratie participative afin de construire et répandre la citoyenneté au-delà de l'État nation en tant que “processus en marche”, faire l'expérience du slogan européen “Unis dans la diversité”. La seconde raison à mon adhésion est la suivante : nous voulons que les valeurs européennes de justice, de culture et d'égalité soient entendues, l'Europe a BESOIN d'être unie dans ce contexte de mondialisation pour rivaliser avec les autres puissances”. Qu'est-ce que cela vous apporte d'être membre d'AE ? Tsvetelina: “AE nous procure ce sentiment incroyable de créativité, de partage des idées et d'accomplissement, de faire avancer les choses. C'est génial d'avoir une première idée de la manière dont les idées évoluent et comment les choses progressent dans tant de pays. J'appréhende les problèmes à l'échelle locale d'une toute autre manière grâce à cela”. Pourquoi vous-êtes-vous engagée dans l'organisation du festival Transeuropa ? Tsvetelina: “J’aime l'idée qu'un festival transnational combine les arts, la politique et la culture. C'est une très bonne expérience et cela en est d'autant plus fort que je fais partie de l'équipe qui organise cet évènement. Nous avons tous la chance de partager nos idées, de les mettre en application et d'avoir le sentiment de changer les choses”. Quelles sont vos attentes par rapport au festival ? Daphne: “…éveiller la curiosité et la prise de conscience sur le plan politique à travers l'Europe, observer les liens qui existent en Europe au moyen de l'art et des expressions. Si l'on parvient à surprendre les gens, à ce que notre message ne soit pas uniquement entendu par le public habituel, déjà informé et intéressé, que cet évènement s'insère dans le processus de création d'un engagement pour une société civile véritablement transeuropéenne, ce festival sera un succès”. Qu'est-ce que le mot “transnational” signifie à vos yeux ? Anca: “Transnational signifie être liés, être ensemble afin d'être plus performants, afin de rendre les communautés de toutes sortes plus fortes”. Parmi les évènements organisés dans votre ville, lequel affectionnez-vous le plus ? Pourquoi ? Daphne: “L'évènement qui vise à établir une véritable connexion entre les villes a été imaginé l'année dernière lors de l'évaluation du festival, c'est la marche transnationale qui se déroulera le 9 mai prochain. Je suis curieux de voir si ce cadre permettra de mettre le concept “transnational” en pratique”.
Transeuropa Festival, EA’s members take the floor
For European Alternatives’ members these are days of hectic activity. The Transeuropa Festival is approaching and every activist is working hard to create interesting and stimulating events in their own city. These people are all volunteers who dedicate an important part of their private life to this and many other activities that European Alternatives runs all the year long. We asked them to explain what the reasons for their commitment were, trying to better define what it means to be part of this organisation for people from all parts of Europe. Anca from Romania, Grégory from France, Daphne from Germany and Tsvetelina from Bulgaria kindly answered our questions. Here is what they said: Why are you a member of European Alternatives? Grégory: “I want to experiment a new form of participating democracy in order to build & spread a citizenship beyond the nation state level as a “work in progress”, an experimentation of the European slogan “United in diversity”. The other point is that if we want the European values of justice, culture and equality to be heard, Europe NEEDS to be unified in a global world to face the power of other nations”. What do you get from being a member of EA? Tsvetelina: “EA gives that amazing feeling of creativity, sharing of ideas and making things happen. It’s amazing to get first-hand experience of how ideas evolve and how things are done in so many different countries. That makes me look at local issues from a completely new angle”. Why are you involved in the preparation of Transeuropa Festival? Tsvetelina: “I like the idea of a transnational festival that combines arts, politics and culture. It’s very good experiencing it but even more exciting being part of the team that is organising it. We all get the chance to share ideas, put them in action and feel like making a difference”. What do you expect from the Festival? Daphne: “…to raise curiosity and political awareness in people across Europe, seeing the connections that exist in Europe especially through artistic means and expressions. If it surprises people, reaches not the usual suspects of an already informed and interested public and becomes part of an emergent truly cross- European civil society engagement, the festival is a success“. What does transnational means to you? Anca: “Transnational means connected, it means a togetherness aimed at increasing efficiency and empowering communities in all its forms.” What is the event you like the most from your city programme? Why? Daphne: “The event that was born out of last year’s festival evaluation and that truly aims at connecting cities is the transnational walk on 9th of May. I am curious to see if this format helps put the ‘transnational’ into practice.”.
Migration et politique dasile dans lUE
Traduction : Adeline Monnin Contexte Pendant toute l’année 2011, Alternatives Européennes organise une consultation délibérative avec des citoyens et des intervenants issus de six pays de l’UE. Nous aborderons des questions transeuropéennes en rapport avec les domaines de la justice, de la sécurité et de la liberté, dont traite le programme de Stockholm (2010-2014). Les consultations se tiendront dans les pays suivants : Royaume-Uni, France, Italie, Bulgarie, Espagne et Roumanie, cependant des citoyens de toute l’Europe participeront. Les groupes de citoyens s’organiseront autour d’un des six sujets de la consultation : la mise en place d’une Europe responsable et solidaire, qui travaille en partenariat sur les questions de migration et de droit d’asile, et qui combat le racisme et la xénophobie. Ces consultations ont pour objectif d’établir un ensemble précis de demandes communes, applicables à un niveau européen en ce qui concerne les droits des citoyens. Ensuite, en découleront des actions spécifiques, y compris la possibilité d’une initiative européenne des citoyens. Cadre politique et institutionnel En Europe, les lois relatives à la migration sont réglementées par le traité sur le fonctionnement de l’UE, dans les domaines de la liberté, de la sécurité et de la justice. Selon les articles 67.1 et 67.2, « l’Union constitue un espace de liberté, de sécurité et de justice dans le respect des droits fondamentaux et des différents systèmes et traditions juridiques des États membres. Elle assure l’absence de contrôles des personnes aux frontières intérieures et développe une politique commune en matière d’asile, d’immigration et de contrôle des frontières extérieures qui est fondée sur la solidarité entre États membres et qui est équitable à l’égard des ressortissants des pays tiers ». Au niveau européen, une série de règles et de directives ont progressivement été adoptées mais l’UE manque encore d’une politique commune solide. On ne peut plus accepter les multiples législations en vigueur sur le même sujet lorsqu’une nation partage sa frontière avec une autre. Des initiatives comme la « carte bleue » européenne proposée par le Commission européenne pour les migrants qualifiés, ou encore l’adoption de la « directive retour » qui doit régir les normes à appliquer lors du renvoi des immigrants clandestins dans leurs pays d’origine, prouvent que la situation est loin d’être sereine, et qu’il est urgent d’adopter des réformes claires sur les politiques de migration en Europe. Le « Pacte européen sur l’immigration et l’asile » constitue une base au développement d’une approche commune de la migration, légale et clandestine. Alternatives Européennes lutte pour l’application de nouvelles politiques communes qui couvriront les aspects suivants : La mise en place d’une meilleure collaboration, plus juste et mieux structurée entre l’UE et les pays du tiers-monde, en ce qui concerne le contrôle des frontières. En savoir plus. Le développement d’une politique d’asile commune, qui ne serait pas un dénominateur commun tirant vers le bas, mais adopterait les normes les plus élevées pour les demandeurs d’asile et les réfugiés, dans toute l’Union. En savoir plus. Une réflexion sur la légitimité des camps et la surveillance des conditions de détention temporaire des migrants. En savoir plus. Alternatives Européennes souhaite également lancer des débats parmi les Européens, afin de trouver d’éventuelles réponses aux questions suivantes : Le développement de nouvelles approches de l’intégration se démarquant de l’assimilation et du multiculturalisme. En savoir plus. Le rejet des discours de partis nationalistes de droite en ce qui concerne l’immigration et les questions de sécurité. Le programme de Stockholm Le programme de Stockholm est un plan de cinq ans proposé par le Conseil européen et adopté par la Commission européenne, concernant les acquis en matière de justice et d’affaires internes pour la période 2010-2014. Développé au Conseil européen en 2009 lors de la présidence de la Suède, ce document aborde de nouvelles formes de coopération et d’intégration pour la liberté, la sécurité et la justice au sein de l’UE. Parmi ses principales priorités, le Conseil européen place le besoin de créer une politique de migration pour l’UE, en collaboration avec les pays du tiers-monde, qui répondra aux besoins et aux priorités des États membres tout en garantissant le respect des droits des migrants. L’UE doit œuvrer pour une société ouverte à toutes les cultures, dans laquelle les migrants seront bien intégrés et pourront profiter de tout leur potentiel. Les événements récents prouvent qu’il faut sans plus tarder construire une procédure commune, sans faille légale, pour les demandeurs d’asile. Initiative citoyenne La possibilité d’une initiative citoyenne européenne est introduite par le traité de Lisbonne. Il établit que « au moins un million de citoyens issus d’au moins un quart des États membres peuvent inviter la Commission européenne à présenter des propositions d'actes juridiques dans des domaines relevant de sa compétence, sur lesquels les citoyens estiment qu’un acte juridique de l’Union est nécessaire à l’application des traités ». Les signatures en ligne sont considérées comme valables. Actuellement, il est proposé que les signatures proviennent d’au moins neuf pays de l’UE pour que l’initiative soit valable. Aller de l’avant Alternatives Européennes est ouverte à toute collaboration avec des organisations partenaires et des individus militants, issus de toute l’Europe, pour mettre en place une série de consultations délibératives transnationales, afin de créer une requête européenne unie et de construire une coalition indispensable à la concrétisation de cette requête.
Migration and asylum policies in the EU
Context Over 2011, European Alternatives is organizing a deliberative consultation with citizens and stakeholders in a sample of six EU countries on transeuropean issues relating to the area of Justice, Security and Freedom contained in the Stockholm Programme (2010-2014). The consultations will be taking place in the UK, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, but citizens from throughout Europe will be involved. Establishing a Europe of responsibility, solidarity and partnership in migration and asylum matters, which fights against racism and xenophobia, isone of the six topics around which citizens’ panels will be organized. These consultations are imagined to decline a specific set of shared demands at a European level in the areas of citizens’ rights, leading to specific actions, including the possibility of a European Citizens’ Initiative. Political and institutional framework Migration law in Europe is regulated by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union under the area of Freedom, Security and Justice. According to articles 61.1 and 61.2 “the Union shall constitute an area of freedom, security and justice with respect for fundamental rights and the different legal systems and traditions of the Member States. It shall ensure the absence of internal border controls for persons and shall frame a common policy on asylum, immigration and external border control, based on solidarity between Member States, which is fair towards third-country nationals…” A series of regulations and directives have been adopted step by step at the European level, but the European Union lacks a solid common policy. In a region sharing a single border, the diversity of legislations stipulating on a same subject is no longer satisfactory. Initiatives such as the European Commission proposal for a European ‘Blue Card’ for skilled migrants as well as the adoption of the ‘Return Directive’ on the standards for sending illegal immigrants back to their countries demonstrate the unrest and urgent need of clear reforms of migration policies in Europe. The “European Pact on Immigration and Asylum” provides the basis for the development of a common approach both to legal and illegal migration. European Alternatives advocates for the implementation of these new common policies covering the following aspects: The establishment of a better, fairer and well-structured collaboration between the EU and third-countries in the area of border controls. Read more The development of a common asylum policy, which is not a lower common denominator, but adopts the highest standards for asylum seekers and refugees across the Union. Read more The reasoning on the legitimacy of the camps, and the surveillance of the conditions in which migrants are temporarily detained. Read more European Alternatives also wishes to be the motor of debate among all those who live in Europe on possible solutions to these issues: The development of new approaches to integration which move away from assimilation and multiculturalism. Read more The deconstruction of the discourse of nationalist right parties as regards immigration and security issues The Stockholm Programme The Stockholm Programme is the five-year plan proposed by the European Council and adopted by the European Commission relating to the Justice and Home Affairs acquis for the 2010-2014 period. This document, developed under the Swedish Presidency of the European Council in 2009, addresses new forms of cooperation and integration in the areas of freedom, security and justice in the European Union. One of the main priorities identified by the European Council addresses the need to elaborate a EU migration policy which will be responsive to the priorities and needs of Member States while guaranteeing the respect of migrants’ rights in collaboration with third countries. The EU should work on building a society open to all cultures in which migrants are well integrated and able to take full advantage of their potential. Following recent events issues such as the consolidation of a common, legally safe procedure for asylum seekers have to be dealt with without further delay. Citizens’ Initiative The Lisbon Treaty introduces the possibility of the European Citizens’ Initiative. The treaty provides that “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”. Online signatures will be considered valid. The current proposals are that signatures will have to come from a minimum of 9 EU countries for the initiative to be valid. The way forward European Alternatives is looking to collaborate with partner organisations and individual activists around Europe to organise a series of transnational deliberative consultations aimed at producing a join European demand and setting up the necessary coalition to carry through that demand.
MULTICULTURALISME vs. ASSIMILATION
Photo du blog de Caroline Fourest. Traduction : Adeline Monnin Lors de son premier discours en tant que Premier ministre, David Cameron a placé la question du multiculturalisme sur le devant de la scène. En effet, lorsqu’il a abordé les sujets de la radicalisation et du terrorisme, il a déclaré que le « multiculturalisme a échoué ». Les dirigeants français et allemand, Nicolas Sarkozy et Angela Merkel, ont rapidement affirmé qu’ils partagent eux aussi ce point de vue. Nous devons essayer de comprendre comment le multiculturalisme se définit avant de nous demander si il a été un échec en Europe. En général, le multiculturalisme est perçu comme le « choix » d’une société dans laquelle chaque culture a le droit d’être représentée, mais sans qu’il n’existe de véritable lien ou interaction entre les diverses communautés. Cependant, on peut aussi le définir comme le « choix » d’une société de reconnaître toutes les cultures, qui coexistent pacifiquement et qui en même temps, partagent une identité commune. C’est ce qu’on appelle «l’unité dans la diversité». Le système a probablement échoué à cause de l’absence d’interdépendance caractérisant la première interprétation. Historiquement, le modèle anglais du multiculturalisme s’est opposé au modèle français d’assimilation : pour ce dernier, l’unité a la priorité sur la diversité. Le fait est que la démocratie française se fonde sur des principes fondamentaux tels que l’unité et l’indivisibilité du peuple français, lalaïcité de l’Étatou l’identité nationale. Au fil du temps, la définition d’« Européen » a changé, tout comme celle d’Anglais, Espagnol ou Allemand, et cette évolution est perpétuelle. Les nations européennes doivent trouver un modèle adapté à leurs traditions mais qui en parallèle encourage l’intégration des minorités établies en Europe. Ces minorités doivent être et se sentir intégrées à une vie européenne commune, sans pour autant oublier leurs racines. Nous devons garder à l’esprit que les personnes issues de minorités doivent constamment faire des efforts pour apprendre la langue et les coutumes du pays dans lequel elles vivent, tout en devant fréquemment affronter l’exclusion sociale et la discrimination dans beaucoup de domaines de la vie publique. Le modèle parfait serait peut-être celui où les minorités sont parfaitement intégrées en Europe, mais sans pour autant négliger la valeur de leurs cultures. En Grande-Bretagne, on pratique le multiculturalisme avec succès depuis des décennies, alors est-ce réellement un problème ? Aujourd’hui lorsque l’on aborde cette question, l’opinion publique se concentre presque exclusivement sur la communauté musulmane en ignorant les autres minorités. Ce dangereux amalgame découle probablement de certains partis d’extrême droit, qui alimentent la peur de « l’invasion musulmane ». Alternatives Européennes tente d’analyser ce problème en encourageant les débats sur les sujets suivants : Multiculturalisme vs. assimilation : quels sont les aspects positifs/négatifs de ces modèles ? Existe-t-il un juste milieu entre les deux ? Violation des droits fondamentaux : l’assimilation menace-t-elle les droits fondamentaux, tels que la liberté de pensée, la liberté d’expression, l’égalité devant la loi et le respect de la vie privée ? Le problème de la représentation : si les minorités étaient mieux représentées dans les médias et en politique, cela favoriserait-il leur bonne intégration ? Est-il nécessaire de créer des actions affirmatives/des quotas dans certains domaines ? Redéfinition de l’identité nationale : comment chaque pays de l’UE perçoit-il l’identité nationale ? Qu’est-ce qui fait que des personnes ont le sentiment d’appartenir à un pays ? Comment perçoit-on les citoyens issus de minorités ethniques dans les pays de l’UE ? L’identité européenne existe-t-elle ? Les minorités ethniques européennes la ressentent-elles plus ou moins que les autres, ou de la même manière ? Intervention du gouvernement : le gouvernement doit-il s’impliquer davantage sur ce problème ? Des lois, comme celle en France sur l’interdiction du voile, sont-elles nécessaires ? Si vous désirez en savoir plus, vous pouvez cliquer sur les liens suivants : Multiculturalisme BBC News, UK Politics, “State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron”, 05/02/2011, (anglais, texte et vidéos) Youtube, Trevor Philips sur le multiculturalisme (06/02/11) Youtube,“Europe at a Crossroad: Assimilation No, Integration Yes – the Story of Malmo, Sweden” (Partie 1 et 2) (anglais) Assimilation Myeurop.info, « Interdiction du voile intégral: l'exception française »,11/04/2011 (français)
MULTICULTURALISM vs. ASSIMILATION
Picture from le Blog de Caroline Fourest.It’s all about a “positive acceptance not a negative tolerance.” Ruth Lea, British economist. The issue of multiculturalism has recently been put under spotlights by David Cameron’s first speech as Prime Minister on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism, where he stated that “multiculturalism failed”. French and German leaders Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel soon proclaimed that they shared this position. Before asking ourselves if multiculturalism in Europe has been a failure we should try to understand how multiculturalism is defined. Generally multiculturalism is perceived as a “choice” of society in which every culture has the right to exist and there is no real link, no real interaction between communities. The other way to define multiculturalism is the “choice” of society to recognize all cultures, which peacefully coexist, but with at the same time a common identity. It is what is called “unity in diversity”. The absence of interconnectivity which characterises the first interpretation of multiculturalism is probably the factor which leads to the failure of this system. Historically, the British model of multiculturalism has been opposed to the French model of assimilation. In the French model, unity is more important than diversity. In fact, principles such has the unité et indivisibilité du peuple français (unity and indivisibility of the French people), laïcité de l’Etat (secularity of the State) or identité nationale (national identity) are fundamental basis of French democracy. The definition of “European” as well as British, Spanish or German has changed throughout the years and is in constant evolution. European countries have to find a model which suits their tradition but at the same time encourages the integration of people from minorities, which are established in Europe. They need to feel and be part of a common European path without forgetting their roots. We should not forget that people from minority backgrounds have to make constant efforts in order to learn the language and the habits of the country where they live in, while often encountering social exclusion and discrimination in many areas of public life. The perfect model would maybe be the one in which minorities are perfectly integrated in Europe but at the same time see that value is given to their culture. Multiculturalism in Britain is not recent, and has successfully been practiced for decades. So is multiculturalism the main problem? Today, when talking about this issue, public opinion tends to refer almost exclusively to the Muslim community ignoring the other minorities. The fear of “Muslim invasion” fed by some right wing extremist is probably causing this dangerous amalgam. European Alternatives is trying to analyse this issue by fostering debate on these subjects: Multiculturalism vs. assimilation:what are the positive/negative aspects of both models? Is there a mid-way between the two? Breach of fundamental rights: Is assimilation a threat for fundamental rights such as freedom of thought, freedom of speech, equality of all before the law or respect for private life? The issue of representation: would a better representation of minorities in the media or in politics favour the successful integration of minorities? Should affirmative action/ quotas be introduced in some areas? Redefining national identity: What is the perception of the national identity in each EU country? What makes people feel part of a country? How are European citizens from ethnic minority backgrounds perceived in each EU countries? Is there a European identity? Do ethnic minority Europeans feel it more/less/equally than others? Government intervention:should the Government play a more active role on this issue? Are laws such as the French ban on the headscarf necessary? If you would like to know more, you can check out the following links:Multiculturalism BBC News, UK Politics, “State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron”, 5 February 2011, (English, text+videos) Youtube, Trevor Philips on multiculturism (06Feb11) Youtube,“Europe at a Crossroad: Assimilation No, Integration Yes – the Story of Malmo, Sweden” (Part 1 and 2) (English) Assimilation Myeurop.info, «Interdiction du voile intégral: l’exception française», 11.04.2011, (French)
La difficulté de raconter des histoires vraies au-delà des nations
Niccolo Milanese Traduction : Pierre Leroy Depuis six ans, Alternatives Européennes s’est appliquée à encourager et à explorer l’émergence d’une subjectivité politique au-delà de l’État nation, sur les bases de la démocratie, l’égalité et la culture. Nous sommes convaincus que pour créer une société au-delà du cadre de l’État nation qui nous conviendrait (car il existe un tas de sociétés au-delà de l’État nation possibles que nous ne trouvons pas adéquates), non seulement devons nous travailler sur des domaines thématiques, notamment la démocratie, la migration, les questions sociales, le féminisme, l’économie, etc., mais également faire appel à des personnes possédant des compétences et de l’expérience dans divers secteurs tels que les artistes, les philosophes, les avocats et les activistes. Nous pensons qu’il est essentiel de créer de nouveaux imaginaires, symboles et lexiques, d’étendre et d’améliorer les droits de chacun et de multiplier les institutions démocratiques pour entraîner l’émergence d’une nouvelle société. Parmi les nombreuses campagnes menées par Alternatives Européennes ces dernières années, il n’est peut-être pas surprenant que celle sur le pluralisme et la liberté des médias soit devenue une campagne clef ; cette dernière vise à réunir un million de signatures et fait appel à la Commission européenne afin qu’elle légifère pour garantir le pluralisme des médias. Non seulement la situation en Europe s’est considérablement dégradée ces dernières années, mais à Alternatives Européennes, nous considérons que la possibilité d’échanger librement des informations est une condition sine qua non à la formation d’une société au-delà de l’État nation. Les médias nationaux créent et recréent la nation tous les jours, ce qui signifie que l’alternative à l’État nation devra elle aussi être créée et recréée, et devra perpétuer la possibilité de reconstruction et de reformulation dans les médias transnationaux. Internet est évidemment une ressource fantastique pour ce partage et cet échange à venir, et nous devons lutter pour que ce dernier reste libre et non censuré, mais les médias «bien établis» et largement « nationaux » (qui sont bien sûr présents sur Internet également) fixent encore nettement les limites politiques du débat et ce même dans la majorité des pays de l’UE, ils s’opposent également violemment à l’émergence de médias alternatifs. L’exposition “Comment raconter une histoire” d’Alternatives Européenne au « Depo » d’Istanbul (centre culturel et de débats, image sur la gauche), qui s’est achevée la semaine dernière, a pris comme point de départ ce défi précis de rechercher un nouveau lexique et des nouveaux registres symboliques avec lesquels les histoires de chacun pourraient être racontées. Au moyen d’une étude des publications samizdat, des publications révolutionnaires clandestines de l’Europe anciennement communiste, des possibilités et des limites de la reconstitution historique et de la mémoire, des montages réalisés dans les films d’actualité, de la cartographie sonore et des contextes généraux reconfigurés, l’exposition a tenté d’ouvrir un espace visant à problématiser sous un regard critique les manières exploitables de partager de l’information. Lors du weekend concluant l’exposition, nous avons organisé un débat sur la liberté des médias et la liberté d’expression, intitulé « La liberté des médias en Europe, ou la difficulté de raconter des histoires authentiques» (Image ci-dessous) et qui a rassemblé, entre autres, des théoriciens culturels, des éditeurs et des avocats. En plus de l’emprisonnement absolument inacceptable de journalistes et d’artistes en Turquie, il fut souligné que la répression opérait de manière bien plus violente que dans le reste de l’Europe. Ce qui m’a frappé le plus, ce sont les similarités dans les défis que devra relever chacun des pays européens pour garantir la possibilité de raconter une autre histoire, élaborer une autre identité collective ou présenter un imaginaire différent. L’État turc censure et réduit au silence au nom de « la préservation de l’identité turque ». Bien que l’État turc soit plus violent que les autres États européens, il existe une forte tendance dans de nombreux endroits en Europe où l’on se demande si critiquer ou remettre en question les identités dominantes constitue un problème, si cela doit être condamné ou réduit au silence, au moins de manière sociale si ce n’est pas légal. Lorsque les médias disposant des monopoles consolident cette conformité, non seulement ils déforment la « sphère » nationale publique et font taire certains de ses membres, mais ils empêchent l’émergence d’autres dispositions sociales au-delà des frontières de la nation. C’est pour ces raisons qu’il était à nos yeux important sur le plan symbolique et politique de tenir ce débat et cette exposition à Istanbul, aux frontières de l’UE actuelle. Je ne serais pas nécessairement en accord avec toutes les autres histoires, identités ou imaginaires collectifs, mais permettre qu’ils soient exprimés de la manière la plus libre possible, dans les limites de la protection de la vie privée et de la dignité, permettre l’échange entre les personnes afin d’imaginer un monde meilleur, tout cela doit être au cœur de la mission d’Alternatives Européennes.
The difficulty of telling true stories across nations
Niccolo MilaneseEuropean Alternatives has for 6 years been promoting and exploring the emergence of a political subjectivity beyond the nation state based on democracy, equality and culture. It has been our conviction that in order to create a society beyond the nation state that we would be happy with (because there are plenty of possible societies beyond the nation state that we would not find attractive) not only would we have to work across thematic areas – dealing at once with democracy, migration, social issues, feminism, economics etc. – but also between different kinds of people with expertise and skills in different areas: artists, philosophers, lawyers, activists. It seems essential to us that the emergence of a new society must involve also the creation of new imaginaries, new symbols and new vocabularies as well as new and greater rights, new and more democratic institutions. Amongst many campaigns that European Alternatives has run over the past years, it perhaps finally unsurprising that media pluralism and media freedom has become a key campaign – aiming to collect one million signatures and calling on the EU Commission to legislate to protect media pluralism. Not only has the situation deteriorated dramatically in Europe over the past ye ars, but much more fundamentally for European Alternatives the possibility of sharing information freely is a sine qua non for the creation of a society beyond the nation state. The nation is created and recreated every day in the national media – and that means an alternative to the nation state must be created, recreated, and allow the ongoing possibility of recreation and remixing in transnational media. The internet is of course a tremendous resource for this sharing and exchange to happen and we must fight for it to remain free and uncensored, but the ‘established’, largely ‘national’ media (also present on the internet, of course), still significantly shape the political contours of debate and possibility in most EU countries, and also aggressively prevent the emergence of alternative medias. The exhibition ‘How to Tell a Story’ of European Alternatives in DEPO in Istanbul (image left), which closed last week, took as its starting point precisely the challenge of looking for new vocabularies and symbolic registers in which collective stories could be told. From examining samizdat publications and revolutionary underground publishing in former communist Europe to the possibilities and limits of historical re-enactment and memory, montages of newsreels, sound-maps and reconfigured plot structures, the exhibition tried to open a space in which the ways in which information is shared between us could be critically problematised. On the closing weekend of the exhibition we held a debate on media freedom and freedom of expression – entitled ‘Media freedom in Europe, or the difficulty of telling true stories’ (image below), which brought together cultural theorists, publishers, lawyers and others. In addition to the totally unacceptable imprisonment of journalists and artists in Turkey that was highlighted – a situation of repression which is significantly more aggressive than in most other parts of Europe – it was most striking to me the similarities of challenges for all those across Europe aiming to tell an alternative history, articulate an alternative collective identity, or present an alternative imaginary. The Turkish state censors and silences on the basis of ‘preserving Turkish identity’. Even though the Turkish state is much more brutal than other European states in this, there is still a strong sense in many parts of Europe that criticising or questioning dominant identities is something problematic and to be condemned or silenced, if not legally, at least socially. When media monopolies reinforce this conformity, they not only distort the national public sphere and silence some of its members, but prevent the emergence of alternative social arrangements beyond the borders of the nation. It was in this regard symbolically and politically important that we held the debate and the exhibition in Istanbul, on the borders of the current EU.Not all alternative histories, collective identities or imaginaries would I agree with, but the freest possible expression of them within the limits of protecting privacy and dignity, the exchange amongst peoples endeavouring to imagine a better world, must be at the heart of European Alternatives’ mission.
Irlande : des bonus pour les banquiers auraient été « choquants » en période daustérité
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Hier, le ministre des Finances irlandais Brian Lenihan a écrit à l’Allied Irish Bank afin de déclarer que toute aide de l’Etat supplémentaire à l’institution dépendrait du non paiement d’un bonus suggéré de 40 millions d’euros pour le personnel, peu importe la période que concernent ces bonus. Il a fait remarquer que cette décision se basait sur le fait qu’il pensait qu’utiliser l’argent des contribuables pour financer de tels bonus serait « inacceptable ». Une réunion d’urgence du conseil de l’AIB a eu lieu suite au courrier du ministre Lenihan et, par la suite, une déclaration a été publiée admettant que, sans le soutien de l’Etat, la banque n’aurait pas survécu et qu’elle devrait continuer à dépendre de ce soutien à l’avenir. L’AIB a décidé de ne pas verser les bonus controversés. D’après le ministre Lenihan, aucun bonus n’a été versé à une quelconque institution financière irlandaise en 2009 et 2010, alors que certains bonus préexistants d’avant 2009 ont été versés à des établissements anglo-irlandais. Les commentateurs juridiques ont souligné qu’une loi doit être promulguée afin de s’assurer que les bonus ne soient pas versés. Le ministre Lenihan a indiqué qu’un amendement serait fait à la loi sur la stabilisation des crédits aux institutions ; le plan de sauvetage du FMI européen est transposé à la loi irlandaise. Alors qu’Alternatives européennes reste concernée par les mesures d’austérité adoptées en Irlande et qui se propagent effectivement à travers l’Europe à une vitesse alarmante, les mesures du ministre Lenihan sont une évolution bienvenue. Veuillez consulter nos commentaires précédents sur la solidarité en Irlande et les alternatives européennes à l’austérité et signer notre pétition pour une Convention sociale européenne, faisant appel aux citoyens et aux sociétés civiles afin d’être directement impliqué dans le réaménagement de l’architecture de la gouvernance économique européenne.
Ireland: Bonuses for bankers would have been ‘galling’ at a time of austerity
Irish Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan yesterday wrote to Allied Irish Bank to state that any further state support of the institution would be conditional on the non payment of a proposed 40 million euro in bonuses for staff, regardless of when these bonuses relate to. He has commented that the decision was based on his belief that using taxpayers money to fund such bonuses would be ‘unacceptable’. An emergency meeting of the AIB Board was held following Minister Lenihan’s letter and subsequently a statement was issued acknowledging that without the support of the state the bank would not have survived and that it would have to continue relying on that support in the future. AIB has decided not to pay the controversial bonuses. According to Minister Lenihan no bonuses were paid at any Irish financial institution in 2009 and 2010, while some pre-existing bonuses from before 2009 were paid at Anglo Irish. Legal commentators have highlighted that legislation must be enacted to make sure the bonuses are not paid. Minister Lenihan has indicated that an ammendment will be made to the Credit Institutions Stabilisation Bill; the EU-IMF bail out agreement as transposed into Irish law. While European Alternatives remains concerned about the austerity measures adopted in Ireland and indeed spreading across Europe with alarming speed, Minister Lenihan’s actions are a welcome development. Please see our previous commentaries on solidarity in Ireland and European alternatives to austerity and sign our petition for a European Social Convention, calling for citizens and civil society to be directly involved in re-designing Europe’s architecture of economic governance.
Conferenza Stampa LasciateCIEntrare
Martedì 7 maggio 2013, ore 11 Roma, sede FNSI, C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 349 Intervengono: Gabriella Guido – portavoce campagna LasciateCIEntrare Salvatore Fachile – ASGI Piero Soldini – CGIL Michele Passione – UCPI Saranno presenti in sala referenti delle diverse associazioni per ulteriori contributi A pochi giorni dalla nascita dell'esecutivo Letta, e dalla notizia della divulgazione di una relazione sui CIE coordinata da una task-force indicata dal Ministero dell'Interno e coordinata dal Sottosegretario Ruperto, la campagna LasciateCIEntrare e tutte le associazioni che ne compongono il comitato promotore, entrano nel merito della relazione per chiedere che il Ministero dell’Interno e le Istituzioni governative e parlamentari non tengano conto del Documento Programmatico sui CIE [qua], che manifesta la totale ignoranza delle effettive criticità della detenzione amministrativa. Nel corso della conferenza stampa saranno presentate le criticità emerse sul sistema della detenzione amministrativa e la proposta di una commissione mista che sarà presentata alle istituzioni ed al neogoverno al fine di superare il sistema dei CIE di riformare la legislazione in materia di immigrazione e asilo. La campagna inoltre esprime forte preoccupazione per quello che sta avvenendo nel CIE di Ponte Galeria, dove gli “ospiti” del centro di identificazione ed espulsione hanno da ieri, 1 maggio, iniziato uno sciopero della fame per protestare e denunciare le misure di trattenimento subite da un sistema e da una normativa che la campagna denuncia da tempo anche con l'appello MAI PIU' CIE. In conferenza stampa sarà data lettura del testo scritto e ricevuto dagli ospiti del CIE di Ponte Galeria. La conferenza stampa si terrà martedì 7 maggio alle ore 11.00 presso la sala stampa del primo piano della FNSI in C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 349. Info www.lasciatecientrare.it su FB LasciateCIEntrare Ufficio stampa Barbara Perversi +39.34739464485 barbara.perversi@gmail.com
Trois questions à Guy Standing
Par Stanimir Panayotov Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Guy Standing participera, lors du Festival Transeuropa 2012, à l’évènement Précarité : d’une condition sociale à un état d’esprit, le 20 mai à l’UCL à Londres. Les termes « précarité » et « précariat » ne sont pas complètement nouveaux et existent depuis environ une dizaine d’années. Quelle nouvelle signification spécifique donnez-vous à « précariat » ? Standing : Le précariat doit être compris comme faisant partie de la structure de classes mondiale émergeante. Il comprend un nombre croissant des personnes qui souffrent de formes multiples d’insécurité sociale et économique. Ceux qui se retrouvent dans le précariat n’ont pas la sécurité de l’emploi, ils enchaînent les emplois de courte durée sans être à l’abri d’un renvoi soudain. Ils n’ont également pas la sécurité de l’emploi dans le sens où ils font souvent un travail qu’ils n’ont pas envie de faire et qu’ils se sentent capable de faire. Ils n’ont aucun contrôle sur les tâches qu’ils doivent réaliser ni l’opportunité de s’épanouir à travers leur travail. Ils connaissent également l’insécurité des revenus puisqu’ils ne sont pas sûrs de ce qu’ils vont recevoir et qu’ils se voient refuser l’accès aux avantages sociaux tels que les congés maladie, les congés payés ou la chance de bénéficier d’une pension de retraite décente à l’avenir. Ils subissent aussi l’insécurité de la représentation dans le sens où ils n’ont pas leur mot à dire dans leurs relations avec leurs employeurs ou même avec leurs collègues. Je pense que l’idée d’un « anéantissement du statut » est plus appropriée pour le précariat ; l’impression que les emplois qu’ils pourraient obtenir sont bien en dessous de leurs qualifications. Enfin, dans le cadre de la définition de ceux qui en font partie, le précariat doit réaliser beaucoup de ce que j’appelle du labeur pour du travail. En d’autres termes, ils doivent accomplir beaucoup de travail non rémunérée, en plus des tâches qu’ils doivent réaliser. Cela fait beaucoup de travail pour bénéficier d’aides de l’état ainsi que pour apprendre une foule de trucs et astuces que l’on appelle conventionnellement « compétences ». Pouvez-vous expliquer la continuité entre votre travail théorique sur la précarité et le Basic Income Earth Network (Réseau Mondial pour le Revenu de Base), avec qui vous collaborez ? A quel projet politique faites-vous référence quand vous parlez du principe de revenu de base universel? Standing : Il y a vingt-cinq ans, un petit groupe d’entre nous – des économistes, des philosophes, des sociologues et d’autres – a mis en place un réseau permettant de promouvoir la discussion et la promotion d’un revenu de base pour tout le monde dans la société, en tant que droit. Nous l’avons appelé le réseau BIEN, qui voulait alors dire Basic Income European Network (Réseau Européen pour le Revenu de Base). Après quelques années, beaucoup de personnes venant de l’extérieur de l’Europe ont rejoint le réseau. Nous avons donc renommé le réseau, BIEN, en changeant le E en Earth. A présent, nous avons des membres qui viennent du monde entier, grâce à des réseaux nationaux qui sont affiliés au BIEN international. Ce serait bien qu’un réseau bulgare voit le jour. Nous avons géré tous les arguments opposés à cette idée et nous sommes sûrs que le droit au revenu de base aiderait à fournir la sécurité élémentaire essentielle à chaque société de marché. Il ne fait pas oublier que l’idée est que ce droit serait sans conditions pour tous les résidents légaux de la société, indépendamment du statut professionnel, de l’âge ou de la situation matrimoniale. Progressivement, les hommes politiques commencent à réaliser que c’est du bon sens. Beaucoup de personnes éminentes nous ont rejoints. Tout le monde peut devenir Membre à vie du réseau et se rendre au prochain Congrès. Le prochain se déroule à Munich du 14 au 16 septembre cette année. Comment voyez-vous le futur de la « main-d’œuvre » du précariat : va-t-elle tendre vers la représentation et la résurrection du syndicalisme ou va-t-elle devenir de plus en plus répandue et autonome ? Standing : Je suis sûr que le précariat va commencer à s’organiser et à réclamer de la reconnaissance en tant que force sociale déterminante. A l’heure actuelle, c’est une classe en formation. Les gens qui font partie du précariat savent contre quoi ils se battent ; les inégalités écœurantes et l’insécurité chronique qu’ils doivent affronter, sans pouvoir contrôler leur épanouissement personnel ou leur vie professionnelle. Cependant, ils ne font que commencer à élaborer un programme progressif cohérent. Guy Standing est professeur d’économie à l’université de Bath, en Angleterre. Il a été directeur de la sécurité socio-économique à l’Organisation internationale du travail, après avoir été directeur des politiques du marché du travail. Membre fondateur du Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), il en est aussi le co-président.
Three Questions to Guy Standing
by Stanimir Panayotov Guy Standing will participate to the Transeuropa Festival 2012 to the event Precariousness: from a social condition to a state of mind on the 20th of May at UCL, London The terms “precarity” and “precariat” are not entirely new and have been around for the last decade or so. What is the new and specific meaning you invest in the “precariat”? Standing:The precariat must be understood as part of the emerging global class structure. It consists of a growing number of people who are experiencing multiple forms of social and economic insecurity. Those finding themselves in the precariat have no employment security, being in and out of short-term jobs without protection against abrupt dismissal. They also have no job security, in the sense that they usually have to do jobs they do not wish to do and what they feel capable of doing. They have no control over the tasks they have to perform, or the opportunity to develop themselves through their jobs. They also experience income insecurity, being unsure what level of income they will be receiving and being denied access to non-wage benefits, such as medical leave or paid holidays or the prospect of a decent pension in the future. They also experience representation insecurity, in the sense of having no voice in their relations with employers or even fellow workers. I think the idea of “status frustration” is most appropriate for the precariat – a sense that the jobs they might obtain are well below the qualifications they possess. Finally, as part of the definition of those in it, the precariat has to do a great deal of what I call in my book, work-for-labour. In other words, they have to perform a lot of work that does not receive any remuneration, over and above what labour they may be doing. This includes a lot of work done to try to obtain state benefits as well as learn new bundles of tricks that are conventionally called “skills”. Can you explain the continuity between your theoretical work on precarity and the Basic Income Earth Network with whom you are collaborating? What political project do you refer to when you mention the universal basic income principle? Standing:Twenty-five years ago, a group of us – economists, philosophers, sociologists, and others – set up a network to promote discussion and advocacy of a basic income for everybody in society, as a right. We called the network BIEN, meaning then Basic Income European Network. After a few years, many more people from outside Europe were joining the network. So we renamed the network, BIEN, where the E was changed to Earth. Now we have members from all over the world, with national networks being affiliated to the international BIEN. It would be great if a Bulgarian network were to be formed. We have dealt with all the arguments thrown against the idea, and are confident that having a basic income as a social right would help provide the basic security that is essential for any market society. Remember that the idea is that it should be unconditional for all legal residents in society, regardless of a person’s work status, age or marital status. Gradually, politicians are beginning to see it is common sense. Many distinguished people have joined. Everybody can become a Life Member of the network and come to the next Congress. The next one is in Munich on the 14th – 16th of September this year. How do you see the future of the precariat’s “work force”: will it tend towards representation and resuscitation of trade unionism or will it become more and more diffuse and autonomous? Standing:I am confident that the precariat will start to organize and demand recognition as a crucial social force. At the moment, it is a class-in-the-making. People in the precariat know what they are against – the disgusting inequalities and the chronic insecurity that they face, without control over their own development or working lives. However, they are only beginning to work out a coherent progressive agenda. Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath, England. He was formerly Director of Socio-Economic Security in the International Labour Organisation, after being Director of Labour Market Policies. Having been a co-founder, he is co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN).
European Alternatives supports Embros theatre and opposes its closure by the Greek government
On the 11 November 2011 a group of artists and cultural workers called the Mavili Collective occupied the disused building of Embros theatre in Athens. The occupation presented itself as a “re-activation” of an abandoned space, and proposed an intense programme of activities bringing together artists, theoreticians, dance/theatre makers, architects and the general public. All these events were free to the public. The occupation re-constituted Embros as a public space for exchange, research, and debate. Embros theatre also features in a full-length documentary co-produced in May 2012 by European Alternatives and Teatro Valle, in the context of Transeuropa Festival. The film is currently being edited for distribution later in the Autumn. The Greek government has now demanded Mavili Collective evacuate Embros immediately setting an eviction date of 25th October. The government intends to rent the building privately for an as yet unspecified use. The termination of a free cultural space and community centre appears particularly questionable at a moment when the Greek state seems unable to financially support cultural practices or to create social structures to support its citizens through the current crisis. European Alternatives expresses its support to the Mavili Collective, to the Embros theatre, and to all those supporting cultural and democratic experimentation in this difficult time for Greek and European citizens. European Alternatives opposes the plans to evacuate the theatre, and condemns the Greek government for attempting to repress the free expression of the artistic and political aspirations of the Greek people. Support the Embros theatre: sign the online petition against closure at this link
European Alternatives sostiene il Teatro Embros e condanna il tentativo di chiusura del Governo greco
L’11 novembre 2011 un gruppo di artisti e lavoratori della cultura, il Collettivo Mavili, hanno occupato il teatro Embros ad atene, che giaceva abbandonato da tempo. L’occupazione si è presentata come la 'riattivazione' di uno spazio abbandonato, e ha proposto un intenso programma di attività riunendo artisti, teorici, produttori di danza/teatro, architetti e tutta la cittadinanza. L'occupazione ha così ricostituito Embros come spazio pubblico di dialogo, dibattito, e ricerca, restituendo uno spazio in disuso alla città. Il Teatro Embros compare anche in un documentario co-prodotto da European Alternatives e dal Teatro Valle Occupato nel maggio 2012, nel contesto del Festival Transeuropa. Il film è attualmente in fase di montaggio e sarà pronto per la distribuzione nel tardo autunno. Il governo greco ha ordinato al Collettivo Mavili di lasciare il Teatro Embros entro il 25 Ottobre. Il governo ha intenzione di privatizzare lo stabile, anche se non esistono ancora dettagli su chi sia interessato alla gestione dello spazio e per quale fine. La chiusura di uno spazio culturale e di aggregazione è particolarmente discutibile in un momento in cui lo stato greco sembra incapace di sostenere qualsiasi pratica culturale o di creare strutture sociali per aiutare i propri cittadini durate l'attuale crisi. European Alternatives manifesta il sostegno al collettivo Mavili, al teatro Embros e a tutti quelli che mantengono vivo uno spirito di sperimentazione culturale e democratica in questi tempi difficili per i cittadini greci ed europei. European Alternatives si oppone al programma di sgombero del teatro e condanna il governo greco per il tentativo di reprimere le aspirazioni artistiche e politiche del popolo greco. Sostieni il teatro Embros: firma la petizione contro la chiusura
Alternatives Européennes soutient le théâtre Embros et soppose à sa fermeture par le gouvernement grec
Traduction de Ludmila Nepotu Le 11 novembre 2011 un groupe d’artistes et de travailleurs du domaine de la culture nommés le Collectif Mavili ont occupé le bâtiment désaffecté du théâtre à Athènes. L’occupation s’est présentée comme une “réactivation ” d’un espace abandonné et a proposé un programme intense d’activités réunissant des artistes, théoriciens, producteurs de danse/théâtre, architectes et le public large. Tous ces événements ont été gratuits pour le public. L’occupation a reconstitué Embros en tant qu’espace public pour l’échange, la recherche et le débat. Le théâtre Embros est présenté aussi dans un documentaire de long métrage coproduit au mois de mai 2012 par Alternatives Européennes et Teatro Valle, dans le contexte du Festival Transeuropa. Le film est à présent en cours de montage pour être distribué plus tard, en automne. Le gouvernement grec a demandé actuellement au Collectif Mavili d’évacuer immédiatement Embros en fixant la date d’évacuation pour le 25 octobre. Le gouvernement vise à louer le bâtiment pour une utilisation qui n’est pas encore spécifiée. La fin d’un espace culturel gratuit et du centre destiné à la communauté paraît particulièrement discutable au moment où l’Etat grec paraît incapable de soutenir financièrement les activités culturelles ou de créer des structures sociales pour soutenir ses citoyens dans le contexte de l’actuelle crise. Alternatives Européennes exprime son soutien en faveur du Collectif Mavili, en faveur du théâtre Embros et de tous ceux qui appuient les activités d’expérimentation culturelle et démocratique dans ces temps difficiles pour les Grecs et pour les citoyens européens. Alternatives Européennes s’oppose aux plans d’évacuation des théâtres et condamne le gouvernement grec d’avoir essayé de réprimer la libre expression des aspirations artistiques et politiques du peuple grec Le soutien du théâtre Embros : signer la pétition en ligne contre la fermeture à ce lien
Le Modèle de lUnion Européenne 2013
Traducere de Ludmila Nepotu Le Modèle de l’Union Européenne (MUE) représente une simulation prestigieuse des institutions et de la politique européennes. Organisée par Bringing Europeans Together Association (BETA), e. V. est un projet éducationnel informel qui a comme but d’offrir aux individus une première expérience concrète concernant les structures complexes du processus décisionnel de l’Union Européenne. Hébergée au sein-même du Parlement Européen, la 7-ème édition de la conférence de Strasbourg aura lieu à Strasbourg, France du 20 au 27 avril 2013. Durant cette période, plus de 180 jeunes s’assumeront des rôles de Ministres du Conseil, Membres du Parlement Européen, lobbyistes, journalistes et interprètes. Le dépôt des candidatures se termine le 31 janvier 2013. Pour plus d’informations et les règles d’application, nous vous prions de consulter : www.meu-strasbourg.org A cause des problèmes techniques, le processus de candidature pour le Modèle de l’Union Européenne Strasbourg 2013 a été prolongé jusqu’au 11 février. Pour quiconque ayant eu des problèmes lors de la procédure, nous vous prions de réessayer maintenant ! Ceux parmi vous qui ont eu des problèmes pour s’inscrire, comme la non-réception du courriel de confirmation, soit réitérez la procédure encore une fois soit contactez-nous. Pour plus d’informations et règles d’application, nous vous prions de consulter notre site : www.meu-strasbourg.org.
Model European Union 2013
Model European Union (MEU) is a prestigious simulation of European institutions and politics. Organised by the Bringing Europeans Together Association (BETA) e.V, it is an informal educational project which aims to give young individuals a first-hand experience of the complex structures of the European Union’s decision-making process. Hosted in the European Parliament, the 7th edition of the Strasbourg conference will take place in Strasbourg, France between the 20th – 27th April 2013. During this time, over 180 young people will take on the roles of Ministers of the Council, Members of the European Parliament, lobbyists, journalists and interpreters. The application process closes on the 31st January 2013. For more information and the rules of application, please see : www.meu-strasbourg.org Due to technical problems, the Model European Union Strasbourg 2013 application process has been extended to 11 February. Anyone who has had issues in applying the first time, please apply now! Those of you who had problems in applying, such as not receiving the confirmation email, either reapply or get in touch with us. For more information and the rules of application please see our website: www.meu-strasbourg.org.
Succès lors de la première semaine de lInitiative des Citoyens pour le Pluralisme des Mass-média
Traducere de Ludmila Nepotu C’est cette semaine qu’a eu lieu le lancement de l’Initiative des Citoyens Européens pour le Pluralisme des Mass-media avec des conférences de presse qui inaugurent la campagne du 7 février dans sept pays européens (pour plus d’informations, lisez le communiqué de presse : ici). L’Initiative qui vise à protéger la liberté des mass-média et du pluralisme, tous les deux étant actuellement menacés dans l’Union Européenne, a été saluée dans plusieurs pays par la société civile, les journalistes et les principaux journaux nationaux. Parmi les premiers à signer cette semaine a été le Président du Parlement Européen, Martin Schulz, qui a signé en ligne le 5 février à Strasbourg. Rappelant le rôle du Parlement Européen dans la sollicitation d’une plus grande implication de la part de l’UE concernant la protection de la liberté des mass-média, le Président a déclaré: “ A de nombreuses reprises, le Parlement Européen a appuyé l’action de l’UE pour protéger l’indépendance et le pluralisme des mass-média dans le cadre des pays membres. Je signe l’Initiative des Citoyens pour le Pluralisme des Mass-média depuis que je suis persuadé que c’est le devoir de l’UE de garantir ce droit, établi par la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux de l’ UE, pour tous les citoyens européens.” SOYEZ PARMI LES PREMIERS A SIGNER: cliquez ici pour lire plus sur l’initiative et signez maintenant! Pour plus d’informations sur la campagne et pour des informations sur la manière dont vous pouvez vous impliquer, contactez-nous à l’adresse info@mediainitiative.eu. Vidéo avec Martin Schulz signant l’initiative:
Successful first week of Citizens Initiative for Media Pluralism
This week was the launch of the European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism with press conferences inaugurating the campaign on February 7th in seven European countries (read a press release with more information here). The Initiative, which aims to safeguard media freedom and pluralism, both currently under attack in the European Union, has been welcomed in many countries by civil society, journalists and key national newspapers. Among the first to sign this week was the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, who signed online on February 5th in Strasbourg. Recollecting the role of the European Parliament in demanding greater EU involvement in protecting media freedom, the President declared: “On numerous occasions the European Parliament has supported EU action with the aim of safeguarding the independence and pluralism of media within member sates. I am signing the Citizens Initiative for Media Pluralism since I am convinced that it is the duty of the EU to guarantee this right, set forth by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, to all European citizens.” BE AMONG THE FIRST TO SIGN: click here to read more about the initiative and sign now! For more information on the campaign and for information on how you can become involved, get in touch with us at info@mediainitiative.eu. Video of Martin Schulz signing the Initiative:
Only proper integration will solve the Easts democracy problems
Article by Juraj DraxlerOn Sunday, Romanians voted in a controversial, and ultimately unsuccessful, referendum to remove the president, Traian Basescu, from office. The whole process, in which the ruling coalition opposed to Basescu tried to bend the rules and bypass constitutional procedures, has rightly resulted in condemnation. But this is not where the story should end. Brittle democracy in the East has roots in the region’s economic transition. This has resulted in a minimal state whose public sector cannot effectively uphold the rule of law and whose impoverished population finds it difficult to organize as a proper civil society. In the meantime, politics are dominated by cliques that vie to act as gatekeepers for inward investment and financial aid, mostly EU structural aid. Since these flows are designed to be the only real engines of growth for these lean export-oriented economies, the struggle is correspondingly intense and low blows are hardly surprising. If the West is worried about Eastern democracy, it should put some pressure on the new member states to adjust their economic model. This is now not impossible, as many processes of deepening integration that have been started as a reaction to the eurozone crisis create a welcome window of opportunity and offer the proper decision-making framework. Romania and Hungary are at the forefront… The reason that the European Commission and the wider Brussels establishment got so nervous so quickly over Romania’s government’s steps was that they are afraid of, as pundits put it, “contagion”. Next door, the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has often crossed swords with the international community and the EU structures in particular during his 2-year rule. Among other things, he stripped the central bank and the constitutional court of much of their autonomy. Orbán managed to fend off the ultimate sanction, the suspension of voting rights in the Council, the body that approves EU legislation. This is now wielded against Romania too. Orbán had to make concessions, but he is clearly unrepentant. The Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta, in the meantime, swiftly made amends on some of the more egregious legal stumbles, but concerns remain. However, Romania and Hungary are not the only countries in the region with democratic governance problems. …but democracy is brittle across the region The eurozone crisis has brought some welcome respite to the ten post-communist member states that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. The “old EU” has guarded against the citizens of the New Member States by opening up the labour market only gradually. The Easterners also remember the times when they had been almost universally branded shoplifters. Now, Europe is gazing at all those islands and pensinsulas on its Western and Southern fringe and for once, Eastern Europeans are not the negative news. In fact, newspapers in the new member states revel in smug stories about lazy Greeks on social benefits. The Czech president Vaclav Klaus has even dropped the remark about Greeks being at most fit to drink ouzo in the shade. However, the average Czech feels the country has nothing to be smug about. Under the spires and gargoyles of Prague, politics is very murky. The city itself has become a local byword for corruption, with money from city’s enterprises such as public transportation being siphoned-off through a maze of tax haven-registered companies. At the same time the city government has bought Hummer cars, Segways and other expensive toys for the municipal police. This is replicated at the national level. For example, over the past 10 years the government has wasted the equivalent of €80 million on an online patient information system that practically nobody used. The supplier had anonymous owners. Czechs have partly taken this in their typical humorous stride. One businessman has started a company called Corrupt Tours, which gives tourists a ride around the spots such as the villas of some of the more notorious politically-connected businessmen. Jokes aside, Czechs are very angry, and often point out despairingly that no really important politician or businessman has ever been sentenced for corruption or fraud. In Bulgaria, just this month a popular judge, the leader of a reformist judges’ union, was suspended, prompting her colleagues to protest in the streets. The police also re-started investigation of the co-owner of the most popular paper, “24 hours”. Critics say in both cases the government, mired in corruption scandals, is simply trying to silence dissent. In Latvia every election since 1990 brings a completely newly formed party into power. At the end of every electoral cycle, Latvians hope a saviour well emerge to clean up the act. For now, these developments are being discussed as a form of epidemic spreading across the region. ‘Ponta learns bad ways from Orbán’. But rather than being a simple contagion, the problems in the East are simply caused by the same structural factors. Export-oriented economies… All of these countries started their economic transformation in early 1990s by efforts to build “domestic capitalism”. This was to happen either via sales of assets to local managers or by ‘voucher privatisation’ where citizens could en masse apply for shareholdings in companies. These efforts mostly ended in failure. Partly this was due to policy-makers’ naiveté, when they wanted to steam ahead establishing capitalism without having developed a proper legal framework first. Partly due to the fact that there were many unscrupulous people involved. The travails of one Viktor Koený, who set up a fund to invest people’s vouchers on their behalf in the Czech Republic are the stuff of legends. He managed to gain control over a huge chunk of Czech industry, only to strip companies of assets and get a fortune out of the country before he could be caught. He later bought an island in the Bahamas and would have lived a happy life had he not got caught up in a bigger deal later, where he defrauded rich American investors, including the odd senator, in a scheme to gain oil concessions in Azerbaijan. The scheme backfired when Koený failed to secure…
Seule une véritable intégration pourra résoudre les problèmes démocratiques de lEst
Par Juraj Draxler Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin Dimanche 29 juillet, les Roumains ont participé, finalement sans succès, à un référendum controversé pour destituer le président, Traian Basescu, de ses fonctions. La méthode employée par la coalition majoritaire opposée à Basescu, tentant de contourner les règles et de se dérober aux procédures constitutionnelles, a bien sûr été condamnée. Mais nous ne devrions pas nous arrêter là. La fragilité de la démocratie dans les pays de l’Est découle de la transition économique de la région. Celle-ci a entraîné l’émergence d’un État minimum, où le secteur public ne parvient pas vraiment à faire respecter la loi et où la population défavorisée peine à s’organiser en véritable société civile. En même temps, la politique est dominée par des bandes qui se disputent pour contrôler les investissements étrangers et les aides financières, des aides structurelles de l’UE pour la plupart. Puisque ces flux sont destinés à être le seul réel moteur de croissance de ces économies poussives, tournées vers l’exportation, il est logique que la lutte soit aussi intense et qu’il y ait des coups bas. Si les pays de l’Ouest s’inquiètent pour la démocratie à l’Est, ils devraient faire pression sur les nouveaux États membres pour qu’ils réajustent leur modèle économique. Cela n’est pas impossible puisque les nombreuses démarches visant au renforcement de l’intégration, entamées en réaction à la crise de la zone Euro, ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives et offrent un cadre plus adapté à la prise de décisions. La Roumanie et la Hongrie sont au premier plan… La raison pour laquelle la Commission européenne, et les institutions de l’UE de manière générale, se sont si vite inquiétées des dispositions du gouvernement roumain, est qu’elles redoutaient, comme le disent les experts, un phénomène de contagion. Tout près de là, le premier ministre hongrois Viktor Orbán a souvent croisé le fer avec la communauté internationale et les structures de l’UE, tout particulièrement au cours de ces deux années au pouvoir. Il a, entre autres, presque dépouillé la Banque Centrale et la Cour Constitutionnelle de leur autonomie. Orbán a réussi à éviter l’ultime sanction : la suspension du droit de vote au Conseil Européen, l’organe qui décide de la législation de l’UE. La Roumanie risque à présent cette même sanction. Orbán a dû faire des concessions, mais il ne manifeste pas le moindre repenti. Pendant ce temps, le premier ministre roumain, Victor Ponta, a rapidement rectifié certaines de ses erreurs les plus nuisibles, mais il inquiète toujours. Cependant, la Roumanie et la Hongrie ne sont pas les seuls pays de la région à rencontrer des problèmes démocratiques dans leur gouvernance. …mais toute la région est concernée par la fragilité de la démocratie La crise de la zone Euro a provoqué un répit bienvenu aux dix États membres postcommunistes qui ont rejoint l’UE en 2004, puis en 2007. L’«ancienne UE » s’est protégée des citoyens des nouveaux États membres en ne leur ouvrant que progressivement le marché du travail. Les citoyens de l’Est se rappellent aussi l’époque où presque tous les considéraient comme des voleurs à l’étalage. Aujourd’hui, l’UE se tourne vers les îles et les péninsules qui bordent l’Ouest et le Sud et, pour une fois, ce ne sont pas les Européens de l’Est qui font l’objet d’inquiétudes ou de mauvais a priori. À vrai dire, les journaux des nouveaux États membres regorgent d’histoires sur les Grecs censés vivre paresseusement des prestations sociales. Le président tchèque, Vaclav Klaus, a même laissé entendre que les Grecs n’étaient bons qu’à boire de l’ouzo à l’ombre. Toutefois, le Tchèque moyen pense que son pays n’a pas de quoi être fier. Sous les cimes et les gargouilles de Prague, la politique est bien trouble. Pour les habitants, la ville est devenue synonyme de corruption ; l’argent des entreprises de la ville, notamment du transport public, est détourné grâce à un réseau complexe de sociétés enregistrées dans des paradis fiscaux. Pendant ce temps, la municipalité achète des Hummer, des Segways et d’autres jouets coûteux pour la police. Ces pratiques sont reproduites à l’échelle nationale. Par exemple, le gouvernement a gaspillé l’équivalent de 80 millions d’euros au cours des dix dernières années pour un système d’information des patients en ligne que presque personne n’a utilisé jusqu’à présent. Les propriétaires du fournisseur sont inconnus. Les Tchèques le prennent avec un peu d’humour, comme à leur habitude : Un homme d’affaires a lancé une entreprise nommée Corrupt Tours, et propose aux touristes de faire le tour de certains lieux comme les villas d’hommes d’affaires particulièrement connus pour avoir des liens étroits avec les hommes politiques Plus sérieusement, les Tchèques sont très mécontents et rappellent souvent avec désespoir qu’aucun homme politique ou homme d’affaires réellement important n’a jusqu’à présent été puni pour corruption ou fraude. Ce mois-ci en Bulgarie, une célèbre juge, à la tête d’une union de juges réformistes, a été suspendue après avoir encouragé ses collègues à manifester dans la rue. Par ailleurs, la police a rouvert l’enquête sur le copropriétaire du journal le plus populaire, « 24 heures ». Dans les deux cas, les critiques affirment que le gouvernement trempe dans des scandales de corruption, et essaie simplement de faire taire les dissidents. En Lettonie, toutes les élections depuis 1990 font entrer au pouvoir un parti entièrement nouveau. À la fin de chaque cycle électoral, les Lettons espèrent qu’un sauveur viendra rétablir l’ordre. Pour le moment, ces événements sont perçus comme une sorte d’épidémie qui se propagerait dans la région. « Ponta suit le mauvais exemple d’Orbán. » En réalité il ne s’agit pas d’une simple contagion, mais plutôt de problèmes dus à des facteurs structurels, communs aux pays de l’Est. Des économies axées sur l’exportation… Tous ces pays ont commencé leur transformation économique au début des années 90 afin d’établir un « capitalisme national ». Ils pensaient le faire par le biais de ventes d’actifs à des entreprises locales ou de la « privatisation par coupons » qui permettait à un grand nombre de citoyens de devenir actionnaires d’une société. La…
Towards a Transnational Democracy for Europe: Launch of a Citizen Pact
By Lorenzo Marsili and Niccolò Milanese While the European Council meets in Brussels to decide on future treaties for still greater financial control, 200 meters away from the Council, in the European Parliament, European Alternatives and partners launch a year-long and bottom-up process demanding a radically democratic Europe and responding to the Fiscal Pact with the development a citizen-led Citizen Pact. The pamphlet “Towards a Transnational Democracy for Europe” tries to start to outline the bases for such a transnational Citizen Pact. For the agenda and more information click here Here’s an extract summarizing the key points. To read the full text, you can download the pamphlet here. The financial and economic crisis, of which we have heard so much discussion since 2007-8, is only one aspect of a whole series of underlying political trends which have been apparent for much longer: a crisis of (in)equality and of increased precarity of the workforce, a human rights crisis, a demographic crisis, an ecological crisis, a crisis in civil liberties, and above all a crisis in democracy. The insistence of political leaders in maintaining a state of “crisis” – a state of exception – for the economy, is also part of a strategy to maintain the cover of a separation between economic issues and wider social issues, which gives the crisis an appearance of technicality and delegitimises the expression of political passions and systemic alternatives, while at the same time “legitimising” a whole series of stealth political and social reforms which go under the banner of “austerity”. Austerity politics is a consequence of democratic failure in Europe and the centralisation of decision-making powers in unaccountable institutions, beginning with the European Council. A pretence of national sovereignty is maintained in the “intergovernmental” method of the Council, while in reality it is a cover for the strongest players to dictate the agenda, and ensures that the common interest of Europeans – and the institutions charged with maintaining the common European interest – are continually undermined by competitive negotiations. We do not have the luxury of deciding whether we want or do not want a reform of the European institutional architecture: there is already a quasi-constitutional process happening at the European level in which the citizens are barely having any say because they are effectively divided in national constituencies, set against one another. Whilst the President of the European Council, the ECB, the Eurogroup and the Commission are working on proposals for treaty change, which will be mostly of fiscal disciplinary nature, the citizens have little or no opportunity to exercise their citizenship and articulate their priorities or alternatives at a European level. As if the Fiscal Compact, which traps many Europeans into enduring poverty, was not enough, new treaties are looming that will focus even more on fiscal elements at their core. Citizens are presented with two perspectives to confront this process. On the one hand they are given the option of supporting deeper integration of the EU on the basis of competition, deregulation and liberalization with no increase in democracy. On the other hand there is the proposal of the disintegration of the European Union and a strengthening of the nation state. Democracy from below Social movements reacting to the economic crisis need to open up a third space and develop a proposal for radical democracy in Europe, demanding the development of clear models of both representative and participatory democracy to reinforce the political agency of citizens, to empower them to take part in political processes, and to restore democratic control and oversight over financial markets and capital. These objectives can only be obtained by taking the continental scale as our horizon for action. Such a proposal for a democratic institutional infrastructure cannot be developed by a small number of experts or technocrats, but must be a broad and collaborative constitutional process involving as many citizens as possible. Such a process will allow Europeans to fully enforce their citizenship and take part in inspiring historic project of creating democracy at a continental scale. To initiate this process we propose that there should be: Part 1: Citizen Pact – a process from below A process of coordinated debate and discussion of a new institutional structure for Europe through all social movements and the enlargement of such debate and discussion to the as many citizens as possible through a cycle of meetings, discussions and debates organised in town-halls, schools, universities, cultural spaces and other local venues throughout Europe, with coordination and exchange between these different cities and citizens. This process would be accompanied by a multilingual space of online debate and discussion of a new institutional structure for Europe to allow for the participation of the maximum of citizens, also employing the latest online participatory techniques. We think the discussions should focus on these three questions: How to ensure a democratic decision-making at a European level in which the interests of people throughout the continent, and the consequences of European decisions for other people affected, are taken into account and the common interest is guaranteed through a just, accountable and transparent process? How to ensure the maximum possibilities for direct citizen involvement in political decision making, as an expression of European citizenship and the best guarantee of common interest? Which economical, political, and social issues are best approached at European level and what legislative competences should democratic transnational institutions have in these areas? Beyond just a drafting of a new constitutional proposal, such process would itself be an experiment of transnational participation and a testament of the possibility of understanding and practicing European democracy on new bases. Part 2: Campaigning for democratic reform As part of the first process, a roadmap should be developed by a plurality of actors from across Europe representing different social movements, general interest organisations, NGOs and others to define a process whereby the citizens’ proposals drafted in the Citizen Pact can be agreed upon and a strategy for institutional implementation devised. …
La loro austerità, la nostra democrazia
Verso un patto di cittadini, cittadine e residenti d’Europa per rifondare la democrazia European Alternatives organizza il 17 dicembre un forum al Parlamento europeo a Bruxelles in cui discutere proposte concrete per rilanciare un processo costituente dal basso, approvando un primo calendario di eventi e un percorso unitario europeo che mobiliterà cittadini, le cittadine e i residenti del’Europa durante tutto l’arco del 2013. Impoverimento, attacco al mondo del lavoro, tensioni sociali, crisi del debito e rischio di implosione dello spazio europeo sono solo alcuni dei frutti amari della lunga crisi iniziata nel 2007. Ma almeno un’altra vittima d’eccezione rischia di essere immolata al focolare dell’emergenza: la democrazia europea. E con la chiusura dello spazio per una vera democrazia, si chiude qualunque spazio per modelli economici, sociali e politici alternativi. Mentre i leader europei si dichiarano a favore di una maggiore integrazione fiscale e finanziaria dell’ Eurozona per far fronte alla crisi, si sente poco o nulla sulla necessità di riformare la democrazia in Europa fuori da ogni scorciatoia tecnocratica, così come cadono nel vuoto gli appelli ad una maggiore cooperazione europea per garantire diritti sociali e del lavoro. I cittadini sono finora stati totalmente esclusi dalla partecipazione al dibattito sul futuro dell’Europa e dei suoi nuovi trattati e strutture di governance. Dopo che i nostri parlamenti nazionali hanno ratificato il Fiscal Pact, sentiamo l'esigenza di rispondere con un Citizen Pact, un patto da e per i cittadini e residenti europei. Contro la costituzionalizzazione dell’austerità, è ora di lavorare a una proposta elaborata dal basso da cittadini, cittadine e residenti d’Europa. Nel 2013 porteremo avanti un ampio processo di consultazione e coinvolgimento della cittadinanza per reclamare riforme democratiche e sociali, ma anche a proporre iniziative dal basso e a livello europeo, verso la costruzione di un Manifesto di cittadini da condividere entro la fine del 2013, pochi mesi prima delle prossime elezioni del Parlamento Europeo. Il Manifesto, o Patto, verrà sviluppato tramite mecchanismi partecipativi e vedrà il coinvolgimento di società civile, cittadini e movimenti sociali sia online che fisicamente nei comuni, nelle scuole, nelle università e negli spazi sociali. Sono già confermati decine di incontri in oltre nove paesi europei, una lista che contiamo di allungare dopo l’incontro di partenza a Bruxelles. INFORMAZIONI E AGENDA Lunedi 17 dicembre, 14.30 – 19.00 Parlamento Europeo, palazzo Altiero Spinelli, stanza 7f387 Agenda: https://euroalter.com/ppp/events/3956/
Vers une démocratie transnationale pour lEurope : lancement du Pacte citoyen
Par Lorenzo Marsili et Niccolò Milanese Traduction : Anaëlle Hubert Alors que le Conseil Européen se réunit à Bruxelles afin de décider des futurs traités pour uncontrôle financier plus important encore, à 200 mètres du Conseil, au Parlement Européen, Alternatives Européennes et ses partenaires lancent un processus participatif du bas vers le haut d’un an appelant une Europe radicalement démocratique et répondant au Pacte Fiscal par le développement d’un Pacte Citoyen, mené par les citoyens eux-mêmes. La brochure « Vers une démocratie transnationale pour l’Europe » tente de poser les bases de ce Pacte Citoyen transnational. Pour le programme et plus d’informations, cliquez ici. Ceci est un extrait qui résume les idées principales. Pour lire le texte entier, vous pouvez télécharger la brochure ici (en anglais). La crise économique et financière, qui fait l’objet de tant de discussions depuis 2007-2008, n’est qu’un seul aspect de toute une série de tendances politiques sous-jacentes qui sont apparentes depuis bien plus longtemps : une crise d’(in)égalité et de précarité grandissante de la main d’œuvre, une crise des droits de l’Homme, une crise démographique, une crise écologique, une crise des libertés civiles, et surtout, une crise de la démocratie. L’insistance des dirigeants politiques à conserver un état de « crise » – un état d’exception – pourl’économie, fait aussi partie d’une stratégie pour maintenir le semblant d’une séparation entreles problèmes économiques et des problèmes sociaux plus larges, ce qui donne à la crise une apparence technique et délégitime l’expression de passions politiques et d’alternatives générales, tout en « légitimant » toute une série de réformes politiques et sociales discrètes sous la bannière de « l’austérité ». La politique d’austérité est une conséquence de l’échec démocratique en Europe et de la centralisation des pouvoirs décisionnels dans des institutions n’ayant aucun compte à rendre, à commencer par le Conseil Européen. Un semblant de souveraineté nationale est conservé dans la méthode « intergouvernementale » du Conseil, qui en réalité permet aux acteurs les plus puissants dictent l’agenda, et qu’elle garantit que l’intérêt commun des Européens – et les institutions chargées de maintenir l’intérêt commun européen – sontcontinuellement ébranlés par des négociations compétitives. Nous n’avons pas le luxe de décidersinous voulons ou non d’une réforme de l’architecture institutionnelle européenne : au niveau européen,il existedéjà une procédure quasi-constitutionnelle dans laquelle les citoyens ont à peine leur mot à dire, car ils sont, en réalité, divisés en circonscriptions nationales, et dressés les uns contre les autres. Pendant que le Président du Conseil Européen, la BCE, l’Eurogroupe et la Commission travaillent sur des propositions pour le changement du traité, qui sera surtout de nature fiscale vers plus de « discipline »,les citoyens n’ont peu ou pas d’opportunités pour exercer leur citoyenneté et articuler leurs priorités ou leurs alternatives au niveau européen. Comme si le Pacte budgétaire ne suffisait pas, enfermant beaucoup d’Européens dans la pauvreté, de nouveaux traités sont en vue, se concentrant encore plus surdes bases fiscales. Deux perspectives sont présentées aux citoyens pour faire face à ce processus. D’un côté, l’option leur est donnée de soutenir une plus grande intégration de l’UE sur la base de la concurrence, de la déréglementation et de la libéralisation sans accroissement de la démocratie. De l’autre, il y a la proposition de la désintégration de l’Union Européenne et une consolidation de l’État-nation. La démocratie par le bas Les mouvements sociaux qui réagissent face à la crise économique doivent ouvrir une troisième voie etmettre au pointune proposition pour une démocratie radicale en Europe, en exigeant le développement de modèles clairs d’une démocratie à la fois représentative et participative, pour renforcerla prise de décisionpolitique des citoyens, pour leur donner le pouvoir de participer aux processus politiques, et pour restaurer le contrôle démocratique et surveiller les marchés financiers et le capital. Ces objectifs ne peuvent être atteints qu’en prenant l’échelle continentale comme horizon d’action. Une telle proposition pour une infrastructure démocratique institutionnelle ne peut pas être développée par un petit nombre d’experts ou de technocrates ; ce doit être un processus constitutionnel large et collaboratif, qui implique autant de citoyens que possible. Un tel procédé permettra aux Européens de faire valoir pleinement leur citoyenneté et de faire partie d’un projet historique inspirant : créer une démocratie à l’échelle continentale. Pour démarrer ce processus, nous proposons qu’il y ait : Première partie : Pacte Citoyen – un processus qui vient d’en bas Le Pacte Citoyen est un processus coordonné de débat et de discussion pour une nouvelle structure institutionnelle pour l’Europe, à travers tous les mouvements sociaux, et l’extension de tels débats et discussions à autant de citoyens que possible grâce à un cycle de réunions, des discussions et des débats organisés dans les mairies, les écoles, les universités, les espaces culturels et d’autres lieux publics locaux partout en Europe, avec une coordination et un échange entre ces différentes villes et citoyens. Ce processus sera accompagné d’un espace multilingue de débat et de discussion en ligne pour une nouvelle structure institutionnelle pour l’Europe, afin que le maximum de citoyens puissent participer, en utilisant les dernières techniques participatives en ligne. Nous pensons que les discussions devraient être centrées sur ces trois questions : Comment garantir une prise de décision démocratique, à l’échelle européenne, dans laquelle les intérêts des gens sur tout le continent ainsi que les conséquences des décisions européennes pour les autres personnes affectées seraient pris en compte et l’intérêt commun assuré, grâce à un procédé juste et transparent ? Comment garantir le maximum de possibilités pour la participation directe des citoyens dans la prise de décision politique, comme expression de la citoyenneté européenne et comme meilleure assurance de l’intérêt commun ? Quels problèmes économiques, politiques et sociaux devraient mieux être abordés au niveau européen, et quelles compétences législatives les institutions transnationales démocratiques devraient-elles avoir dans ces domaines ? Au-delà de l’élaboration d’une nouvelle proposition constitutionnelle, un tel processus serait lui-même une expérience de participation transnationale et un témoignage de la possibilité de comprendre et de pratiquer la démocratie européenne sur de nouvelles bases. Deuxième partie : Faire campagne pour une réforme démocratique Dans le cadre du premier processus, une feuille de route devrait être conçue par de nombreux…
Garantito l’accesso ai CIE in Italia
Nel corso degli ultimi mesi Alternative Euroee, nel contesto del coordinamento LasciateCIEntrare, ha partecipato ad una campagna per richiedere il diritto di accesso ai CIE e ai CARA in tutti Europa. Lo scorso 22 ottobre, assieme a organizzazioni da tutta Europa riunite a Parigi per un forum transnazionale organizzato da Alternative Europee e Migreurop, abbiamo pubblicato un appello per il diritto della società civile ad entrare nei campi di detenzione, preludio per una campagna europea sul tema. Siamo molto felici dunque di annunciare che il ministro dell'Interno Anna Maria Cancellieri ha firmato una direttiva che revoca la circolare dell'ex ministro Roberto Maroni e consente ai giornalisti l'accesso ai centri per migranti. La Federazione Nazionale della Stampa Italiana, uno dei promotori della campagna LasciateCIEntrare, commenta: “E’ un’ottima notizia la decisione del ministro Cancellieri di aprire di nuovo ai giornalisti le porte dei Cie. Finalmente viene ripristinato il nostro diritto-dovere di raccontare ciò che avviene in queste strutture. E’ una decisione che giova anche alla credibilità delle istituzioni italiane preposte all’accoglienza degli immigrati, perché il blocco disposto ad aprile dall’allora ministro Maroni autorizza da mesi il sospetto che all’interno di Cie e Cara vengano praticati trattamenti lesivi dei diritti umani. La revoca del divieto è una riaffermazione di basilari principi costituzionali, per la quale anche la Fnsi ringrazia il ministro Cancellieri e tutti i parlamentari che si sono battuti per il risultato di oggi”. Gabriella Guido, animatrice del comitato LasciateCIEntrare, chiarisce che questa nuova normatica è solo l'inizio: “Questo atto, che la società civile ha chiesto a gran voce, arrivando alla grande mobilitazione del 25 luglio, era un atto dovuto, ma non scontato. Garantire la libertà di informazione è una delle condizioni basilari ed essenziali per garantire una società democratica, in grado di difendere i diritti di tutti, di quei cittadini italiani e di quei cittadini stranieri che scelgono il nostro paese dove vivere e stabilirsi o come paese di transito. Da oggi, forse, ciò che avviene nei centri di identificazione ed espulsione sarà possibile renderlo pubblico. E quindi non potremo non essere ancora più fortemente convinti che una diversa gestione delle espulsioni, dei riconoscimenti e delle richieste di asilo sia possibile e necessaria”. Alternative Europee continuerà a lavorare nei prossimi mesi per l'estensione a livello europeo del diritto di accesso ai CIe, e per far iniziare un grande dibattito pubblico sulla possibilità di superare il sistema di detenzione per migranti e richiedenti asilo.
Laccès aux centres de détention autorisé en Italie !
Dans le contexte de la campagne LasciateCIEntrare, Alternatives Européennes a mené ces derniers mois une campagne en faveur du droit à l’accès aux centres de détention. Plus récemment, au côté de plusieurs organisations venues de partout en Europe pour se réunir lors d’un forum transnational à Paris le 22 octobre dernier, nous avons publié un appel pour le droit de la société civile à entrer dans les centres de détention, ce qui constitue une première étape dans la campagne menée au niveau européen pour demander des garanties de l’UE sur le droit à l’accès. Aujourd’hui nous sommes très heureux de vous annoncer que le nouveau Ministre de l’Intérieur italien a décidé d’autoriser les journalistes à accéder à tous les centres de détention en Italie ! Ensemble avec nos partenaires en Italie, nous enverrons dans les prochaines semaines des requêtes d’accès aux centres de détention italiens, pour veiller à la bonne mise en œuvre de la nouvelle législation. Cette victoire n’est qu’un début : nous avons besoin maintenant de stabiliser et généraliser ce droit à l’accès partout en Europe, comme étape préliminaire à l’organisation d’un vaste débat public sur la possibilité d’aller au-delà du système de détention des migrants et des demandeurs d’asile
Access to detention centres granted in Italy!
Over the past few months European Alternatives, in the context of the campaign LasciateCIEntrare, has been campaigning for the right of access to detention centres. Most recently, together with organisations from throughout Europe meeting in a transnational forum in Paris on October 22, we published an appeal for the right of civil society to access detention centres, which represented the first step for a European-level campaign demanding EU gurantees on the right of access. We are now very pleased to announce that the new Italian interior minister has decided to grant access to journalists to all detention centres in Italy! Together with our partners in Italy, over the coming weeks we will be sending requests for access to Italian detention centres, to check that the actual implementation of the new legislation. This victory is only the start: we now need to secure the right of access throughout Europe, as a preliminary step to initiative a vast public discussion on the possibility of going beyond the system of detention for migrants and asylum seekers.
Another road for Europe
Article for OpenDemocracy, 24 June 2012 A Forum in Brussels on June 28 launches alternatives to the inaction of the European Council Article by Mario Pianta On June 28 the European Council – with the leaders of 27 EU countries – meets in Brussels for key decisions on how to address Europe’s crisis. A week ago the G20 summit defined the global context and last thursday in Rome the leaders of the four largest euro countries rehearsed the forthcoming debate in the Council. Little has emerged from this flurry of meetings, policy changes are not in sight and much is ignored on the current acceleration of Europe’s crisis. The first “potential news” we can expect from Brussels concerns the taxation of financial transactions. At the end of Rome’s summit the German economic minister Wolfgang Schäuble declared that ten EU countries are now ready to introduce it. It would be a long-awaited success for those who have been demanding the introduction of the Tobin tax for twenty years; even if limited to a few countries, hitting some speculative activities only, and not waterproof in the face of finance’s strategies, the tax would mark a symbolic watershed. For the first time in five years of crisis, finance would “take a beat” from politics. The scene in plain view would not be limited anymore to governments’ passivity in the face of speculation, saving private banks with public money while public budgets suffer the outrageous terms imposed for refinancing debt. We could watch investment banks losing some power, speculation cut down to size. The problem is that Europe gives up the idea of a common rule and chooses an “enhanced cooperation initiative” among selected countries; David Cameron’s UK – the staunchest opponent of taxing finance – is left off the hook. We will have to wait for the European Council to see whether this initiative will be really and promptly introduced. The second “potential news” concerns the collective responsibility of euro countries on public debt – and is more unlikely to emerge from the summit in Brussels. Italy, France and Spain have (weakly) demanded that Europe’s Funds set up for addressing the crisis – EFSF and ESM – buy bonds of fragile countries as a way to cool down interest rates; solidarity (and eurobonds) come before the transfer of sovereignty – has argued François Hollande, the new Socialist President of France. But the German chancellor Angela Merkel is firm on the opposite view; what is needed is a “fiscal union” – even tighter than the Fiscal compact decided a few months ago, waiting approval from Europe’s parliaments – which would amount to a German protectorate on the spending power of euro countries; eurobonds may come a long way after that. The novelty here if the “conversion” of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund; she has told Europe to immediately introduce eurobonds, a “fiscal union” and bond-buying by the European Central Bank (ECB), ending the present recession in time for helping Barack Obama’s re-election in the US vote of next November. Among EU leaders the stalemate is likely to persist well beyond the Brussels summit and the lone player with the power to act is going to remain Mario Draghi, the Amletic head of the ECB. He has so far saved banks, refused to support government debt of weak countries, and upset the German government by asking a “banking union” with the power to control the excessively risky behaviour of banks. Confusion rules at the top. The third “potential news” – 130 billion euros for funding “growth” – has no basis in fact; is not clear where this money comes from, where it may go and how it could possibly end Europe’s recession. Modest action on the capital of the European Investment Bank and on reshuffling existing EU funds is no news at all. The “real” news on the eve of the EU summit are much darker. Financial markets continue to bet against European governments and reflect the somber economic outlook. On Monday the Spanish government has officially requested EU help in refinancing its private banks. Greece is not anymore on the front page of newspapers but its crisis – economic as well as political – is far from being solved, in spite of the brief respite that may come from Brussels on the terms of the Memorandum imposed to Athens. And there is Cyprus too; this small island in the East Mediterranean, member of the euro, has become a financial paradise for Russian and Middle Eastern capitals and has now two banks close to collapse – their deficit amounts to 20% of the country’s GDP, according to Moody’s. Cyprus’ prime minister – a Communist with links to Russia – has asked a large emergency loan to Moscow and may soon knock at Brussels’ door for EU help. By the way, Cyprus will assume the Union’s rotating presidency on July 1st, 2012. The world’s largest economic area led by a bankrupt financial paradise; it could be a fitting epilogue for a Europe unable to put finance under control and stop its run towards collapse. In order to change Europe’s course there are four key themes – ignored by Europe’s leaders – that need to move at the centre of the debate. The first one is the need to tame finance. This issue could become a cleavage in the rapidly changing European politics. Speculation means sky-high interest rates on public debt, cuts in wages and welfare, never-ending recession. It is in (almost) everybody’s interest – firms, workers, political forces this side of ultra-liberalism – to break this spiral, building a “post-liberal consensus” for actions that include a drastic downsizing of financial activities, the “Volcker rule” with a return to a rigid division between commercial and investment banks, restrictions to operations with high risk and low transparency (trade over the counter, derivatives, etc.), end of fiscal paradises and rigorous harmonization of tax rates in Europe. Within the Union, all countries of the “periphery” would…
Un autre chemin pour lEurope
Article pour OpenDemocracy, 24 juin 2012 Le 28 juin, un forum à Bruxelles présentait des alternatives face à l’inaction du Conseil européen. Article par Mario Pianta Traduction par Aliénor Daumalin Le 28 juin, le Conseil européen, composé des dirigeants des 27 pays de l’UE, se rassemblera à Bruxelles pour prendre des décisions clés concernant la crise en Europe. La semaine précédente, le sommet du G20 a considéré la situation mondiale et mardi dernier, à Rome, les dirigeants des quatre plus grands pays de la zone euro se sont préparés pour le débat du prochain Conseil. Peu de choses sont ressorties de ces multiples rencontres ; aucun changement de politique ne pointe à l’horizon et l’exacerbation de la crise en Europe est globalement passée sous silence. La première « nouvelle potentielle » que l’on peut attendre de Bruxelles concerne la taxe sur les transactions financières. À l’issue du sommet de Rome, le ministre de l’économie allemand, Wolfgang Schäuble, a déclaré que dix États membres étaient désormais prêts à l’instaurer. Longtemps attendue, cette mesure serait un succès pour ceux qui réclament depuis vingt ans l’introduction de la taxe Tobin ; même si elle ne s’appliquait qu’à quelques pays, ne touchait que certaines activités spéculatives et pouvait être contournée par les stratégies de la finance, cette taxe marquerait un tournant décisif. Pour la première fois en cinq ans de crise, la politique porterait un « coup » à la finance. Nous n’assisterions plus seulement à la passivité des gouvernements qui, face à la spéculation, sauvent les banques privées avec l’argent public tandis que le budget des États est soumis à des contraintes inacceptables dans le but de réduire la dette. Nous pourrions voir les banques d’investissement perdre un peu de leur pouvoir et la spéculation diminuer. Malheureusement, l’Europe abandonne l’idée dune règle commune et se tourne vers une « initiative de coopération renforcée » entre quelques pays ; le R-U de David Cameron, le plus farouche opposant à la taxation de la finance, est tiré d’affaire. Ce Conseil européen nous dira si cette initiative sera réellement et rapidement mise en place. La seconde « nouvelle potentielle » touche à la responsabilité collective des pays de la zone euro vis-à-vis de la dette publique – mais il est peu probable qu’une décision soit prise à ce sujet lors du sommet à Bruxelles. L’Italie, la France et l’Espagne ont (timidement) demandé à ce que les Fonds européens créés pour faire face à la crise – le FESF et le MES – achètent des titres aux pays fragilisés afin de faire retomber les taux d’intérêt ; la solidarité (et les euro-obligations) passent avant le transfert de souveraineté, a souligné François Hollande, le nouveau président socialiste. Mais la chancelière allemande, Angela Merkel, s’y oppose fermement : ce qu’il faut c’est une « union budgétaire » – plus stricte encore que le pacte budgétaire défini quelques mois plus tôt et toujours en attente de validation par le Parlement européen – qui s’apparenterait à un protectorat allemand sur la liberté des pays de la zone euro à gérer leurs dépenses ; les euro-obligations attendront encore. La vraie nouveauté vient de la « conversion » de Christine Lagarde, directrice générale du FMI. Elle a demandé à l’Europe d’instaurer sur-le-champ des euro-obligations ainsi qu’une « union budgétaire » et de faire en sorte que la Banque centrale européenne (BCE) achète ces titres, mettant un terme à la récession juste à temps pour soutenir la réélection de Barack Obama aux É-U en novembre prochain. Les dirigeants de l’UE risquent de rester dans l’impasse longtemps encore après le sommet de Bruxelles et Mario Draghi, le président indécis de la BCE, reste le seul a pouvoir agir. Il a jusqu’à présent sauvé les banques, refusé de soutenir les dettes publiques des pays en difficulté et inquiété le gouvernement allemand après avoir demandé une « union bancaire » permettant de contrôler les agissements trop risqués des banques. La confusion règne. La troisième « nouvelle potentielle » – 130 milliards d’euros pour financer la croissance – est en fait infondée : nous ne savons pas d’où provient cet argent, où il ira, ni de quelle façon il pourrait bien mettre fin à la récession en Europe. Des actions modérées sur le capital de la Banque européenne d’investissement et un remaniement des fonds actuels de l’UE ne constituent en rien une nouveauté. Les « véritables » nouvelles à la veille du sommet de l’UE sont bien plus sinistres. Les marchés financiers continuent à parier contre les gouvernements européens et témoignent de sombres perspectives économiques. Lundi, le gouvernement espagnol a officiellement demandé l’aide de l’UE pour refinancer ses banques privées. La Grèce ne fait plus les unes des journaux mais la crise – économique autant que politique – est loin d’être résolue, malgré le court répit que Bruxelles lui accordera peut-être en amendant le mémorandum imposé à Athènes. Et il y a le cas de Chypre ; cette petite île à l’Est de la Méditerranée, membre de la zone euro, est devenue un paradis financier pour les capitaux de Russie et du Moyen-Orient mais deux de ses banques sont à présent au bord de la faillite – leur déficit s’élève à 20% du PIB, selon Moody’s. Le premier ministre chypriote, un communiste lié à la Russie, a réclamé à Moscou un important prêt d’urgence et pourrait bientôt frapper à la porte de Bruxelles pour demander l’aide de l’UE. D’ailleurs, Chypre assurera la présidence tournante de l’Union à partir du 1er juillet 2012. La plus grande zone économique dirigée par un paradis financier en faillite : ce pourrait être un épilogue adéquat pour une Europe incapable de contrôler la finance et d’enrayer sa propre chute. Pour remettre l’Europe sur la bonne voie, quatre thèmes clés, ignorés par les dirigeants européens, doivent être replacés au cœur du débat. Le premier est relatif à la nécessité de maîtriser la finance. Ce sujet pourrait semer la discorde dans un contexte où la politique européenne évolue si vite. La spéculation implique des taux d’intérêts exorbitants sur la dette publique, la réduction des salaires et des prestations sociales ainsi qu’une récession permanente. Il est…
AE rejoint la Conférence Nationale des Etats-Unis sur la Réforme des Mass-médias
Traduction de Ludmila Nepotu La Conférence nationale sur la Réforme des Mass-médias a tout pour plaire: Artistes primés. Stars d’Hollywood. Militants visionnaires. Journalistes chevronnés. Personnalités influentes de D.C. Et Alternatives Européennes! Organisée par la Presse Libre à Denver du 3 au 8 avril dernier, la conférence traite des mass-médias actuels influents, de la démocratie et des enjeux technologiques, proposant un riche programme avec des centaines d’événements, des ateliers, des séminaires et des occasions informelles. Alternatives Européennes a été invitée à participer à la conférence pour discuter de notre Initiative Européenne pour le Pluralisme des Mass-médias, une campagne transnationale collectant un million de signatures pour changer la législation de l’UE sur la liberté des mass-médias par le biais du nouvel instrument de l’Initiative des Citoyens Européens. Lorenzo Marsili, directeur de Alternatives Européennes et le porte-parole pour l’Initiative des Mass-médias, seront présents pour parler dans “le panel global de défense” et vonttweeter en livetout au long des jours de la conférence – pour rester en contact vous pouvez suivre @l_marsili Depuis la conception de son logo, Alternatives Européennes a toujours été persuadée que la coopération transnationale ne peut s’arrêter aux frontières de l’EU. Nous sommes heureux d’avoir une chance pour continuer de construire des réseaux et la capacité pour l’action en Europe et aux delà de ses frontières pendant cette conférence.
EA joins US National Conference on Media Reform
The National Conference for Media Reform has it all: Award-winning artists. Hollywood luminaries. Visionary activists. Veteran journalists. D.C. heavyweights. And European Alternatives! Organised by Free Press in Denver over April 3-8, the conference deals with today’s pressing media, democracy, and technology issues, featuring a rich program with hundreds of events, workshops, seminars, and informal occasions. European Alternatives has been invited to participate to the conference to discuss our European Initiative for Media Pluralism, a transnational campaign collecting one million signatures to change EU legislation on media freedom through the new instrument of the European Citizens Initiative. Lorenzo Marsili, director of European Alternatives and spokesperson for the Media Initiative, will be attending to speak in the “global advocacy” panel and will be tweeting live throughout the conference days – to stay in touch you can follow @l_marsili Since the conception of its logo, European Alternatives has always been convinced that transnational coopearation cannot stop at the borders of the EU. We are delighted to have a chance to continue building networks and capacity for action in Europe and beyond at this conference.
Lancement du Pacte citoyen pour la démocratie européenne
Traduction : Anaëlle Hubert Le forum transnationaldu lundi 17 décembre, auquel ont assisté plusieurs organisations de la société civile européenne et des citoyens de toute l’Europe, avait pour but d’ouvrir la voie à un Pacte Citoyen participant à combler le vide démocratique en Europe. La discussion était passionnée et diversifiée. Le Pacte Citoyen, qui devrait s’accorder sur une série de demandes communes pour les prochaines élections du Parlement Européen en 2014, vise à exprimer les visions et priorités citoyennes sur ce que devrait être l’Europe, et leurs inquiétudes, particulièrement en ce qui concerne les problèmes de justice sociale, l’emploi et les droits fondamentaux, ainsi que la structure institutionnelle de l’UE. Le Pacte Citoyen cherche à aller dans une autre direction que celle d’un traité européen intergouvernemental. En effet, le Pacte vise à être à la fois un pacte de coopération et de solidarité entre les Citoyens européens (et les immigrés résidant en Europe) et un pacte entre les citoyens et certaines institutions prêtes à soutenir nos exigences. Son mandat est aussi d’ouvrir un « troisième espace » dans lequel les citoyens peuvent s’engager pour l’Europe : sans accepter la logique actuelle d’austérité, ni en refusant catégoriquement toute aspiration européenne à une Union ou une intégration. Il fournirait ainsi aux citoyens européens une opportunité concrète d’exercer leur citoyenneté et d’articuler leurs priorités ou leurs alternatives au niveau européen. Toutes les organisations représentant les citoyens européens sont invitées à travailler ensemble vers le Pacte Citoyen de manières diverses qui pourraient inclure : Participer à l’organisation de la série de débats citoyens mis en place par Alternatives Européennes en Italie, en Bulgarie, en France, en Espagne, en Roumanie, au Royaume-Uni, en Allemagne et en Slovaquie courant 2013 Organiser des réunions et des débats publics autour de thèmes en rapport avec le Pacte Citoyen (nous avons parlé d’initiatives à Bologne, Venise, Florence et ?ód?) Organiser des activités publiques, qui ne sont pas des conférences mais qui englobent des approches plus créatives (y compris le TRANSEUROPA festivalen octobre 2013) Participer à une campagne commune pour signer l’Initiative citoyenne européenne courant 2013 Soutenir le processus de l’AlterSummit, les mobilisations prévues le 14-15 mars et l’AlterSummit qui aura lieu à Athènes en juin 2013, et introduire le Pacte Citoyen pour la démocratie dans les inquiétudes de l’AlterSummit Contribuer à la production d’un manifeste citoyenpour les élections européennes en 2014, et l’utiliser comme outil de plaidoyer envers les groupements politiques, candidats individuels et députés au Parlement européen Contribuer à une Charte pour la Citoyenneté Européenne Utiliser une wiki-constitutionen ligne, et d’autres plateformes Internet pour la discussion Contribuer aux recommandations stratégiques qui seront formulées par la société civile Alliance pour l’année européenne des citoyens Demander la tenue d’une Convention Constitutionnelle et avancer des propositions sur la manière dont une telle Convention devrait inclure et impliquer les citoyens Mener des sondages d’opinion publique. Si vous êtes intéressé pour y participer, ou aider d’une autre façon, contactez-nous à press@euroalter.comou utilisez simplement le logoet la bannière “Citizens Pact For European Democracy” ou des hashtags Twitter communs. Certaines suggestions de hashtags Twitter sont : #Citizenspact ou #EUdemocracynow.
A Citizens pact for European Democracy is launched
The transnational forum on Monday 17 December, attended by various organisations from European civil society and citizens from all across Europe intended to pave the way for a Citizens Pact to fill up the democratic gap in Europe. Discussion was passionate and varied. The Citizens Pact, which should agree on a common set of demands in time for the next European Parliamentary Elections in 2014, intends to voice the citizens’ visions and priorities of how Europe should be, and their concerns particularly in relation to social justice issues, employment and fundamental rights as well as the institutional structure of the EU.The Citizens Pact is wished to move in a different direction to any European inter-governmental Treaty. The Pact aims indeed at being at the same time a pact of cooperation and solidarity between European Citizens (and migrants with residency in Europe) and a pact between citizens and some institutions ready to back our demands.Its mandate is also to open a ‘third space’ in which citizens can engage with Europe: neither accepting the current logic of austerity, nor accepting the flat refusal of all European aspiration to a Union or integration. Thus, providing European citizens with a concrete opportunity to exercise their citizenship and articulate their priorities or alternatives at a European level. Any organisations representing European citizens and individuals are welcome to work together towards the Citizens Pact in a variety of ways which may include: Taking part in organising the series of citizens’ deliberations convened by European Alternatives in Italy, Bulgaria, France, Spain, Romania, the UK, Germany and Slovakia over 2013 Organising public meetings and deliberations around themes relating to the Citizens’ Pact (we mentioned initiatives in Bologna, Venice, Florence, Lodz) Organising public activities which are not conferences but include more creative approaches (including TRANSEUROPA festival in October 2013) A shared campaign to sign European Citizens’ Initiatives over 2013 Supporting the AlterSummit process, the mobilisations planned for the 14/15th March and the AlterSummit to be held in Athens in June 2013, and introducing the Citizens’ Pact for Democracy into the concerns of the AlterSummit Producing a citizens’ manifesto for the European elections in 2014, and using it to put pressure on political groupings and individual candidates and MEPs Contributing to a Charter for European Citizenship Using an online wiki-constitution and other online platforms for discussion Contributing to the policy recommendations to be formulated by the Civil Society Alliance for the European Year of Citizens Engaging in calling for a Constitutional Convention and in putting forward proposals for how such a Convention should include and involve citizens Conducting surveys of public opinion. If you are interested in joining in these or any other way, get in contact with us at press@euroalter.com or simply start using the logo and the banner “Citizens Pact For European Democracy” or common twitter hashtags. Proposals for twitter hashtags include: #Citizenspact or #EUdemocracynow.
United States of Europe?
“We are all EUROPEANS, We want a FEDERAL EUROPE now!” Europe-wide FLASH MOB! In BRUSSELS: When: 13:30 on June 28th Where: Place du Luxembourg/Esplanade Solidarnosc in front of the European Parliament (look for the flags!) What: bring the European flag as well as some national flags and join us! Background of the initiative On June 9th hundreds of Europeans in several European cities showed their solidarity to the Greek people by organising EUROPE-WIDE FLASH MOBS to say that “We are all Greeks, we are all Europeans!” It is now time to act again to ask our European Leaders meeting for the European Summit of 28-29 June to take some significant decisions to overcome the crisis and give back the European People some hope in the future. Under the motto: “WE ARE ALL EUROPEANS, WE WANT A FEDERAL EUROPE NOW!” the people of Europe are asking for the creation of a Federal Union! Over the past few weeks initiatives have been organised in BRUSSELS, MILAN, DUSSELDORF, FLORENCE, SALZBURG, GENOA, PARIS, ATHENS, ROME TORTONA, LYON. The photos are on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/374904629223431/Organized by: European Alternatives, European Green Party, European Federalist Party, Sinistra Ecologia e Libertá, Movimento Federalista Europeo and JEF.
Des États-Unis dEurope ?
« Nous sommes tous EUROPEÉNS, Nous voulons une EUROPE FÉDÉRALE Maintenant ! » Un FLASH MOBdans toute l’Europe ! À BRUXELLES : Quand : le 28 juin à 13h30 Où : Place du Luxembourg/Esplanade Solidarnosc En face du Parlement européen (cherchez les drapeaux !) Quoi : apportez le drapeau européen, ainsi que des drapeaux nationaux et rejoignez-nous ! Contexte de l’initiative : Le 9 juin, dans plusieurs villes d’Europe, des centaines de citoyens ont témoigné de leur solidarité envers le peuple grec en organisant des FLASH MOBS DANS TOUTE L’EUROPE pour proclamer que « Nous somme tous grecs, nous sommes tous européens ! ». À présent, il faut agir à nouveau pour demander à nos dirigeants européens (qui se réunissent les 28 et 29 juin pour le Sommet européen) de prendre des décisions efficaces qui permettront de surmonter la crise et de redonner de l’espoir au peuple européen quant à son avenir. Avec comme slogan : « NOUS SOMMES TOUS EUROPÉENS, NOUS VOULONS UNE EUROPE FÉDÉRALE ! », le peuple européen réclame la création d’une Union fédérale ! Au cours des dernières semaines, des initiatives ont été organisées à BRUXELLES, MILAN, DÜSSELDORF, FLORENCE, SALZBOURG, GÊNES, PARIS, ATHÈNES, ROME, TORTONE, LYON. Les photos sont disponibles sur Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/events/374904629223431/ Organisateurs : Alternatives Européennes, Parti vert européen, Parti fédéraliste européen, Sinistra Ecologia e Libertá, Movimento Federalista Europeo et JEF.
Alternatives Européennes recrute un responsable comptable et administratif
Traduction: Murielle Louail Alternatives Européennes recherche un responsable comptable et administratif pour travailler depuis son bureau de Rome. Le candidat doit être à l’aise avec les systèmes comptables anglais et italiens ainsi qu’avec leurs exigences. Le poste couvre un aspect central de la vie administrative et financière d’Alternatives Européennes. Nous attendons un administrateur motivé et habile apte à garantir le respect de toutes les exigences légales et financières de nos associations, tout comme une gestion et une planification financière précises. En particulier, il lui sera demandé de gérer : Le compte de résultat ; Le personnel ; La supervision des paiements aux fournisseurs et employés ; Le respect des exigences fiscales, administratives et légales de toutes les entités d’AE ; La projection des flux de trésorerie ; La préparation des comptes de fin d’année pour les audits externes ; Les créances de TVA ; Le classement et la réconciliation des recettes et des frais ; La prise en charge des opérations en espèces ainsi que les relations avec les banques ; La concertation avec les consultants fiscaux, légaux et du travail, (particulièrement en ce qui concerne les contrats de travail, les heures de travail des employés, les fiches de paie). La gestion des recherches et des rapports concernant la santé et la sécurité au travail, la politique de confidentialité ainsi que la garantie du respect des politiques nationales (plus particulièrement pour l’entité légale italienne). Il/elle devra également assurer la liaison avec tous les chefs de projets d’AE afin de garantir la correspondance entre les dépenses prévues et réalisées. Le candidat devra parler couramment anglais et italien ; il devra également adhérer aux valeurs et missions d’Alternatives Européennes. Le poste à pourvoir est à temps partiel pour un total de 24 heures par semaine. Les heures et les jours travaillés peuvent faire l’objet d’une négociation. 900 euros net par mois. Si vous pensez que votre profil correspond au poste, merci d’envoyer votre CV et une lettre de motivation à info@euroalter.com avant le jeudi 2 mai à 12.00 heures.
EA is recruiting an accounting and administration manager
DEADLINE EXTENDED to MAY 7th European Alternatives is looking for an accounting and administration officer to work from its Rome office. The candidate should be familiar with both the British and Italian accounting system and requirements. The position covers a central aspect of the administrative and financial life of European Alternatives. We expect a motivated and skillfull administrator capable of ensuring adherence to all financial and legal requirements for our associations, as well as accurate financial planning and management. In particular, he or she would be asked to manage Profit and loss accounts; Payrolls; Overseeing payments to suppliers and employees. Adherence to fiscal, administrative and legal requirements for EA legal entities; Cashflow projection; Preparing end of the year accounts for external audit; VAT claims; Filing and reconciliation of receipts and expenses; Dealing with cash transactions and relations with banks; Liaising with all the fiscal, legal and labour consultants (especially as regards employment contracts, employees’ working hours, and payslips); Managing research and reports concerning Occupational Health and Safety, Privacy and other national policies fulfilments (especially for the Italian legal entity); He or she would also be required to liaise with all EA’s project managers to make sure that forecasted and real expenses match. The candidate would need to be fluent in English and Italian and adhere to European Alternatives values and mission. The position would be part time for a total of 24 hours a week. Specific hours and days can be negotiated. 900€ net per month. If you think you fit the right profile, please send your CV and one-page cover letter to info@euroalter.com by Thuesday 7 May at 12.00 pm.
EA looking for accounting and administration officer
European Alternatives is looking for an accounting and administration officer to work from its Rome office. The candidate should be familiar with both the British and Italian accounting system and requirements. The position covers a central aspect of the administrative and financial life of European Alternatives. We expect a motivated and skillfulladministrator capable of ensuring adherence to all financial and legal requirements for our associations, as well as accurate financial planning and management. In particular, he or she would be asked to manage Profit and loss accounts; Payrolls; Overseeing payments to suppliers and employees. Adherence to fiscal, administrative and legal requirements for EA legal entities; Cashflow projection; Preparing end of the year accounts for external audit; VAT claims; Filing and reconciliation of receipts and expenses; Dealing with cash transactions and relations with banks; Liaising with all the fiscal, legal and labour consultants (especially as regards employment contracts, employees' working hours, and payslips); Managing research and reports concerning Occupational Health and Safety, Privacy and other national policies fulfilments (especially for the Italian legal entity); He or she would also be required to liaise with all EA’s project managers to make sure that forecasted and real expenses match. The candidate would need to be fluent in English and Italian and adhere to European Alternatives values and mission. The position would be part time for a total of 24 hours a week. Specific hours and days can be negotiated. Pay is based pro-rata on standard EA salary of €1.500 net / month for full-time equivalent
Alternatives Europeennes rejoint la plateforme de l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux
Photo Flickr / GlobalCitizen01 Nous sommes heureux d'annoncer qu'Alternatives Européennes fait maintenant partie de la Plateforme des Droits Fondamentaux (FRP), qui est le lieu principal d'echange entre l'Agence des Droits Fondamentaux de l'Union Europeenne et la société civile. Plateforme des Droits Fondamentaux est un réseau de plus de 300 ONG, partenaires sociaux, associations, institutions académiques et d'autres organisations de partout en Europe, qui travaillent activement avec l'Agence des Droits Fondamentaux. Alternatives Européennes, à partir d'aujourd'hui, seras consultée pour les projets de recherche que l'Agence developpe dans le domaine des droits humains. Un domaine dans lequel nous avons de l'experience et des connaissances, comme par exemple sur les droits des migrants, les droits LGBT, et la liberté des médias). En rejoignant la plateforme, Alternatives Européennes pourra participer aux activités de l'Agence et ainsi contribuer à la mise en place de politiques pour la protection des droits fondamentaux en Europe.
EA joins the Fundamental Rights Agency’s Platform
Photo Flickr / GlobalCitizen01 We are happy to announce that European Alternatives is now part of the Fundamental Rights Agency’s Platform (FRP), the main channel for cooperation and information exchange between the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and civil society.The Fundamental Rights Agency’s platform is a network of over 300 NGOs, social partners, associations, academic institutions and other organisations from across the EU, which actively work together with the FRA in research, education, awareness raising and other activities concerning human rights. European Alternatives, from now on, will be consulted on research projects that the Agency is developing in the areas of human rights where we have knowledge and experience (such as Freedom of expression, Migrants rights, LGBT rights). Joining the FRP will allow European Alternatives to have a say on the Agency’s activities and thereby contribute to fundamental rights policies at the EU level.
Pour le mariage pour tous et partout en Europe!
Le débat fait rage en France en ce moment sur le mariage homosexuel. Manifestations contre Manifestations, les militants des deux bords se mobilisent et se font entrendre pour que leur position soit reconnue. Alternatives Européennes s'est depuis longtemps mobilisée pour la reconnaissance et le respect des droits LGBT partout en Europe. Nous avons organisé des consultations sur les droits LGBT (la dernière en date à Brighton, Grande Bretagne), des expositions artistiques dans certains des pays européens où ces droits sont les plus contestés (Pologne, Roumanie) et même un kiss-ing transnational dans le cadre du Festival Transeuropa. Notre réseau a créé une vidéo (it gets better/Les choses s'améliorent) sur la situation des personnes LGBT à travers l'Europe. La reconnaissance des mariages homosexuels d'un pays à l'autre en Europe est un des thèmes qui nous est cher. Pourquoi un couple marié en Espagne ou au Portugal perdrait-il sa reconnaissance lorsqu'il déménage en Italie par exemple? Et la situation se complique d'autant plus pour le couple si l'un(e) des conjoint(e)s est originaire d'un pays tiers. Nous sommes donc face à une réelle entrave à la liberté de circulation des citoyens européens et à leur droit à une vie familiale. Bref, nous serons à la manifestation ce dimanche 27 janvier à Paris! Recherchez la bannière 'Kiss me for equality'! Merci pour la photo à Besse et sa pote sur http://jesuisunyaourt.canalblog.com/
Ouverture de lexposition SHAREs à Istanbul
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Comment raconter une histoireest l’une des principales étapes du projet SHAREs – S’informer sur la mobilisation transnationale. SHAREs est un projet d’une durée de 18 mois, conçu comme une plateforme qui permet de développer la collaboration transnationale impliquant des personnes venant de près de 10 pays européens et de différents secteurs (opérateurs culturels, artistes, journalistes, militants, philosophes, étudiants) et d’établir un dialogue à long terme avec les pays qui ne sont pas encore membres de l’UE (Turquie). SHAREs a l’intention de mettre l’accent sur la relation entre le rôle de la communication et la production d’information, la distribution et la consommation, avec les formes possibles de mobilisation et de collaboration, aussi inévitablement liées l’une à l’autre. Comment raconter une histoire – Exposition à Istanbul, 12 janvier – 18 février 2013, au DEPO à Istanbul www.depoistanbul.net Ouverture le 11 janvier 18h30avec la musique de Timo Rohula extraite de « 1930 » par Aleksandra Domenovic Conférence de Dan Perjovschi, le 12 janvier à16h30 Exposition avec : Archive (Chiara Figone, Francesca Boenzi, Paolo Caffoni, Ignas Petronis) (Allemagne/Italie), Aleksandra Domanovic (Serbie/ Allemagne), Dan Perjovschi (Roumanie), John Menick (Etats-Unis), Vladimir Nikolic (Serbie), Marinella Senatore (Itaie), John Smith (Royaume-Uni), Imogen Stidworthy (Royaume-Uni), Adam Vackar (République Tchèque/France). Exposition organisée par Emanuele Guidi et Cathy Larquè « Comment raconter une histoire » est une exposition qui explore la relation entre les pratiques artistiques et le domaine de la production d’information et de dissémination. Le titre, tiré d’une série de dessins de John Menick, fait référence à la narration en tant qu’art, qui répond à des règles précises et qui, déjà au milieu du 20è siècle, s’est étendu hors du domaine créatif, où elle fait principalement référence à la pratique de l’écriture de « scénarios, de romans d’amour, policiers et de science fiction », afin d’entrer et d’informer chaque domaine de la vie, des stratégies marketing aux discours politiques et tout le système médiatique/d’actualités. L’exposition part de ce sujet pour présenter les pratiques artistiques et culturelles, qui jouent significativement avec les mécanismes de la narration aussi bien qu’avec les hiérarchies, et les relations de pouvoir qui régulent la distribution d’informations. Les artistes étudient l’histoire et les stratégies des médias officiels – de la télévision à la radio, des journaux à différentes formes de documents imprimés – afin de s’attaquer à leur rôle dans le façonnage de l’imaginaire collectif. En même temps, « Comment raconter une histoire » présente le travail d’artistes qui explorent les méthodologies participatives afin que les récits collectifs puissent émerger et, ainsi, repenser l’équilibre entre le producteur et le récepteur, entre l’auteur et le public.
SHAREs Exhibition Opens in Istanbul
How To Tell A Story is one of the main stages of the project SHAREs – Informing Transnational Mobilization. SHAREs is an 18 months long project conceived as a platform to develop a transnational collaboration involving people from about 10 European countries from different sectors (cultural operators, artists, journalists, activists philosophers, students) and to establish a long term dialogue with non-EU yet countries (Turkey). SHARES intends to stress the relationship between the role of communication and information production, distribution and consumption, with the potential forms of mobilisation and collaboration as necessarily linked to each other. How to tell a Story – Exhibition in Istanbul, 12 January – 18 February 2013, at DEPO Istanbul www.depoistanbul.net Opening 11th January 18.30 with music by Timo Rohula from “1930” by Aleksandra Domenovic Lecture by Dan Perjovschi, 12th January 1630 Exhibition With: Archive (Chiara Figone, Francesca Boenzi, Paolo Caffoni, Ignas Petronis) (Germany/Italy), Aleksandra Domanovic (Serbia/ Germany), Dan Perjovschi (Romania), John Menick (USA), Vladimir Nikolic (Serbia), Marinella Senatore (Italy), John Smith (UK), Imogen Stidworthy (UK), Adam Vackar (Czech Republic/France). Exhibition curated by Emanuele Guidi and Cathy Larquè How To Tell A Story is an exhibition that investigates the relationship between artistic practices and the sphere of information production and dissemination. The title, taken from the series of drawings by John Menick, refers to storytelling as a form of art which respond to precise rules and that, already from the middle of 20th century, expanded from the creative field ! where it referred mainly to the practice of writing ‘screenplays, romance novels, mystery novels, and science fiction novels’ ! to enter and inform every sphere of life from marketing strategies to political discourses and the whole news/media system. The exhibition starts from this subject to present artistic and cultural practices, which critically play with the mechanisms of storytelling as well as the hierarchies, and power relations that regulate the information distribution. The artists observe the history and the strategies of the official mass media – from TV to radio, from newspapers to different form of printed items – to tackle their role in the shaping of the collective imaginary. At the same time How To Tell A Story presents the work of artists who explore participative methodologies to make possible for collective narratives to emerge and therefore rethink the balance between producer and receiver, between author and audiences.
Working the community spirit
After analysing how young people’s work situation affects the relationship they have with their neighbourhoods in a negative way, here’s the second half of the analysis which looks at how it impacts on them in a more positive way. As Rhiannon discovered in her journey to Granda, for many young people, their work situation forces them to live, leave or create and this trinity is very much reflected in the people across Europe we have interviewed. It’s refreshing that there are people whose work situation makes them really feel excited about their neighbourhood. Less refreshing is that only one in twenty feel this way! Some love their neighbourhood, their “neighbours love what I am doing and are interested and not at all harsh if I make noise or something like that because of my job”. For a similar proportion, their work situation makes them want to help build community projects. These are our Lifestyle Hackers. Through the amount of free time they have will influence how much time they can get to know their neighbours and even help build community projects. Indeed, they do want to “see more people. more homes, more councils growing their own food and salads. I have now started my own blog about it to help people in the area.”. In Spain, “groups of unemployed youth came together to create a cultural centre which would host concerts, art exhibitions, English lessons, communal meals and political discussions”. While in Romania, they create a social market to exchange food, skills and relationships. Organisations like the Ministry of Entrepreneurship “help young people help others get out of deprivation. Deprivation isn’t just in your environment but of your mindset. We want to help people live a life less ordinary by teaching a man or woman to fish for themselves.” This can be difficult at first when young people “always try to make an effort to get to know neighbours and help with neighbourly tasks. I feel I am alone most of the time doing this though”. Helping with projects in the community helps people “feel responsible too, help with food. I get more involved in their lives, helping out, giving a hand (they are over 80 years old). We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our festival, including in London (12-13 & 19-20 October) & Amsterdam (19-20 October). Click on one of the tabs to get involved!
Back to basics
In our survey on how young people cope with making a living, we started out analysing how important young people value particular principles from finding a place they can call their own to giving a helping hand. But what about their basic living situation? The majority of people who participated in the survey have a Masters. How does this compare with the the European average? Over seven in ten of our respondents had achieved a university qualification whereas half that number have achieved this across Europe. The clear majority live with other people, whether that’s with their friends, partners or parents/relatives. In many cases, they depend on others for a place to stay because they can’t afford to pay the rent – such as sofasurfing at their friends or staying in the room they grow up in with their parents. This compares withfour in ten young people across Europe who felt that their peers couldn’t afford to leave their family home. Almost half of respondents are in full time work – which is an encouraging sign – although close to two thirds of those are in precarious work – either temporary work or in two or more jobs. How does this compare with Eurostat? Close to a third started work over five years ago which can be explained both by the relatively old average of the respondents and the fact that many will have started work in their teens. This disproves the myth that young people are inexperienced or perhaps it’s that their experience in the type jobs they do have in their teens are not sufficiently valued or profiled by recruiters or even jobseekers. If you want to find out what a basic standard of living is in terms of income, try out this calculator by @jrf_uk. In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
GIVING A VOICE TO THE VOICELESS
We’ve been asking young people how they cope with making a living, interviewing people and organisations who help them. Catch 21 are a really inspirational organisation who help give the voiceless a voice through video. Their latest episode on youth unemployment really captures the hopes and fears of our generation. Here’s an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers.
DON’T LET EXAM RESULTS DECIDE OUR FATES
The myths we’ve been brought up to believe about how a good qualification will lead to a good job have been blown away by the harsh reality of the labour market. This is particularly vivid at the moment when many young people will be taking their exams. How can you be motivated when it’s who you know that gives you a better chance of accessing the most powerful professions and how much you can grit your teeth which determines how long you’ll stay exploited in precarious jobs. One of the areas we’ve been looking at on how young people make a living, is how important they feel traditional expectations are – from getting a good degree, stable job, buy their own house, ec – and what they really want to aspire towards. This spoken word video by @sulibreaks sums up what’s going on in many people’s heads. Take it away..
We need a good deal for Europeans, not a good deal for nation states
The European budget proposal agreed on by the European council on 8th February is a bad deal for young people, a bad deal for the economy, a bad deal for Europe’s place in the world and a bad deal for European democracy. For the first time the European Council of Heads of State has proposed to reduce the EU budget, precisely at the time when a more integrated European economy is crucial for the economic future of Europe and for its people. At the moment when the euro is not functioning as a currency because of a competitiveness gap between countries, the Council proposes to cut cohesion funds and investment in innovation and research with respect to the proposals of both the Commission and Van Rompuy. At the moment when 6 million young people are unemployed, the Council allocated a meagre 6 billion euros to training them for jobs which are unlikely to exist without stimulus. At the moment when investment in an integrated European economy is essential for creating jobs, bringing about a green transition and integrating the continent, European projects for each of these have been cut with the consequence of further exacerbation of the competitiveness gap between countries. At the moment when decisive political changes are happening on Europe’s borders, which will have effects for not only Europe’s future but that of the rest of the world, Europe’s foreign policy and aid capacity has been reduced. The budget proposal of the Council represents the arrogance of national leaders thinking exclusively about their national interests in a short-term perspective. It is both an affront to the current European Parliament, which had urged for a forward-looking budget with investment in growth, as well as own resources for the Union, and an affront to European democracy to set an austerity budget for the next 7 years despite the election for a new parliament and new commission in less than two years’ time. For these reasons we call on the European Parliament to reject the proposal, as is its right under the Lisbon treaty, and to insist on an interim budget managed year-on-year until the elections. This would allow the Council to vote each year – without the need for unanimity which drives to the lowest common denominator – a budget that would be approved the parliament. More than this, the proposal of the Council is an affront to European citizens who want to see European common goods protected and promoted throughout the Union: the proposal is a classic example of the Council dividing groups who lose out from the budget – young Europeans in the front line – into national constituencies, to silence any dissent under the dictum of budgetary responsibility and it being ‘a good deal for our country’. We must wake up to the common future of our continent and unite around alternatives to these proposals: we need a good deal for Europeans, not a good deal for the nation states. European Alternatives is coordinating a participative, transnational and citizen-led process of drafting an alternative in its Citizens Pact, in advance of the elections in 2014, and will aim to have candidates take on board our demands. We think that these kinds of approaches, rather than closed-room, late night deals amongst national leaders, present a brighter hope for this continent and its citizens and a better example for the world.
European Alternatives supports the first citizens initiative: Fraternité 2020
Aimed at increasing participation and direct democracy, the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) was introduced with the Treaty of Lisbon to give European citizens a chance to influence EU decision-making. The ECI allows at least one million citizens from at least seven European countries to present the European Commission with a legislative proposal. Fraternité 2020, the first ECI to be registered, is pushing for enhancing EU exchange programmes – like the Erasmus Programme or the European Voluntary Service (EVS) – in order to contribute to a united Europe based on solidarity among citizens. This way, Europe’s first citizens’ initiative asks for 3% of the EU budget being spent on EU exchange programmes starting from 2014. The very first citizens’ initiative, officially registered by the European Commission on May 9 (Europe Day), 2012, builds on previous contributions such as the Europe 2030 Report prepared by the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe and wishes to help bring the EU closer to its citizens. Fraternité 2020 is so far supported by around 20 academics on EU affairs, about 100 NGOs active in organising EVS exchanges and projects or representing students’ interests, and around 50 MEPs representing all major parties in the European Parliament. Fraternité 2020 has started collecting signatures on October 26, 2012. It has until November 1, 2013, to collect 1 million signatures online from across the EU. In order to be able to sign up to a European citizens’ initiative you need to be an EU citizen (national of a member state) old enough to vote in European Parliament elections (18 except in Austria, where the voting age is 16). If you fulfil this requirement, sign directly online now: http://sign.F2020.eu European Alternatives supports Fraternité 2020 – why not do the same? Sign today online: http://sign.F2020.eu
Alternatives Européennes soutient la première initiative des citoyens: Fraternité 2020
Traduction de Ludmila Nepotu Ayant comme but la croissance de la participation et la démocratie directe, l’initiative Citoyenne Européenne (ICE) a été introduite par le Traité de Lisbonne pour offrir à ses citoyens l’opportunité d’influencer le processus décisionnel de l’UE. ICE permet qu’au moins un million de citoyens venant au moins des sept pays puissent présenter à la Commission Européenne une proposition législative. Fraternité 2020, la première ICE qui va être enregistrée, milite pour l’amélioration des programmes d’échange – comme Le programme Erasmusou Le service Européen de Volontariat (SEV)– dans le but de contribuer à une Europe unie fondée sur la solidarité entre ses citoyens. De cette manière, la première initiative des citoyens d’Europe exige qu’à partir de 2014, 3% du budget de l’UE soient dépensés pour les programmes d’échange de l’UE. La première initiative citoyenne enregistrée officiellement par la Commission Européenne, le 9 mai (Journée de l’Europe) 2012, s’appuie sur les contributions précédentes, comme le Rapport de l’Europe 2030 rédigé par le Groupe de Réflexion concernant l’Avenir de l’Europe et vise à contribuer à un rapprochement plus grand entre l’Europe et ses citoyens. Fraternité 2020 est soutenue jusqu’à présent par environ 20 cadres didactiquesen matière d’affaires européennes, environ 100 ONGactives dans l’organisation des échanges et des projets SEV ou dans la représentation des intérêts des étudiants, et environ 50 députésqui représentent tous les partis importants du Parlement Européen. Fraternité 2020 a commencé à collecter les signatures le 26 octobre 2012. Jusqu’au 1 novembre 2013 elle doit collecter 1 million de signatures on-line sur tout le territoire de l’UE. Pour pouvoir signer l’initiative citoyenne européenne, il est nécessaire d’être citoyen de l’UE (citoyen d’un Etat membre), ayant l’âge pour voter aux élections du Parlement Européen (18, excepté l’Autriche, où l’âge pour voter est de16 ans). Si vous remplissez cette condition, signer directement on-line maintenant: http://sign.F2020.eu Alternatives Européennes soutient Fraternité 2020 – pourquoi ne pas faire pareil ? Signez on-line aujourd’hui: http://sign.F2020.eu
END THE CRIMINALISATION OF PROTEST!
Photo: Trenton Oldfield at ‘Refusing to accept one’s place’ Salon TRANSEUROPA festival 2010 On 19 October 2012 Trenton Oldfield was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court for his protest at the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. He was given 6 months custodial sentence for his direct action against government cuts and a culture of elitism in the UK. This statement, written together with Defend The Right To Protest, calls for an end to the criminalisation of protest. Having collaborated with Trenton and his This is Not a Gateway during the Transeuropa Festival, European Alternatives would like to show its solidarity with a colleague who is always an extremely thoughtful, altruistic, and committed partner. On the 7th of April 2012, Trenton Oldfield undertook a direct-action protest at the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. The aim of his protest was to focus attention on the long-standing and entirely unjust inequalities in British society that are being severely exacerbated by government cuts and reductions in civil liberties. Trenton chose the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race because it is a symbol of class, privilege and elitism in Britain. An astonishing 70% of the cabinet in the current government are Oxford or Cambridge graduates. This government is protecting the privileges of the wealthy while cutting the essential necessities of the majority and the poor and reducing people’s rights and freedoms. In the three days before Trenton’s protest, the coalition government (1) received royal assent for its bill to privatise the NHS, (2) introduced the Communications Data Bill to legalise surveillance of all digital communications of UK subjects, and (3) called on people to ‘shop their neighbours’ if they suspected they might protest at the 2012 Olympic Games. Trenton’s protest aimed at drawing attention to these injustices. He swam into the course of the boat race. The race was halted and restarted 25 minutes later. The action was seen by an international audience but it affected just 18 rowers and a handful of event organisers on a closed river, on a long weekend. The direct-action protest was wholly consistent with Trenton’s decade+ work in London on addressing this city’s unnecessary poverty and inequalities. The audience for the free event experienced a minor delay of 25 minutes. The BBC coverage ended at its pre-scheduled time-slot. Not a single complaint was received from the public by either the Metropolitan police or the BBC. Trenton was initially charged with Section 5 of the ‘public order act’. Hansard reports reveal that government ministers asked the police commissioner to increase the charge so that a custodial sentence could be achieved. On the morning of his first court appearance (23 April 2012) Trenton’s charge was significantly increased via the ancient common law charge of ‘public nuisance’ under which conviction can result in life in prison. On the 26 September 2012 Trenton was found guilty of causing ‘public nuisance’ for undertaking his protest. The recent conviction and sentencing of Russian feminist rock collective Pussy Riot to two years in prison for their protest was rightly met with shock and anger for the lack of tolerance towards dissent under Putin. The very same lack of tolerance towards dissent seems to be happening in Britain as Trenton waits for sentencing on the 19th October 2012. Defend the Right to Protest extend our solidarity to Trenton and wholeheartedly believe that he should not have faced criminal charges for exercising his right to protest. We are concerned about the change in the original charge seemingly due to political and media pressure. To us it is clear that this protest against inequality and elitism does not warrant a custodial sentence, least of all possibly years in prison. Defend the Right to Protest are also alarmed that this charge might be levied against protesters in the future. The only motive we can see for the CPS selecting this outdated legislation is that it offers courts the chance to hand down sentences up to life in prison. After Wednesday’s verdict Trenton made the following statement: “As inequalities increase in Britain and across much of the world, so does the criminalisation of protest; my solidarity is with everyone everywhere working towards more equitable societies.” We urge an end to this wholly inappropriate over-punishment of Trenton and the criminalisation of protest. To add your name to this list, please email naik_d@hotmail.com or join this FB page.
Mettez un terme à la criminalisation de la protestation !
Photo: Trenton Oldfield au Salon « Refus d’accepter sa place », TRANSEUROPA festival 2010 Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Le 19 octobre 2012, Trenton Oldfield a été condamné par le tribunal d’Isleworth Crown pour avoir manifesté lors de la course d’aviron entre Oxford et Cambridge. Il a été condamné à 6 mois de prison pour son action directe contre les coupes du gouvernement et la culture élitiste au Royaume-Uni. Cette déclaration, rédigée avec la collaboration de Defend The Right To Protest (Défendre le droit de protester), demande la fin de la criminalisation de la protestation. Ayant collaboré avec Trenton et son « This is not a gateway » lors du festival Transeuropa, Alternatives européennes souhaite témoigner sa solidarité avec un collègue qui est toujours un partenaire extrêmement prévenant, altruiste et engagé. Le 7 avril 2012, Trenton Oldfield a entrepris un acte de protestation direct lors de la course d’aviron entre Oxford et Cambridge. L’objectif de cette protestation était d’attirer l’attention sur les inégalités de longue date et parfaitement injustes de la société britannique, qui sont sérieusement exacerbées par les coupes du gouvernement et la réduction des libertés civiles. Trenton a choisi la course d’aviron entre Oxford et Cambridge car il s’agit d’un symbole de classe, de privilège et d’élitisme en Grande-Bretagne. Un pourcentage incroyable de 70% des membres du gouvernement actuel sont diplômés d’Oxford ou de Cambridge. Ce gouvernement protège les privilèges des riches tout en coupant les besoins essentiels de la majorité et des pauvres et en réduisant les droits et les libertés de la population. Durant les trois jours précédant la protestation de Trenton, le gouvernement de coalition (1) a reçu la sanction royale pour son projet de loi sur la privatisation du NHS, (2) a introduit le projet de loi sur les données de communication afin de légaliser la surveillance de toutes les communications numériques des citoyens britanniques et (3) a appelé les habitants à « dénoncer leurs voisins » s’ils les soupçonnent de vouloir protester lors des Jeux olympiques 2012. La protestation de Trenton avait pour but d’attirer l’attention sur ces injustices. Il a coupé la trajectoire de la course à la nage. La course a été interrompue et a repris 25 minutes plus tard. L’action a été vue par un public international mais n’a affecté que 18 rameurs et une poignée d’organisateurs sur un fleuve fermé, lors d’un long week-end. Cet acte de protestation direct était entièrement cohérent avec le travail de plus d’une décennie de Trenton à Londres, qui s’intéresse à la pauvreté et aux inégalités inutiles de cette ville. Le public de cet évènement gratuit a connu un léger retard de 25 minutes. Le reportage de la BBC a été diffusé au créneau programmé. Pas une seule plainte n’a été adressée à la police londonienne ni à la BBC par le public. Trenton a d’abord été accusé d’infraction à la section 5 de la loi sur l’ordre public. Le rapport Hansard révèle que les ministres du gouvernement ont demandé au commissaire de police d’augmenter les charges afin d’obtenir une peine de prison. Le matin de sa première comparution (le 23 avril 2012), les charges contre Trenton ont été considérablement élevées à cause de l’accusation d’ « atteinte à l’ordre public » de l’ancien droit commun, sous laquelle la condamnation peut conduire à la prison à perpétuité. Le 26 septembre 2012, Trenton a été reconnu coupable d’atteinte à « l’ordre public » pour avoir entrepris sa protestation. La récente condamnation et la peine de deux ans de prison du collectif rock féministe russe Pussy Riot pour avoir protesté a suscité, à juste titre, un choc et de la colère contre le manque de tolérance vis-à-vis des dissidents sous Poutine. Le même manque de tolérance vis-à-vis des dissidents semble survenir en Grande-Bretagne, alors que Trenton attend le verdict qui sera délivré le 19 octobre 2012. Defend the Right to Protest prolonge notre solidarité envers Trenton et croit sincèrement qu’il ne devrait pas avoir à affronter des accusations criminelles pour avoir exercé son droit de protester. Nous nous inquiétons du changement des charges originales, apparemment causé par les pressions politiques et médiatiques. Pour nous, il est évident que cette protestation contre les inégalités et l’élitisme ne justifie pas une peine de prison, et encore moins de possibles années de prison. Defend the right to protest craint également que cette accusation soit retenue contre des manifestants à l’avenir. La seule motivation que nous pouvons trouver au CPS pour avoir opté pour cette législation obsolète, est qu’elle offre aux tribunaux la chance de rendre des sentences allant jusqu’à la perpétuité. Après le verdict de mercredi, Trenton a déclaré : « Alors que les inégalités augmentent en Grande-Bretagne et dans de nombreuses régions du monde, la criminalisation de la protestation augmente également ; je tiens à exprimer ma solidarité envers tous ceux qui, de partout, œuvrent pour des sociétés plus équitables. » Nous demandons l’arrêt de la sanction totalement inappropriée contre Trenton et de la criminalisation de la protestation. Pour ajouter votre nom à la liste, veuillez envoyer un email à naik_d@hotmail.com ou rejoignez cette page Facebook.
Droits du travail et conditions de travail décentes en Europe : la marche à suivre
Photo : Flickr Par Cristina Bermejo, Secrétaire à la jeunesse, Comisiones Obreras Traduit par Audrey Ubertino 1. Introduction La terrible crise financière de 2008, causée par une avidité irréfléchie et incontrôlable et des banques insatiables, a déclenché une crise économique et sociale avec de graves répercussions sur les Etats-membres de l’UE. Cela se reflète sur les croissances économiques en baisse, le chômage en hausse, des mesures d’austérité sévères, des taux de perte d’emploi plus élevés, plus d’emplois précaires, des réductions généralisées des salaires et des subventions et une réduction des droits à la retraite… Ainsi, les travailleurs payent le prix fort pour la folie du monde financier, où les salaires et les bonus sont toujours honteusement élevés. Les soi-disant « plans de sauvetage » de la Grèce et de l’Irlande ont conduit l’UE à mettre la pression non seulement sur ces pays, mais aussi de manière générale, à baisser les salaires et les retraites et à introduire davantage de « flexibilité » (c’est-à-dire affaiblir les négociations collectives et les lois sur le travail) dans les marchés du travail. Le récent « Pacte sur la compétitivité et la convergence » adopté par la Commission européenne va engendrer des réductions supplémentaires dans les dépenses sociales et l’investissement public et est le précurseur de nouveaux plans d’ajustement. L’absence de politique solide et cohérente de la part du gouvernement européen, ainsi que le problème des dettes souveraines, sert également d’excuse aux institutions européennes afin de promouvoir un programme agressif de réformes structurelles, de nature réellement néolibérale, qui met en place un programme complet de réductions des droits et des prestations sociales. Jamais dans l’histoire de l’UE et des institutions européennes qui l’ont précédée ne s’est produit un tel phénomène. Pour ceux qui se trouvent à la barre des institutions politiques de l’UE, la croissance économique et la création d’emplois sont des objectifs secondaires et subordonnés, depuis le tournant drastique qu’a connu la politique européenne en mai dernier. C’est sans compter sur des problèmes tels que la protection de l’environnement, qui court le risque d’être relégué au second plan à cause des difficultés économiques et des faiblesses politiques, alors qu’il devrait passer avant tout, en particulier à la lumière du récent désastre nucléaire japonais. La proposition de « gouvernance économique » de la zone euro et de l’UE est inacceptable car elle est concentrée, de manière obsessionnelle, sur la réduction des déficits publics et la mise en œuvre de « réformes structurelles » dans des secteurs tels que les négociations collectives et les marchés du travail, les retraites et autres subventions, dans lesquels l’UE à peu de compétences. D’autre part, les aspects essentiels à un gouvernement économique – en particulier les pays ayant une monnaie commune – comme l’impôt normé, n’apparaissent pas dans les objectifs du gouvernement susmentionné. Précédemment, les jugements de la Cour européenne de Justice – les dossiers Laval, Viking, Rüffert, Luxembourg, etc. – qui ont établit la primauté de la liberté de circulation et l’établissement de capitaux sur le droit de faire grève et le droit à la négociation collective, et la valeur protectrice du droit au travail, ont ouvert la voie au dumping des salaires et de l’emploi, avec les autorités européennes qui ne sont pas disposées à remédier au problème. Il n’a jamais été plus évident dans l’UE que le gouvernement couvre les intérêts des puissances économiques, en particulier le capital financier, et au détriment des valeurs qui ont inspiré le model social européen. La soumission permanente des gouvernements démocratiques aux exigences, réelles ou supposées, des marchés financiers, constitue une sérieuse détérioration de la démocratie. Il faut souligner que ces marchés sont particulièrement conditionnés au bénéfice des profiteurs ; et également que l’opinion d’un certain nombre d’agences d’évaluation des risques qui devraient être totalement discréditées pour leurs énormes erreurs et complicité dans la création de la bulle d’investissement financière, dont l’éclatement a déclenché la crise dont nous souffrons. 2. Comment se sont produits la crise et la politique de restrictions qui a suivi ? -hausse généralisée du chômage dans toute l’Europe, avec des taux aussi élevés que celui de l’Espagne (20%), avec un nombre particulièrement élevé de jeunes chômeurs (en Espagne : 30-40%, le double du taux européen), le groupe le plus affecté par la crise, avec les femmes et les immigrés. -affaiblissement de la protection sociale : La réduction des allocations chômage (en Espagne, la subvention 426e a été annulée), ce qui impose des conditions supplémentaires pour y avoir accès. Le gel des retraites et l’obligation immédiate (inutile à court terme) de réexaminer tous les systèmes de retraite (le relèvement de l’âge de la retraite, une augmentation du nombre calculé d’années travaillées nécessaires à l’obtention du minimum retraite, l’introduction de systèmes de financement privé…). La baisse ou l’annulation des autres prestations sociales (loi de la dépendance, chèque bébé…). Education : budgets réduits (GB : réduction des bourses/prêts, augmentation des frais universitaires). Santé : par exemple, réduction des doses de médicament ; coupes budgétaires : privatisation et tentative d’introduire une contribution aux frais de santé (Catalogne). -modification des conditions de travail Gel et réduction des salaires (jusqu’à 1,5% en moyenne dans l’UE : Irlande, Grèce, Roumanie, les pays baltes), les salaires du secteur public souffrant des réductions les plus sévères. Affaiblissement des négociations collectives, rupture des ententes salariales obtenues avec les syndicats, et changement des conditions de travail (jours et heures de travail, mobilité géographique, fonctions…). Imposition de changements liés à l’emploi au niveau législatif (réforme en Espagne : réduction des coûts et plus grande facilité pour licencier, changement des pratiques de recrutement avec une augmentation des contrats temporaires, non-respect des droits établis dans les conventions…). Intrusion des Etats et de l’UE elle-même dans l’autonomie des négociations par les interlocuteurs sociaux (syndicats et hommes d’affaires) afin de s’accorder sur les conditions de travail (par exemple, la productivité plutôt que l’inflation en tant que point de référence pour les salaires). Les garanties sont ainsi perdues, non seulement le droit à la négociation, mais aussi d’entreprendre une action collective. Conclusion : perte globale…
Labour rights and decent working conditions in Europe: the way forward.
Foto da Flickr Article by: Cristina Bermejo, Youth Secretary, Comisiones Obreras Translated by: Ben Engel 1. Introduction The dreadful financial crisis of 2008, caused by irresponsible and uncontrollable greed and by insatiable banks, has sparked an economic and social crisis with serious repercussions in EU member states. This is seen in reduced economic growth, increased unemployment, severe austerity measures, higher rates of job loss, more unstable jobs, generalised cuts in salaries and subsidies and a reduction in retirement rights… Thus, we, the workers, are paying a high price for the folly of the financial world, where salaries and bonuses are still sickeningly high. The so-called “bail-outs” of Greece and Ireland have led the EU to put pressure not only on these countries, but in general, to cut salaries and pensions, and to introduce a greater degree of “flexibility” (i.e. weaken collective negotiation and labour laws) in their job markets. The recent “Competitiveness and Convergence Pact” passed by the European Commission will provoke additional cuts to social spending and public investment and are the precursor to new adjustment plans. The lack of a strong and coherent policy on the part of the European government, as well as the problem of sovereign debts, also serves as an excuse for the European institutions to push forward an aggressive programme of structural reform, of a genuinely neoliberal nature, which sets up an entire agenda of cuts to rights and social provisions. Never in the history of the EU and the European institutions which preceded it, has such a phenomenon been seen before. For those at the helm of the EU’s political institutions, economic growth and the creation of jobs are secondary objectives, and subordinate since the drastic turn European policy experienced last May. This is to say nothing of such issues as environmental sustainability, which is at great risk of fading into the background because of economic difficulties and political weakness, when it should be one of the foremost issues, especially in light of Japan’s recent nuclear disaster. The proposal of “economic governance” of the Euro Zone and of the EU is unacceptable because it is centred – obsessively so – on the aim of reducing public deficits and pushing forward “structural reforms” in areas, such as collective negotiations and labour markets, pensions and other social provisions, which the EU has little expertise in dealing with. On the other hand, aspects which are essential for economic government – especially in countries with a common currency – like standardised tax, make no appearance in the objectives of the aforementioned governance. Previously, the verdicts of the European Court of Justice – the Laval, Viking, Rüffert, and Luxembourg cases etc. – establishing the primacy of freedom of movement and establishment of capitals over the rights to strike and to collective negotiation, and the protective value of the Right to Work, opened the way for salary and labour dumping, with the European authorities showing no willingness to remedy the problem. Never before in the EU has it been so clear that government is servicing the interests of the economic powers, in particular of the financial capital, and to the detriment of the values which inspired the European Social Model. The continuous submission of democratic governments to demands, real or supposed, from the financial markets, constitutes a serious deterioration in democracy. It must be stressed that these markets are very much conditioned to the advantage of profiteers; and also that the opinions of a number of risk assessment agencies which should be totally discredited for their huge mistakes and complicity in creating the financial investment bubble, whose bursting sparked the crisis we are suffering. 2. How did the crisis and the resulting policy of cuts come about? – Generalised increase in unemployment across Europe, with rates as high as in Spain (20%), with especially high numbers of youths unemployed (in Spain: 30-40%, double the European rates), the group most affected by the crisis, along with women and immigrants. – Weakening of social protection: Reduction of unemployment benefit (in Spain, the 426e subsidy has been cancelled), imposing further requirements to access it Freeze in pensions and immediate obligation (unnecessary in the short term) to review all pension systems (raising of retirement ages, an increase in the calculated number of working years necessary to earn minimum pensions, introduction of private financing systems…) Lowering or cancelling other social benefits (Dependency Law, the baby cheque…) Education: lower budgets (GB: reduction in grants/loans, increase in university fees) Health: e.g. Reduction of doses of medicines; budget cuts: privatisation and an attempt to introduce co-payment in health (Cataluña) – Bending of working conditions Freezes and reductions in salaries (up to 1.5% of the average in the EU: Ireland, Greece, Romania, the Baltic Countries), with salaries in the public sector suffering the harshest cuts Weakening of collective negotiation, breaking of salary agreements reached with the unions, and changing working conditions (working day, hours, geographical mobility, functions…) Imposition of labour-related changes at a legislative level (Reform in Spain: reduced cost and greater ease in firing, changes in hiring practices with increase in temporary contracts, non-compliance with rights established in convention…) Interference by the States and by the EU itself with the autonomy of negotiation by social interlocutors (trade unions and businesspeople) to agree on working conditions (e.g. productivity rather than inflation as a reference point for salaries). Guarantees are therefore lost, not only of the right to negotiation, but also to undertake collective action. Conclusion: global loss of governance of the States and therefore of the populace, leading to the gradual destruction of the European Welfare State model by attacks on fundamental democratic rights and on the pillars of that welfare state (education, health, pensions…). 3. Trade union alternatives The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), of which Comisiones Obreras is part, has just called for a Europe-wide New Deal to dig ourselves out of the crisis, founded on two fundamental pillars: the issuing of Eurobonds to combat the crisis of sovereign debts, and a plan for economic recovery…
Get involved in our new project on precarity!
Our new project on precarity!
Participez à notre nouveau projet sur la précarité !
Our new project on precarity!
Initiative européenne pour le pluralisme des médias
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Photo Flickr historiepostale « Toute personne a droit à la liberté d’expression. Ce droit comprend la liberté d’opinion et la liberté de recevoir ou de communiquer des informations ou des idées sans qu’il puisse y avoir ingérence d’autorités publiques et sans considération de frontières. La liberté des médias et leur pluralisme sont respectés. » Article 11, Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’Union européenne. Contexte En 2011, Alternatives européennes organise une consultation délibérative avec des citoyens et des intervenants sur un échantillon de six pays de l’UE, sur des questions transeuropéennes liées aux domaines de la justice, la sécurité et la liberté, contenus dans le programme de Stockholm (2010-2014). Les consultations se tiendront au Royaume-Uni, en France, en Italie, en Bulgarie, en Espagne et en Roumanie, mais des citoyens de toute l’Europe seront impliqués. Garantir la liberté d’expression et d’information dans tous les Etats-membres de l’UE est l’un des six sujets autours desquels seront organisés les panels de citoyens. Ces consultations sont conçues afin de décliner un ensemble spécifique de revendications communes au niveau européen dans les domaines des droits des citoyens, ce qui donnera lieu à des actions concrètes, dont la possibilité d’une Initiative citoyenne. Cadre politique et institutionnel La liberté d’expression et d’information fait partie des valeurs fondatrices des démocraties européennes. Bien qu’il soit considéré comme un droit inaliénable par les constitutions de tous les Etats-membres ainsi que par le Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’UE, en réalité, le pluralisme des médias est menacé dans un certain nombre de pays d’Europe occidentale et orientale. La situation de l’Italie, de la Hongrie et de la Roumanie est particulièrement inquiétante, mais des « bastions » démocratiques comme la France et la Grande-Bretagne doivent également faire face à des menaces à l’encontre de la liberté d’information, sous la forme d’une pression croissante des hommes politiques sur les télédiffuseurs, ou de mesures pour créer des conglomérats de médias trop importants pour garantir la pluralité. Depuis mai 2010, Alternatives européennes et l’Alliance internationale de journalistes travaillent activement à l’établissement d’une coalition pour une Initiative européenne pour le pluralisme et la liberté des médias. Cela a impliqué des séminaires au Parlement européen et dans plusieurs Etats-membres, ainsi que la diffusion d’enquêtes parmi un grand nombre d’organismes de presse en Europe. L’Initiative européenne pour le pluralisme des médias encourage l’idée que les institutions européennes devraient sauvegarder le droit à l’information indépendante et pluraliste, comme sanctionné par la Charte des droits de l’Homme. L’Initiative comprend la création d’un Conseil des médias européens de la société civile, et une campagne destinée aux institutions européennes. L’Initiative a trois objectifs principaux : -Etablir une coalition paneuropéenne d’organismes de presse et un groupe directeur composé d’experts sur les questions concernant le pluralisme et la liberté des médias (désigné sous le nom de Conseil des médias européens). Il n’existe actuellement rien de tel et la création d’un tel conseil représenterait une avancée considérable dans la promotion de la liberté des médias au niveau paneuropéen et dans l’apport continu de soutien aux avancées dans le domaine de la protection du pluralisme des médias au niveau des institutions européennes. -Provoquer une amélioration notable de la législation concernant le pluralisme et la liberté des médias au niveau paneuropéen, grâce à une campagne dans le Parlement européen et le lancement éventuel d’une Initiative Citoyenne Européenne afin de cibler directement la Commission européenne. La législation qui doit être améliorée, dans les compétences actuelles de l’UE, inclut : -la mise en œuvre d’un système de contrôle du pluralisme des médias propre à la Commission européenne, qui utiliserait des indicateurs clairs permettant de repérer les menaces à l’encontre du pluralisme des médias dans les Etats-membres ; et/ou -la définition d’une législation antitrust plus claire et plus efficace au niveau de l’UE qui régit la concentration des médias et de la publicité. -Mener une campagne pour le pluralisme et la liberté des médias au niveau européen, sensibiliser la population à la dimension européenne de la défense de la liberté des médias, et développer une plateforme transnationale commune permettant d’aller au-delà des compétences existantes de l’UE. Le programme de Stockholm Tandis que la liberté d’information est essentiellement vue comme une protection accrue des données personnelles et de l’intimité dans le programme de Stockholm, Alternatives européennes souhaite considérer un autre point de vue. Alors que le programme de Stockholm envisage le respect et la mise en œuvre de la Charte des droits fondamentaux de l’UE, nous aimerions nous concentrer sur l’article 11 qui stipule : Liberté d’expression et d’information 1. Toute personne a droit à la liberté d’expression. Ce droit comprend la liberté d’opinion et la liberté de recevoir ou de communiquer des informations ou des idées sans qu’il puisse y avoir ingérence d’autorités publiques et sans considération de frontières. 2. La liberté des médias et leur pluralisme sont respectés. Comme la situation dans un certain nombre d’Etats-membres est loin de ce qui est exprimé dans l’article 11, Alternatives européennes considère la discussion sur ces questions d’une importance capitale. L’Initiative citoyenne Le traité de Lisbonne présente la possibilité d’une Initiative Citoyenne Européenne. Le traité prévoit que « des citoyens de l'Union, au nombre d'un million au moins, ressortissants d'un nombre significatif d'États membres, peuvent prendre l'initiative d'inviter la Commission européenne, dans le cadre de ses attributions, à soumettre une proposition appropriée sur des questions pour lesquelles ces citoyens considèrent qu'un acte juridique de l'Union est nécessaire aux fins de l'application des traités. » Les signatures en ligne seront considérées comme valides. Le projet actuel est que, pour que l’initiative soit valide, les signatures doivent venir d’au moins 9 pays de l’UE. La marche à suivre Alternatives européennes cherche à collaborer avec des organisations partenaires et des militants individuels dans toute l’Europe, afin d’organiser une série de consultations délibératives transnationales qui visent à produire une demande européenne commune et assembler la coalition nécessaire afin de mener à bien cette demande. Cela pourrait inclure de…
European initiative for media pluralism
photo flickr historiepostale “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected”Article 11, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights Context Over 2011, European Alternatives is organising a deliberative consultation with citizens and stakeholders in a sample of six EU countries on transeuropean issues relating to the area of Justice, Security and Freedom contained in the Stockholm Programme (2010-2014). The consultations will be taking place in the UK, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Romania, but citizens from throughout Europe will be involved. Guaranteeing freedom of expression and information across all member states of the EU is one of the six topics around which citizens’ panels will be organised. These consultations are imagined to decline a specific set of shared demands at a European level in the areas of citizens’ rights, leading to specific actions, including the possibility of a Citizens’ Initiative. Political and institutional framework Freedom of speech and of information are among the funding values of European democracies. While they are granted as inalienable rights by all member states’ constitutions, as well as by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the reality is that media pluralism is under threat in a number of countries, in Easter as well as Western Europe. The situation of Italy, Hungary and Romania is particularly worrying, but democratic “strongholds” like France and Britain are also experiencing threats to freedom of information in the forms of increasing pressure from politicians onto broadcasters, or moves to create media conglomerates too big to guarantee plurality. Since May 2010 European Alternatives and Alliance International de Journalists have been actively working to establish a coalition for a European Initiative for Media Freedom and Pluralism. This has involved seminars in the European Parliament and in several member states, as well as the circulation of surveys amongst a wide number of media organisations throughout Europe. The European Initiative for Media Pluralism promotes the idea that European institutions should safeguard the right to independent and pluralistic information as sanctioned by the European Charter on Human Rights. The Initiative includes the creation of a civil society European Media Council, and a campaign directed at the European institutions. There are three major objectives to the Initiative: Establishing a pan-European coalition of media organisations and a steering group of experts in media pluralism and freedom issues (working name: European Media Council). Nothing of this kind currently exists, and the creation of such a Council would be a significant advance in promoting media freedom at a pan-European level and providing ongoing support to advances in the protection of media pluralism at the level of European institutions. Bringing about a substantial improvement in legislation regarding media pluralism and freedom at a pan-European level, through a campaign inside European Parliament and the possible launch of a European Citizens’ Initiative to directly target the European Commission. Legislation within current EU competences to be improved includes: The implementation of the European Commission’s own Media Pluralism Monitor, employing clear indicators for threats to media pluralism in the Member States; and/or The definition of clearer and more effective antitrust legislation at EU level governing concentration in media and publicity. Campaigning for media pluralism and freedom at European level, raising awareness of the European dimension of the defense of media freedom, and developing a common transnational platform going beyond already-existing EU competences. The Stockholm Programme While freedom of information is mostly intended as increased protection of personal data and privacy in the Stockholm Programme, European Alternatives wishes to explore another angle. As the Stockholm Programme envisage the respect and implementation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, we would like to focus on Article 11, which states. Freedom of expression and information 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. 2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected. As the situation in a number of member states is far from what expressed in Article 11, European Alternatives considers the discussion on these issues of paramount importance. Citizens’ Initiative The Lisbon Treaty introduces the possibility of the European Citizens’ Initiative. The treaty provides that “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”. Online signatures will be considered valid. The current proposals are that signatures will have to come from a minimum of 9 EU countries for the initiative to be valid. The way forward European Alternatives is looking to collaborate with partner organisations and individual activists around Europe to organise a series of transnational deliberative consultations aimed at producing a join European demand and setting up the necessary coalition to carry through that demand. This may include submitting a Citizens’ Initiative to the European Commission, requesting officially legislate over a Media Pluralism Monitor. While aware of the challenge that the 1 million figure represents, a well-organised coordination across all 27 member states and an alliance with political parties, individual MEPs, local, national, transnational NGOs as well as a strategy based on social media and viral communication, could make this challenge achievable.
Construire lEurope des citoyens : une nécessité pour lavenir de lUnion européenne
Par Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Audrey Ubertino La journée de l’Europe, le 9 mai, célèbre l’anniversaire de la déclaration Schuman qui a marqué une étape importante dans la collaboration entre différents Etats-nations européens. En 1950, la création de l’union du charbon et de l’acier entre six pays était remise en question. Depuis lors, la vitesse de développement de formes de collaboration entre les états européens s’est intensifiée et a pris presque tous les observateurs par surprise. Mais bien que d’énormes progrès aient été faits en ce qui concerne la collaboration entre les états européens, la vitesse de collaboration entre les citoyens européens n’a pas suivi le même rythme. Très souvent, il nous a semblé, à nous citoyens, que nous avons été délibérément exclus du processus décisionnel européen, et que l’Union européenne est tout sauf une Europe qui nous appartient : au mieux, on nous a laissé un choix rudimentaire, « oui » ou « non », quant à une intégration européenne plus poussée ; et en France, en Hollande et plus récemment en Irlande, une majorité de citoyens a dit « non » lors de référendums constitutionnels (même si les Irlandais ont plus tard été persuadés de voter « oui »). Les 12 derniers mois ont montré deux choses, peut-être plus clairement qu’auparavant : premièrement, que les institutions européennes ne pourront pas continuer à prendre des décisions sans mieux tenir compte des citoyens européens et, deuxièmement, que nous, les citoyens européens, avons peu de chances d’obtenir le type d’Europe dans laquelle nous aimerions vivre, à moins que nous ne prenions la responsabilité et l’initiative de travailler ensemble pour la demander. Prenons l’une des décisions les plus importantes prises l’année dernière : la création d’un Fonds européen de stabilité financière afin de consolider les économies d’abord de la Grèce, puis de l’Irlande. Cette démarche a été et est toujours particulièrement controversée. Nos dirigeants politiques nous disent qu’il n’existe pas d’autre alternative que d’agir de la manière dont ils ont décidé. En conséquence, il y a eu peu de débats publics sur l’impact des plans mis en place, ni sur les citoyens grecs ou irlandais, ni sur les citoyens des autres pays européens. Surtout, il y a eu très peu de débats sur les autres moyens disponibles pour relancer l’économie européenne. La dialectique politique repose entre une élite européenne qui affirme qu’il n’existe pas d’alternative à ses décisions, et différentes formes de protestation contre toute forme de solidarité entre les Etats-membres européens. C’est une opposition « Pas d’alternative »/ « Pas d’Europe ». L’une des conséquences dangereuses de ce manichéisme européen est la montée des partis extrêmes dans beaucoup de pays européens, que ce soit les Vrais Finlandais en Finlande qui sont opposés à tout transfert budgétaire dans les autres pays, ou le Jobbik en Hongrie qui proteste contre les conditions imposées à l’économie hongroise par l’UE et le FMI. Dans un tel contexte politique de polarisation autour de la question de la solidarité européenne, même certaines des réussites européennes les plus populaires, telles que le droit de circuler librement, sont mises à rude épreuve et des populations telles que les Roms sont les premiers à perdre au change. Lorsque la solidarité entre les citoyens européens est sous pression, il n’est pas surprenant que l’hospitalité envers les immigrés arrivant sur les côtes européennes soit encore plus difficile à solliciter. S’ils ne font pas face à ce problème, l’élite européenne et les citoyens européens sont susceptibles de se retrouver sur une pente glissante dans une direction où ils ne souhaitent aller ni l’un ni l’autre, vers une Europe de chauvinismes nationaux, désagréable, bornée et injuste. La seule solution à ce problème est que les citoyens européens travaillent ensemble afin de présenter une nouvelle série de propositions politiques pour l’Europe, de prendre eux-mêmes la responsabilité de travailler ensemble afin de déterminer l’avenir de leur Europe. C’est pourquoi l’ONG transeuropéenne Alternatives européennes a organisé le festival TRANSEUROPA, entre le 6 et le 15 mai, qui se déroule dans 12 villes à travers le continent, dont Bratislava et Prague, ainsi que Londres, Paris, Sofia, Cluj-Napoca, Amsterdam et d’autres. Tout au long du festival, les citoyens pourront se rassembler afin de débattre sur un certain nombre de thèmes, dont les droits des Roms, les droits des immigrés, la liberté des médias et l’avenir de l’économie européenne. Le festival lui-même est organisé par des citoyens venant de toute l’Europe, et vous êtes invités à participer en personne ou en ligne, et à rejoindre la communauté de citoyens qui refusent la logique « Pas d’alternative »/ « Pas d’Europe ». Le site internet du festival est www.transeuropafestival.eu
Building a Europe of citizens: a necessity for the future of the European Union
Niccolo Milanese Europe Day on May 9th celebrates the anniversary of the Schuman declaration which marked an important step in the collaboration between different European nation states. In 1950 it was the creation of the coal and steel union between six countries that was in question. Since then, the speed of the development of forms of collaboration between the states of Europe has only increased and has taken almost all observers by surprise. But while huge progress has been made in collaboration between European states, the speed of the collaboration between European citizens has not followed the same pace. Very often, it has seemed to us citizens that we have been deliberately excluded from the decision-making processes of Europe, and that the European Union is anything but a Europe that belongs to us: at best, we have been given crude a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ choice about further European integration; and in France, Holland and more recently Ireland a majority of citizens said ‘no’ in constitutional referendums (even if the Irish were later persuaded to say ‘yes’). The past 12 months have demonstrated two things perhaps more clearly than before: firstly, that the European institutions will not be able to continue to take decisions without taking a greater account of the citizens of Europe, and secondly that we citizens of Europe are unlikely to get the kind of Europe in which we would like to live unless we take the responsibility and initiative for working together to demand it. Take one of the most important decisions of the last year: the creation of a European Financial Stability Facility in order to shore-up the economies of first Greece, then Ireland. This was and still is highly controversial. Our political leaders tell us that there is no alternative but to act in the way they have decided. As a consequence there has been little public debate of the impact of the plans put in place, neither for the citizens of Greece or Ireland, nor on the citizens of other countries of Europe. Above all there has been little debate about what alternative ways for restarting the European economy are available. The political dialectic rests between a European elite which says there is no alternative to its decisions, and various forms of protest against any forms of solidarity amongst European member states. It is ‘No Alternative’ versus ‘No Europe’. One of the dangerous consequences of this European Manichaeism is the rise of extreme parties in many European countries, whether they are the True Finns in Finland calling out against any budget transfers to other countries, or Jobbik in Hungary protesting against the conditions imposed on the Hungarian economy by the EU and IMF. In such a political context of polarisation around the question of European solidarity, even some of the most popular European achievements, such as the right to free movement, are coming under strain, and populations such as the Roma are the first to lose out. When solidarity between European citizens is under strain, it is unsurprising that hospitality for migrants arriving on European shores is even harder to summon. Without facing this problem, both the European elite and the European citizens are likely to find themselves on a slippery slope going in a direction neither of them wants, to a nasty, insular and unjust Europe of national chauvinisms. The only solution to this problem is for European citizens to work together to propose an alternative series of political propositions for Europe, to take the responsibility themselves for working together to determine the future of their Europe. This is the reason why the trans-European NGO European Alternatives has organised TRANSEUROPA Festival between 6th – 15th May, taking place in 12 cities throughout the continent including Bratislava and Prague, along with London, Paris, Sofia, Cluj-Napoca, Amsterdam and others. Throughout the Festival ,citizens will be coming together to discuss a number of main themes, including Roma rights, migrant rights, media freedom and the future of the European economy. The Festival itself has been organised by citizens from throughout Europe, and you are invited to participate in person or online, and to join the community of citizens who refuse the logic of No Alternative or No Europe. The website of the Festival is www.transeuropafestival.eu
25 septembre, Londres : Débat « LEurope est-elle néolibérale ? »
Samedi 25 septembre, de 16h30 à 18 heures Hanbury Hall 22a Hanbury Street, London, E1 6QR Entrée gratuite L’Union européenne est souvent accusée d’être une structure néolibérale. 20 ans après la chute du mur de Berlin, cette époque de l’histoire est-elle véritablement révolue ? Comment les points de vue diffèrent-il en Europe de l’Est et de l’Ouest ? Ce débat public aborde les dimensions économique, sociale et démocratique de cette question et compare la situation dans l’Europe de « l’Est » et de « l’Ouest ». L’objectif de cette discussion est de commencer à ébaucher les grandes lignes d’une action potentielle sur le plan politique et civique, au niveau européen, dans un contexte de mise en cause du statu quo actuel par l’opinion publique. Les intervenants inclueront : Sasha Jankovskia, Commission européenne à la DG des affaires économiques et financières Juraj Draxler, CEPS de Bruxelles Niccolo Milanese, Alternatives Européennes En partenariat avec la représentation de la Commission européenne du RU et le NCVO
25th September, London: Debate, ‘Is Europe Neoliberal?’
Saturday 25th of September, 4.30pm – 6pm Hanbury Hall 22a Hanbury Street, London, E1 6QR Free entry The European Union is often accused of being a neoliberal construction. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, is it true that history has come to an end? How does the point of view differ between East and West Europe? This public debate addressing the economic, social and democratic dimensions of this question and comparing the situation in ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Europe. The ambition of the discussion will be to begin to sketch the outlines of potential political and civil action directed at the European level in the context of widespread public questioning of the current status quo. Speakers will include: Sasha Jankovskia, European Commission DG Economic and Financial Affairs Juraj Draxler, CEPS Brussels Niccolo Milanese, European Alternatives In partnership with the European Commission Representation UK and NCVO
Civil Liberties and Stockholm Programme
Starting in November 2010, this project proposes a series of deliberative democracy panels in six European countries centred around crucial themes in civil liberties and citizenship rights. The six participating countries are: The United Kingdom, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, and Spain. The work is organised around a process of regional, national, and transnational summits. In the first stage three regional panels take place in medium-sized towns in each of the 6 countries participating in the project. These first meetings bring together around 50 people in each locality. In the second stage a Citizens’ Panel takes place in each of the participant countries, bringing together 200 citizens each. Finally, a closing Forum takes place in Brussels bringing together 250 people including representatives from the 6 participating countries. The series of panels is accompanied by hearings in the European Parliament to directly connect the project and its participants with European policy-making. The resulting final recommendations are presented in a public event in the European Parliament. The themes of the panels are structured around the key ares covered by the Stockholm process, and in particular the two areas of Fundamental Rights of Citizenship and Migration and Asylum. The topics selected are: 1) Civil status across borders 2) protection of basic rights across borders 3) protection of freedom of information and privacy 4) professional and educational qualifications across borders 5) migration policy 6) european citizenship and electoral rights More information and applications to participate coming soon! Supported by EACEA
EA article in EU Observer
EA Directors Niccolo Milanese and Lorenzo Marsili have published the following opinion piece on EUobserver, making the case for a joint European response to recent expulsions of Roma from France.We are all Roma now Roma European citizens have the same rights as all other European citizens, and their rights must be defended, otherwise European citizenship means nothing. This fundamental principle of European citizenship is frequently being lost amidst the furore surrounding the condemnation by the European Parliament and by a member of the European Commission of the expulsion of Roma from France. On the 9th of September the European Parliament called for a halt to the expulsions. On 14th September, following the leaking of an official document of the French authorities clearly targeting Roma encampments, Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Justice and Human Rights strongly warned France that if collective discrimination were found to be taking place in France, then the Commission would be forced to defend the right to free movement for all European citizens, and take France to court. Since that time the French government, with the support of several other heads of state, has launched a considerable counteroffensive against Commissioner Reding for drawing parallels with the Second World War. Whatever the inappropriateness of Reding’s parallel, she and the European Parliament were right to stand up for the rights of European citizens. It is true that there is considerable public mistrust of the Roma, just as it is true that the Roma have been one of the most discriminated groups in Europe over the past centuries, that many of them live in some of the worst poverty to be found in the EU, and that their literacy and educational levels are typically much worse than other European citizens. None of this gives any justification for collectively targeting them or impinging their right to free movement in the EU. Rather what is required is a real European program for the Roma, which is applied at all levels of European society. The discourse and the actions of many member states are not setting the conditions for such a program to succeed, and that is another reason why they are both objectionable and hypocritical. The problem is not only in France. In Italy collective expulsions of the Roma are also taking place, and only a couple of years ago vigilante groups of citizens burnt down Roma encampments following politicians making speeches linking Roma with criminality. In Hungary the Jobbik party runs explicitly on anti-Roma rhetoric. In Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia organised attacks on Roma by hate groups, and anti-Roma marches throughout towns have become more and more frequent. In Germany, 12,000 Roma are going to be deported to Kosovo in the coming years, roughly half of them children who speak neither Serbian nor Albanian, and who came to Germany in exile from the ethnic violence of 1992. In Denmark and in Sweden the Roma have had their rights to free movement curtailed. These actions have led to the European Network Against Racism warning that ‘a culture of impunity for those who want to target the Roma is being created.’ In such a culture discrimination can only grow and the problems only get worse. For these reasons the European institutions must act to break such a culture. For those of us interested in building a future European culture of equal rights and democracy for all, this must be a rallying moment as European rights will come under stronger and stronger pressure as the economic crisis bites. We are defending must understand we are defending our own rights as well when we defend those of the most vulnerable, our rights as European citizens. European Alternatives has launched a petition supporting the European institutions defending European citizenship. Sign here! Lorenzo Marsili and Niccolo Milanese Directors, European Alternatives
Un article dAE dans le EU Observer
Traduction : Pierre Leroy Les directeurs d’AE Niccolo Milanese et Lorenzo Marsili ont publié l’article d’opinion suivant dans l’EU Observer, plaidant pour une réponse européenne conjointe face aux récentes expulsions dont ont été victimes des Roms de France. Nous sommes tous Roms aujourd’hui Les citoyens européens Roms ont les mêmes droits que tous les autres citoyens européens, et leurs droits doivent être défendus, sans quoi la citoyenneté européenne n’a aucun sens. Ce principe fondamental de la citoyenneté européenne se perd souvent dans les protestations résultantes de la condamnation par le Parlement européen et par un membre de la Commission européenne de l’expulsion des Roms de France. Le 9 septembre dernier, le Parlement européen a appelé à ce que les expulsions cessent. Le 14 septembre, suite à la fuite d’un document officiel issu des autorités françaises et visant clairement les camps de Roms, Viviane Reding, la commissaire à la justice, aux droits fondamentaux et à la citoyenneté, a vivement averti la France que s’il était démontré qu’une discrimination collective s’opérait en France, alors la Commission se devrait de défendre le droit de libre circulation pour tous les citoyens européens, et poursuivre la France en justice. Depuis, le gouvernement français, avec le soutien de plusieurs autres chefs d’État, a lancé une vaste contre-attaque contre la commissaire Reding l’accusant de dresser des parallèles avec la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Qu’importe que le parallèle de Reding n’ait pas été approprié, le Parlement européen et elle avaient raison de défendre les droits des citoyens européens. Il est vrai qu’il existe une méfiance considérable à l’égard du peuple Rom, aussi vrai que les Roms ont été l’un des peuples les plus discriminés en Europe ces derniers siècles, que la plupart d’entre eux vivent dans les zones les plus pauvres que l’on peut trouver dans l’UE, et que leur alphabétisation et leurs niveaux d’éducation sont généralement bien moins élevés que le reste des citoyens européens. Rien de tout cela ne justifie qu’ils soient visés collectivement ou encore que leur droit de libre circulation dans l’UE ne soit pas respecté. Il faut plutôt établir un véritable programme européen pour le peuple Rom, appliqué à tous les niveaux de la société européenne. Les discours politiques et les actions menées par de nombreux États membres ne posent pas les conditions pour le succès d’un tel programme, ce qui constitue une autre raison au fait qu’ils soient inacceptables et hypocrites. Le problème n’existe pas uniquement en France. En Italie, des Roms sont également expulsés collectivement, et il y a seulement deux ans, des membres de milices privées ont brûlé des campements de Roms à la suite de discours politiques liant le peuple Rom à la criminalité. En Hongrie, le parti Jobbik fonctionne sur une rhétorique explicite anti-Roms. En Hongrie, République Tchèque et Slovaquie, des attaques organisées de la part de groupes haineux s’opèrent contre le peuple Rom, et des marches anti-Roms se tenant dans toute la ville deviennent de plus en plus fréquentes. En Allemagne, 12 000 Roms sont sur le point d’être déportés au Kosovo au cours des prochaines années, parmi eux, environ la moitié sont des enfants qui ne parlent ni serbe ni albanais et qui se sont exilés en Allemagne pour fuir les violences ethniques de 1992. Au Danemark et en Suède, les Roms ont vu leur droit de libre circulation bafoué. Ces actions ont mené le Réseau européen contre le racisme à avertir de l’émergence d’une « culture de l’impunité à l’égard de ceux qui prennent pour cible le peuple Rom ». Cette culture se développant, la discrimination ne pourra que s’aggraver et les problèmes ne pourront qu’empirer. C’est pourquoi les institutions européennes doivent stopper l’expansion de cette culture. Pour ceux d’entre nous qui souhaitent bâtir une culture européenne basée sur des droits égaux et sur la démocratie pour chacun, il est temps de nous rallier au moment où les droits des Européens subissent une pression de plus en plus forte à mesure que la crise économique frappe. Nous défendons une meilleure tolérance, nous défendons nos propres droits ainsi que ceux des plus vulnérables, nos droits de citoyens européens. Alternatives Européennes a lancé une pétition pour que les institutions européennes défendent la citoyenneté européenne. Signez la ici ! Lorenzo Marsili and Niccolo Milanese Directeurs d’Alternatives Européennes
Lactiviste lgbt en Europe Orientale Robert Biedron a été libéré !
Traduction : Pierre Leroy Alternatives Européennes a soutenu la campagne pour obtenir la libération de Robert Biedron, arrêté à Varsovie le 11 novembre dernier alors qu’il exerçait son droit démocratique de protester contre une parade d’extrême droite ; nous accueillons ainsi la bonne nouvelle : il a été relâché ! Plus d’informations et d’analyses sont à venir prochainement ! Alternatives Européennes soutient la campagne pour obtenir la libération de Robert Biedron, arrêté le 11 novembre dernier à Varsovie pour des motifs non plausibles l’accusant d’avoir attaqué un officier de police alors qu’il protestait contre une parade d’extrême droite à Varsovie. Tomek Kitlinski, un représentant d’AE qui était à ses côtés, lance cet appel : Robert Biedron est aujourd’hui l’icône de la lutte difficile pour les droits des lgbt en Europe Centrale et Orientale. Biedron (né en 1976) est le principal activiste lgbt en Pologne : Il a fondé la Campagne contre l’Homophobie et a été son président jusqu’en 2009. Aujourd’hui, il est d’autant plus important, il est le leader du mouvement progressif en Pologne. Robert est le plus ardent défenseur des droits des homosexuels dans son pays : Il a écrit un livre populaire : « A rainbow Reader » et a été le fer de lance d’actions lgbt telles que les actions de visibilité pour les homosexuels «Let Them See Us » (Laissons-les nous voir) qui sont des portraits de couples gays et lesbiens. Je l’ai rencontré avec mon partenaire Pawel lorsque nous avons participé à cette campagne, je me souviens de l’enthousiasme de Robert. Son charisme était toujours évident lorsque je l’ai rencontré la dernière fois le 11 novembre 2010 à Varsovie. Nous avons participé avec la réalisatrice Agnieszka Holland et des milliers de Polonais à une manifestation antifascisme dans la Vieille Ville. Robert était toujours en première ligne, mais ne négligeait personne. Il m’avait même promis de venir dans ma ville de Lublin pour m’aider la semaine suivante. Robert a participé à cette manifestation afin d’exprimer sa protestation contre l’antisémitisme, la misogynie et l’homophobie. Nous nous sommes rassemblés contre l’appropriation de la fête nationale de Pologne, le 11 novembre, par des organisations fascistes qui avaient reçu des autorités de la ville le droit de défiler. De nombreux associés d’Alternatives Européennes étaient à nos côtés : la féministe Kazimiera Szczuka, la linguiste Slawek Krolak, des membres de la Tektura de Lublin. Suivant l’idée de Seweryn Blumsztajn du journal quotidien la Gazeta Wyborcza, nous avons hué les fascistes qui paradaient fièrement dans les rues de Varsovie. Robert était avec nous, il nous inspirait. Nous poursuivons notre lutte, nous nous concentrons désormais sur la libération de Robert. Joignez-vous à nous dans ce combat pour sa liberté.Tomasz Kitlinski, Pologne
Released: Robert Biedron, Eastern Europe’s leading lgbt activist!
European Alternatives supported the campaign to free Robert Biedron, arrested in Warsaw on 11th November while excercising his democratic right to protest against an extreme right parade; we consequently welcome the good news that he has now been released from custody! More news and analysis coming soon! European Alternatives supports the campaign to free Robert Biedron, who was arrested on 11th November in Warsaw on implausible charges of attacking a police officer, whilst protesting against an extreme-right parade in Warsaw. Tomek Kitlinski, an EA representative who was with him, sends this appeal: Robert Biedron is the icon of the difficult fight for lgbt rights in Central/Eastern Europe today. Biedron (b. 1976) is Poland’s foremost lgbt activist: in 2001 he founded the Campaign against Homophobia and served as its president until 2009. He is still more: the leader of the progressive movement in Poland. Robert is the most vocal advocate of queer rights in this country: he authored a popular book “A Rainbow Reader” and spearheaded such lgbt actions as queer visibility action “Let Them See Us” – portraits of lesbian and gay couples. I met him when with my partner Pawel when we participated in this campaign – I remember Robert’s enthusiasm. His charisma was also visible when I met him last on 11 November 2010 in Warsaw. We participated together with film director Agnieszka Holland and thousands of Poles in an anti-fascist demonstration in the Old City. Robert was as always on the frontline, but didn’t neglect anyone. He even promised me to come to my city Lublin to help the following week. Robert participated in this demonstration to express his protest against anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia. We convened against the appropriation of Poland’s National Day, 11 November, by fascist organisations, allowed by city authorities to march. Many of European Alternatives associates were with us: feminist Kazimiera Szczuka, linguist Slawek Krolak, members of Lublin’s Tektura. Following the idea of Seweryn Blumsztajn of Gazeta Wyborcza daily, we whistled at the fascists who wanted to parade proudly in the streets of Warsaw. Robert was with us – he inspired us. Now our struggle continues. Now we focus on setting Robert free. Please join us in this fight for his freedom. Tomasz Kitlinski, Poland
Sofia, le 7 décembre : La montée de lextrémisme de droite dans toute lEurope
Traduction : Pierre Leroy 7 décembre (mardi) 2010, 19 heures Alternatives Européennes et le Red House Centre Culture and Debate présentent : Le Débat TRANSEUROPA série 1 : La montée de l’extrémisme de droite dans toute l’Europe – à la recherche de réponses transnationales La crise économique et financière qui s’aggrave, la crainte de l’afflux d’immigrants et le futur incertain du continent européen, tout cela a contribué au retour de mouvements politiques d’extrême droite dans les politiques européennes. Du Royaume-Uni en passant par la Hongrie et la Bulgarie, et de la Suède à la France et l’Italie, une multitude de mouvements anti-immigrants, anti-islam, anti-roms, des mouvements ultra nationaux et néo-nazis gagnent de plus en plus de sympathisants et participent même parfois au gouvernement. Leurs influences rhétoriques modèrent même le discours politique, que ce soit lorsque le Chancelier allemand déclare que “le multiculturalisme a échoué” ou lorsque le Président français expulse des Roms. Quelles sont les raisons au succès des partis d’extrême droite dans toute l’Europe et que pouvons-nous faire pour les combattre ? En quoi cette montée est-elle reliée à l’évolution de la nature de l’État nation ? Quelles sont les mobilisations mises en place en Europe pour combattre ces tendances à l’intolérance ? Pouvons-nous appeler à ce qu’une mobilisation transnationale se mette en place ? Discussion avec des analystes et des activistes issus de différents pays d’Europe. Le premier débat TRANSEUROPA fait la promotion du festival pour les politiques contemporaines et la culture TRANSEUROPA qui se tiendra en mai 2011 simultanément à Sofia, Londres, Paris, Bologne, Cluj, Amsterdam et Lublin. En anglais et en bulgare. Tickets : 2 / 1 BGN (1,02 / 0,51 euros)
Sofia, 7th December: The rise of right wing extremism throughout Europe
7 December (Tuesday) 2010, 7.00 p.m. Red House Centre for Culture and Debate European Alternatives and Red House Centre for Culture and Debate present TRANSEUROPA debate series 1: The rise of right wing extremism throughout Europe – finding transnational answers The deepening of the economic and financial crisis, the fear of the influx of immigrants, the unclear future ahead of the European continent have all contributed to the return of right wing extremist political movements throughout European politics. From the United Kingdom to Hungary and Bulgaria, and from Sweden to France and Italy, a multitude of anti-immigrant, anti-islam, anti-roma, ultranationalist and neo-nazi movements are gaining supporters and sometimes even participating in government. Their rhetoric influences even moderate politics’ discourse, whether it be the German Chancellor declaring the “failure of multiculturalism” or the French President expelling the Roma. What are the causes for the success of far-right parties throughout Europe and what can we do to combat them? How does their rise relate to the changing nature of the nation state? What mobilisations are taking place across Europe to fight tendencies of intolerance? Might a move to a transnational horizon of mobilisation be called for? Discussion with analysts and activists from different European countries. The first Transeuropa debate promotes the festival for contemporary politics and culture Transeuropa which will take place in May 2011 simultaneously in Sofia, London, Paris, Bologna, Cluj, Amsterdam and Lublin. In English and Bulgarian. Tickets: 2 / 1 BGN.
Groupe de réflexion de la Jeunesse TRANSEUROPA pour la démocratie
Nous sommes ravis de vous présenter le réseau TRANSEUROPA : un réseau d’activistes venus de toute l’Europe, œuvrant ensemble à l’émergence d’une nouvelle et authentique politique, culture et société transnationale en Europe. Cliquez ici pour plus d’informations sur la réunion de fondation et sur les documents de référence présentant le réseau. Comment fonctionne-t-il ? La base des activités menées par le réseau TRANSEUROPA est un sommet « transnational » se tenant mensuellement et où les membres de chaque ville représentée sont invités à participer, leurs dépenses respectives étant couvertes. Les membres du réseau : · Préparent des articles, dont des articles d’opinion, sur des questions politiques clefs afin de les publier en ligne et dans le magazine imprimé appartenant au réseau : Transeuropa, distribué gratuitement dans plusieurs villes d’Europe. ·Réfléchissent ensemble aux campagnes publiques que pourrait mener le réseau afin de sensibiliser l’opinion publique sur les questions/propositions présentées par ce dernier. · Organisent des évènements publics afin de promouvoir le travail et les idées du réseau. · Participent à l’organisation du Festival TRANSEUROPA Qu’est-ce qu’il vous apporte ? Le réseau TRANSEUROPA est avant tout une plateforme pour ceux désirant œuvrer ensemble à l’émergence d’une nouvelle politique, société et culture et européenne. Le réseau rassemble des activistes, des savants, des artistes et des étudiants venus de tout le continent afin qu’ils élaborent ensemble une nouvelle perspective politique transnationale. Vous tirerez profit de l’hétérogénéité de ces personnes, de leurs histoires et de leurs approches ainsi que de la diversité des sujets abordés. Vous aurez également l’opportunité de proposer des projets ou des sujets d’études, Alternatives Européennes et le réseau TRANSEUROPA feront de leur mieux pour vous permettre de mener ces projets à terme s’ils sont conformes aux objectifs d’Alternatives Européennes. Enfin, vous pourrez voyager dans d’autres villes dans le réseau TRANSEUROPA, nous prenons en charges vos dépenses. Quelle est la durée de votre engagement ? Pour devenir membre du réseau TRANSEUROPA vous devez vous engager à participer de septembre à la fin de mai 2011. Une fois que vous avez pris part au réseau TRANSEUROPA et contribué à la préparation du festival TRANSEUROPA en mai 2011, vous demeurez membre du réseau, et vous pouvez décider de la durée de votre engagement dans notre entreprise. Le festival TRANSEUROPA Le festival TRANSEUROPA est un évènement transeuropéen qui se déroule simultanément dans de nombreux pays en mai 2011. Le festival représente le point culminant du travail réalisé par le réseau, les discussions qui se sont tenues les mois précédents y seront présentées publiquement. Le format du festival dans chaque ville est souple afin qu’il puisse être adapté aux différents contextes en place dans chaque ville mais aussi selon les capacités et les ressources des groupes locaux. Quels sujets peuvent-être abordés ? Nous avons une liste de sujets essentiels que nous voulons absolument aborder dans le réseau TRANSEUROPA au cours de l’année à venir. Nous désirons savoir comment ils peuvent être reliés et comment ils peuvent être étudiés dans les différentes réalités sociales et politiques de toute l’Europe. Nous vous invitons à proposer d’autres sujets sur lesquels nous pourrions travailler. Sur la plateforme du réseau social du réseau TRANSEUROPA (à venir prochainement ! ), vous pourrez sans cesse proposer des nouveaux sujets comme des priorités. Sujet essentiels La démocratie Transnationale. Elle inclue : le sens de la démocratie dans l’UE et les États nations, les nouvelles méthodes participatives, le futur de la représentation politique en Europe. La migration. Elle inclue : l’asile commun et la politique d’immigration; les centres et camps de détention; les politiques d’intégration, les questions relatives aux droits de l’homme. L’écologie et les biens communs. Ils incluent : la politique environnementale; les biens communs et l’accès aux services d’intérêt général ; le modèle de production ; la justice sociale et le changement climatique. Les médias transnationaux et le pluralisme des médias. Ils incluent : la liberté des medias, le monde transnational public et les médias européens. L’égalité des genres. Elle inclue : la législation de l’UE et la législation nationale relatives à l’avortement, le salaire, l’équilibre entre la vie professionnelle et la vie privée, etc. L’image des femmes et des hommes. Avec le soutien de : Jeunesse en action
Transeuropa Youth Think-tank for Democracy
We are excited to present TRANSEUROPA Network – a network of activists from throughout Europe working together for the emergence of a new and genuinely transnational European politics, culture and society. Click here for information on the founding meeting and background documents presenting the Network. How does it work? The basis of the activity of TRANSEUROPA network is monthly “transnational” summits where members of the network from each city represented are invited to participate with expenses covered. Members of the Network: Prepare articles and opinion pieces on several key political questions for publication online and in the Network’s own printed magazine, Transeuropa, distributed free of charge in several European cities. Think together about public campaign the network can run to sensibilise public opinion on specific issues/proposals the network comes up with Organise local events and stunts to promote the work and ideas of the network Participate in the organisation of TRANSEUROPA Festival. What do you get out of it? TRANSEUROPA Network is above all a platform for those who want to work together to bring about the emergence of a new European politics, culture and society. The Network brings together activists and scholars, artists and students from throughout the continent to develop together a new transnational political subjectivity. You will benefit from the diversity of these individuals, their backgrounds and approaches, and the diversity of topics dealt with. You will also have the opportunity to propose projects or subjects of investigation, and European Alternatives and TRANSEUROPA Network will do its best to allow you to run these projects if they are consistent with the aims of European Alternatives. Finally, you will have the opportunity to travel to other cities in the TRANSEUROPA Network with expenses covered by us. How long is your commitment? To become a part of TRANSEUROPA Network you need to be happy to commit to participating between September and the end of May 2011. Once you have taken part in TRANSEUROPA network and helped prepared TRANSEUROPA Festival in May 2011, you will remain a member of the Network, and you can choose how much you would like to continue to engage in our work. TRANSEUROPA Festival TRANSEUROPA Festival is a trans-European event happening simultaneously in many countries in May 2011. The Festival represents the climax of the work of the Network and the place where the discussions held over the preceding months will be publicly presented. The format of the Festival in each of the participating cities is left flexible so that it can be adapted to the different contexts of different cities, and also to the capacities and resources of the local groups. What topics are possible? We have a list of core topics we definitely want to cover in TRANSEUROPA Network over the coming year. We want to explore how they can be best related to and explored in the different social and political realities throughout Europe. You are also very welcome to suggest other topics we should work on. In the TRANSEUROPA Network social networking platform (coming soon!) there will be the constant opportunity to bring up new topics as priorities. Core topics Transnational Democracy Includes: the meaning of democracy in the EU and nation states, new participative methods, the future of political representation in Europe. Migration Includes: Common asylum and migration policy; detention centres and camps; integration policies, human rights issues Ecology&Commons Includes: Environmental policy; common goods and access to general interest services; production model; social justice and climate change Transnational Media&Media Pluralism Includes media freedom and pluralism, transnational public sphere and European media, democratisation of access to the media Gender Equality Includes: EU and national legislation relating to abortion, pay, work-life balance etc. The image of women and of men. Supported by: Youth in Action
Transeuropa Network
Siamo felici di presentare TRANSEUROPA Network – una rete di attivisti di tutta Europa che collaborano per l'emergere di una nuova politica, cultura, e società veramente europea e transnazionale. Click here for information on the founding meeting and background documents presenting the Network. Come Funziona? Le Network si articola attorno a convegni transnazionali tenuti una volta al mese dove in diverse città europee con spese di viaggio coperte da noi. I partecipanti alla rete TRANSEUROPA: Preparano articoli e pezzi d'opinione riguardo vari argomenti politici e culturali, da pubblicare online e nella pubblicazione stampata della rete, intitolata Transeuropa, distribuita gratis in varie città Europee. Creano insieme i concetti per guidare campagne e attività pubbliche per sensibilizzare l'opinione pubblica riguardo proposte specifiche elaborate dalla Network. Organizzano eventi locali per promuovere il lavoro e le idee della rete TRANSEUROPA. Partecipano nell'organizzazione del festival TRANSEUROPA. Perchè Partecipare? La rete TRANSEUROPA è sopratutto una piattaforma per tutti colloro che vogliono collaborare per far emergere una nuova politica, cultura e società europea. La rete riunisce attivisti, professori, e studenti provenienti da tutto il continente nello sviluppo di una nuova politica transnazionale. Potrai beneficiare della diversità dei partecipanti alla rete, con i loro background diversi e la molteplicità di interessi e argomenti trattati. Avrai in più l'opportunità di proporre progetti e argomenti da ricercare; European Alternatives e la rete TRANSUROPA faranno del loro meglio per offrirti la possibilità di portare avanti tali progetti se sono compatibili con le aspirazioni dell'organizzazione. Infine, avrai la possibilità di viaggiare alle varie città della Network. Quanto tempo devo dedicare alla rete TRANSEUROPA? Per diventare membro della rete TRANSEUROPA dovrai poter garantire di partecipare da settembre fino alla fine del mese di maggio 2011. Una volta finito questo periodo rimarrai membro della rete TRANSEUROPA e potrai definire il livello della tua futura partecipazione nel nostro progetto di lavoro. TRANSEUROPA Festival Il festival TRANSEUROPA è un evento transeuropeo che si tiene simultaneamente in diversi paesi durante il mese di maggio 2010. Il festival rappresenta il colmo del lavoro della rete TRANSEUROPA e il momento in cui i discorsi tenuti duranti i mesi precedenti verranno presentati al pubblico. La struttura del festival in ogni città partecipante è flessibile e viene disegnata secondo i contesti delle diverse città e le capacità e risorse dei gruppi locali. Quali argomenti possono essere trattati? Abbiamo una lista di argomenti che senz'altro vogliamo discutere nell'ambito della rete TRANSEUROPA per l'anno 2010. La nuova rete sociale internet TRANSUROPA (in arrivo prossimamente) offrirà la possibilità di proporre nuovi argomenti quando lo si vuole. Argomenti di base Democrazia Transnazionale Include: il concetto della democrazia in Europa e gli stati nazionali, nuovi metodi di partecipazione, il futuro della rappresentanza politica in Europa. Migrazione Include: politica comune europea di asilio e migrazione; centri e campi di detenzione, politica di integrazione, diritti umani Ecologia e Beni Comuni Include: politica ambientalista; beni comuni e l'accesso a servizi di interesse generale; modelli di produzione; giustizia sociale e cambiamento climatico. Media Transnazionale e Pluralismo di Media Include: libertà della stampa e pluralismo dei media, I media europei e lo spazio pubblico, la democratizzazione dell'accesso ai media Egualgianza Include: Legislazione nazionale ed europea riguardo: coppie di fatto, aborto, la parità salariale, ecc. L'immagine dell'uomo e della donna. Sono convinto, ora cosa devo fare? Inivitiamo chi fosse interessato a registrarsi per l'incontro fondativo della rete TRANSEUROPA che si terrà a Londra dal 25 al 26 di Settembre 2010. Per iscriverti alla rete TRANSEUROPA mandaci un'email all'indirizzo seguente delineando gli argomenti che ti interessano d più, e perchè vorresti diventare membro della rete TRANSEUROPA: network@euroalter.com Supported by: Youth in Action
Londres, le 9 décembre Colloque : Linitiative citoyenne européenne
L’INITIATIVE CITOYENNE EUROPEENNE – OÙEN SOMMES-NOUS ? Une innovation majeure du Traité européen de Lisbonne autorise un million de citoyens issus d’un nombre significatif d’États membres de l’Union européenne à demander à la Commission européenne de proposer une nouvelle législation. Elle donne aux citoyens le droit d’influencer directement l’agenda législatif de l’UE. Alternatives Européennes a le plaisir de participer au colloque organisé par la représentation du Parlement européen au RU. Nous présenterons l’idée d’une campagne européenne, ainsi que deux initiatives sur lesquelles nous travaillons actuellement, l’une sur le pluralisme des medias, l’autre sur les droits des homosexuels en Europe. JEUDI, le 9 décembre 2010 de 15 heures à 17 heures Europe House, 32 Smith Square, Westminster, London SW1P 3EU Comité: DIANA WALLIS, Membre du Parlement européen et Vice-président du Parlement européen BERND BIERVERT, Directeur-Adjoint du Cabinet du CommissaireSefkovic ROLF BUECHI du groupe de réflexion IRI – Europe (Initiative, Referendum Institute) LORENZO MARSILI, groupes communautaires d’Alternatives Européennes Des ONG, des académiciens, des élaborateurs de politiques et des forgeurs d’opinions pourront trouver cet évènement intéressant. L’évènement est gratuit et ouvert à tous sur la base du principe du premier arrivé, premier servi. Pour vous inscrire, merci d’envoyer un e-mail à Joanna.zywotko@ext.ec.europa.euavant le 30/11/2010 en indiquant l’intitulé de l’évènement auquel vous souhaitez vous inscrire. Pour plus d’informations, contactez Elisabeth Sweeney. Tél : 0207 227 4328 Cet évènement sera suivi d’un débat sur le prix Sakharov pour les droits de l’homme, également ouvert au public.
London – 9 December – European Citizens’ Initiative seminar
THE EUROPEAN CITIZENS’ INITIATIVE – WHERE DO WE STAND ? A major innovation of the EU Treaty of Lisbon allowing one million citizens from a significant number of EU Member States to ask the European Commission to propose new legislation, allowing citizens the direct right to influence the EU’s legislative agenda. European Alternatives is pleased to be participating in this seminar organised by the European Parliament Representation in the UK. We will present the idea of European campaigning, and present two Initiatives we are currently working on – one on media pluralism and one on gay rights in Europe. THURSDAY, 9 December 2010 from 3 p.m. – 5 p.m. Europe House, 32 Smith Square, Westminster, London SW1P 3EU Panel: DIANA WALLIS, MEP and Vice-President of the European Parliament BERND BIERVERT, Deputy Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Sefkovic ROLF BUECHI of the Think Tank IRI – Europe (Initiative, Referendum Institute) LORENZO MARSILI, European Alternatives Community groups, NGOs, academics, policy and opinion formers may find this event interesting. The event is free and open to all on a first-come first-served basis. To register please email Joanna.zywotko@ext.ec.europa.eu by 30/11/2010 giving the title of the event you are registering for. For further information please contact Elisabeth Sweeney Tel: 0207 227 4328 This event will be followed by a debate on the Sakharov Human Rights Prize which is also open to the public.
Serbian voters chose rightist Nikolic
Vladan MiljkovicSerbian voters decided to change their president. Mr. Tomislav Nikolic succeeded in becoming the new president after defeats in two previous elections against Boris Tadic. The perennial loser finally became a winner. It was quite a shocking defeat for modern Serbian society. For many people, this simply means a suppression of the democratic process in Serbia. Nikolic, as the former head of the Progressive Party, has a controversial political biography. He was vice president of the Serbian Radical Party. He is godfather to the leader of the Radicals who is now standing trial for war crimes at the Hague. During his days in the Radical Party of Serbia, Nikolic had one of the most aggressive approaches against the European Union and was clearly against the European option. Mr. Nikolic has also had an active role during the nineties when he was elected as vice president of the Serbian government, during the time of Milosevic’s regime.In 2008, after two electoral defeats, Nikolic decided to change his political ideology. After forming the Serbian Progressive Party he decided to split from the extreme Radical Party. He stated that he had changed political views and he started to promote European values. After almost one year as part of the opposition he tried to convince Serbian authorities that the country was in need of early elections. When his proposal was rejected, he announced that he would go on a hunger strike. This incident marks only of the many events that highlight Nikolic’s colorful biography. Do people in Serbia believe that Nikolic is a new pro-European leader or did they wanted to punish former president Tadic? This election had the lowest turnout of voters since 2004 (Nikolic won 50.21% of total votes to Tadic’s 46.77%). Tadic won almost 817.467 less votes than during the last elections while Nikolic won almost 675.555 less votes. The former president Tadic, while acting as President of Serbia, was also the president of the Democratic Party, which had a majority in the Serbian Parliament, and in the Serbian Government. The middle class in Serbia felt betrayed, the had expected more. The big numbers are critical. With high levels of unemployment, corruption, failed transition, people grew tired. Serbia is among the four poorest countries in Europe. The standard of life is certainly on the edge for many people. Tadic’s closest associates should feel that they could have contributed more, and could have changed many negative aspects of Serbian society. It is clear that Nikolic has secured victory because people refused to use their vote to support Tadic once more. This is what caused his defeat. Serbia is in the final phase of forming a new government, and Nikolic has stated that he is ready to cooperate with Tadic. This cooperation is crucial for Serbia’s future, for if there is an inability to cooperate between these two opposing sides, Serbia will have a hard time moving forward on its path towards the EU. Many sticky issues await the new government; massive public administration, the pension and tax reforms, and of course, Kosovo. Tadic has done a lot to promote the Serbian reputation in the world, and has built his name as one of the fighters for the European idea. Mr Nikolic, however, does not have the same positioning. While he declares himself as pro-EU, he needs to work hard to create a better image of himself, and to show that he is honest in his intentions and his rhetoric, and that he will maintain his focus on cooperation in the region. He declared that he wants to foster good relations with the EU and with Russia and, for now, he has support from both sides. These elections have shown us that there is a place for a new political option in Serbia, which, if formed, could play an important role in the Serbian pro-European perspective.
Les électeurs serbes choisissent lhomme de droite Nikolic
Par Vladan Miljkovic Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Les électeurs serbes ont décidé de changer leur président. Mr Tomislav Nikolic est parvenu à devenir le nouveau président après avoir échoué lors des deux dernières élections contre Boris Tadic. Le sempiternel perdant est enfin devenu gagnant. Ce fut une défaite surprenante pour la société serbe moderne. Pour beaucoup, cela implique simplement la suppression du processus démocratique en Serbie. Nikolic, en tant qu’ancien chef du parti progressiste, a une biographie politique controversée. Il a été vice président du parti radical serbe. Il est le parrain du chef des radicaux qui est actuellement jugé pour crimes de guerre à La Haye. A l’époque où il faisait partie du parti radical serbe, Nikolic avait l’une des approches les plus agressives contre l’Union européenne et était clairement contre l’option européenne. Mr Nikolic a également joué un rôle actif dans les années 90 lorsqu’il a été élu vice président du gouvernement serbe, pendant le régime de Milosevic. En 2008, après deux défaites électorales, Nikolic a décidé de changer son idéologie politique. Après avoir formé le parti progressiste serbe, il a décidé de se séparer du parti radical extrémiste. Il a déclaré qu’il avait changé d’opinions politiques et il a commencé à promouvoir les valeurs européennes. Après près d’un an en tant que membre de l’opposition, il a tenté de convaincre les autorités serbes que le pays avait besoin d’élections anticipées. Lorsque sa proposition a été rejetée, il a annoncé qu’il entamerait une grève de la faim. Cet incident n’est que l’un des nombreux évènements qui marquent la biographie mouvementée de Nikolic. Les gens en Serbie pensent-ils que Nikolic est un nouveau dirigeant pro-européen ou voulaient-ils punir l’ancien président Tadic ? Ces élections ont obtenu le taux de participation le plus bas depuis 2004 (Nikolic a rassemblé 50,21% des suffrages contre 46,77% pour Tadic). Tadic a remporté près de 817467 de voix de moins que lors des dernières élections alors que Nikolic a gagné près de 675555 de voix en moins. L’ancien président Tadic, lorsqu’il était président serbe, était également président du parti démocratique, qui avait la majorité au Parlement serbe et au gouvernement serbe. La classe moyenne en Serbie s’est sentie trahie, elle s’attendait à plus. Les gros chiffres sont critiques. Avec un taux de chômage élevé, de la corruption, une transition ratée, les gens se sont lassés. La Serbie fait partie des quatre pays les plus pauvres d’Europe. Le niveau de vie est certainement à la limite pour beaucoup de gens. Les associés les plus proches de Tadic devraient avoir le sentiment qu’ils auraient pu contribuer davantage et qu’ils auraient pu changer beaucoup des aspects négatifs de la société serbe. Il est évident que Nikolic a triomphé car les gens ont refusé d’utiliser leur vote pour soutenir Tadic une nouvelle fois. C’est ce qui a causé sa défaite. La Serbie est dans la phase finale de la formation d’un nouveau gouvernement, et Nikolic a déclaré qu’il était prêt à coopérer avec Tadic. Cette coopération est cruciale pour l’avenir de la Serbie, car si une coopération entre les deux parties adverses est impossible, la Serbie aura du mal à avancer sur le chemin en direction de l’UE. Beaucoup de questions délicates attendent le nouveau gouvernement ; une administration publique importante, les retraites et les réformes fiscales et, bien sûr, le Kosovo. Tadic a fait beaucoup pour promouvoir la réputation serbe dans le monde, et s’est fait un nom en tant que partisan de l’idée européenne. Mr Nikolic, en revanche, n’a pas le même positionnement. Bien qu’il se déclare pro-UE, il va devoir travailler dur pour créer une meilleure image de lui-même et pour montrer que son discours et ses intentions sont honnêtes, et qu’il maintiendra son attention sur la coopération dans la région. Il a déclaré qu’il souhaitait encourager de bonnes relations avec l’UE et avec la Russie et que, pour l’instant, il avait le soutien des deux côtés. Ces élections nous ont montré qu’il y avait une place pour une nouvelle option politique en Serbie qui, si elle se forme, pourrait jouer un rôle important dans la perspective pro-européenne de la Serbie.
Suède-Turquie : un nouveau chapitre du génocide arménien
« Patnos, femmes arméniennes de la ville de Van » Photo : haabet2003/Flickr Traduit par Audrey Ubertino « Un peuple qui ignore son passé ne comprendra jamais son présent » (Indro Montanelli) Ces derniers jours, une controverse dont personne ne veut plus parler a été mise en avant. Peut-être par ignorance, par peur, ou simplement pour vivre en paix. Le 11 mars, le Parlement suédois a approuvé, contre la volonté du gouvernement, une motion afin de reconnaître le génocide arménien perpétré par les Turcs en 1915. La résolution est passée avec une seule voix de différence : 131 votes pour et 130 contre. Après cela, une crise diplomatique s’est ouverte entre la Suède et la Turquie. Comme mentionné par le journal local suédois « The Local », le lendemain de la mis en œuvre, l’ambassadeur suédois à Ankara Christer Asp, a été convoqué par le ministre des Affaires étrangères turc, quelques heures seulement après que le Premier ministre turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan ait pris deux décisions importantes : annuler le sommet suédois du 17 mars et renvoyer l’ambassadeur turc, Zergun Korutuk, à Stockholm. Koruturk a déclaré que cette résolution aurait de lourdes conséquences sur leurs relations et a ajouté : « Les députés ne peuvent pas décider s’il y a eu un génocide ou pas. L’Assemblée n’est pas un tribunal. » Le ministre des Affaires étrangères suédois Carl Bild a affirmé que cette motion était une erreur, mais il a ajouté qu’elle ne compromettrait en aucun cas la position positive du gouvernement quant à l’entrée de la Turquie dans l’UE. QUE SIGNIFIE LE GENOCIDE ARMENIEN ? Il s’agit de l’un des génocides les plus oubliés et dont on parle le moins. Hitler l’a cité en exemple, lorsqu’il parlait des projets qu’il avait en tête : « Qui parle encore du génocide arménien ? » L’expression Ermeni Soyk?r?mi(genocide arménien) renvoie à deux évènements précis qui se sont déroulés entre la fin du 19ème siècle et le début du 20ème. Le premier est la campagne contre les Arméniens, perpétuée par le sultan ottoman Abdul Hamid II (1894-1896) ; le second renvoie à la déportation des Arméniens lors de la Première Guerre mondiale, entre 1915 et 1916 (le mot génocide concerne surtout cet évènement). En fait, durant cette période, les Jeunes-Turcs du Comité Union et Progrès ont pris le pouvoir : au départ, ils ont proposé l’égalité et la fraternité, mais ils avaient également besoin d’un hommage au sang. Ils craignaient l’alliance des Arméniens avec les Russes et les Français, qui étaient leurs ennemis : ils aidaient à financer les Arméniens afin de les encourager à se rebeller contre l’Etat républicain en pleine ascension. Ainsi, la nuit du 24 au 25 avril 1915, ils ont commencé à arrêter des Arméniens, en particulier des intellectuels : en seulement une nuit, près de 600 Arméniens ont été tués et, à partir de ce moment-là, ils sont commencé à les envoyer dans les déserts arides de Syrie. En 1919, les principaux responsables ont été condamnés par contumace, car ils s’étaient réfugiés en Allemagne. Avec la Conférence de Paris en 1920, la responsabilité politique du génocide a été imputée à Abdul Hamid II, au triumvirat du Comité Union et Progrès (Talaat, Djemal et Enver) et, enfin, à Ataturk, qui a présenté le génocide comme faisant partie intégrante de son action militaire et politique. Les données officielles font état de près de 1 200 000/1 300 000 victimes. La fin de la guerre, avec le traité de Sèvres, ratifie la création de l’Etat arménien. QUELLE EST LA POSITION DE CEUX QUI NIENT L’EVIDENCE ? Très populaire dans la société moderne, en particulier lorsqu’on parle de l’Holocauste, le négationnisme est le comportement intellectuel de ceux qui utilisent des outils dialectiques afin de nier l’évidence des faits. Leur raison se base sur le fait qu’ils décrivent les Jeunes-Turcs comme de la simple propagande ; ils affirment qu’ils n’ont jamais eu pour projet d’éliminer les Arméniens et, de plus, que ce n’est pas comparable au génocide nazi contre les Juifs lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le gouvernement turc refuse de reconnaître qu’il s’agit d’un génocide, et c’est une forte cause de conflit avec l’UE : le système judiciaire national condamne à la prison quiconque mentionne le génocide en public, pour mauvaise propagande contre le pays ; le prix Nobel de littérature Orhan Pamuk a été condamné pour cela. Taner Akcam est l’historien qui a été le premier à être inculpé pour cette raison, en 1976, écopant de 10 ans de réclusion. La semaine dernière, une chaîne de télévision turque a placé l’Italie dans la liste des 20 pays reconnaissant le génocide arménien mais, plus tard, le gouvernement a nié et a souligné que le Parlement italien avait exprimé, dans une résolution de 2001, que le but du gouvernement était de « dépasser complètement tout conflit entre les différentes populations et minorités, afin de créer des conditions, dans le respect de l’intégrité territoriale des deux Etats (la Turquie et l’Arménie) pour une cohabitation pacifique et une protection appropriée des droits de l’Homme, dans la perspective d’une intégration rapide de la Turquie dans l’Union européenne. » Dans la liste des 20 Etats reconnaissant le génocide arménien, la France a un rôle important puisque, au sein de l’Etat, nier le génocide est un délit. Comme je l’ai déjà indiqué, en vue d’une intégration totale dans l’UE, la Turquie devrait faire face à ses manques et ses erreurs. Il est important d’avoir une opinion personnelle, mais nous ne pouvons pas changer l’Histoire, et chaque Etat doit assumer les responsabilités de son passé. http://inviaggiocongeniuscard.it/progetti/londoners
Sweden-Turkey: a new chapter of the Armenian genocide
“Patnos, Van-Armenian women“. Photo by: haabet2003/Flickr). “People who ignore their past, will never understand their present”. (Indro Montanelli) In the past days came to the fore an argument of which nobody want to talk anymore. Perhaps for ignorance, for fear, or simply to live in peace. On March,11, the Swedish Parliament approved, against the government’s will, a motion to recognize the Armenian genocide made by Turkish in 1915. The resolution passed with just one different vote: 131 votes in favor and 130 against. After this, its opened a diplomatic crisis between Sweden and Turkey. As referred by the Swedish local journal “The Local“, the day after of the implementation, the Swedish ambassador in Ankara Christer Asp, has been convoked by the Turkish Foreign Affair Minister, just few hours after two strong decisions made by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: to cancel the Swedish summit for the 17th of march and to send back the Turkish ambassador in Stokholm, Zergun Koruturk. Koruturk declared that this resolution will have a drastic impact on the relations between them, and added: “Deputies can not decide if there have been a genocide or not. The Assembly is not a court“. Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Bild said that this motion is a mistake, but added that anyway will not compromise the positive position of the government towards the Turkish entry into the EU.WHAT DOES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEANS? It is one of the most forget and discussed. Hitler took it as an example, talking about the projects he had in his mind: “Who is still talking about the Armenian genocide?” The expression Ermeni Soyk?r?mi (Armenian genocide) refers to two specific events which took place between the end of the 19th Century and the start of the 20th. The first is the campaign against Armenians perpetuated by the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II (1894-1896) ; the second refers to the deportation of Armenians of the World War I, between 1915-1916 (the word genocide refers particularly to this event). In fact, in this period the Young Turks of the Committee of Union and Progress, took power: at first, they proposed equality and brotherhood, but they also needed a blood’s tribute. They were scared about the alliance between Armenians with Russians and French, who were they enemy: they were giving their help to fund Armenians, encouraging them to rebel from the rising Republican State. Thus, in the night between 24th and 25th of April 1915, they started to arrest Armenians, especially intellectuals: in just one night around 600 Armenians have been killed, and from that moment, they start to send them in the arid deserts of Syria. In 1919 the principal liables have been condemned in absence, because they were refugee in Germany. With the Paris Conference,1920, the political responsibility of the genocide has been imputed to Abdul Hamid II, to the triumvirate of the Committee of Union and Progress (Talaat, Djemale and Enver) and finally to Ataturk, who posed the genocide as an integral part of his political and military action. Official data attest around 1.200.000/1.300.000 victims. The end of the war, with the Treaty of Sevres, will ratify the born of the Armenian State. WHICH IS THE POSITION OF WHO DENY THE OBVIOUS? Very popular in the modern society, especially talking about the Holocaust, this is the intellectual behavior of who use dialectical instruments to deny the evidence of the facts. Their reason is based on the description of the Young Turks as a simple propaganda; they attest that have never been an actual project to eliminate Armenians, and moreover this is not comparable with the Nazi genocide against Jewish of the War World II. The Turkish government refuse to recognize the fact as a genocide, and this is a strong motivation of clash with the EU: the national judiciary bench punish with prison to whom mention the Armenian genocide in public, with the accuse of a bad propaganda against the country, and also the the Nobel Orhan Pamuk suffered this charge. Taner Akcam is the historian who has been charged the first time for this reason, in 1976, with 10 years of reclusion. Last week a Turkish Televion put Italy in the list of 20 countries which recognize the Armenian genocide, but later the government denied, and underlined that Italian Parliament in a 2001 resolution, expressed government’s goal as a “complete overtaking of any conflict between different population and minorities, to create conditions, respecting the territorial integrity of the two States (Turkey and Armenia) to a pacific cohabitation and a correct protection of human rights, in a perspective of a rapid integration of Turkey into the European Union“. In the list of 20 States which recognize the Armenian genocide, France have an important role: in fact in the State is a criminal offence to deny the genocide. As I previously said, looking forward to a complete integration in the EU, Turkey should face its lacks and mistakes. It is important to have a personal opinion, but we can not change the history, and every State have to adopt all the responsibilities connected to its past. http://inviaggiocongeniuscard.it/progetti/londoners
Svezia-Turchia: un nuovo capitolo sul genocidio armeno
“Patnos, Van- Armenian women“. Photo by: haabet2003/Flickr). “Un popolo che ignora il proprio passato non saprà mai nulla del proprio presente“. (Indro Montanelli) Negli ultimi giorni è tornato alla ribalta un argomento di cui non si vuole più parlare. Forse per ignoranza, per paura, oppure per il semplice quieto vivere. Il giorno 11 marzo il parlamento svedese ha approvato, contro il volere del governo, una mozione che riconosce come genocidio il massacro armeno del 1915 da parte dei turchi. La risoluzione è passata per un solo voto di differenza: 131 favorevoli e 130 contrari, con 4 deputati di maggioranza che hanno disatteso le direttive governative. A seguito del fatto, si è aperta una crisi diplomatica tra Svezia e Turchia. Come riferito dal quotidiano locale svedese “The Local“, il giorno successivo l’ambasciatore svedese nella sede di Ankara, Christer Asp, è stato convocato dal ministro degli Esteri turco, poche ore dopo che il premier turco Recep Tayyip Erdogan esprimesse due forti decisioni: quella di annullare il summit previsto in Svezia per il 17 marzo e quella di richiamare in patria, fino a data da definirsi, l’ambasciatore turco a Stoccolma, Zergun Koruturk. Quest’ultimo ha affermato che questa risoluzione avrà un impatto drastico sulle relazioni tra i due paesi, dichiarando: “non è un lavoro da deputati decidere se c’è stato o meno un genocidio“. Il ministro degli Esteri svedese Carl Bildt ha definito questa mozione un errore, ma ha aggiunto che in ogni caso non comprometterà la posizione favorevole del governo all’entrata della Turchia nell’UE. MA COSA SI INTENDE PER GENOCIDIO ARMENO? È uno dei genocidi più dimenticati e più discussi. Hitler lo prendeva da esempio parlando dei progetti che aveva in mente: “chi parla ancora oggi del genocidio degli armeni?“. Parlando di Ermeni Soyk?r?m? (genocidio armeno) ci si riferisce a due eventi specifici avvenuti tra la fine dell’800 e l’inizio del 900. Il primo è la campagna contro gli armeni perpetuata dal sultano ottomano Abdul-Hamid II (1894-1896); il secondo la deportazione degli armeni tra il 1915-1916 (il termine “genocidio” si riferisce particolarmente a questo episodio). Proprio in questo periodo infatti, i Giovani Turchi del Comitato Unione e Progresso, avevano spodestato l’impero ottomano: inizialmente proposero uguaglianza e fraternità, ma si richiedeva un tributo di sangue. Si temeva che gli armeni potessero allearsi con i russi, di cui erano nemici; inoltre sia l’esercito russo che quello francese, avevano cominciato ad appoggiare o finanziare gli armeni, incitandoli alla rivolta contro il nascente Stato repubblicano. Così nella notte tra il 24 e il 25 aprile 1915 cominciarono gli arresti, specialmente di intellettuali: in una sola notte ci furono circa 600 vittime; da questo momento cominciarono le deportazioni verso gli aridi deserti della Siria e della Mesopotamia settentrionale. Nel 1919 i principali responsabili vennero condannati in contumacia, perché rifugiati in Germania. Con la Conferenza di Parigi del 1920, la responsabilità politica dello sterminio si attribuirà a Abdul Hamid II, al triumvirato del Comitato Unione e Progresso (Talaat, Djemale ed Enver) e infine a Ataturk, il quale pose il massacro come aspetto integrante della sua azione politica e militare. Le cifre ufficiali attestano tra 1.200.000/1.300.000 vittime. La fine della guerra, con il trattato di Sèvres, sancirà la nascita di uno Stato armeno. QUAL’E’ LA POSIZIONE DEI NEGAZIONISTI? Il negazionismo, molto in voga, purtoppo, anche nei confronti dell’Olocausto, è un atteggiamento storico culturale che fa uso di strumenti dialettici per negare l’evidenza dei fatti. La loro motivazione si basa sul descrivere le azioni dei Giovani Turchi come mera propaganda; si afferma che non è mai esistito un progetto concreto di sterminio, né un piano sistematico di eliminazione, e inoltre che il fatto non sia certo paragonabile allo sterminio nazista contro gli ebrei della Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Il governo turco si rifiuta di riconoscerlo come genocidio, e questa è una forte causa di attriti con l’UE: la magistratura del paese, inoltre, punisce con il carcere chi nomini in pubblico l’esistenza del genocidio, per propaganda anti-patriottica: lo stesso premio nobel Orhan Pamuk ha subìto questa condanna. Taner Akcam fu lo storico che per primo si permise di parlare in pubblico dell’argomento, e venne arrestato nel 1976 e condannato a 10 anni di reclusione. La scorsa settimana un’ emittente turca ha inserito l’Italia nella lista dei 20 paesi che riconoscono la questione armena come genocidio, ma il governo ha successivamente smentito, ricordando che il Parlamento italiano, in una risoluzione del 2001, ha impegnato il governo a “adoperarsi per il completo superamento di ogni contrapposizione tra popoli e minoranze diverse nell’area al fine di creare le condizioni, nel rispetto dell’integrità territoriale dei due Stati (Turchia e Armenia), per la pacifica convivenza e la corretta tutela dei diritti umani nella prospettiva di una rapida integrazione della Turchia e dell’intera regione dell’Unione Europea“. Nella lista dei 20 paesi che riconoscono il genocidio armeno, spicca il nome della Francia, Stato in cui è considerato reato la negazione del genocidio. Come ho già affermato precedentemente, in vista di un’entrata a pieno titolo nell’UE, la Turchia deve affrontare i propri errori e le proprie carenze. Si può sempre avere un opinione, ma non si può cambiare la storia, e ogni paese deve assumersi le responsabilità del proprio passato.
Bienvenue dans lexplorateur dactivités locales
Traduction de Stéphanie Klaczynski Nous avons créé l’explorateur d’activités localespour que vous puissiez savoir quels autres groupes travaillent sur les sujets pour lesquels votre groupe est impliqué. Cela vous permettra également d’explorer les activités dans lesquelles les membres de votre groupe pourraient s’engager avec des membres d’autres groupes. Cela vous aidera à trouver les groupes qui ont les aptitudes dont vous avez besoin pour votre activité. Plus important, il vous permettra d’identifier les groupes locaux qui travaillent sur les sujets ou le type d’activités sur lesquels vous souhaiteriez collaborer pour le festival. Essayer l’explorateur d’activités locales Comment utiliser cet outil ? Voir la présentation d’utilisation de cet outil. Explorateur d’activités localesde Noel Hatch Si vous souhaitez ajouter une nouvelle activité que votre groupe organisera bientôt ou que vous prévoyez pour le festival, remplissez simplement le formulaire sur http://bit.ly/newlocalactivities. Les activités ajoutées à ce formulaire seront ajoutées à l’explorateur d’activités locales. Si vous avez des suggestions d’amélioration, faites le moi savoir ! Pour toute question, contactez n.hatch@euroalter.com.
Welcome to the Local Activities Explorer
We have created the Local Activities Explorer so that you can see what other groups are working on the issues your group cares about. We have now also created the Festival Activities Explorer which shows exclusively activities proposed for the next festival. It will also enable you to explore what activities members of your group could get involved in with members from other groups. It will help you find groups who’ve got the skills that you need for your activity.Most importantly, it will enable you to identify which local groups are working on the issues or types of activities that you would like to collaborate on for the festival. This is a working progress and future activities will be added as groups developed them. Try the Festival Activities Explorer Try the Local Activities Explorer How can you use this tool?See the presentation which describes how you can use this tool. Local Activities Explorer from Noel Hatch If you want to add a new activity that your group is organising soon or that you are planning for the festival, just fill in the form at http://bit.ly/newlocalactivities. Activities that you add to this form will then be added to the Local Activities Explorer.If you have any suggestions on how to improve this, do let me know! Any questions, contact n.hatch@euroalter.com.
La Commissione severa e giusta rispetto all’adesione croata?
Foto: FlickrAlessandro Polvani La questione dell’adesione croata all’Unione sembra essere giunta ad un punto di blocco. La Commissione ha richiesto recentemente un “raddoppio degli sforzi” su tre questioni considerate cruciali per permettere l’adesione croata, per la quale le negoziazioni dovrebbero concludersi il prossimo Giugno: si tratta della collaborazione del governo croato in materia di crimini di guerra, di lotta alla corruzione, e in relazione a ciò, della riforma della giustizia. Quali sono i progressi che possiamo attenderci in questo senso? In materia di riforma della giustizia, un’opinione congiunta delle organizzazioni rappresentanti la società civile croata, emanata a metà febbraio, esprime preoccupazione sulla possibilità che il capitolo negoziale 23 “Diritti fondamentali e magistratura” possa essere chiuso prima che effettive riforme siano attuate. Delle riforme urgenti sono richieste sia sotto il profilo della lotta alla corruzione, per la quale sono richiesti sostanziali progressi, che sotto il profilo di una riforma del sistema giudiziario, Tra le organizzazioni che hanno elaborato questo rapporto figura la sezione croata di Transparency International, il principale think-tank europeo attivo nel campo della lotta alla corruzione. Le conclusioni rivelano come questo problema abbia enormi dimensioni in Croazia, come dimostrato anche dalle recenti manifestazioni di piazza. Purtroppo, queste problematiche sono condivise da Romania e Bulgaria, le quali hanno ultimato il loro processo di adesione nel 2007, e che secondo il rapporto indipendente pubblicato da Transparency, hanno realizzato nel 2010 un indice di percezione della corruzione ben peggiore rispetto a quello della Croazia. Per quanto riguarda l’altro campo che ha attirato critiche da parte della Commissione, quello della riforma del sistema giudiziario, sono necessari progressi per quanto riguarda l’autonomia della magistratura dal potere esecutivo. Anche se una nuova legislazione più garantista è stata approvata, lo scorso gennaio 57 giudici sono stati frettolosamente nominati prima che la nuova procedura entrasse in vigore, a dimostrazione della scarsa volontà della classe politica di introdurre effettive e sostanziali riforme. Da notare anche il fatto che i giudici costituzionali sono tuttora nominati con un semplice voto parlamentare (in Romania ciò non avviene più dal 2003; in Bulgaria solo un terzo dei giudici costituzionali è nominato secondo questo metodo). La considerazione per cui, per molti aspetti, la tutela dei diritti civili non è peggiore in Croazia rispetto ad altre realtà comunitarie, come quella bulgara e romena, può spingere a sostenere un’adesione prematura della Croazia, grazie ad una fuorviante argomentazione per cui, se Romania e Bulgaria sono state ammesse pur non avendo oggettivamente completato il loro percorso di riforme, anche la Croazia dovrebbe esserlo. Riteniamo che questo tipo di ragionamento provochi una sorta di “livellamento verso il basso” della condizione dei diritti civili in Europa, nonché una sorta di “Europa a due velocità” sotto questo punto di vista. È importante notare come questa attenzione che l’UE deve legittimamente prestare alle scelte dei paesi candidati non è identificabile come inutile pedanteria o maniacale attenzione ai dettagli. L’Europa ha un grande potere, quello di influenzare, tramite i meccanismi insiti all’adesione, il cambiamento nei paesi che si candidano alla membership. Questo potere, noto come europeizzazione, può consentire alla Croazia di fare grandi passi in materia di libertà civili. È tuttavia necessaria un’intransigenza quanto al rispetto dei criteri indicati per i singoli capitoli negoziali.
Sévère mais juste ? Lapproche de la Commission face à ladhésion de la Croatie
Par Alessandro Polvani Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Photo : Flickr Les négociations pour l’adhésion de la Croatie à l’Union européenne devraient être conclues en juin prochain, mais le sujet semble être au point mort. La Commission a récemment demandé à ce que l’Etat redouble d’efforts, afin de répondre à certains critères, à savoir sa coopération en matière de crimes de guerre et des efforts dans la lutte contre la corruption, qui est évidemment liée à une réforme judiciaire. Ces questions sont considérées comme cruciales dans la décision d’autoriser l’adhésion de la Croatie à l’Union. Quels sont les progrès auxquels nous pouvons nous attendre à cet égard ? En ce qui concerne la réforme judiciaire, les organisations qui représentent la société civile croate ont publié une déclaration commune mi-février. Elles se sont dites préoccupées par le fait que la négociation du chapitre 23, qui concerne « le pouvoir judiciaire et les droits fondamentaux », pourrait se conclure avant que des réformes efficaces soient mises en place. Des réformes urgentes qui relèvent des deux catégories sont exigées : le combat contre la corruption, qui exige d’importants progrès ; et la restructuration du système judiciaire. La filiale croate de Transparency International – le principal groupe de réflexion européen qui opère dans le domaine de la lutte contre la corruption – fait partie des organisations qui ont rédigé un rapport détaillé sur le sujet. Les conclusions ont révélé d’importantes implications de corruption en Croatie, un problème évident au vu des manifestations locales. Malheureusement, ces problèmes sont également importants en Roumanie et en Bulgarie, qui ont achevé le processus d’adhésion en 2007. De plus, le rapport indépendant publié par Transparency International suggère que l’Indice de perception de la corruption 2010 dans ces deux pays était pire que celui de la Croatie. En ce qui concerne la restructuration du système judiciaire, qui a également attiré les critiques de la Commission, nous pouvons dire que des progrès sont nécessaires afin de s’assurer que les magistrats opèrent avec plus d’indépendance vis-à-vis des organes exécutifs. Bien qu’une nouvelle législation défendant les libertés civiles ait été approuvée, 57 juges ont été nommés à la hâte en janvier dernier, avant que la nouvelle procédure ne soit entrée en vigueur. C’est un signe que la classe politique manque d’enthousiasme quant à une réforme efficace et substantielle. Il est également important de noter que les juges constitutionnels sont toujours nommés par un simple vote parlementaire (en Roumanie, cela n’est pas arrivé depuis 2003, alors qu’en Bulgarie, seul un tiers des juges constitutionnels sont sélectionnés de cette manière). En gardant cela à l’esprit, nous pouvons considérer que, sous de nombreux aspects, la sauvegarde des droits civils en Croatie n’est pas pire que les réalités de certaines aires communautaires, comme celles de la Bulgarie et de la Roumanie. Il est donc logique que la Croatie entre prématurément dans l’Union grâce à cet argument trompeur : si la Roumanie et la Bulgarie ont été admises sans avoir objectivement achevé leur processus de réforme, alors cela devrait également être le cas pour la Croatie. Nous maintenons que ce type de logique entraîne une baisse de la condition des droits civils européens et, ainsi, soutient une Europe « à deux vitesses ». Il est important de noter que l’attention que l’UE doit légitimement porter à ses choix de pays candidats ne peut être qualifiée de pédanterie inutile ou d’attention obsessive aux détails. L’Europe a un grand pouvoir : grâce aux mécanismes inhérents au processus d’adhésion, elle peut influencer les changements dans les pays qui sont candidats à l’adhésion. Ce pouvoir, connu sous le nom d’européanisation, peut permettre à la Croatie de faire d’énormes progrès en termes de liberté civile. Il est cependant nécessaire d’être rigoureux lors de la conception de critères indicatifs pour chaque chapitre de négociation.
Firm but Fair? The Commissions approach to Croatian Accession
Photo: Flickr Article by Alessandro Polvani Translation by Danielle Moodie The negotiations for Croatian accession to the European Union should be concluded by next June, but the matter seems to have come to a standstill. The Commission recently requested that the State double its efforts to meet certain criteria, namely, its cooperation in matters of war crimes and its endeavours in the fight against corruption, which is of course related to judicial reform. These issues are considered crucial in the decision to allow Croatia’s accession to the Union. What progress can we expect in this regard? As far as judicial reform is concerned, organisations which represent Croatian civil society issued a joint statement in mid-February. They expressed concern that the negotiation of chapter 23, which refers to “judiciary and fundamental rights”, could be concluded before effective reforms are set in motion. Urgent reforms falling under both categories are demanded: the fight against corruption, which requires substantial progress; and the restructuring of the judicial system. The Croatian branch of Transparency International – the main European think-tank operating in the field of anti-corruption – has been among the organizations detailing a report on the matter. Its conclusions reveal the huge implications of corruption in Croatia, a problem which is evident given local protests. Unfortunately, these issues are also prominent in Romania and Bulgaria who completed the accession process in 2007. Moreover, the independent report published by Transparency suggests that the 2010 Corruption Perception Index in both these countries was worse than that of Croatia. With regards to the restructuring of the judicial system, which has also attracted criticism from the Commission, it can be said that progress is required to ensure that the magistrate operates with more independence from executive bodies. Although new legislation advocating civil liberties was approved, 57 judges were hastily appointed last January, before the new procedure came into force. This is an indication that the political class lacks enthusiasm for effective and substantial reform. It is also worth noting that the constitutional judges are still appointed using a simple parliamentary vote (in Romania this has not happened since 2003; whilst in Bulgaria only a third of constitutional judges are selected in this way). Bearing this in mind, it can be considered that, by some accounts, the safeguard of civil rights in Croatia is no worse than the realities of some community areas, such as Bulgaria and Romania. It therefore stands to reason that Croatia could enter the Union prematurely thanks to this misleading argument: if Romania and Bulgaria have been admitted despite not having objectively completed their reform process, then this should also be the case for Croatia. We maintain that this kind of logic induces the condition of European civil rights to be lowered, and as such supports a “two-speed” Europe. It is important to note that the attention that the EU must rightfully lend to its choice of candidate countries cannot be branded futile pedantry or obsessive attention to detail. Europe has a great power: through the mechanisms inherent in the accession process it can influence change within the countries who apply for membership. This power, known as Europeanization, can permit Croatia to make great advances in terms of civil liberty. It is, however, necessary to be rigorous when setting out the indicative criteria for each negotiation chapter.
La hausse des prix de lalimentation va-t-elle conduire à une réforme significative de la PAC cette année ?
Par Sam Logan Traduit par Audrey Ubertino L’augmentation des prix de l’alimentation s’annonce comme la pomme de discorde principale dans le monde en 2011. Au cours de la semaine dernière, des émeutes ont éclaté en Algérie, déclenchées par une forte augmentation soudaine des prix des aliments de base, et l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO) a publié des chiffres qui montrent que les prix des produits alimentaires de base ont atteint des niveaux record en décembre, dépassant de loin les niveaux qui ont déclenché des troubles sociaux généralisés dans plusieurs pays en 2008. Les raisons évoquées quant à l’augmentation des prix comprennent les spéculateurs qui achètent de grandes quantités de marchandises, le marché en plein essor des biocarburants, l’augmentation de la population mondiale et l’augmentation du pouvoir d’achat dans la plupart des pays en voie de développement. Dans un monde où des millions de personnes en Chine, en Inde et ailleurs échappent (de manière admirable) à la pauvreté tous les ans et peuvent se permettre de s’offrir des repas de qualité (ce qui généralement signifie plus de viande), cela implique une pression toujours croissante sur les ressources. La combinaison de ces facteurs a incité la FAO à avertir que les prix élevés sont là pour durer. La peur d’une famine généralisée, déclenchée par des produits alimentaires de base de moins en moins abordables, a mené les gouvernements chinois et indien à imposer des interdictions d’exporter certains produits. Heureusement, le prix du riz est resté relativement stable, ce qui permet de s’assurer que les pauvres au niveau mondial ne sont pas (encore) touchés aussi durement qu’en 2008. La France, qui dirige actuellement le G20, fera du sujet des prix de l’alimentation une priorité lors du sommet à Paris, les 27 et 28 janvier, et les représentants chercheront des solutions afin de maintenir les prix de l’alimentation à un faible niveau. Outre la probabilité que les travailleurs européens pauvres vont devoir dépenser une part plus élevée de leurs revenus dans l’alimentation, (tout en s’inquiétant de la stagnation ou du déclin des salaires et des perspectives sombres du marché du travail), l’approvisionnement et les prix de l’alimentation (plus spécifiquement, comment l’UE intervient-elle pour les influencer) seront d’actualité pour une autre raison cette année, puisque la future direction de la Politique agricole commune doit être établie en milieu d’année. Le contexte probable d’augmentation des prix va compliquer la tâche des législateurs de justifier le fait que les subventions du secteur agricole s’élèvent à 43% du budget de l’UE. La semaine dernière, Caroline Spellman, la ministre de l’Environnement britannique, s’est exprimée en faveur d’un remaniement drastique de la PAC, en affirmant aux agriculteurs présents lors d’une importante conférence des industries majeures qu’il est « temps de faire des progrès significatifs pour la réduction de notre dépendance aux paiements directs » et que « l’augmentation de la demande mondiale de nourriture et l’augmentation des prix de l’alimentation rendent possible la réduction des subventions et le projet de leur abolition. » D’après plusieurs analystes, la PAC est aujourd’hui incontestablement obsolète. Neil Thurnock, journaliste impliqué dans le projet de subventions agricoles, soutient que la PAC est née de circonstances spéciales au début des années d’après-guerre, lors d’une sévère pénurie de production alimentaire en Europe. Depuis que la politique a été mise en place, l’agriculture est devenue extrêmement mécanisée, la population continue de quitter la campagne pour des zones urbaines, l’offre de nourriture dépasse la demande de manière significative et beaucoup moins de sources de revenu sont soutenues par la PAC, bien qu’elle continue de représenter près de la moitié du budget de l’UE. Des recherches menées par farmsubsidy.com montrent que la majorité des subventions de la PAC finissent dans les mains de riches propriétaires terriens, dont les membres de la famille royale britannique sont les destinataires. Dans un monde où le nombre de personnes sous-alimentées a doublé en dix ans, (d’après…), malgré l’augmentation du niveau de vie pour des millions d’autres, atteindre la sécurité alimentaire mondiale devrait être un principe central de la réforme européenne sur la politique alimentaire, et la PAC devrait y contribuer. Que la PAC, dans sa forme actuelle, contribue ou non à l’augmentation des prix de l’alimentation fait l’objet de controverses. La Commission soutient que cette politique a moins d’effets de distorsion que les subventions américaines, et qu’elle n’affecte pas les prix à l’échelle mondiale. Cependant, il est discutable qu’en maintenant artificiellement les prix bas pour les consommateurs en Europe, la politique fait la promotion de la surconsommation, qui mène à un gaspillage massif. De plus, si le bétail est nourri de soja et de céréales importés, le prix de ces marchandises est plus élevé dans les pays développés, et une grande partie de cette viande est alors perdue. Il est cependant évident que la politique alimentaire de l’UE ne contrôle pas suffisamment le gaspillage de nourriture et n’aide pas à atteindre la sécurité alimentaire mondiale. D’après certaines estimations, jusqu’à la moitié de la nourriture produite en Europe est jetée chaque année (ZeroWasteEuope propose des statistiques particulièrement choquantes sur son site). Peut-être que, parmi les solutions, se trouve un changement de culture en occident, loin de la tolérance vis-à-vis de la nourriture gaspillée, et la politique alimentaire de l’UE devrait pouvoir réduire le gaspillage alimentaire de manière drastique. Outre le gaspillage alimentaire, il n’est guère indiqué de subventionner la production de viande et de produits laitiers, qui est bien plus intensive que la culture de céréales et de légumes, et qui fait monter le prix des marchandises de base. De plus, étant donné que la production des produits laitiers et de la viande est responsable de près de 20% des émissions de gaz à effet de serre en Europe, réduire leur consommation pourrait aider à respecter les engagements de l’UE concernant la réduction des émissions de dioxyde de carbone. Bien sûr, la réduction de ces subventions aurait pour effet de rendre ces produits plus chers pour les consommateurs et serait ainsi politiquement difficile, mais si le compromis était une réduction conséquente de la somme injectée…
Will the rising cost of food lead to meaningful reform of CAP this year?
Article by: Sam Logan The escalating cost of food looks set to be a major bone of contention around the world in 2011. In the past week, riots have broken out in Algeria, triggered by a sudden steep increase in the price of basic foodstuffs, and the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization published figures which show that the price of basic food commodities hit record highs in December, rocketing above the levels which triggered widespread social unrest in a number of countries in 2008. Reasons cited for increased prices include speculators buying up large quantities of commodities, the booming biofuels market, the rising global population and rising purchasing power in much of the developing world. In a world where millions of people in China, India and elsewhere (laudably) escape poverty every year, and can afford to eat higher quality meals (which typically means more meat), this naturally means an ever increasing strain on resources. The combination of these factors has prompted the FAO to warn that higher prices are here to stay. Fear of widespread hunger triggered by increasingly unaffordable basic food commodities has led the governments of China and India to impose export bans on certain foods. Fortunately, the price of rice has remained relatively stable, ensuring that the world’s poor have not (yet) been as badly hit as in 2008. France, which currently leads the G20, will make the topic of food prices a priority at a summit in Paris on the 27th and 28th of January, and representatives will look at ways to keep the price of food down. Aside from the likelihood that Europe’s working poor will have to shell out a higher proportion of their incomes on food, (while worrying about stagnant or declining wages and a bleak job market), the supply and price of food (specifically, how the E.U. intervenes to influence them) will be topical for another reason this year, as the future direction of the Common Agricultural Policy is due to be determined in the middle of the year. The likely context of rising prices may make it harder for policymakers to justify the subsidy of the agricultural sector taking up 43% of the E.U.s budget. Caroline Spellman, the UK Environment Secretary, last week, came out in favour of a drastic overhaul of the CAP, telling farmers attending a major industry conference that “Now is the time to make very significant progress towards reducing our reliance on direct payments,” , and that “Rising global demand for food and rising food prices make it possible to reduce subsidies and plan for their abolition.” According to many analysts, the CAP now looks distinctly out-dated. Neil Thurnock, a journalist who is involved in the Farm Subsidy project argues that the CAP arose out of special circumstances in the early post-war era, when there was a severe shortage of food production in Europe. Since the policy was first implemented, farming has become massively mechanised, people continued to leave the countryside for urban areas, the supply of food significantly exceeds demand, and far fewer livelihoods are supported by the CAP, despite its continuing to take up nearly half of the E.U. Budget. Research done by farmsubsidy.org suggests that the majority of CAP subsidies ends up in the hands of wealthy landowners, with members of the British royal family among recipients. In a world in which the number of people who are underfed has doubled in a decade, (according to…), despite the increased living standards for millions of others, achieving global food security should be a central tenet of the reform of Europe’s food policy, and the CAP should contribute towards it. Whether or not the CAP in its current form contributes to rising food prices is a moot point. The Commission argues that it is far less market distorting than American subsidies, and doesn’t affect global prices. However, it is arguable that by keeping prices for consumers artificially low in Europe, the policy promotes overconsumption leading to massive wastage. Furthermore, if livestock is fed on imported soy and grain, the price of these commodities is higher in the developing world, and much of this meat is then wasted. It is clear however, that EU food policy doesn’t adequately control food wastage, and doesn’t help achieve global food security. According to some estimates, as much as half of the food produced in Europe every year is thrown away (ZeroWasteEurope have some particularly shocking statistics on their site). Perhaps, among the solutions could be a culture shift in the West away from the tolerance of wasted food, and EU food policy should be capable of drastically reducing food wastage. Aside from wastage, it makes little sense to subsidize meat and dairy production, which is farmore intensive than the cultivation of grains and vegetables, and pushes up the price of basic commodities. Furthermore, as dairy and meat are responsible for as much as 20% of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, cutting down their consumption could help to fulfil the EU’s commitments to carbon emissions reduction. Of course, cutting these subsidies would have the effect of making these products more expensive for consumers and thus would be politically difficult, but if the trade-off was a substantial reduction in the amount of money funnelled into the CAP, and cheaper basic commodities, much of the public might be in favour of it.. The potential severity of the international context may function as a reminder to European policymakers that the Common Agricultural Policy has significant ramifications beyond Europe, and that these ramifications cannot be swept under the carpet. CAP was set up to solve a (then) critical issue of a food supply shortage (in Europe) and poor living conditions for Europe’s farmers. Hopefully reform will be tailored to solve the pressing problems of today. In 2011, when the availability and cost of food is likely to be a pressing issue globally, hopefully meeting the world’s food requirements will be a more important consideration than the perpetuation of the direct subsidy of landowners and farmers, which too often benefits the already…
La FEJ prévient la Hongrie des menaces à lencontre des médias tandis que le Parlement vote une nouvelle loi
Photo : Youssef Hanna Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Aujourd’hui, la Fédération européenne des Journalistes s’est jointe aux membres du Parlement européen pour s’opposer à un nouveau projet de loi sur les médias, actuellement en cours au Parlement hongrois, dont le but est de créer une instance dirigeante pour les médias du pays, de telle manière que les journalistes prétendent que cela va ébranler la liberté de la presse. « Cette loi attire les médias sous l’emprise d’une instance dont l’autorité et la légitimité sont discutables. Ses pouvoirs sur l’éventail complet des médias hongrois représentent une sérieuse menace au droit de l’Homme fondamental de la liberté d’expression », a affirmé le Secrétaire général de la FEJ, Aidan White. « De plus, elle prévoit de lourdes amendes pour les médias qui ne respectent pas certains « principes », dictés par l’agenda politique. » Selon l’ébauche actuelle du projet de loi, un nouveau Conseil des médias, qui agira en tant qu’instance dirigeante suprême nommée par le gouvernement, aura le pouvoir de condamner les journaux à une amende pouvant aller jusqu’à 25 millions de forints (89 000 €) et 10 millions pour les sites d’actualités, alors que les chaînes de télévision et les stations de radio pourraient être condamnées à une amende allant jusqu’à 360 000 € pour ne pas fournir une « couverture équilibrée » ou pour ne pas fournir « la demande minimum d’informations » et « le respect de l’institution du mariage et de la famille. » De telles sanctions pourraient même être imposées sans passer devant les tribunaux. S’il est adopté sous sa forme actuelle, avec les restrictions qui doivent être mises en place par les autorités en charge des médias, la FEJ affirme que le projet de loi viole le droit constitutionnel de la liberté d’expression et, au lieu du tribunal, limite ces droits à un cadre qui doit être déterminé uniquement par le jugement des autorités en charge des médias. Aujourd’hui, les dirigeants de l’Intergroupe média du Parlement européen ont également envoyé une lettre au Président du Parlement européen, afin d’exprimer leurs préoccupations quant à la situation des médias en Hongrie. La FEJ, sa filiale hongroise MUOSZ et d’autres groupes de la société civile en Hongrie et ailleurs, ont appelé le gouvernement hongrois à revoir le projet de loi et à soutenir les institutions européennes pour l’application complète du traité de Lisbonne, qui inclut des références aux droits fondamentaux tels que la liberté de la presse. Pour plus d’informations, contactez la FEJ au +32 2 235 2215 La FEJ représente plus de 250 000 journalistes dans plus de 30 pays européens.
EFJ Warns Hungary Over Threats to Media as Parliament Votes on New Law
Photo by: Youssef Hanna The European Federation of Journalists today joined with Members of the European Parliament in opposing a new media bill currently at the Hungarian Parliament which aims to create a governing body for the country’s media in a process that journalists claim will undermine press freedom. “This law draws the media under the power of a body whose authority and legitimacy are questionable. Its powers over the whole spectrum of the Hungarian media represent a serious threat to the fundamental human right of the freedom of expression,” said EFJ General Secretary Aidan White. “Moreover it foresees heavy fines for media which do not respect certain ‘principles’ dictated by the political agenda”. Under the current draft of the bill a newly formed Media Council, which will act as a supreme governing body nominated by the government, will have the power to fine newspapers up to 25 million forints (EUR 89,000) and news websites 10 million, whereas TV and radio stations could be fined between up to around 360.000 Euro for failing to provide “balanced coverage”, or failing to provided “minimum demand of information” and “respect of the institution of marriage and family.” Such penalties may be imposed even without litigation in the courts. If adopted in its present form, with the restrictions to be brought to effect by the media authorities, the EFJ says the Bill violates the constitutional right to the free expression of opinion, and – instead of the court – constrains these rights into frameworks to be determined only by the judgment of the media authorities. Today the leaders of the Media Intergroup of the European Parliament also sent a letter to the President of the European Parliament to express their concerns over the media situation in Hungary. The EFJ, its affiliate in Hungary MUOSZ and other civil society groups in and outside Hungary, call on the Hungarian Government to review the draft law and support European institutions for the full enforcement of the Lisbon Treaty which includes references to fundamental rights such as press freedom. For more information contact the EFJ at +32 2 235 2215 The EFJ represents over 250,000 journalists in over 30 European countries
Alternatives Européennes soutient Macao, le nouveau centre des Arts occupé à Milan
Traduit par Pierre Leroy Le samedi 5 mai, de nombreux citoyens et employés dans le domaine des arts, du divertissement et de la culture sont entrés et occupent depuis la tour Galfa avec pour objectif d’y créer Macao, le nouveau centre des arts de Milan. Alternatives Européennes soutient Macao et répond à cet appel contre la menace d’expulsion. Macao appartient à tous, protégeons-le ! La tour appartient au groupe d’assurance italien Fondiaria Sai contrôlé par la famille Ligresti. Elle est située dans un immeuble de bureaux historique dans le centre de Milan abandonné depuis plus de 15 ans. De manière remarquable, les milliers de personnes qui ont participé à la création de ce nouvel espace dédié aux arts travaillent depuis une semaine pour rendre cet endroit habitable et visible. Nous sommes nombreux à nous rendre tous les jours à Macao pour partager nos intentions et notre vision des choses, permettant à une toute nouvelle perspective sur la création d’un centre des arts et de la culture en ville de se former. Nous recevons de nombreuses demandes d’académiciens, d’universités et d’intellectuels qui souhaitent participer au projet de Macao, en partageant leurs connaissances, fournissant leurs propres moyens de production, transportant des classes et des ateliers dans un espace qui peu à peu devient le centre ultime de la beauté et de l’enrichissement culturel. Nous considérons que ce processus de participation que nous pratiquons tous avec émerveillement et enthousiasme peut véritablement constituer la naissance d’une nouvelle perspective ainsi qu’une façon de repenser la culture, notamment à notre époque où la culture elle-même est trop souvent considérée comme étant d’importance secondaire. En effet, la crise généralisée nous empêche d’imaginer un avenir où l’on aurait toutes nos chances. Au contraire, nous estimons que Macao démontre avec force, ténacité et de manière visionnaire, un autre concept de pensée sur les relations de pouvoir et une autre façon de comprendre les moments de la vie. Et ce courant de pensée se propage. Il est dit que la menace d’une expulsion immédiate est très forte, et que nous ne devrions pas laisser ce processus extraordinaire aux mains de la logique de la répression policière. NOUS DEMANDONS A CHACUN D’ENTRE NOUS : TOUS LES CITOYENS, ARTISTES ET INTELLECTUELS, DE PARTAGER ET DE REPANDRE CET APPEL POUR PROTEGER MACAO. Envoyez un e-mail à l’adresse suivante : proteggiamomacao@gmail.compour signer cet appel au soutien.
European Alternatives supports Macao, new occupied arts center in Milan
On saturday May the 5th many citizens and workers in the fields of arts, entertainment and culture entered and occupied the tower Galfa, in order to create Macao, the new arts center in Milan.European Alternatives supports Macao and joins this appeal against the threat of eviction. Macao belongs to everyone, let’s protect it! The tower is owned by Fondiaria Sai whose honorary reference is Ligresti. The tower is located in a historic office skyscraper in the centrum of Milan, which has been left abandoned for more than fifteen years. In an extraordinary way, the creation of a new space for arts involved thousands of people, that since one week are working hard to make this space livable and visible. A lot of us every day come to Macao and experience the sharing of purposes and vision, which is letting emerge a brand new perspective about the creation of an arts and culture center in the city. We are receiving numerous requests, by academies, universities and intellectuals that want to participate to this project in Macao, by sharing their knowledge, providing their own means of production, carrying whole classes and workshops in a space that, increasingly, is emerging as an ultimate imaginable situation of beauty and cultural enrichment. We believe that this process of participation that we are all living with wonder and enthusiasm can really represent the birth of a new perspective and a way to rethink the culture, especially during these times in which, too often, culture itself is considered as something relegated to secondary importance, because of a generalized crisis that keeps preventing us from imagining a future truly full of chances. We, instead, believe that Macao is showing, with strength, tenacity and vision, another concept of thinking about power relations and another way of understanding life times. All this is contagious. That said, the threat of imminent eviction is very heavy and we should not leave this wonderful process in the hands of the logic of police repression. WE ASK TO ALL OF US, ALL CITIZENS, ARTISTS AND THINKERS, TO SHARE AND SPREAD THIS APPEAL TO PROTECT MACAO. Send an email to proteggiamomacao@gmail.com to sign the call of support
Decommodifying labour
Nicola Countouris is a London based jurist who has been doing research on precarity in a transnational perspective. We met him at University College, London, in front of what seemed most adequate to the circumstances: three cup of teas, as part of our project on how young people cope with making a living. It was more or less sunset and, indeed, a remarkably clear one compared with London’s scarcely generous weather at this time of the year; words flew easily. Gian Paolo Faella (G.P): What made you study precarity in the European labour market with a comparative method? Nicola Contouris (N.C): Precarity is becoming an increasingly important theme in labour studies, and I thought it was almost unavoidable to do that, especially considering that my main research area in labour law is the employment relationship and the contract of employment. To a certain extent workers that may be considered precarious depart from the standard model of employment relationship based on the standard contract of employment, which is what I’ve been working on recently. G.P: In your recent research you argue that work relationships are in themselves precarious. Is it due to the current crisis, or rather towards more long-term phenomena? I think there are structural elements in the employment relationship that makes it by its very nature precarious, and that is the elements which seats at the basis of the analysis of labour law: the employment relationship is the legal manifestation of a power relationship between the employer and the worker, and that power relationship is fairly unbalanced and tends to favour the position of the employer. So from that point of view every work relationship is precarious because one of the two parties in the relationship has considerably more power than the other party. Now this of course doesn’t mean that there aren’t particular types of work relationships which have emerged in recent years that are particularly affected by various elements of precarity. G.P.: In the past labour law was designed to protect in the first instance what was the career par excellence: employment in factories. Should the welfare state now become something that should protect people above all for the time in which they can’t work? It depends on the model of welfare state you’re thinking about. Some models of welfare state were falling in the paradigm that you just described in being particularly corporatist models: Germany, France and to a certain extent Italy, I suspect, would fall in that model. However some other welfare state models had more universalistic aspirations, and I think the traditional British Beveridge inspired model at least in the late forties and the fifties might have aspired to a bit more than to what you just said and you have the traditional universalistic systems from the Scandinavian countries that I think aspires to more than just filling in the gaps. Vincent Kuiper (V.K): What do you think these aspirations would be? What are they trying to achieve beyond filling the gaps then? They were very much associated to a notion of citizenship that went beyond the one of “industrial” citizenship that you’ve discussed and that was very much what I think Beveridge wanted to achieve, and you’re certainly right saying that probably the main focus was the blue-collar worker. As for the future there are countervailing pressures: on the one hand there is a pressure that partly derives from precarity and from the fact that you have a growing number of people that engage less intensively with the labour market than, for instance, their fathers or mothers used to. Very often they engage with the periphery of the labour market through precarious forms of employment or work. So that pressure should probably suggest that we have more of a security network provided by the welfare state. On the other hand there are fiscal pressures that also derive from the reduced social security contributions precarious work gives, which make the current system allegedly untenable, let alone a system that had more ambition than the current one. So there are issues about the political and the fiscal viability of the current welfare states. Greece can be a tragic example of a system in which welfare cuts are hitting at the very moment in which 56% of the younger segment of the labour force is affected by unemployment. V.K.: You’re talking about a power relationship between the employer and the employee. Don’t you think that if people are trying to make use of the welfare system, this power relationship which is unequal is shifted to the one between citizens and governments? If you’re depending on welfare, you’re also in a relationship with the government who is providing you with money and benefits. I would be in favour of a more generous welfare state, especially because the labour market, for various reasons, doesn’t seem to be able to guarantee the dignity and the good level of subsistence that citizens used to expect and received just a few years ago. It’s clear to me that the welfare state, what I understand by it, will have increasingly to take care of that if active citizenship has to be promoted. While it is important that wages are decent it’s also important that we think about a decent income that is not necessarily attached to the labour market exchanges. Things like minimum guaranteed income, or basic income, and so on and so forth, are inevitably going to play an increasingly important role in those societies who want to maintain a concept of active citizenship. V.K.: How would you define active citizenship then: having a job, paying taxes? Having a job can both be seen as a form of active citizenship or as a means to achieve active citizenship, and I think both aspects of work are important: it has to be decent in itself, as we spend most of our life in a standard form of employment, and a considerable share of our life at work but it’s also important that…
Ré-humaniser le travail
Traduction : Maxence Salendre Depuis son bureau de Londres, le juriste Nicola Countouris continue ses recherches transnationales sur les causes de la précarité. Nous l’avons rencontré à l’University College London (UCL), devant trois tasses de thé qui nous ont semblées être adaptées au vu des circonstances, dans le cadre de notre étude sur les solutions employées par les jeunes pour gagner leur vie. La conversation se révélait passionnante tandis que le soleil se couchait sur un ciel remarquablement clair qui contrastait avec la pluie généralement généreuse qui s’abat sur le pays à cette époque de l’année. Gian Paolo Faella (G.P.) : Quelles sont les raisons qui vous ont amenées à étudier de manière comparative l’évolution de la précarité sur le marché du travail européen ? Nicola Contouris (N.C.) : La précaritéest un phénomène qui prend rapidement de l’importance dans les études concernant le marchédu travail. Dès lors, j’ai penséqu’il m’était presque impossible d’éviter le sujet surtout en considérant que mon domaine de recherche en droit du travail concerne les relations professionnelles et les différents contrats de travail. Les employés considérés comme « précaires » ne partagent généralement pas, avec les autres employés, le schéma habituel des relations professionnelles. Actuellement mes recherches portent sur cette thématique. G.P. : Dans vos dernières publications vous soutenez que les relations professionnelles sont en soi précaires. Est-ce un phénomène dû à la crise actuelle ou s’inscrit-il davantage dans le long-terme ? N.C. : Je pense qu’il y a des éléments structurels dans les relations professionnelles qui les rendent, par nature, très précaires. Et ce sont ces éléments qui forment la base de toute analyse du droit du travail. Les relations professionnelles sont la manifestation légale d’une relation de pouvoir entre l’employeur et l’employé et cette relation de pouvoir est assez déséquilibrée et tend à favoriser la position de l’employeur. Dès lors, de ce point de vue, toute relation professionnelle est précaire car l’une des parties dans la relation a un pouvoir bien plus considérable que l’autre partie. Ceci ne signifie cependant pas qu’il existe de nouveaux types de relations professionnelles qui soient davantage affectées par la précarité. G.P. : Dans le passé, le droit du travail était conçu comme une manière de protéger en premier lieu ce qui constituait la carrière par excellence : le travail en usine. L’Etat providence devrait-il donc évoluer afin de protéger les employés lors du temps qu’ils passent en-dehors de leur lieu de travail ? N.C. : Cela dépend du type d’Etat-providence auquel vous faites références. Certains modèles d’Etat-providence tombaient dans le groupe des modèles corporatistes que vous venez de décrire. L’Allemagne, la France et jusqu’à un certain point l’Italie suivaient ce modèle. Cependant, d’autres modèles d’Etat-providence ont des aspirations bien plus universalistes. Je pense par exemple au modèle traditionnel britannique inspiré par le rapport Beveridge et qui, tout au moins à la fin des années 1940 et dans les années 1950, voulait dépasser la simple définition de l’Etat-providence que vous venez de nommer. Enfin les systèmes universalistes traditionnels mis en place dans les pays Scandinaves se veulent plus performants qu’un simple travail de colmatage de brèches en superficie. Vincent Kuiper (V.K.) : Quelles sont, selon vous, ces aspirations ? Et que souhaitent-elles accomplir au-delà du simple fait de colmater les brèches en superficie ? N.C. : Ces programmes étaient très liés à une notion de citoyenneté qui dépassait la citoyenneté « industrielle » que vous décrivez et c’est là, je crois, ce que Beveridge voulait réussir à développer. Vous avez toutefois certainement raison en affirmant que son projet visait principalement à protéger les travailleurs. Dans le futur, la pression sera de deux natures différentes : d’une part il existe une pression émanant de la précarité et du fait que de plus en plus de personnes ne sont pas autant engagées sur le marché du travail que leurs parents pouvaient l’être. Généralement, ils s’engagent sur le marché du travail de manière périphérique en acceptant des contrats de travail précaires. Cette pression tend donc à indiquer que l’Etat-providence agit de manière certaine comme un filet de sécurité. D’autre part, il existe aussi des pressions fiscales qui proviennent de la faiblesse des contributions sociales qu’un travail précaire rapporte ce qui rend supposément très intenable le système actuel sans même parler d’un système qui soit plus ambitieux que le système actuel. Il y a donc des problèmes quant à la viabilité politique et fiscale des Etats-providence actuels. La Grèce est l’exemple tragique d’un système qui subit en ce moment les coupes budgétaires et dans lequel 56% du segment le plus jeune de la population active est touchée par le chômage. V.K. : Vous mentionnez une relation de pouvoir entre l’employeur et l’employé. Ne pensez-vous pas que si la population tente d’utiliser la protection accordée par l’Etat-Providence cette relation inégale de pouvoir se déplace sur la relation entre les citoyens et les gouvernements ? N.C. : Si vous recevez une allocation chômage, vous êtes également dans une relation avec le gouvernement qui vous fournit votre argent et vos bénéfices sociaux. Je serais en faveur d’un Etat-providence plus généreux, en particulier car le marché du travail, pour des raisons diverses, ne semble pas capable de garantir la dignité et le niveau de vie auquel les citoyens s’attendaient et auquel ils étaient habitués quelques années auparavant. Il me semble clair que l’Etat-providence, ou ce que j’en comprends, devra de plus en plus s’occuper de tels sujets si les principes de citoyenneté active sont mis en application. Alors que la question d’un salaire décent est essentielle, il est également primordial que nous imaginions un revenu décent qui ne soit pas indexé sur le marché du travail. Des avantages comme le salaire minimum garanti ou le salaire de base (parmi d’autres) vont inévitablement jouer un rôle de plus en plus important dans ces sociétés qui veulent maintenir cette notion de citoyenneté active. V.K. : Comment définiriez-vous la citoyenneté active : avoir un emploi et payer ses impôts ? N.C. : Avoir un emploi peut être vu à la fois comme de la citoyenneté active ou comme une manière d’atteindre la citoyenneté active et je crois que ces deux aspects du travail sont importants. Le travail…
From Tahrir Square to Puerta del Sol: what unites Arab and European social movements
Photo: screenshots from “Back to the Square” and “The Square, the seed of occupy movement” Article by Sarah Anne Rennick In partnership with the Human Rights International Film Festival (FIFDH), European Alternatives organised in Paris a round table discussion on political mobilisation and social movements in Egypt and in Europe. Sarah Anne Rennick, a researcher on social mobilisation in the “Arab Spring” and the author of the following text, took part in this riveting exchange on how new forms of social movements have emerged on both sides of the Mediterranean and on how to achieve societal changes, together with Laura Enchemin (Indignados), Hicham Ezzat (activist in the Egyptian revolution), Shahinaz Abdel Salam (blogger and cyber-dissident) and François Pradal (journalist and member of Egypt Solidarity) The last two years have seen a flurry of protest activity and the birth of new social movements across the Arab world and Europe, and while on one hand these movements seem to concern ostensibly different struggles – Arab citizens in a fight against authoritarianism; European citizens mobilizing against economic contraction – one can’t help but notice important similarities between them. Most obviously, perhaps, are the motifs that the Arab and European movements share. The frequent donning of the Guy Fawkes mask, for example, or the common demand for dignity, are but a few examples. More strikingly has been the use of identical protest tactics: images of tent camps erected in Madrid’s Plaza del Sol and Cairo’s Tahrir Square demonstrate the proliferation of “occupation” as a common strategy of these movements. Such similarities are not mere coincidences. On the contrary, they reveal a process of diffusion of the Arab Spring not only across the Middle East and North Africa but also into Europe. These shared symbolic dimensions indicate the affinity that the various Arab and European protestors feel, as well as their own perception of each other’s movements as part of the same struggle. While the targets of protest may vary between different countries, the overriding objective of the Arab Spring movements and those such as the Indignados in Europe is social justice. A distinct sentiment of injustice – whether it be political, socio-economic, or both – permeates these movements. The diverse protests demand nothing less than a recalibration of the social contract: a profound change in state-society relations, based on increased participation and redistribution, and towards a new vision of democratic practice. This common quest for social justice and the fight against political and/or economic oppression render the Arab and European movements remarkably like-minded. Yet even beyond their actual goals, the movements in the Arab world and Europe bare important similarities in their organizational structures. Informal and lacking clear hierarchy, these movements attest to a more fluid and horizontal form of internal decision-making. Moreover, many of these movements have emerged not from the efforts of seasoned activists but rather from movement entrepreneurs: individuals with limited prior political experience who took action thanks to innovative forms of participation as well as an acute sense of injustice. The movements of the Arab Spring and their counterparts in Europe have thus not only diversified how mass protest movements take place, but also the profile of activists. Their contribution to participatory politics and the reinvigoration of political consciousness is in itself a significant accomplishment.
De la place Tahrir à la Puerta del Sol : ce qui unit les mouvements sociaux arabes et européens
Photos : captures d’écran de « De retour sur la Place » et « La Place, la graine du mouvement d’occupation » Par Sarah Anne Rennick Traduction par Marie Rouzaut En partenariat avec le Festival International du Film des Droits de l’Homme (FIFDH), Alternatives Européennes a organisé à Paris une table ronde sur les thèmes de la mobilisation politique et des mouvements sociaux en Egypte et en Europe. Sarah Anne Rennick, chercheuse travaillant sur la mobilisation sociale du « Printemps Arabe » et auteur de l’article à suivre, a participé à ces captivants échanges sur comment de nouvelles formes de mouvements sociaux ont émergé des deux côtés de la Méditerranée et sur comment accomplir les changements sociétaux. Autour de la table étaient également réunis Laura Enchemin (les Indignés), Hicham Ezzat (activiste de la révolution égyptienne), Shahinaz Abdel Salam (bloggeuse et cyberdissidente) et François Pradal (journaliste et membre de Egypte Solidarité). Les deux dernières années ont vu jaillir une forte activité de protestation et naître de nouveaux mouvements sociaux dans le monde arabe et en Europe. Alors que ces mouvements paraissent concerner différentes luttes – citoyens Arabes combattant contre l’autoritarisme, citoyens Européens mobilisés contre l’austérité économique – on ne peut s’empêcher de signaler d’importantes similitudes entre eux. Le plus évident, peut-être, sont les caractéristiques communes aux mouvements arabes et européens. Le port fréquent du masque de Guy Fawkes ou la revendication de la dignité en sont quelques exemples. L’utilisation de tactiques de protestation similaires est encore plus frappante : des photos de campements érigés devant la Plaza del Sol à Madrid et sur la Place Tahrir au Caire démontrent que la prolifération de l’«occupation » est une stratégie commune à ces mouvements. De telles ressemblances ne sont pas de simples coïncidences. Bien au contraire, elles révèlent que le Printemps Arabe ne s’est pas propagé uniquement au Moyen Orient et au Nord de l’Afrique mais également en Europe. Le partage de ces dimensions symboliques prouve l’affinité que ressentent les protestataires arabes et européens, ainsi que la perception qu’a chacun de ces mouvements de faire partie d’une même lutte. Bien que les cibles de protestation varient d’un pays à l’autre, l’objectif principal des mouvements du Printemps Arabe, et de ceux tels que les Indignés en Europe, est la justice sociale. Un sentiment d’injustice distinct – qu’il soit politique, socio-économique ou les deux – s’infiltre dans ces mouvements. Les différentes protestations ne demandent rien d’autre qu’un nouveau calibrage du contrat social : un changement profond dans les relations entre l’Etat et la société, basé sur l’augmentation de la participation et sur la redistribution, et vers une nouvelle vision des pratiques démocratiques. Cette commune revendication pour la justice sociale et le combat contre l’oppression politique et/ou économique traduisent une même sensibilité entre les mouvements arabes et européens. Bien encore au-delà de leurs objectifs actuels, les mouvements dans le monde arabe et en Europe démontrent d’importantes ressemblances dans leur organisation. Ces mouvements, informels et souffrant d’un manque de hiérarchie clairement établie, témoignent d’un système interne de prise de décision plutôt fluide et horizontal. De plus, beaucoup de ces mouvements n’ont pas émergé d’efforts d’activistes professionnels mais plutôt de ceux d’entrepreneurs du mouvement : des individuels peu expérimentés en politique qui ont agi grâce à des formes de participation innovantes et animés d’un sens aigu de l’injustice. Les mouvements du Printemps Arabe et leurs homologues en Europe n’ont donc pas seulement diversifié les formes de mouvements de protestation de masse mais aussi le profil des activistes. Leur contribution aux politiques participatives et la réinvention de la conscience politique sont en soi une réussite significative.
The left and Europe: video-comment
EA’s codirector Lorenzo Marsili speaks at Subversive festival on the necessity of social movements, parties, and trade unions to act European. In the coming weeks and months European Alternatives will focus on developing new working proposals for more effective transnational political practices and actions, preparing a large assembly on this topic in Florence in november.
La gauche et lEurope : Commentaire vidéo
Intervention de Lorenzo Marsili (en anglais), codirecteur d’Alternatives Européennes lors du Festival Subversif sur l’importance des mouvements sociaux, des partis et des syndicats pour que les pays agissent en tant qu’Européens. Dans les semaines à venir, Alternatives Européennes se concentrera sur la mise en place de nouvelles propositions de travail afin de rendre les pratiques et actions politiques transnationales plus efficaces. Dans ce contexte, une grande réunion aura lieu sur ce sujet à Florence en novembre.
Vers un revenu minimum ?
Dans le cadre de notre série consacrée aux moyens de gagner sa vie, nous nous intéresserons aussi à ce que les personnes font de l’argent gagné. L’illustration ci-dessous, réalisée par Samuel Granados et Gianluca Seta pour le @courrierinter, répond à cette question pour l’Italie. Mais quand on perd son travail ou qu’on n’arrive pas à en trouver un, on doit soudainement décider quelles dépenses effectuer ou non. Dès lors, faut-il militer pour encore davantage d’aide sociale, au risque que celle-ci ait pour conséquence d’empêcher les plus pauvres de sortir de leur misère ? Nous savons que, bien que l’égalité financière ne garantisse pas forcément un niveau de vie égal, il est évident que comme le démontre le livre The Spirit Level, des revenus inégaux aggravent les autres inégalités. Depuis le début des années 90, la part de richesses possédée par la majorité d’entre nous a même diminué proportionnellement à l’augmentation de celle possédée par les 10% des personnes les plus riches. Jusqu’ici, les gouvernements se sont concentrés beaucoup plus sur les opportunités que sur l’égalité, au point d’avoir même baptisé ce concept « mobilité sociale », l’exemple le plus flagrant étant leur approche visant à « ramener les personnes dans le monde du travail ». Toutefois, pour ceux qui acceptent de jouer le jeu, cette approche paradoxale s’avère être un piège : en effet, en même temps qu’elles perdent la plupart de leurs avantages (exemption de taxe d’habitation et communale, allocations de chômage), leur taux d’imposition augmente de manière significative. Bien évidemment, cette situation décourage les demandeurs d’emploi, aussi à cause des difficultés pratiques comme le prix du déplacement pour se rendre à un entretien d’embauche ou même celui de la connexion Internet nécessaire à la recherche d’emploi. Comment payer ses factures à chaque fin de mois sans savoir combien d’heures de travail l’agence d’intérim nous accordera, tout en faisant face à la montée soudaine du taux d’imposition qui accompagne tout emploi ? En ces temps de « change we can believe in » (changement auquel on peut croire), il est naturel de tourner les regards vers Obama, mais en termes de protection sociale, les Etats-Unis ont tant de retard qu’ils ne constituent pas cette fois-ci une source d’inspiration. Dès lors, quelles sont les mesures non soumises à conditions, irrémédiables et indépendantes des ressources dont nous avons besoin pour combattre la pauvreté ? Pourquoi pas un revenu minimum ? Il remplirait ces trois conditions ; alors, l’UE devrait-elle réduise ses dépenses sociales pour financer un « revenu minimum citoyen » garanti à tous, ou bien augmenter les impôts sur les revenus les plus élevés, ou même instaurer un « revenu maximum citoyen » ? Quels seraient les avantages d’un revenu minimum ? L’avantage du Crédit de Revenu Citoyen est que n’étant pas soumis à condition, il aide à réduire la stigmatisation liée aux allocations proportionnelles aux ressources. Comme il est irrémédiable, cela réduira également le stress dû à l’incertitude pour le mois prochain. Il s’agit d’une mesure de redistribution des biens : les ressources des plus aisés sont redistribuées aux moins aisés. Les personnes aux plus faibles revenus toucheraient 25% de plus que ce qu’ils touchent aujourd’hui tandis que ceux aux revenus les plus élevés ne toucheraient qu’un peu moins. Pour les autres, leurs revenus augmenteraient ou resteraient stables. En encourageant une plus grande flexibilité du travail, l’apprentissage à vie et les stages de recyclage si importants aujourd’hui, il s’agirait également d’une mesure de responsabilisation. Le moment n’est-il pas venu d’aller vers un revenu minimum ? Si vous souhaitez participer à l’élaboration d’idées sur le travail et la politique sociale, participez à notre forum à Sofia !Voici une autre occasion exceptionnelle pour vous de voir votre œuvre primée lors de notre festival ! Nous avons développé une méthode vous permettant d’imaginer un jour dans la vie d’un jeune en 2020, grâce à nos personnages : Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists et Lifestyle Hackers.
TIME FOR A BASIC INCOME?
As we look at how people make a living, how they spend the money they earn? This infographic below by Samuel Granados and Gianluca Seta in the @courrierinter shows how people spend their money in Italy. But when you lose your job or you can’t find a job, suddenly you have to make a decision on what to spend or not? So should we campaign for an even greater increase in welfare spending or would more of the same still prevent people climbing out of the poverty black hole? We know that although financial equality doesn’t directly guarantee social equality, income inequality certainly aggravates other inequalities we face as The Spirit Level demonstrates. Indeed, the proportion of wealth has fallen for the majority of us as much as it has risen for the richest 10% since the earlier 90s. Up until now, governments have focused much more on opportunity much more than equality – it even has a name for it – “social mobility” and the most visible example of this is their approach to “getting people back into work”. The paradox though for the people that take this up is that they fall into a trap – they lose most of their benefits – housing & council tax as well as job seekers allowance while the rate of deduction of their tax rates rises significantly. This obviously discourages people from trying to get back into work, as well as the practical difficulties of being able to afford to get to job interviews or even broadband to search for jobs. How will they be able to pay for the bills at the end of the month, not knowing how many hours their recruitment agency will give them to work and facing a sharp decrease in tax credits that takes place when you get a job? In these times of change we can believe in, we would normally look to Obama, but the US is so far behind in terms of social protection, that it doesn’t make sense this time round to be inspired. What we surely need then are more unconditional and non-withdrawable and less means-tested benefits to tackle poverty? How about a basic income? This pushes all these buttons, so should the EU reduce welfare spending to pay for a “basic citizen’s income” to everyone or should it increase taxes for those who earn more or even introduce a maximum wage to pay a “living citizen’s income”? What are the overriding benefits of a basic income? The Citizen’s Income Trust argues that it’s unconditional, so it would also reduce the stigma attached to means-tested benefits. Its non-withrawable, so it would also reduce the stress attached to working out how much they would be left with at the end of the month. It’s redistributive as income is redistributed from people who are better off more towards those less so. Those who earn the least would get a quarter more in come than they currently do, while those who earn the most would only get a bit less. The rest of us would either get an increase in income or would stay in the same position as we are now. It’s empowering as it would also encourage more flexible working, lifelong learning and retraining which is so important at the moment. Isn’t it time for a basic income? If you want to take part in developing ideas on work and welfare, check out our forum in Sofia! Here’s another exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers.
Transnational Democracy Instead of Phony National Democracy
It has been a couple of weeks since European citizens were shocked: in solidarity with the Bulgarians, people from various corners of Europe have occupied social media with wholehearted messages of support for transnational democracy. The reason behind this is the complete failure of the phony national democracy in Bulgaria (despite 23 years of reforms often referred to as negotiated transition), in view of the latest parliamentary elections on 12 May. Some first-hand observations are worth sharing. Transeuropeans Borislava Miteva and Rosen Dimov from Sofia explain what they witnessed while assisting the OSCE election monitoring mission. A propaganda-free day never actually did take place ! Although the law requires the day prior to the election to be in a vacuum of political messages so that the citizens can make up their minds for whom to vote, on Saturday May 11th the media echoed stories of 500 000 ballot forms that were produced in excess. The Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the information with very few details, thus igniting further tension among the political players, whose members then fell back on the media one by one, in a rush to influence – again illegally – the voters. The printing company that won the public tender to print the ballots turned out to be owned by a city councillor from the same political party (the former governing GERB) as the recently resigned Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov. Tsvetanov is know to have spent some 10 million Euro annually on wiretapping citizens against the background of minimal statutory salaries equivalent to 150 Euro. Later on during the pre-election day, it was announced that several thousand additional stamps were produced for the local electoral committees, so that the forgery plan intertwined in the election process could succeed. On the Election Day what Rosen witnessed in the district of Varna were fake ballots and fake voting-protocols (where the election committee enters the data from the corresponding poll station), massive fraud (Roma votes being bought for 5 Euro) and police officers acting in favour of the former political party in power. The big bang, however, was in the middle of the night: the website of the independent Austrian agency SORA, contracted to carry out a parallel calculation of the votes, was hacked while the copying machines available to the election committees proved defunct. At that time, more than 450 sections – or 100 000 other votes (that is 3% of the electoral body) veiled in mystery: authorities could not confirm what was going on there. Investigative reports by NGOs and media sources showed that between 3 to 5 am, when most observers were resting, these 100 000 votes were changed; hence, the official aftermath meant a weak advance of 3,5% for GERB. SORA reported that some 14 000 ballot forms were invalid, but still included in the official calculations of the Central Electoral Committee. As expected (and consistent with the perceived significant distrust among the Bulgarian citizens), various political parties appeared to exercise a wide-range of techniques to influence the votes in their favour. Apart from the alleged big-scale frauds in the form of fake ballots, stamps and protocols (generally associated with GERB) there were also some modest, yet by no means less efficient ways of vote influencing. For instance, in the district of Stara Zagora, Borislava together with two foreign observers witnessed encouragement by party proxies from Leader (marginal political party), Ataka (far-right, Eurosceptic party) and DPS (minority-representing party), who sometimes went as far as accompanying voters to the voting booth, especially in small villages where people know each other well. An almost comic occurrence involved one electoral-committee member who loudly admitted that he was “a person of BSP” (successor-party of the dictatorial Communist Party) upon recognising a delivery person: all in the name of receiving an abundant lunch box. Interestingly, identical lunch boxes in same-colored bags were seen in almost all poll stations visited by that particular team of observers. Nevertheless, the nation-wide direct vote-buying cannot be undermined. In a friendly conversation with the chairperson of an electoral committee in a Roma neighborhood in the city of Stara Zagora, Borislava learned that the hamburger party (referring to the lunch boxes distributed by BSP proxies) did not do as well, because the Roma residents were not “such fools to sell [themselves] for a cheap lunch, when [they] could get much more money from Ahmed Dogan [referring to the chairperson of DPS].” During a long wait at the District Electoral Committee, the same election committee member explained that the delay was due to the “clean-up of the mistakes in the protocol”. On the other hand, long hours of waiting were the destiny of many of the other 482 election committees in the district of Stara Zagora, resulting not only from time spent on deliberate or unintended protocol mistakes, but also from the limits to the administrative capacity in the processing room, followed by the dreadful (non-)acceptance of the ballots and protocols by a committee comprising of deputies from rival political parties. Consequently, in the midst of thousands of people, in between rooms and line-ups, during long wait hours, the authenticity of the seals on the bags of ballots is, to say the least, questionable. The exciting Election Day was followed by an even more curious event: the arithmetical winner in the elections, GERB, did not become the political winner; completely isolated and distrusted by the other parliamentary represented powers, the former governing party boycotted the sessions of the Parliament, including the constituent assembly. While pushing the Constitutional Court to revoke the elections (some 2/3 of the members were appointed through GERB-dominated procedures), the other parliamentary powers are attempting to form a government. The paradox of national “democracy” requires the Socialist BSP to join forces on one hand with the minority party DPS (Turks were particularly oppressed in the end of the Communist regime) and on the other – with Ataka which discriminates against national minorities, among which those of Turkish descent.
BORROWING FROM THOSE WHO CARE
One of the findings we’re starting to uncover from our Making a Living survey on what support young people access the most and that they value the most is that it’s their family that they go to first for practical support.This extends beyond providing somewhere to stay while they’re looking for a job (or even one that means they can afford a place of their own) to even supporting them to start their own projects. More on that very soon, but this correlates with experiences of @edgeryders too.That’s why it’s insightful that @hellomerci_fr have started a new platform which styles itself as being able to “empruntez a des gens qui vous veulent du bien” (or “borrow from those who care”) with user stories (through @rue89) such as “Jonathan has already funded a new violin bow, while Héloïse will finish her master’s thesis in Jordan.” Not crowdfunding for a million-pound gaming platform, but for practical support that either help people finance the development of their skills. It clearly is targeted at reassuring people who are scared of going to pay day lenders with the threat of bailiffs knocking their door down and the polite snub from their local but very distant bank manager. In effect, it builds on the informal behaviours that exist in social networks, which from personal experience seems to be one of the most effective ways for any digital platform to work.
LE CV DU CITOYEN INVISIBLE
« J'ai volé avec Ryanair, je suis expert en réseaux sociaux et je parle un peu italien, anglais et français. » Voici seulement un extrait des paroles du CV que @Henzovic nous chante sur un air espagnol. A-travers notre projet Gagner sa vie, nous découvrons comment des jeunes parviennent à gagner leur vie, y compris en pratique, des économies d'argent aux services offerts. De re.vu a visual.ly, il existe de nombreuses manières de créer un CV original, voire de dévoiler ses talents en produisant son propre portfolio avec discoverables. Le plus frappant avec la chanson-CV de @henzovic est qu'elle résume le paradoxe auquel fait face la jeunesse : elle sait faire des économies (@lucytobin), elle met en œuvre son savoir-faire pour trouver de nouveaux emplois comme expert en réseaux sociaux et elle apprend de nouvelles langues pour s'ouvrir aux opportunités d'un marché du travail de plus en plus vaste. Certains verront dans cette chanson l'histoire d'un « bomeur », un jeune chômeur qui se la coule douce. Mais peut-être s'agit-il plutôt de celle de jeunes qui se cassent le c** à apprendre et à appliquer le savoir-faire dont l'économie a besoin au 21° Siècle. Peut-être que c'est le marché du travail qui a du plomb dans l'aile ? Ou peut-être devrions-nous tout simplement rester fidèles à nos sentiments et faire ce que nous aimons vraiment ? Voici une occasion exceptionnellepour vous de voir votre oeuvre primée lors de notre festival ! Nous avons développé une méthode vous permettant d'imaginer un jour dans la vie d'un jeune en 2020, grâce à nos personnages : Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists et Lifestyle Hackers.
THE CV FOR THE INVISIBLE CITIZEN
“I used to fly with Ryanair, I am a social media expert, And I speak a bit of Italian, English and French too”. These are just some of the lyrics to the CV sung by @Henzovic on a Spanish tube. Through our Making a Living project, we’ve been finding out how young people cope with making a living, including how they manage practically – from saving money to selling services. There are many ways you can create a CV which is exciting – from re.vu to visual.ly– and even discover your skills to produce your own portfolio with discoverables. What is so striking about @henzovic resume singalong is that it sums up the paradox that young people are faced with. That they know how to save money (@lucytobin), they are putting into practice the skills for new jobs like social media expert and they are learning new languages to open up opportunities to a much wider job market. For some people, this song tells the story of a “bomeur” – unemployed young people who bum about – but perhaps it’s the story of young people who are working their b***s off learning & applying the skills the economy needs in the 21st century. Maybe it’s the job market that hasn’t caught up? Or maybe we should just go with our gut feelings and do what we really love? Here’s an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers.
Hello Europe
Do you feel…European? If we asked the question anywhere in Europe “Do you make me feel so“, you’d be surprised to get “European” as a response. And yet when we’re away from it, we feel transnational, when we create a visceral connection with people over issues we care deeply about and when we find memories of other countries in the cities we live in, we feel more transnational. Perhaps that’s what distinguishes feeling transnational from feeling European? “People can act after they have witnessed how people really live and have experienced the emotions they have shared with those people” – it’s where they feel bonds, and when people travel or live in other cities in Europe, they can start feeling Euro…bonds. Unlike financial bonds, emotional bonds create energies that create assets. One of our projects is exploring understanding how young people cope with making a living and one of the questions we always get asked, is “how do young people you’ve interviewed in other cities cope with making a living” – we’ve had skype meetings so they could do that – what if they could have that conversation between themselves in real time? Maybe, very soon they will, thanks to #helloeurope a new initiative to crowdfund for this happen! Check out their website and show your support! In the meantime, you could win an infographic or help us design scenarios for our project on how young people cope creatively with making a living!
BORDERS TO CROSS: Open call!
PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT BORDERS TO CROSS How green is (y)our grass? Deadline for applications: 14th June Learn how civic initiatives and other innovations are reshaping the practice of democracy within and across borders. Borders to Cross is an inter national conference that will bring together civil servants, citizens, social entrepreneurs, and scientists to reflect on the innovative ways in which democracy is being practiced and civil society, market and gover nment are working together to address shared problems in Europe. Don’t miss the opportunity to draw insights and inspiration from the work of colleagues from over 20 countries. AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS 29-31 OCTOBER 2013 Why: Transition Europe is bursting with examples of democratic innovation. Citizens are taking public matters into their own hands and driving change through efforts to improve the neighborhoods and cities in which they live. Public officials are experimenting with new forms of practical deliberation and conflict resolution that remake relationships with citizens and other stakeholders. These new forms of cooperation and co-creation challenge us to make sense of how roles and responsibilities are changing. As they rework the relationship between bottom-up and top-down patterns of organization, these practical experiments push public, civic, and market organizations to rethink the ways they relate to each other. Their experiences pose important questions. How can we support and facilitate grass-root initiatives and safeguard public concerns? How can we respond to demands for action when the rules of the game are themselves shifting? Citizens and civic professionals often work pragmatically in these settings —seeking to learn as they act. Their stories contain a wealth of insights that can become the working knowledge that binds a community of practitioners across political and institutional borders. Our ambition is to create an international learning community, whose members can learn together about shifting roles, responsibilities, and opportunities for linking society and democracy. What: Action Learning Community The Dutch ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), the ministry of Health, Welfare & Sport (VWS), the ministry of Infrastructure & Environment (I&M), the ministry of Economic Affairs (EZ), the City of Amsterdam, the Universities of Amsterdam and Leuven, Netwerk Democratie, European Alternatives and G1000 have joined forces to create a conference in which participants can explore challenging responses to societal problems across (and beyond) Europe. Borders to Cross will provide a setting for reflecting on experiences, dilemmas, and designs at the boundary of change. We envision a laboratory for active learning to help participants develop insights that they can bring into play in their own work. Researchers will work as partners in the living labs in order to capture the significance of new relationships and innovations in practical deliberation and problemsolving. The conference aims to bring together 40 inspiring initiatives and projects that cover diverse themes: new forms of ownership and joint decision-making, inclusive participation, and the role of entrepreneurship in the public domain. How: Borders to Cross The conference will have an accessible and flexible nature that allows for personal interaction and group reflection that contributes to action learning and the development of a durable learning community. The conference will begin in the afternoon of Tuesday 29 October and end around lunchtime on 31 October. During these 48 hours there will be opportunities to: — Attend workshops about cutting edge participatory methods; — Reflect with scientists about practical insights and innovative theories; — Listen to leading figures in the field of civic driven change; — Enlarge your vision and learn from initiatives and projects by visiting the marketplace; — Visit civic driven change initiatives in neighborhoods in Amsterdam; — Talk with peers about the daily challenges you face and the borders you have to cross In connection with this conference Amsterdam will subsequently host the granting of the prestigious ErasmusPrize to Jurgen Habermas on November 5th. Expected results The conference provides you with: — a new perspective on the transitions that are underway in democratic practice and the shifting roles for government, markets and civil society actors that this implies — practical strategies that you can implement in your own work. — a renewed network of civic professionals and citizens who are engaged with related challenges. The conference will provide the opportunity to address your questions and think together with international colleagues about new approaches that are suitable for your local societal challenges. The reach of the conference will extend beyond those actually present. The conference activities will be made available through social media, audio and video clips. More practically, participants will share innovative approaches and stories in their home country. Open Call There is an open call to collect interesting initiatives and projects that we can learn from. The Open Call for Innovative Practice and Dilemma’s will gather the most striking examples of efforts in which citizens, civil society actors, and public officials have redefined their roles and modes of interaction. Examples may range from the G1000 in Belgium to a social pharmacy in Greece or a social procurement procedure in Sweden. The cases will be linked by the common effort to reinvent democratic relationships through practical initiatives. Representatives of the projects that are selected will be invited to present and discuss their successes and their frustrations and to bring home innovative approaches to pressing societal problems. Participants & Costs Up to 200 civic professionals will participate in the Borders to Cross conference. Their diversity will create opportunities for surprising encounters and innovations that challenge our thinking. Our goal is a balanced group of government, civil society, and market actors together with researchers. Approximately 20% of the participants in the conference will originate from the Netherlands. The conference is free of charge and does not include travel and lodging expenses. Scholarships for travel andaccommodation expenses can be requested. Funding decisions will be made by the conference organizers on the basis of the contribution an initiative or project can make to shared learning about the themes described in the open call. Questions about the open call? Or do you want to know more about the open call, how to enter or nominate initiatives or projects? Send an email to: Jonmar van Vlijmen amsterdam@euroalter.com Can’t wait to start exchanging?! Get in touch now with fellow civic professionals on the Borders to Cross Linked In group:…
HOW TO POCKET A LIVING
We hear about teenagers making their first million before they hit 2020, but we rarely hear about people the same age who are prototyping how digital technology could be used to help them and their peers make a living. Apps for Good is an organisation which was originally set up in Latin America, blending a mix of community development and technology development principles to help young people learn how to create apps that make social change happen. They ran their first pilot course in Europe with young and unemployed students. This year, they had awards of which one of the winners was an app idea called “Pocket Job”. Let’s hear it from the creators of this exciting idea “We find that our parents aren’t actually willing to give us that much pocket money, so we thought why not find a way to get people who need jobs done, to get them done at a low price, ask people who need a little bit of extra money to do jobs for them” For all those people who told us that one of they ways they cope with making a living is to make a bit of extra money on the side, this could be for you! Apps for Good awards 2013 – Pocket Job from TechCityInsider on Vimeo.
Making money make sense
After asking young people across Europe about their living situation, we then explored what dreams they had about what they wanted to achieve in the future. But, we also wanted to understand why those dreams were important for them to achieve. Almost a third want stability. This motivates them to get a better job because it will enable them “to afford all the needs I have such as my own flat or house and will give me the feeling of security and stabilization”. Stability is important to have a feeling to build something – their network or projects they want to develop, or giving their children “the chances I feel I didn’t have”. The need for stability grows over time. One in six want to be more self-sustaining and autonomous, so they that they don’t depend on others controlling them, like their employer on how to work or their spouse on when to have children. They also don’t want to rely on others providing for them, like money or a spare room from their parents. It explains why many would prefer to have a place they can call their own. They want this as it “will grant me the right to speak my mind more often and act as such” and “because I have to know, show and prove what I have worked for”. It’s also so they can make a living in a way that helps them “feel free to do other things” and not “be left behind in a globalised world”. One in five young people want to make their dreams happen and achieve their goals. They want to develop different objectives than those set by society because they don’t want to give up on their dreams. These are “the things that I have wanted from a child and have been working towards…I want to make the most of my time on earth”. To do so, they “want to be able to afford it and to have enough time to do it even while working”, whether it’s to get an attorney certificate, have kids or travel around the world. Only 2% want to achieve higher status. Just under one in six had particular expectations because they wanted to gain a sense of fulfilment and progression, mainly to build on the time and effort they’ve invested in developing their skills and career. They want to see “fairly visible landmarks of your own productivity and development” to get a “feeling I have developed all of my talents”. They know it’s important to have their own job and house, but “it’s also important to achieve the next steps of self-realisation and professional development”. They want to push themselves to keep growing to “meet a lot of challenges before the age of 40”. One in five want to make a purposeful and meaningful life. This is motivated by wanting to “stay fit and beautiful…in mind, body and soul” and “to be able to die happily leaving a positive legacy”. Beyond their career, what motivated them to make a purposeful and meaningful life is to “love…because it is a verb and not just a feeling”and to seek sense. Indeed, for them family and friends are “sense-making institutions”. “Happiness is the basis of everything. Staying happy is my main goal in life and work. Money can’t buy happiness. I can’t say it doesn’t matter at all, because money makes things that make me happy possible, like travelling.” About one in 20 want to be constantly challenged to use their skills to improve and develop. They would “rather have a satisfying and challenging job than a boring job with a large paycheck”. That might be even more important “in case I do not manage to find a job which fulfils and enriches me”. Which is why many people we’ve interviewed had switched careers in some cases, moving from very different fields, i.e. from medicine to journalism, but also because “it is important to be readier for the unexpected and keep curious about what surrounds us”. Just over one in five want to open their mind and better understand others. This is often triggered by people they meet and their desire to discover other cultures, “because it is fun and enriches your life in many ways (more than money), but also because the ability to understand other humans increases”. In many cases, this is why people felt travelling and living abroad was important to“discover new people, new countries, live new experiences and learn new languages & skills.” They think that “life should, ultimately, be about new experiences and expanding your mind and worldviews – rather than reproduction (social or biological)”, in particular when they’re young as they don’t imagine themselves “travelling with a group of other retired people when I’m old. I’d rather stay at home growing my garden and helping”. Around one in six are motivated because they want to make social change or help others. They want this because they feel a sense of mission to change the world“otherwise we’ll face more and more troubles – poverty, sickness, nuclear catastrophe, end of cheap oil, sterile soils, dying in oceans, more slavery, civil war and pollution”. In some cases, these problems are much closer to home like helping their “family because they are in a difficult situation” or even their own projects where they “want the values of the organisation to grow even beyond my own involvement” or “want to provoke social change by making documentary films” or because they want to share their passion with their child or shape the future of their city. We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our festival, including in London (12-13 & 19-20 October) & Amsterdam (19-20 October). Click on one of the tabs to get involved!
What are young people’s living standards in Europe?
We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our festival, including in London (12-13 & 19-20 October) & Amsterdam (19-20 October). Click on one of the tabs to get involved!
Open your mind to challenge yourself
After the first part of our analysis on what motivates young people to achieve their goals, about one in 20 want to be constantly challenged to use their skills to improve and develop. They would “rather have a satisfying and challenging job than a boring job with a large paycheck”. That might be even more important “in case I do not manage to find a job which fulfils and enriches me”. Which is why many people we’ve interviewed had switched careers in some cases, moving from very different fields, i.e. from medicine to journalism, but also because “it is important to be readier for the unexpected and keep curious about what surrounds us”. Just over one in five want to open their mind and better understand others. This is often triggered by people they meet and their desire to discover other cultures, “because it is fun and enriches your life in many ways (more than money), but also because the ability to understand other humans increases”. In many cases, this is why people felt travelling and living abroad was important to “discover new people, new countries, live new experiences and learn new languages & skills.” They think that “life should, ultimately, be about new experiences and expanding your mind and worldviews – rather than reproduction (social or biological)”, in particular when they’re young as they don’t imagine themselves “travelling with a group of other retired people when I’m old. I’d rather stay at home growing my garden and helping”. Around one in six are motivated because they want to make social change or help others. They want this because they feel a sense of mission to change the world “otherwise we’ll face more and more troubles – poverty, sickness, nuclear catastrophe, end of cheap oil, sterile soils, dying in oceans, more slavery, civil war and pollution”. In some cases, these problems are much closer to home like helping their “family because they are in a difficult situation” or even their own projects where they “want the values of the organisation to grow even beyond my own involvement” or “want to provoke social change by making documentary films” or because they want to share their passion with their child or shape the future of their city. We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our festival, including in London (12-13 & 19-20 October) & Amsterdam (19-20 October). Click on one of the tabs to get involved!
Gentrify this – the impact of precarity on local communities
After asking young people across Europe about their living situation, their basic standards we then explored what dreams they had about what they wanted to achieve in the future and what motivated their expectations, as well as the support they accessed to help hem make a living, we now move onto the impact their work situation has on their relationship with their neighbourhood. It’s striking that for one in five young people, they have no relationship with their neighbours because they work so much they don’t have any time to meet them, let alone make friends…our Zombie Generation. This is often because “I’m away almost all day long” and “don’t work where I live, I don’t have much time to explore my neighbourhood except at the weekends”. For others, it’s because they’ve “moved many times in last few years so I don’t have a real neighbourhood”. For one in five young people, their work situation has no effect on their relationship with their community. They highlight that this is either because they don’t know their neighbours or are indifferent to the local area they live in. Some interact more with the community than their neighbours, because they feel “pretty connected to my local community. I wish I made more time to connect with my immediate neighbours. Its partly a casualty of living in a big city like London”. They “try to act in a polite way when I meet my neighbours, but there are no local interactions. I do not know them.”Could supporting initiatives like @casserolehq and @goodgym help people to reconnect with their neighbours in fun and helpful ways? Surprisingly, for only one in fifty, their income had an effect on what neighbourhood they could live in. Some chose to live in relatively poor neighbourhoods because of its lower rents. But others lived in cheap appartments in wealtheir neighbourhood, because they appreciate the quality of living. As a result, a very small minority want to move to a better neighbourhood. If they had a “better work situation (well paid job) a could change my place of residence e.g. I could buy a flat in the more attractive district”. For some, getting out of the environment they live in has a deeper purpose. They’ve “got friends I’ve know since I was 18 months and there are other people I grew up with who I’ve left behind. I couldn’t live the live they were leading. You need to look at your social networks and look they they reinforce you and each other and where that’s going to lead.” For a minority, they feel excluded from their neighbourhood: “The down side is the lack of contact, since the more people are wealthy at average, the more they would avoid strangers.” Others belong to marginalised communities and often feel ostracised. Their “work situation gives me again a sense of inferiority. It can create ideological division and sense of alienation.” Overall, the crisis makes young people more stressed and insecure about their future and this has an impact on their relationships with others. These are our Invisible Citizens. This is why projects such as @thisisthematter are really important to help give young people a sense of belonging in their neighbourhoods. The Matter Movie from The Matter on Vimeo. We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our festival, including in London (12-13 & 19-20 October) & Amsterdam (19-20 October). Click on one of the tabs to get involved!
The 20 jobs of the future
At our Festival, we’ll be exhibiting scenarios of how young people will make a living in 2020, so the presentation by @sparksandhoney provides fascinating insights into this future on how “60% of the best jobs in the next ten years haven’t been created yet”. Our favourite jobs that haven’t yet been created are: Corporate disorganizer “An expert that shuffles hierarchies in companies to create start-up cultures and organised chaos” Curiosity tutor “A personal advisor in flaneuring; an advisor that not only provides inspiration and content to spark curiosity, but one that teaches the art of discovery” Urban shepherd “A combination of resilient micro-farmer and guide to the nature-filled side of the city” Hackschooling counselor “Encourages students to hack the real world and experiment with life rather than only pursuing traditional educational paths” What job would you prefer? 20 Jobs of the Future from sparks & honey We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our Festival, including in London (12-13 & 19-20 October) & Amsterdam (19-20 October). Click on one of the tabs to get involved!
Making markets
In our workshop on helping young people how to make a festival, one of the themes that kept coming back was how to make a living through the crisis. What came out of this discussion was that: “People wanted to go back to what really mattered – like valuing where we live and what we make. People wanted to explore ways to value the places we live in – whether it’s encouraging people to recycle, grow community gardens, replant playgrounds or host craft markets. Could food could be at the heart of linking up people from different cultures and cities in Europe? Should we teach children to fix and make things rather than spend to buy?” That’s why it’s amazing to see how the Teenage Market has developed, helping provide a platform to teenagers wanting to show, share and sell their crafts, proof that they’re not just watching TV or glued to their BBMs all day! We reckon this would be a great way to meet @openideo brief on “how might we inspire young people to cultivate their creative confidence” through making! That’s why we’re chuffed to be hosting our venue at @makerversity in Somerset House! Introducing OpenIDEO’s Creative Confidence Challenge from IDEO on Vimeo. The market is part of our everyday reality, but how often do we reflect on what we think, feel, do, say, see, hear, taste or buy here? What does this space really mean to us? We developed a treasure hunt around markets to discover how we experience a space like a market. What also came out of this is our new project looking at how young people cope creatively with trying to make a living. If you’re a young person or work with young people, we’d love to hear from you! We’ll be showcasing Making a Living across different cities in our Festival. Get involved!
RE: THINK EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY!
RE: THINK EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY! EuroAlter Association announces the start of activities in RE: THINK EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY! The project will be run in partnership with Asocia?ia ProDemocra?ia, European Alternatives London, Transeuropa Network London, European Alternatives Italia and Ambiente Legalità Intercultura Palermo. The project will last until June 2012 and will bear a strong transnational dimension. The project RE:THINK EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY! aims at creating a transnational team of 18 young activists in European NGOs who will be involved in activities related to participative democracy in Romania, Great Britain and Italy, from a both comparative and intercultural perspective. The project is one of education for active citizenship, for which it will consist in four visits to major institutions (Parliament, public authorities, etc.) in Bucharest, London and Rome, as well as to the European Parliament and other Brussels-based European institutions. We envisage that the experience and the information gained during the project will be included in a comprehensive good practice guide, written in collaboration by all the 18 participants, which will be distributed to NGOs and students from the three countries, as well as to the participants in the Transeuropa Festival, which will take place simultaneously in 15 European cities in 2012, including Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest. In addition, the project includes the creation of a transnational think-tank including young people who want to improve their knowledge and experience in participative democracy at national and European level. In addition, we rely on intercultural dialogue and exchange of ideas that will contribute to a better understanding of today’s Europe, whose citizens we all are. EuroAlter Association operates in Romania at a local, national and transnational level and is headquartered in Cluj-Napoca. It is a part of European Alternatives EEIG, a European-level NGOs’ partnership, promoting democracy, social justice and culture beyond the nation state. Together with our partner organizations and institutions, we organize campaigns, policy initiatives and local and transnational projects in areas such as migration, human rights, participative democracy, active European citizenship, new forms of sustainable economy, minority rights and media freedom. European Alternatives is one of the NGOs who are constantly invited by the European Commission to discuss and debate on topics related to the above-mentioned areas. Such meetings facilitate an approach aimed at enabling the citizen’s voice to be heard in the major European decision-making bodies. For more information, please contact: Daniel Peslari European Alternatives Regional Coordinator E-mail: d.peslari@euroalter.com Telephone no.: 0040- 740690780 Address: 2/2, G-ral Traian Mosoiu street, Cluj-Napoca, Romania www.euroalter.com The project is funded by the European Commission through the Youth in Action Programme, Action 1.3.
THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE
Our Making a Living project is trying to find out how young people cope with making a living across Europe. As part of this, we’re encouraging you to interview other young people but also organisations who are helping others make a living. One of the areas we’re focusing is how young people cope practically with making a living, the day to day workarounds that help them get by and develop skills. That’s we’ve been really impressed by The U. We interviewed Louise Foreman, who as well her love for halloumi and Beyonce, is the U’s community coordinator. She shares her insights on how the U came about and how it helps people tackle everyday issues. What were the steps in developing The U from coming up from the idea to opening up the first U? The U is a Young Foundation venture which started in October 2010 with support from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts). During the first four months we conducted research into similar models of learning in order to build an understanding of what was currently available, and to establish what the most successful format for our sessions could be. For the following 2 months we then worked with a service designer to begin the design and prototyping phase for a template of what a U session should be like. In this phase it was important for us to be able to understand user experience; questioning our assumptions about what works and allowing room for feedback was essential. Intro to The U: a citizens University from The U on Vimeo. In Spring 2011 we started working in two pilot sites (Northumberland and Sutton), building relationships with local community organisations and promoting the delivery of our free learning sessions. What is the ethos around providing bite-sized learning sessions mainly focused on helping people tackle everyday issues? Whilst prototyping our original U sessions we explored what the ideal length of time for a learning session would be. We discovered that 90 minutes was the appropriate balance between keeping the experience accessible and engaging, and covering enough detail for the information that was shared to be useful. We want our sessions to be accessible to a very wide range of people, no matter what stage of life they are at, what level of experience they have or what kind of background they come from. Because of this, we aim to offer skills that are broadly relevant in day-to-day life and which respond to everyday challenges that we can all relate to – witnessing a medical emergency, having a dispute with a neighbour or friend, not knowing where to go to for new information about employment or social opportunities. By maintaining a focus on day-to-day issues we are able to promote the idea that lifelong learning is not something which should be restricted to formal education institutions, but rather that opportunities to learn new things and share your own skills are a valuable aspect of everyday life. How important are tackling these everyday issues and learning skills to help people cope with everyday life? Having the confidence to face day-to-day challenges is a significant factor in an individuals’ capacity to feel independent and in control of their own life. Therefore the importance of our session design is twofold; the skills must be shared in a way that is engaging and memorable so that participants feel confident to apply what they have learnt in everyday life, and additionally the experience itself must be friendly and positive so that participants come away feeling confident and more willing to engage with further training and volunteering opportunities. We use the term “making a living” both in terms of making ends meet and creating the living you want, blending your work & social life. In what ways does The U help develop people’s skills to make a living? We measure our impact both in terms of increasing people’s confidence in their own skills, and also in terms of the social connections that are formed during sessions. Building local social networks is a key part of the work that we do in communities and there is a significant body of research to demonstrate the importance of these networks both in terms of promoting positive personal wellbeing and also in shaping attitudes about the area that you live in. We believe that enhanced confidence and communication skills, alongside the formation of new local networks and connections, is a valuable combination for enabling individuals to seek out new opportunities (be these employment opportunities or social ones) and to ‘make a living’ in the terms you defined. What has surprised you the most about the impact the U has had? The U delivers sessions within a fixed timescale (normally around 4 months) in each community. During this time our local delivery team work hard to ensure that we deliver over 20 high quality sessions and also connect participants with other local community projects and on-going training and volunteering opportunities. As time has passed after The U has finished delivering sessions in a particular location, it has been fantastic to continue to receive feedback about the long-term impact of the project. In some instances this feedback demonstrates how individuals were able to apply or share their skills with new people further down the line, and in other cases we heard about on-going community projects which had benefitted from additional volunteer support as a result of introductions that were made through The U. In all of these cases it was wonderful to see the effect of The U as a catalyst for long-term community connections.
THE TOXIC TRINITY OF PRECARITY
As part of our project on making a living, we’re looking at how helpful different forms of support are to help young people cope with precarity.Recession, social stigma and emotional distress – mixing up a toxic trinity We make the assumption that focusing on getting people into work helps take people out of poverty – whether it’s using the incentive of the minimum wage or the threat of cutting welfare payments. But when we look at what’s going on the ground, many people find it difficult to find the money or the time to look for jobs. Even when they have found work, many families still face poverty, having to get high cost sub-prime loans because they are refused better value loans. Let’s get this straight – the more disadvantaged people are, the harder they’re going to be it by the recession. That’s why the advice and support by organisations such as @jrf_uk is so critical: Many people aspire to be “good families”, but face the constant threat of companies charging them ever more for their basic needs, with benefits agencies telling them to cut corners when they are no more corners to cut and society labelling them “bad parents”.This all creates a social crisis of of deteriorating mental health and self exclusion. Income inequality doesn’t only affect spending power, it exacerbates everything else – indeed there is a direct correlation between the rates of emotional distress and income inequality. We may be able to reboot the banks at the touch of a Treasury button, but rebooting people’s livelihoods requires a far more radical approach.
La trinité toxique de la précarité
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Dans le cadre de notre projet making a living (gagner sa vie), nous cherchons à savoir si les différentes formes de soutien pour aider les jeunes à faire face à la précarité sont utiles. La récession, le stigmate social et la détresse émotionnelle forment ensemble une trinité toxique. Nous faisons l’hypothèse que se concentrer à inciter les gens à travailler aide à sortir les gens de la pauvreté, que cela se fasse en utilisant la motivation du revenu minimum ou la menace de supprimer les allocations sociales. Mais lorsque nous nous intéressons à ce qui se passe sur le terrain, beaucoup trouvent difficile de trouver l’argent ou le temps de chercher du travail. Même lorsqu’elles ont trouvé du travail, beaucoup de familles doivent toujours faire face à la pauvreté, puisqu’elles doivent souscrire des prêts hypothécaires à des coûts élevés car on leur refuse de meilleurs prêts. Soyons clairs, plus les gens sont désavantagés, plus ils vont être touchés durement par la récession. C’est pourquoi les conseils et le soutien d’organisations telles que @jrf_uk est si important. De nombreuses personnes aspirent à être de « bonnes familles », mais elles doivent faire face aux menaces constantes des sociétés qui les font payer encore plus pour leurs besoins fondamentaux, avec les organisations de prestations sociales qui leur disent de faire des économies alors qu’il n’y a plus d’économies à faire et la société qui les qualifie de « mauvais parents ». Tout cela crée une crise sociale de détérioration de la santé mentale et d’auto exclusion. Les inégalités de revenus n’affectent pas uniquement le pouvoir d’achat, elles accentuent tout le reste ; en effet il existe un lien direct entre les taux de détresse émotionnelle et les inégalités de revenus. Nous pourrions être en mesure de redémarrer les banques en appuyant sur le bouton de la Trésorerie, mais redémarrer les sources de revenu des gens demande une approche bien plus radicale.
Fernando Pessoa Evening
Fernando Pessoa is one of the most and important European intellectual figures of the past century. The London Festival of Europe 2008 dedicated a whole day to the exploration of this mysterious Portuguese Poet. Fernando Pessoa is a multitude. Born in Lisbon in 1888, the reputation of this mysterious Portuguese poet has been steadily growing over the years, until he is today considered one of the most fundamental European voices of the past century. The most striking characteristic of Pessoa is his constant use of heteronyms, or literary egos, so that a plurality of voices and biographies are the only possible voice and biography of this poet of polygamy. Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos are the three most developed poetic heteronyms employed by Pessoa, but after his death, from a box containing his writings – fragmented, on spare restaurant receipts, napkins, loose sheets – emerged a true multitude of characters, each the author of a particular assemblage of texts. Bernando Soares, the semi-heteronym author of the magnificent Book of Disquiet; Antonio Mora, philosopher and sociologist; Baron of Teive, essayist; Thomas Coarse and Alexander Search, writing in English; Raphael Baldaya, astrologer … and onwards to a list of seventy-two names and as many genres of writing. All the heteronyms collaborated on publication projects, critiqued and even translated one another. Sensationalism, one of the numerous “movements” started by Pessoa, was critiqued by Antonio de Seabra and compiled in English by Sher Henay, both fruits of Pessoa’s imagination. Neo-Paganism was strongly defended by Antonio Mora, Pessoa’s philosophical persona. Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis frequently attacked each other’s poetry, but joined in the appreciation of Alberto Caeiro’s verses. Pessoa’s heteronyms had a real presence in his life, well beyond literary play; Pessoa’s only, mainly epistolary, romantic relation was broken by the constant interference of Alvaro de Campos, who exasperated the beloved, Ophelia Queiroz, who was, at last, real. . Most importantly, the heteronyms he assumes are not simple literary alter-egos, like Valéry and his Monsiery Teste or Rilke and Malte Laurids; they are entirely self-sufficient, perfect existents, with their own biography, attitude, aesthetics, style and, what is more, they all express, in the most profound sense of the term, a particular possibility of being, a “metaphysics”, a true, tangible, honest reaction to the mystery of being. In a letter to Armando Cortes-Rodrigues Pessoa writes: “I consider insincere all things… that do not contain a fundamental metaphysical idea, in which there is not, not even as a gust of wind, a minimum notion of the gravity and mystery of Life. This is why all I have written under the names of Caeiro, Reis, Alvaro de Campos is authentic. In each of them I have put a profound concept of life, different in each of the three, but in all deeply aware of the mysterious importance of existence.” The production of Pessoa mirrors the evolution of a life that has given up all pretensions and wishes to find a harbour. At first it could be seen to depart from the plateau of disbelief that characterised much modernist creation, and that finds its clearest echo in Pessoa-Bernando Soares’ Book of Disquiet, the factless autobiography of a solitary employee in which all the themes dear to the high-bourgeois literature of the early twentieth century find their place, enmeshed in an absurd air of normality already prefiguring some of Becket’s characters to come. But it would be reductive, and indeed impossible, to inscribe Pessoa in the simple existential reaction to the meaninglessness of a world without certainty. If Pessoa departs from the “nothingness” of the world, it is only to turn this nothingness into eternal possibility, to hold a constant revolution in thought by “usurping the Divine power of being everything”. And this is the effect Pessoa’s three-dimensional heteronyms achieve, that of a multiplicity of the truthful, a crystallisation of experience with its refraction of a thousand shades of possible existences; “all manners”, the poet writes, “of faking I understand the world, or better, of faking it can be understood”. Autopsychography The poet is a faker Who’s so good at his act He even fakes the pain Of pain he feels in fact. And those who read his words Will feel in his writing Neither of the pains he has But just the one they’re missing. And so around its track This thing called the heart winds, A little clockwork train To entertain our minds. 1 April 1931 Translated by Richard Zenith, in Fernando Pessoa : A little Larger than the Entire Universe. Selected Poems. (Penguin Classics) Fernando Pessoa: European Modernist or Postmodernist? Celebrated writer and translator Richard Zenith will present a lecture and read selected verses of Pessoa. Accompanied by a special cello composition by Vicky Steiri and screening of contemporary Portuguese Video-Art. FREE Friday 7th March, 6.30PM, St Peter’s Church (Mayfair), Vere Street, London W1G 0DQ Part of the London Festival of Europe, Full program see here
Soirée Fernando Pessoa
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Fernando Pessoa est l’une des figures intellectuelles européennes les plus importantes du siècle dernier. Le Festival de l’Europe de Londres 2008 a consacré une journée entière à la découverte de ce mystérieux poète portugais. Fernando Pessoa est une multitude. Né à Lisbonne en 1888, la réputation de ce mystérieux poète portugais a grandi de manière régulière au fil des ans, jusqu’à ce qu’il soit aujourd’hui considéré comme l’une des voix européennes les plus fondamentales du siècle dernier. La caractéristique la plus frappante de Pessoa est son utilisation constante des hétéronymes, ou égos littéraires, de telle manière qu’une pluralité de voix et de biographies sont la seule voix et la seule biographie possibles pour ce poète de la polygamie. Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis et Alvaro de Campos sont les trois hétéronymes poétiques employés par Pessoa les plus développés mais, après sa mort, une véritable multitude de personnages, chacun étant l’auteur d’une collection de textes particulière, ont émergé d’une boîte contenant ses écrits (fragmentés, sur des vieux reçus de restaurant, des serviettes, des feuilles volantes). Bernando Soares, l’auteur semi-hétéronyme du formidable Livre de l’intranquilité ; Antonio Mora, philosophe et sociologue ; le Baron de Teive, essayiste ; Thomas Coarse et Alexander Search, qui ont écrit en anglais ; Raphael Baldaya, astrologue… et la liste se poursuit avec soixante-douze noms et autant de genres littéraires. Tous les hétéronymes ont collaboré à des projets de publication, se sont critiqués et se sont même traduits les uns les autres. Le sensationnalisme, l’un des nombreux « mouvements » initiés par Pessoa, a été critiqué par Antonio de Seabra et compilé en anglais par Sher Henay, les deux étant le fruit de l’imagination de Pessoa. Le néo-paganisme a été ardemment défendu par Antonio Mora, le personnage philosophique de Pessoa. Alvaro de Campos et Ricardo Reis ont fréquemment attaqué la poésie de l’autre, mais se sont associés dans l’appréciation des vers d’Alberto Caeiro. Les hétéronymes de Pessoa ont eu une véritable présence dans sa vie, bien au-delà du jeu littéraire ; l’unique relation amoureuse de Pessao, principalement épistolaire, a été brisée par l’interférence constante d’Alvaro de Campos, qui exaspérait sa bien-aimée, Ophelia Queiroz qui était, elle, bien réelle. Plus important encore, les hétéronymes qu’il endosse ne sont pas de simples alter-ego littéraires, comme Valéry et son Monsieur Teste ou Rilke et Malte Laurids ; ils sont entièrement autonomes, ce sont des éléments parfaitement existants, avec leur propre biographie, leur attitude, leur esthétisme, leur style et, de surcroît, ils expriment tous, dans le sens le plus profond du terme, une possibilité particulière d’être une « métaphysique », une véritable réaction, concrète et honnête, au mystère de l’être. Dans une lettre à Armando Cortes-Rodrigues, Pessoa écrit : « Je considère dénuées de sincérité toutes les choses… qui ne contiennent une idée métaphysique fondamentale, dans laquelle il n’y ait, même en coup de vent, une notion minimum de gravité et de mystère de la Vie. C’est pourquoi, tout ce que j’ai écrit sous les noms de Caeiro, Reis et Alvaro de Campos est authentique. Dans chacun d’eux, j’ai mis un concept profond de vie, différent chez chacun des trois, mais tous profondément conscients de l’importance mystérieuse de l’existence. » La production de Pessoa reflète l’évolution d’une vie qui a abandonné toutes prétentions et qui souhaite trouver un port. A première vue, on pourrait avoir l’impression qu’elle quitte le plateau de l’incrédulité qui caractérisait la plupart des créations modernistes, et qu’elle trouve son écho le plus clair dans le Livre de l’intranquilité de Pessoa-Bernando Soares, l’autobiographie sans fondements d’un employé solitaire dans laquelle tous les thèmes chers à la littérature de la haute-bourgeoisie du début du vingtième siècle trouvent leur place, empêtrés dans un absurde sentiment de normalité qui préfigure déjà certains des personnages de Becket à venir. Mais ce serait réducteur, et en fait impossible, d’inscrire Pessoa dans la simple réaction existentielle à un monde dénué de sens et sans certitude. Si Pessoa quitte le « néant » du monde, c’est uniquement pour transformer ce néant en une possibilité éternelle, pour mener une révolution constante de la pensée en « usurpant le pouvoir divin d’être tout. » Et c’est l’effet atteint par les hétéronymes tridimensionnels, un effet de multiplicité de ce qui est véridique, une cristallisation de l’expérience avec sa réfraction d’un millier de nuances d’existences possibles ; « toutes les façons de simuler », écrit le poète, « le fait que je comprends le monde ou, mieux, simuler le fait qu’il peut être compris. » Autopsychographie. Le poète sait l’art de feindre. Il feint si complètement Qu’il en vient à feindre qu’est douleur La douleur qu’en fait il sent. Et ceux qui lisent ses écrits Dans la douleur lue sentent bien Non les deux qu’il a connues, Mais celle qu’ils n’éprouvent point. Et ainsi, en ses engrenages Tourne, jouet de la raison, Ce petit train mécanique Qui de cœur a reçu le nom. 1er avril 1931. Traduction française par Armand Guibert. La traduction anglaise a été réalisée par Richard Zenith et apparait dans son livre Fernando Pessoa : A little Larger than the Entire Universe. Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) Fernando Pessoa: moderniste ou post-moderniste européen? Célèbre écrivain et traducteur, Richard Zenith présentera une conférence et fera la lecture d’une sélection de vers de Pesssoa. Accompagné d’une composition spéciale pour violoncelle de Vicky Steiri et de la projection d’une vidéo d’art portugaise contemporaine. GRATUIT vendredi 7 mars, 18h30, St Peter’s Church (Mayfair), Vere Street, Londres W1G 0DQ dans le cadre du Festival de l’Europe de Londres, voir ici pour le programme complet.
FROM MISSING THE BUS TO JOINING AN OCCUPATION
As part of our Making a Living project to use creative methods to explore how young people are coping with making a living, we recently announced an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers. These have been produced thanks to the stories of over 80 young people across 25 cities in Europe on how they cope with making a living. We’d like to thank Ryan and Maxime for imagining the day in the life of a Zombie Generation – Sophia. Sophia is a French girl living in London. She lives with her parents in an attic they converted after she got evicted from her flat after she split up with her husband who moved back to Paris. She has two children from a relationship back in France. She is currently working as a supply teacher in several schools and would like to be a permanent teacher. Morning She needs to wash and get her children dressed for school and make them breakfast in time to walk them to the bus. She forgets to set her alarm, so wakes up late. By the time she has rushed through getting her children ready, the school bus has left. She eventually finds a route using the normal bus that can take her children to the school. She interacts with the bus driver telling them to watch out for her children to make sure they get off at the right stop. She tells them what two buses to take to get there. She then gets a different bus to the school she teaches at. She does this because she needs to get her children to school, but she knows she can’t go on the same bus to make sure they get there safely as otherwise she will be really late getting into work. She feels frustrated she can’t accompany her children safely, but she knows they have had to become independent because of her work situation. Lunch She needs to report her delay to the principal and then go to her class. She goes to the principal’s office to apologise for being late for work. He threatens to fire her, but says he will be kind and just cut her pay. She then goes to the classroom and all the children go crazy as they have been waiting for her. She does this because she feels she needs to still teach the children, even though she wants to quit. She feels victimised and blames the agency that selects schools for her to be a supply teacher at. Afternoon She needs to meet colleagues for a coffee to discuss the next year. She goes to the staff room and explains what happened to one of the colleague she’s close to. The colleague tells her that she experienced the same situation recently and says this is the last straw, that only supply teachers in the school are treated like this. They should strike on their poor treatment. But for Sophie, this is her only job and she needs to pay for her children’s wellbeing. In the end, she agrees to go on strike as she trusts her colleague. She feels torn, but feels that she has nothing to lose as her pay has been cut already. Evening She needs to pick up her children from school and help her colleagues occupy the school. She takes part in the occupation of the school with the other teacher, protesting for equal treatment of all teachers in their working conditions. The school children design flyers with the teachers. She calls her parents to pick up her children, but they can’t get out of work at the call centre and factory. She calls her oldest child Jonathan and asks him to walk Melissa his sister to her school. She wants to stay at the occupation, but wants to be with her children too. She wants them to learn how its important to stand up for your rights. Through this imaginary day, we see how even trivial issues like missing the bus can lead to dramatic events – like having your pay cut – which have an impact on making a living. But how trusting in other people – whether it’s the bus driver for watching out for her children or her colleague for agreeing to go on strike – helps her cope better. We see the constant tension between wanting to do the best for her children and having to ensure there is money coming in, while at the same time wanting to stick by her values even in the most desperate situations. It’s these everyday issues that policy makers need to reflect on to better design solutions with young people that help them cope with the crisis. Like Maxime and Ryan, who not imagine a day in the life yourself of one of the personas?
Pamphlet: Detenzione amministrativa dei migranti e violazione dei diritti umani
European Alternatives e la campagna LasciateCIEntrare hanno pubblicato questo pamphlet sulla detenzione amministrativa dei migranti, disponibile per il download online. Data di pubblicazione: dicembre 2012 Numero pagine: 16 Scarica qui la versione in PDF
Eyewitness report: Neo-Nazi March in Lithuania on Independence Day
Neo-Nazi March in Lithuania on Independence Day.
Témoignage : une manifestation néo-nazie en Lituanie lors de la fête de l’Indépendance
Neo-Nazi March in Lithuania on Independence Day.
LEurope après lEurope : lautre Europe en attente
La carte du monde surréaliste (1929) Par Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Ce texte a initialement été publié sur Opendemocracy.net dans le cadre de leur série « L’Europe peut-elle s’en sortir ? ». Lorsque nous parlons de « questions européennes », nous avons tendance à parler presque exclusivement en ce que nous pourrions appeler des termes « verticaux », comme si la « question » de l’Europe ne concernait que les institutions officielles (le Parlement, la Commission…), les accords entre les Etats-membres, ou même la relation entre les citoyens et les institutions. Cette tendance est particulièrement forte au Royaume-Uni où la « question européenne » est en effet réduite à un simple « oui ou non » à l’Union européenne. Mais elle est présente dans tous les pays européens et est en partie la conséquence inévitable du fait que l’Union européenne est très jeune et en perpétuelle construction. Nous pourrions également dire que c’est la conséquence, d’une certaine manière, de l’idée que l’Europe elle-même est capturée par l’Union européenne et ses institutions sous leur forme actuelle. Aussi importantes que sont les questions « verticales » sur l’Europe, il existe également un ensemble de questions sans doute plus importantes qui pourraient être appelées « horizontales » : comment les Européens se comprennent-ils entre eux, en tant qu’individus et en tant que groupes ? Comment se traitent-ils entre eux ? Comment expriment-ils la solidarité ou le conflit ? Comment agissent-ils ensemble ? Se re-concentrer sur ces questions me paraît être une part importante de la construction d’une Europe par le bas, ou une tentative de « refondation ». Nous savons que les institutions officielles et les dirigeants élus ont une très grande influence dans la détermination de la façon dont les gens communiquent entre eux : si les dirigeants du nord propagent l’idée que les habitants du sud de l’Europe sont inefficaces et paresseux, par exemple, ou qu’une faute « morale » a été commise dans le sud qui nécessite d’être « sanctionnée » par l’austérité, et si, en effet, les politiques de l’Union européenne deviennent basées sur ce type de postulats, alors il est évidemment plus probable que les personnes dans le nord de l’Europe vont avoir cette image des personnes dans le sud, et que les rapports sociaux vont changer dans ce sens. Mais les attitudes et les comportements des gens ne sont heureusement pas totalement déterminés par les dirigeants ou les institutions, et les changements de comportement de la population entraînés par les politiques publiques ne sont pas unidirectionnels. Sans parler de désobéissance civile, il existe des formes alternatives d’organisation sociale qui peuvent être promues et qui résistent efficacement à la fois à la « logique » du marché et àcelle des institutions. Plusieurs exemples récents sont bien connus, des supermarchés du peuple aux bitcoins et aux théâtres occupés. Dans le cadre de la crise économique, un certain nombre de ces initiatives les plus discutées sont tout naturellement concentrées sur des économies alternatives. Nous ne possédons pas encore beaucoup d’exemples de telles initiatives à l’échelle européenne ou qui se concentrent sur l’Europe, même si elles ont vu le jour, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la solidarité avec les populations immigrées. De telles initiatives devraient sans aucun doute assumer une lourde tâche : elles mettraient au défi non seulement l’opinion dominante, mais également les logiques institutionnelles aussi profondes que le classement de nos sociétés selon la forme des Etats-nations. Elles auraient de leur côté la dimension de plus en plus « transnationale » de nos vies, nos relations sociales et nos perspectives, qui sont à présent largement au-delà de tout ce qui pourrait être limité en une seule politique nationale. De telles initiatives n’auraient pas nécessairement d’exigences politiques orientées vers les institutions officielles de la démocratie, mais elles mettraient plutôt en œuvre de nouvelles manières d’être Européen. La création de telles initiatives me paraît essentielle pour le développement d’une Europe alternative. Historiquement, la gauche européenne a été bâtie grâce à des initiatives telles que les coopératives, les clubs pour les ouvriers et les syndicats. Ce sont là certaines des façons dont les valeurs de solidarité, par exemple, ont été ancrées, protégées et promues dans notre corps social. Si nous souhaitons bâtir une gauche européenne, il est naïf de croire que cela peut ou va être fait en obtenant le pouvoir dans les institutions. Ce sera fait grâce à un processus d’une dizaine d’années à créer des institutions sociales alternatives. Détenir le pouvoir dans les institutions peut sembler souhaitable afin de faciliter ce processus social, mais il faudrait que ce soit le pouvoir au service du peuple à long terme, en quelque sorte, et non l’inverse. Comme Bo Strath et beaucoup d’autres l’ont affirmé, le renforcement et la politisation du Parlement européen sont des éléments essentiels à la création d’une sphère publique européenne qui fonctionne et qui permette au système de commentaires entre les représentants et les représentés de fonctionner correctement. A ce jour, nous sommes dans une situation où les sphères publiques nationales en Europe renforcent la divergence nationale et la compétition, grâce à une boucle de rétroaction bien établie entre l’opinion publique nationale et les dirigeants nationaux, qui nous précipite vers des formes de populisme nationaliste. Un Parlement européen qui a trouvé sa place dans le système institutionnel européen interromprait cette boucle de rétroaction nationale, en introduisant une perspective européenne concentrée sur le bien commun européen. Mais un Parlement européen qui fonctionne dans ce sens ne peut être créé par décret. Ni ne peuvent être réellement créés des partis politiques transeuropéens, qui incarneraient une vision différente du bien commun européen, par les élites ou par des partis politiques nationaux en recomposition, sous forme de « groupes » au niveau européen : la création de partis politiques sera basée sur et émergera de la structuration des mouvements populaires dans la société européenne, à travers des initiatives sociales. Oublier cet ancrage dans le corps de la société, il me semble, fait partie de ce que beaucoup de personnes veulent dire lorsqu’elles disent que les partis politiques paraissent de plus en plus déconnectés de la vie de tous les jours et semblent représenter uniquement les hommes politiques professionnels ou des intérêts cachés. Les…
Europe after Europe: the other Europe in waiting
The surrealist map of the world (1929)Niccolo Milanese This text was originally published on Opendemocracy.net as part of their ‘Can Europe Make It?’ Series There is a tendency when speaking of ‘things European’ to speak almost exclusively in what we could call ‘vertical’ terms, as if the ‘question’ of Europe is all about the formal institutions – the parliament, the Commission etc. – the agreements amongst member states, or even the relationship between the citizens and the institutions. This tendency is particularly strong in the United Kingdom, where ‘the European question’ is indeed being boiled down to a simple ‘in or out?’ But it is present in all European countries and is in part the inevitable consequence of the European Union itself being very young and continuously under construction. We could also say that it is the consequence, in some ways, of the idea of Europe itself being captured by the European Union and its institutions in their present form. As important as the ‘vertical’ questions about Europe are, there are also a set of arguably more important questions which could be called ‘horizontal’ : how do Europeans relate to one another, as individuals and as groups? How do they treat each other? How do they express solidarity or conflict? How do they do things together? Refocusing on these questions seems to me an important part of constructing a Europe from below, or an attempt at ‘refoundation’. We know that the formal institutions and elected leaders have a very great influence in determining the way people relate to one another: if leaders from the North propagate the idea that people in the South of Europe are inefficient and lazy, for example, or that a ‘moral’ fault has been committed in the south that needs to be ‘punished’ by austerity, and indeed if the policies of the European Union become based on this kind of premise, then it is of course more likely that people in the North of Europe will think this way of people in the South, and that social relations will change in this direction. But the attitudes and behaviours of people are thankfully not totally determined by leaders or institutions, and the changes in public attitudes induced by public policies are not unidirectional. Without speaking of civil disobedience, there are alternative forms of social organisation which can be promoted which effectively resist the ‘logic’ of both the market and also the institutions. Many recent examples are well known, from people’s supermarkets to bitcoin to occupied theatres. In the context of the economic crisis, many of the most discussed of such initiatives are understandably focussed on alternative economies. We do not yet have many examples of such initiatives on a European scale, or with Europe as a focus, even if they have been emerging, notably with regard to solidarity with migrant populations. Such initiatives arguably would have a tough task: they would challenge not only dominant opinion, but also institutional logics as profound as the ordering of our societies according to the form of nation states. They would have on their side the increasingly ‘transnational’ dimension of our lives, social relations and outlooks, which now largely go beyond anything that could be circumscribed in one national polity. Such initiatives would not necessarily be making political demands directed towards formal institutions of democracy, but rather enacting new ways of being European. The creation of such initiatives seems to me essential for the development of an alternative Europe. Historically, the left in Europe has been built through such initiatives as cooperatives, working men’s clubs, and trade unions. These are some of the ways that the values of solidarity, for example, have been anchored, protected and promoted in our social fabric. If we want to build a European left, it is naïve to think it can or will be done by conquering power in the institutions. It will be done through a decade-long process of creating alternative social institutions. Holding power in the institutions may be a desirable thing to facilitate this social process – but it would be power in the long-term service of the people, as it were, and not the other way around. As Bo Strath and many others have argued, the reinforcing and the politicisation of the European Parliament are essential components of creating a functioning European public sphere which allows for the feedback between representatives and represented to correctly function. At the moment we have a situation where the national public spheres in Europe reinforce national divergence and competition through a well-established feedback loop between national public opinion and national leaders, which is rushing us towards forms of nationalist populism. A European Parliament which found its place in the institutional system of Europe would interrupt this national feedback loop by introducing a European perspective focussed on the European common good. But a functioning European Parliament in this sense cannot be created by fiat. Nor can genuinely transeuropean political parties, which would incarnate competing visions of the European common good, be created by the elites or by recomposing national political parties into ‘groups’ at the European level: the creation of political parties will be based on and emerge from the structuration of people’s movements in European society, through social initiatives. Forgetting this anchoring in the fabric of society – it seems to me – is part of what many people are getting at when they say that political parties seem increasingly disconnected from everyday life and seem only to represent professionalised politicians or hidden interests. The ‘European’ political groupings seem only to accentuate this feeling. It is also possible to resist dominant logics in actions as simple and everyday as the way that we interact in social settings with others, behaviour that we accept and behaviour that we condemn, the jokes we repeat or refuse to laugh at… All of this is well known and quite obvious to many of us from other experiences: more or less successful battles have been won by progressive forces to change…
L’Europe après l’Europe : l’autre Europe en attente
La carte du monde surréaliste (1929)Par Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Ce texte a initialement été publié sur Opendemocracy.net dans le cadre de leur série « L’Europe peut-elle s’en sortir ? ». Lorsque nous parlons de « questions européennes », nous avons tendance à parler presque exclusivement en ce que nous pourrions appeler des termes « verticaux », comme si la « question » de l’Europe ne concernait que les institutions officielles (le Parlement, la Commission…), les accords entre les Etats-membres, ou même la relation entre les citoyens et les institutions. Cette tendance est particulièrement forte au Royaume-Uni où la « question européenne » est en effet réduite à un simple « oui ou non » à l’Union européenne. Mais elle est présente dans tous les pays européens et est en partie la conséquence inévitable du fait que l’Union européenne est très jeune et en perpétuelle construction. Nous pourrions également dire que c’est la conséquence, d’une certaine manière, de l’idée que l’Europe elle-même est capturée par l’Union européenne et ses institutions sous leur forme actuelle. Aussi importantes que sont les questions « verticales » sur l’Europe, il existe également un ensemble de questions sans doute plus importantes qui pourraient être appelées « horizontales » : comment les Européens se comprennent-ils entre eux, en tant qu’individus et en tant que groupes ? Comment se traitent-ils entre eux ? Comment expriment-ils la solidarité ou le conflit ? Comment agissent-ils ensemble ? Se re-concentrer sur ces questions me paraît être une part importante de la construction d’une Europe par le bas, ou une tentative de « refondation ». Nous savons que les institutions officielles et les dirigeants élus ont une très grande influence dans la détermination de la façon dont les gens communiquent entre eux : si les dirigeants du nord propagent l’idée que les habitants du sud de l’Europe sont inefficaces et paresseux, par exemple, ou qu’une faute « morale » a été commise dans le sud qui nécessite d’être « sanctionnée » par l’austérité, et si, en effet, les politiques de l’Union européenne deviennent basées sur ce type de postulats, alors il est évidemment plus probable que les personnes dans le nord de l’Europe vont avoir cette image des personnes dans le sud, et que les rapports sociaux vont changer dans ce sens. Mais les attitudes et les comportements des gens ne sont heureusement pas totalement déterminés par les dirigeants ou les institutions, et les changements de comportement de la population entraînés par les politiques publiques ne sont pas unidirectionnels. Sans parler de désobéissance civile, il existe des formes alternatives d’organisation sociale qui peuvent être promues et qui résistent efficacement à la fois à la « logique » du marché et àcelle des institutions. Plusieurs exemples récents sont bien connus, des supermarchés du peuple aux bitcoins et aux théâtres occupés. Dans le cadre de la crise économique, un certain nombre de ces initiatives les plus discutées sont tout naturellement concentrées sur des économies alternatives. Nous ne possédons pas encore beaucoup d’exemples de telles initiatives à l’échelle européenne ou qui se concentrent sur l’Europe, même si elles ont vu le jour, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la solidarité avec les populations immigrées. De telles initiatives devraient sans aucun doute assumer une lourde tâche : elles mettraient au défi non seulement l’opinion dominante, mais également les logiques institutionnelles aussi profondes que le classement de nos sociétés selon la forme des Etats-nations. Elles auraient de leur côté la dimension de plus en plus « transnationale » de nos vies, nos relations sociales et nos perspectives, qui sont à présent largement au-delà de tout ce qui pourrait être limité en une seule politique nationale. De telles initiatives n’auraient pas nécessairement d’exigences politiques orientées vers les institutions officielles de la démocratie, mais elles mettraient plutôt en œuvre de nouvelles manières d’être Européen. La création de telles initiatives me paraît essentielle pour le développement d’une Europe alternative. Historiquement, la gauche européenne a été bâtie grâce à des initiatives telles que les coopératives, les clubs pour les ouvriers et les syndicats. Ce sont là certaines des façons dont les valeurs de solidarité, par exemple, ont été ancrées, protégées et promues dans notre corps social. Si nous souhaitons bâtir une gauche européenne, il est naïf de croire que cela peut ou va être fait en obtenant le pouvoir dans les institutions. Ce sera fait grâce à un processus d’une dizaine d’années à créer des institutions sociales alternatives. Détenir le pouvoir dans les institutions peut sembler souhaitable afin de faciliter ce processus social, mais il faudrait que ce soit le pouvoir au service du peuple à long terme, en quelque sorte, et non l’inverse. Comme Bo Strath et beaucoup d’autres l’ont affirmé, le renforcement et la politisation du Parlement européen sont des éléments essentiels à la création d’une sphère publique européenne qui fonctionne et qui permette au système de commentaires entre les représentants et les représentés de fonctionner correctement. A ce jour, nous sommes dans une situation où les sphères publiques nationales en Europe renforcent la divergence nationale et la compétition, grâce à une boucle de rétroaction bien établie entre l’opinion publique nationale et les dirigeants nationaux, qui nous précipite vers des formes de populisme nationaliste. Un Parlement européen qui a trouvé sa place dans le système institutionnel européen interromprait cette boucle de rétroaction nationale, en introduisant une perspective européenne concentrée sur le bien commun européen. Mais un Parlement européen qui fonctionne dans ce sens ne peut être créé par décret. Ni ne peuvent être réellement créés des partis politiques transeuropéens, qui incarneraient une vision différente du bien commun européen, par les élites ou par des partis politiques nationaux en recomposition, sous forme de « groupes » au niveau européen : la création de partis politiques sera basée sur et émergera de la structuration des mouvements populaires dans la société européenne, à travers des initiatives sociales. Oublier cet ancrage dans le corps de la société, il me semble, fait partie de ce que beaucoup de personnes veulent dire lorsqu’elles disent que les partis politiques paraissent de plus en plus déconnectés de la vie de tous les jours et semblent représenter uniquement les hommes politiques professionnels ou des intérêts cachés. Les groupes politiques « européens » ne semblent qu’accentuer ce sentiment.…
Politics upside down: To be or not to be in the EU: Is that the question?
By Matt Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Politics & International Relations Blog originally published on politics|upside|down on May 14th 2013 Earlier this week I chaired a table discussion on bottom-up democracy at a world café event organised by European Alternatives at Europe House in London entitled ‘To be or not to be in the EU: Is that the question?’. The event brought researchers and civil society activists together with members of the general public to generate ideas for a more democratic Europe. The summary of ideas will be discussed at a transnational meeting of citizens in Venice and the ideas will be incorporated into a citizen’s manifesto to try and influence those running for the EP in 2014. The focus of discussion at my table was on designing institutions for collective decision-making across Europe in a way that allows meaningful participation of ordinary citizens. Participants were very much of the view that the EU is a de facto elitist organisation. Opportunities for voice of ordinary citizens are in reality minimal. Participants consistently expressed the view that those in the greatest need are rarely those who are consulted in EU decision-making. There is very little media presence for innovations in democracy despite its prevalence at a local level. They are rarely mentioned by politicians at the European level. There is no reason why local innovation cannot co-exist with and buttress institutions that actively create deep participation at a transnational level. Finally, but relatedly, it was felt that the EU is very centralised. It rarely dips its toes into its rural or urban backwaters – even these consultations always take place in London, and never in places that are not tourist destinations. Proposals from participants for citizen’s manifesto: When the EU considers public participation it needs to actively seeks out and provide the foundations for less established minorities to participate and voice their stories and fresh ideas on an equal footing. The EU should clearly show an interest in incentivising these groups using everything from asking them to paying them. It is felt that this would give them the respect, compensation and autonomy necessary to participate in politics. When groups participate in decision-making it is imperative that they are given information and allowed the experience of deliberating with fellow EU citizens from different walks of life. The EU should more actively create these spaces throughout the public sphere. Relatedly, the EU should mirror the ERASMUS programme but expand it to fund European mobility for exchanges of persons in all types of employment. It was felt that ERASMUS has been the single most successful policy in fostering a pan-European transnational identity. Citizens often end up living happily and becoming connected to cities they would otherwise never have heard of. However it is restricted to those in Higher Education (a group already politically engaged). Perhaps the EU could start by funding an exchange programme for government workers (not one that sends them all to Brussels but all over Europe). The European Union should legislate such that multinational corporations who employ workers across European borders must have a democratic structure in order to enjoy the economic benefits of European markets. This means that workers across countries must have power over significant decisions made by these companies, engendering transnational workplace democracy. MEPs should be a lot more vocal and active in promoting and giving voice to ideas like electoral reform, decisions made by citizen’s assemblies of stratified random samples of the European population, citizen’s initiatives and opportunities for citizen’s to have a say on capital infrastructure projects built with EU money. If they claim they are already doing some of the things we are asking for then could they show us and promote them please! The EU needs to be active in building civil society as a countervailing power particularly in newer member states where corruption is still a barrier to effective democracy. They could do this by funding an exchange programme for community organisers. Are these the kinds of discussions we should be having about Europe? I certainly think they provide a for a more fruitful and creative discourse on alternatives to politics in Europe!
La politique sens-dessus-dessous : être ou ne pas être dans l’UE : est-ce la question ?
Par Matt Ryan, chargé de cours en politique et relations internationales. Blog initialement posté sur politics|upside|down,le 14 mai 2013. Plus tôt cette semaine, j’ai présidé une table-ronde sur la démocratie par le bas, lors d’un évènement world café organisé par Alternatives européennes à l’Europe Houe à Londres, intitulée « Etre ou ne pas être dans l’UE : est-ce la question ? ». L’évènement a rassemblé des chercheurs et des militants de la société civile et des membres du grand public, afin de générer des idées pour une Europe plus démocratique. La synthèse des idées sera traitée lors d’une rencontre transnationale de citoyens à Venise, et les idées seront incorporées à un manifeste des citoyens, afin d’essayer d’influencer les candidats aux élections du Parlement européen en 2014. L’objet de la discussion de ma table-ronde était la conception d’institutions pour des prises de décisions collectives dans toute l’Europe, de manière à permettre la participation significative des citoyens ordinaires. Les participants étaient tous d’accord sur le fait que l’UE est de facto une organisation élitiste. Les possibilités de se faire entendre pour les citoyens ordinaires sont en réalité minimales. Les participants ont constamment indiqué que ceux dont les besoins sont les plus importants sont rarement ceux qui sont consultés dans les prises de décision de l’UE. Les innovations en termes de démocratie sont très peu présentes dans les médias, malgré sa popularité au niveau local. Elles sont très peu mentionnées par les hommes politiques au niveau européen. Il n’y a aucune raison pour que les innovations locales ne soutiennent pas et ne coexistent pas avec les institutions qui créent activement une profonde participation à un niveau transnational. Enfin, mais dans le même ordre d’idées, nous avons estimé que l’UE est très centralisée. Elle s’aventure rarement dans ses soins reculés ruraux ou urbains ; même ces réunions se déroulent toujours à Londres et jamais dans des lieux qui ne sont pas des destinations touristiques. Propositions des participants pour le Manifeste Citoyen : 1. Lorsque l’UE envisage la participation du public, elle doit activement chercher et fournir les fondements pour que les minorités les moins établies puissent participer et exprimer leurs histoires et leurs idées nouvelles sur un pied d’égalité. L’UE devrait clairement montrer un intérêt à encourager ces groupes à se servir de tout, allant de leur poser des questions à les payer. Nous pensons que cela leur donnerait le respect, la compensation et l’autonomie nécessaires pour participer à la vie politique. 2. Quand des groupes participent aux prises de décision, il est impératif que des informations leur soient données et qu’ils soient autorisés à connaître l’expérience de délibérer avec des concitoyens de l’UE, venant de différents milieux. L’UE devrait créer ces espaces plus activement à travers la sphère publique. 3. Parallèlement, l’UE devrait refléter le programme ERASMUS mais en l’étendant au financement de la mobilité européenne pour des échanges de personnes dans tous les types d’emplois. Nous pensons qu’ERASMUS est la politique qui a connu le plus de succès à encourager l’identité transnationale européenne. Les citoyens finissent souvent par vivre heureux et se connecter à des villes dont ils n’auraient autrement jamais entendu parler. Cependant, cela est limité aux personnes dans l’enseignement supérieur (un groupe déjà engagé politiquement). Peut-être que l’UE pourrait commencer par financer un programme d’échange pour les fonctionnaires (pas un programme qui les enverraient tous à Bruxelles mais dans toute l’Europe). 4. L’Union européenne devrait légiférer de manière à ce que les sociétés multinationales qui emploient des travailleurs au-delà des frontières européennes aient une structure démocratique, afin de profiter des avantages économiques des marchés européens. Cela signifie que les travailleurs européens dans tous les pays doivent avoir du pouvoir sur des décisions significatives, prises par ces sociétés, ce qui engendrerait une démocratie du travail transnationale. 5. Les députés européens devraient se faire entendre davantage et être plus actifs en ce qui concerne la promotion et l’expression d’idées comme les réformes électorales, les décisions prises par les assemblées citoyennes d’échantillons aléatoires stratifiés de la population européenne, les initiatives citoyennes et les opportunités pour les citoyens d’avoir leur mot à dire sur les projets d’immobilisations, bâtis avec l’argent de l’UE. S’ils prétendent déjà faire certaines des choses que nous demandons, alors pourraient-ils nous les montrer et les promouvoir, s’il vous plaît ? 6. L’UE doit être active dans la construction de la société civile, en tant que puissance compensatrice, en particulier dans les nouveaux Etats-membres où la corruption est toujours un obstacle à une démocratie efficace. Cela pourrait se faire grâce au financement d’un programme d’échange pour les organisateurs de la communauté. Est-ce là le genre de discussions que nous devrions avoir sur l’Europe ? Je pense évidemment qu’elles nous fournissent des échanges plus fructueux et plus créatifs sur les politiques alternatives en Europe ! Traduit par G. Sciaudone Cet article a été écrit dans le cadre du projet Transnational Democracy Network financé par l'agence Jeunesse en Action du British Council.
WRITE A POEM ON PRECARITY
We’re using creative methods to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. We’ll also feature them at our festival! A few days ago we featured a spoken word video about teenager’s expectations when they go into their high school exams. Inspired by this, we want to offer you the opportunity of having your poetry showcased at our festival. It can be a song about how to cope with making a living, like Eminem’s “If I had” or a poem about precarity like being unemployed by the Poet Laura-eate.
LIVE AND LEARN
You may remember we invited people to share their stories on how they cope with making a living. This is the first post starting to analyse the findings from this research, starting with how important young people value finding a place they can call their own, learning, making and earning a living. But first, here’s our infographic you can print out! It’s best viewed by clicking on this link. Living Just under one in five value living somewhere as something to strive for. For three quarters of these, that means having a place they can call their own – to provide them with stability, particularly with people who are tired of moving from town to town and even from country to country – and in some cases, to help their parents settle too. It’s split down the middle in terms of proportions of people wanting their own house versus those who want their own flat. For about a sixth of people, living in a good neighbourhood is very important, particularly one that is clean and safe. A couple of people preferred to live in a place with others – such as through a commune – or prioritise living abroad, such as in South America and Asia. Click on the visualisation to activate it Learning Many people want to do additional courses, particularly post graduate qualifications in disciplines they’ve developed an interest in and want to research further (such as horticulture, art or design) or that they need for their work (like law or economics). Most importantly, people want to learn practical skills so they can become independent of the system – whether that’s cooking, using new technologies or other forms of DIY. In particular, many people want to learn to be fluent in another language, because they’re migrants in another country will move abroad and need it to get a job and integrate into their new society. Click on the visualisation to activate it Making Just under a fifth of participants felt making was an important ambition. Almost a third of these want to do work that they enjoy and that they are good at. This was defined as meaningful work that fulfils young people professionally. For some that was about working in a cooperative environment or producing their own food. For others it was about being the best specialist in their field – such as becoming a teacher working with children. Building on this, around one in ten respondents wanted to aspire to get as many people as possible to see what they had made – whether that was getting their films or books distributed widely, performing in important films or being a famous artist in their genre. Another third of people want to start their own business, in particularly being able to earn a living from it to make it sustainable While only five percent want to do work which challenged them, around 15 percent strive to have a stable job, particularly those currently working in precarious situations, such as at night. Stability is therefore very important, but that doesn’t mean to say they don’t want to see change – the same percentage want to achieve progress in their career – whether through being better paid or promoted whether in their current field – such as becoming a professor or a manager – or finally being able to use their qualifications to move into the sector they wanted to work in – such as European politics. Click on the visualisation to activate it Earning Only 8% of people value earning money as an important principle to strive for. Almost a third want to become financially independent, in particular from their family or to be able to turn their hobby into a job, or to sustain their creative ventures, such as filmmaking or jewellery. Almost a third prioritise getting paid fairly as an important expectation, to stop doing slave work for companies and actually become rewarded for their efforts at work – such as getting paid for having their books published. Is financial independence becoming more important than financial stability? Click on the visualisation to activate it Our next post in this series will explore the other expectations young people have. Watch this space!
A Turkish Spring?
A report from one of our members in Istanbul “How dare you tell me to dismiss this governor and that police chief? Know your place!” was Recep Tayyip Erdo?an answer to the demands made Tuesday morning by representatives of Taksim resistance, that the people responsible for the brutal reaction against protesters be punished. The PM continued: “From the start, some people, internally and externally, have tried to portray the protests as totally innocent and just, and the police of having systematically used force. Certain media in Turkey were lead provocateurs. The foreign media took part in these operations,” hinting at the use of Twitter to organize and comment the protests, and at a Turkish reporter for BBC and Der Spiegel, accused by AKP of misrepresenting the events. On May 28, a few environmentalists set up tents among the 600 sycamores in Gezi Park to avoid bulldozers razing it to the ground. Thanks to the violence of law enforcers, media silence and Erdo?an’s vehement speeches, citizens all over the country took to the streets to protest against the lack of freedom of expression and assembly. So far, nearly 8,000 people have been wounded, dozens have been arrested, five have died. After violent clashes, on June 15 the police cleared the park and cordoned it off. The red-and-white tape is now surrounding one of the last green areas left in central Istanbul and a prime target of PM aggressive gentrification of public spaces. Erdo?an wants to obliterate Taksim square, traditionally a place of protest against the government. Over it, he intends to rebuild Ottoman military barracks, which would harbor a mosque and a shopping mall, in a city already filled with them. But Erdo?an’s dream doesn’t stop here. He also aims at destroying the neighboring Tarlaba?? district, rundown home to Kurds and prostitutes, to build shiny houses for the wealthy; create a third bridge on the Bosporus; the city’s third airport, which would become the biggest hub in Europe; excavate a new canal to the Black Sea; and erect a giant mosque on Istanbul’s highest hill. These plans would have a bigger ecological impact than destroying Gezi, and not once local residents have been consulted. The PM is also pushing Istanbul for the 2020 Olympics, to secure his glory, and build some more. More buildings equal more money for his son-in-law’s construction company, Gap ?n?aat, already awarded the reconstruction of Tarlaba??. The AKP came into power in 2002, crushing the opposition that has not been able to recover since. In an overwhelmingly conservative and Muslim country, the poor will keep voting AKP because it rewards their loyalty with various goods. Kurds hope to improve their situation after Erdo?an last March was able to negotiate a ceasefire with PKK. Many voters appreciate that he has improved the country’s economy, health care system and infrastructures so much that it seemed that Turkey had a real shot at becoming part of the European Union. Other people cherish the switch from Atatürk’s Westbound foreign policy, to one concentrating more on the Middle Eastern neighbors, proposing Turkey as an example of democracy and stability in the area and a mediator between Europe and the Arab world. Elected with a program to stop secular Kemalists’ interference with a religious lifestyle, the AKP government started doing the same, imposing an Islamic behavior on its citizens. Since 2002 media freedom in Turkey plummeted from 99th place over 179 countries to 154th, reaching the nadir during the protests: the first weekend of June CNNTürk aired cooking shows and documentaries on penguins, while CNNInternational showed the police ferociously repressing the Istanbul manifestation. At the end of 2011, an Internet filter was introduced for the whole state. On May 24, the parliament ruled new restrictions on the sale of alcohol and banned its advertisement. LGBT situation worsened: Turkey is near the bottom of ILGA-Europe (International Lesbian and Gay Association) index and AKP is refusing to recognize gender identity and sexual orientation in the new Constitution. Last February, Erdo?an hinted that he wanted to lift the ban on headscarves in public places, after his unsuccessful attempt in 2007. A month ago came another AKP’s controversial move: with the aim of restricting the 1983 liberal abortion law, Erdo?an has ruled that the morning-after pill can no longer be bought in pharmacies without a prescription. The Prime Minister is known for urging Turkish women to have at least three children each. When images and tales of police brutality against the peaceful protesters in Gezi Park surfaced in the social media, Turkish people decided to let Erdo?an know what they think of his authoritarian turn. In the history of the Republic, it’s the biggest and longest spontaneous protest and it’s gathering a very mixed crowd: politicians and football fans, LGBT and middle class, famous actors and high schoolers. Many carry the Turkish flag with a portrait of filo-Westerner and secular Atatürk, but it’s not a battle between Muslim and laics, both fighting together against an abuse of power. Confronted with the first manifestation of dissent under his rule, Erdo?an first dismissed it, and then violently attacked it, hinting at foreign forces and lying media behind it. He rallied his supporters; he censored and insulted the press, arresting journalists and photographers; he willfully ignores the main issues behind the destruction of Gezi; and brushed off the European Parliament and UN concerns about the “disproportionate and excessive use of force by Turkish police to break up peaceful and legitimate protests”. The PM needs to protect his strongman image, because he plans to become president, after introducing a new Constitution that would transform Turkey in a presidential state. But the protests turned the tables and now the greatest risks for him come from inside the AKP. The lira keeps hitting new all-time low versus dollar and euro, while tourists and foreign investors (who represent a sizable part of Turkish revenues) are wary. Those who supported Erdo?an because he improved the economy could now turn to the less charismatic but moderate…
Un Printemps turc ?
A Istanbul, une de nos militantes raconte… « De quel droit osez-vous me demander de limoger tel gouverneur ou tel chef de police ? » Voilà la réponse adressée par Recep Tayyip Erdoğan aux représentants des manifestants de la place Taksim, qui demandaient jeudi matin que les responsables de la répression brutale des manifestants soient punis. « Dès le début, en Turquie comme à l’étranger, certains ont voulu montrer une image de manifestants totalement innocents qui se battent pour une cause juste et d’une police faisant systématiquement usage de la force. Certains médias turcs se sont conduits comme des provocateurs et des médias étrangers ont participé à ces opérations, » a-t-il poursuivi, faisant référence aux manifestations organisées et commentées via Twitter et à un reporter turc travaillant pour la BBC et Der Spiegel, accusé par l’AKP de donner une fausse image des événements. Le 28 mai, un groupe d’écologistes a planté des tentes entre les 600 sycomores du Parc Gezi afin d’empêcher qu’il soit rasé par les bulldozers. Face à la violence des forces de l’ordre, au silence des médias et aux discours enflammés d’Erdoğan, des citoyens sont sortis dans la rue partout dans le pays pour protester contre le manque de liberté d’expression et d’assemblée. Jusqu’ici, presque 8000 personnes ont été tuées, des dizaines ont été arrêtées et il y a eu cinq morts.Après des affrontements violents, la police a finalement évacué et bouclé le parc le 15 juin. Gezi, qui constitue un des derniers espaces verts du centre-ville d’Istanbul ainsi qu’une cible privilégiée de la virulente politique de réaménagement urbain du Premier ministre, est donc à présent entouré d’un ruban rouge et blanc. Erdoğan veut détruire la place Taksim qui a souvent servi de centre de protestation contre le gouvernement. A terme, il a l’intention de reconstruire les casernes militaires ottomanes qui contiendraient une mosquée et un centre commercial (alors que la ville en rengorge déjà). Mais sa vision va beaucoup plus loin : il ambitionne également de détruire le district avoisinant de Tarlabaşi, où vivent beaucoup de kurdes et de prostituées, afin de construire de luxueuses résidences pour les plus riches ; de construire un troisième pont par-dessus le Bosphore ; de faire le l’aéroport de la ville le plus grand en Europe ; de creuser un nouveau canal vers la Mer noire ; et de construire une gigantesque mosquée sur le plus haut sommet de la ville. L’impact environnemental de ces projets serait immense, bien au-delà de la seule destruction du parc de Gezi, mais les riverains n’ont pas été consultés une seule fois. De plus, le Premier ministre défend la candidature d’Istanbul pour les Jeux olympiques de 2020, pour sa gloire et afin de pouvoir entreprendre davantage de travaux… qui rapporteront encore plus d’argent à l’entreprise de construction de son gendre, Gap Inşaat, déjà chargée de la reconstruction de Tarlabaşi. L’AKP a pris le pouvoir en 2002 lors d’élections au cours desquelles elle a écrasé l’opposition, qui ne s’en est toujours pas remise. Dans un pays majoritairement musulman et conservateur, l’AKP peut compter sur les voix des pauvres que le parti remercie de sa fidélité par divers cadeaux en nature. Après le cessez-le-feu avec le PKK obtenu par Erdoğan en mars dernier, les kurdes espèrent des progrès. Beaucoup d’électeurs lui sont reconnaissants d’avoir reconstruit l’économie du pays et amélioré les infrastructures et la couverture-santé, au point, semblait-il, de booster sérieusement la candidature d’adhésion de la Turquie à l’Union Européenne. D’autres apprécient la réorientation de la politique étrangère, d’une direction pro-occidentale sous Atatürk vers davantage de relations avec ses voisins du Moyen-Orient, auprès desquels la Turquie s’affiche comme un modèle de démocratie et de stabilité et comme un médiateur entre l’Europe et le monde arabe. L’AKP, élu avec un programme visant à empêcher les kémalistes laïcs d’interférer dans la vie religieuse des citoyens, est tombé dans les mêmes travers une fois au pouvoir en imposant une société islamique plus stricte. Depuis 2002, la Turquie est passée de la 99° à la 154° place (sur 179 pays) de l’index de la liberté de presse. Le summum a été atteint pendant les dernières manifestations : la première semaine de juin, pendant que CNN International montrait les images de la féroce répression policière des manifestants à Istanbul, CNN Türk diffusait des émissions de cuisine et des documentaires sur les pingouins ! Un filtre Internet a été introduit fin 2011 dans tout le pays. Le 24 mai, le parlement a voté de nouvelles restrictions sur la ventre d’alcool et interdit les publicités pour des boissons alcoolisées. La situation s’est également empirée pour les LGTB : la Turquie est en queue de liste de l’index d’ILGA Europe (International Lesbian and Gay Association) et l’AKP refuse de reconnaître l’identité et l’orientation sexuelle dans la nouvelle Constitution. En février dernier, Erdoğan a laissé entendre qu’il voulait revenir sur l’interdiction du voile dans les lieux publics, ce à quoi il avait échoué en 2007. Une autre mesure controversée est survenue y a un mois : dans une initiative visant à restreindre la loi de 1983 sur l’avortement, jugée trop libérale, Erdoğan a décidé que la pilule du lendemain ne pourrait désormais plus être achetée sans ordonnance dans les pharmacies. Le Premier ministre est réputé encourager les femmes turques à avoir au moins trois enfants. Lorsque les photos et témoignages à-propos de la brutalité policière contre les manifestants pacifiques de Gezi Park ont commencé à faire le tour des réseaux sociaux, le peuple turc a décidé de montrer à Erdoğan ce qu’il pense de son détour autoritaire :ce fut le début du plus important et du plus long mouvement spontané de l’histoire de la République turque, qui rassemble des acteurs très divers tels que des politiciens, des fans de football, des LGTB, des membres de la classe moyenne, des acteurs célèbres et des lycéens. Beaucoup de manifestants portent des drapeaux turcs et des portraits de l’ex-Président Atatürk, un laïc pro-occidental. Toutefois, il ne s’agit pas d’une bataille entre musulmans et laïcs mais d’une lutte commune contre l’autoritarisme. Erdoğan, face au premiers signes d’opposition à son pouvoir, a d’abord choisi de…
DESIGNING FOR LIFE
We interviewed @natalka_design (video of which will be ready in July) as a symbol of how young people are creating new ways of making a living. Here's a showreel she produced which describes her craft. If you'd like to share your story about how you're making a living, get in touch or check out our website.
Le design, c’est la vie
Nous avons interviewé @natalka_design (la vidéo sera mise en ligne en juillet) afin de montrer des jeunes qui innovent pour gagner leur vie. Voici une démo qui décrit son travail. Si vous souhaitez témoigner de comment vous gagnez votre vie, contactez-nous ou consultez notre site.
EA at 55th Venice Biennale
‘Joan of Art: Towards a Free Education System’, is a multi-year cultural program which aims to deliver a free education system. In the first stages the very notion of education will be explored so that a new system can be delivered which recognises the value of sharing knowledge between peers and across disciplines. In its first year the project has collaborated with founding partner Nomas Foundation, Macro and European Alternatives. From late May until November 2013 the project will be continued in residence with Gervasuti Foundation – location of the Maldives Pavilion – Venice, with additional support by Worm Foundation (Rotterdam). Opening and closing events will contribute to the development of a new free course on art, politics and education, to be delivered from art spaces internationally: an archive of cultural knowledge initiated during the 55th biennale, the Encyclopedic Palace. OPENING EVENT: JOAN’S CARVERY 28 may, 6pm / Fondazione Gervasuti / Fondamenta S.Anna (via Garibaldi) Dutch artist Harold de Bree will cook a ‘golden calf’ inside a metal plinth bearing the inscription in Venetian: ‘Savèr xe segno de tirannide, far domande xe segno de libertà’. (Knowing is the mark of tyranny. Questioning is the mark of freedom). The 50 kilo calf – covered in gold leaf – will be served at 8pm. The golden calf makes reference to the worship of false idols. Today we worship false knowledge, delivered through expensive hierarchical institutions The carving of the cooked calf will initiate an open discussion on the subject of free education. The discussion will open to the public and will involve occupants of MACAO, SALE docks, the curator Mike Watson, EA’s Lorenzo Marsili and invited guests. You may download a press release here. INFORMATION BAR The Joan of Art Bar will be handing out limited edition beer bottles produced in collaboration with Birra del Borgo. Half-quotes on the importance of education will be printed on the labels. The sentences can be completed by finding the corresponding half-quote on the labels of beers being drunk by others, giving rise to the sharing and exchange of reflections, which can be written on a space left on the bottles. The labels will be exhibited over the following days in the bar. The project has been developed by the curator Mike Watson in collaboration with artist Andrew Rutt and assistant curator Donatella Giordano.
Les citoyens européens face à la machine dintégration financière : propositions pour le Manifeste citoyen
Les citoyens européens face à la machine d’intégration financière Propositions pour le Manifeste citoyen Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Jeudi 25 avril 2013, 14h-17h30, Centre d’information européen, représentation de la Commission européenne en Slovaquie, Bratislava Obtenez plus d’informations sur le Manifeste citoyenet sur la consultation de Bratislava. Vous pouvez télécharger les propositions de cette consultation des citoyens ici. Depuis que la crise économique a débuté, les gouvernements ont introduit des mesures d’austérité et accepté une intégration financière plus ferme dans l’Union européenne. Beaucoup de ces démarches ont de graves conséquences sur la vie quotidienne des citoyens européens, ainsi que sur l’état de l’Europe. Cependant, dans la plupart des pays, une grande partie de la population a exprimé sa reluctance vis-à-vis des nouvelles politiques économiques et son désaccord avec le fait que la population est très peu consultée sur les sujets d’une importance cruciale. En effet, le problème de longue date du « déficit démocratique » de l’UE est de retour sur le devant de la scène. Les dernières évolutions, où les politiques ont été passées en force devant le Conseil européen, ont éclipsé les gains obtenus par le traité de Lisbonne, qui augmentait le pouvoir du Parlement européen et promettait aux citoyens d’intervenir davantage dans les affaires européennes. Parmi les participants se trouvaient des universitaires des universités locales et de l’Académie des sciences slovaque, ainsi que des militants locaux. Nous avons abordé trois sujets distincts : l’intégration fiscale (dont les politiques austérité/pro-croissance), l’union bancaire (dont le rôle du secteur bancaire dans le développement économique) et le pouvoir des instances de l’UE pour établir le programme d’intégration. Propositions Tables rondes : questions abordées et propositions clés mises en avant. Les propositions énumérées ci-dessous ont été élaborées à partir de discussions utilisant la méthodologie du World Café et reflètent les opinions de la majorité des participants à la consultation des citoyens, même si les idées et les opinions étaient variées et parfois en désaccord. Certaines des propositions ont été évoquées à différentes tables-rondes mais ont été réunies ici dans un souci de clarté. Si vous souhaitez réagir, commenter une proposition ou soumettre d’autres idées, veuillez utiliser la zone de « commentaires » au bas de la page. Intégration fiscale Panel : Monika Martiskova (Alternatives européennes), Brigita Schmognerova (ancienne ministre des Finances et ancienne vice-présidente de la Banque européenne pour la Reconstruction et le Développement), Zsolt Gal (Université Comenius de Bratislava) La question centrale était la participation des citoyens dans l’intégration fiscale de l’UE. Au départ, les experts ont présenté leur position vis-à-vis de l’intégration fiscale dans l’UE. Puis, ils ont débattu les raisons de l’intégration fiscale en Europe. Brigita Schmognerova, ancienne ministre des Finances (1998-2002) a affirmé qu’il ne s’agissait pas uniquement d’intégration fiscale. L’intégration fiscale sous la forme d’objectifs de déficit communs et appliquée de manière stricte n’aidera pas à résoudre les problèmes dans les pays de l’UE, il faut des politiques bien plus larges. Les mesures d’austérité ne sont pas la solution pour sortir de la crise. Zsolt Gal, de l’Université Comenius de Bratislava, le second expert invité, a déclaré que la théorie économique sur les zones monétaires optimales ne correspond pas vraiment à l’UEM. Cependant, l’euro projet devrait se poursuivre et le seul moyen pour cela est l’intégration fiscale. Les participants se sont tous les deux mis d’accord sur le fait que l’intégration fiscale est une étape nécessaire après la création de l’union monétaire. Enfin, le panel de participants et l’assistance ont parlé des sources de la crise, en mettant l’accent sur les plans de sauvetage en Grèce, en Irlande, au Portugal et à Chypre. 1 . Mettre fin aux politiquesd’austérité : il y a un fort consensus parmi les économistes du milieu universitaire sur le fait que les réductions fiscales étouffent la croissance. Cette idée est même soutenue par certains anciens faucons de l’austérité institutionnelle, tels que le FMI. L’UE doit revoir la réduction des dépenses dans les pays qui sont renfloués ainsi que dans les pays centraux. 2 . Rééquilibrer la croissance dans la zone euro : à nouveau, beaucoup d’économistes s’accordent sur le fait que la clé pour sortir de la crise est une croissance équilibrée dans la zone euro. Cela signifie qu’il faut stimuler la demande dans les pays « centraux », en particulier l’Allemagne. Cela implique soit des politiques fiscales plus libres soit des mesures règlementaires, telles que l’adoption d’un revenu minimum relativement élevé. 3 . Changer la procédure de déséquilibre macroéconomique de la Commission européenne. La procédure a été largement critiquée pour apporter son soutien plutôt que d’aller à l’encontre des déséquilibres. Par exemple, les règles permettent des excédents courants plus importants que les déficits. La procédure devrait être réformée. 4 . L’harmonisation fiscale doit être suivie par une harmonisation des taxes. Des mesures pour harmoniser les taxes sont bien plus nécessaires que « l’harmonie fiscale » actuellement proposée. Le système de taxation actuel permet aux multinationales d’utiliser les échappatoires fournies par la complexité des juridictions dans lesquelles elles opèrent. Il y a actuellement un élan pour une transparence grandement accrue. La Directive sur l’impôt retenu à la source sera probablement amendée afin d’élargir le type d’actifs ainsi que les pays couverts par l’échange automatique d’informations. La Commission européenne a proposé de nouvelles mesures pour harmoniser le rassemblement d’informations, afin d’éviter les fraudes à la TVA, et des avancées importantes ont été réalisées récemment afin de faire pression en faveur de la déclaration pays par pays. L’élan devrait être conservé et cela devrait être considéré comme l’une des tâches principales de la société civile européenne. Union bancaire Panel : Jan Zaborsky (rédacteur en chef, Trend hebdomadaire d’économie), Juraj Draxler (Centre d’études de la politique européenneet Alternatives européennes), Viliam Palenik (Académie des Sciences slovaqueet membre du Comité économique et social européen) La discussion a été ouverte par Viliam Palenik, un économiste de l’Académie des sciences slovaque, membre d’ECOSOC. Il a décrit comment ECOSOC tente d’amener la discussion de l’UE sur l’union bancaire. Il a mentionné comment certaines des propositions recommandées par ECOSOC n’étaient pas adoptées dans la législation de l’UE, par exemple, une règle…
European citizens vis-a-vis financial integration machine: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
European citizens vis-a-vis financial integration machine Citizens’ consultation for the Citizens ManifestoThursday April 25th 2013, 14:00-17:30 European Information Centre, Representation of the European Commission in Slovakia, Bratislava Find out more information about the Citizens Manifesto and about the Bratislava consultation.You can download the findings of this citizens’ consultation here. Since the economic crisis began, governments have introduced austerity measures and accepted tighter financial integration in the European Union. Many of these steps have far-reaching consequences for the everyday life of European citizens as well as for the shape of Europe. Yet in most countries, large parts of the population have expressed reluctance towards new economic policies and disagreement with the fact that there is very little public consultation over topics of vital importance.Indeed, the long-standing issue of EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ is now back on stage. Latest developments, where polices are bulldozed through the European Council, have overshadowed the gains achieved by the Lisbon Treaty, which increased the power of the European Parliament and promised to give the citizens a greater say in European affairs.Participants included academics from local universities and the Slovak Academy of Sciences, as well as local activists.We discussed three separate topics: fiscal integration: (including austerity vs. pro-growth policies), banking union (including the role of the banking sector in economic development), and the power of EU bodies to set the integration agenda. Findings Table Discussions: Issues Discussed and Key Proposals Put Forth The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology and reflect the positions of the majority of participants to the citizens’ consultation, even though ideas and positions were diverse and sometimes in disagreement. Some of the proposals raised during different discussions were merged here for the purpose of clarity. If you’d like to react to or comment a proposal or put forward other ideas, please use the “comment” box at the bottom of the page. Fiscal integration Panel:Monika Martiskova (European Alternatives), Brigita Schmognerova (former Minister of Finance and former Vice-President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), Zsolt Gal (Comenius University Bratislava)The key question was the participation of the citizens in the fiscal integration of the EU. At the beginning the experts introduced their position towards fiscal integration in the EU. Then they discussed the reasons for fiscal integration in Europe. Brigita Schmognerova, former minister of finance (1998-2002) said it is not only about fiscal integration. The fiscal integration in the shape of common, strictly enforced deficit targets itself won´t help to solve the problems in the EU countries, much broader policies are needed. The austerity measures are not the way out of the crisis. Zsolt Gal,Commenius university in Bratislava, the second expert invited, said that economic theory about optimum currency areas does not really fit to EMU. However, the europroject should be continued and the only way is the fiscal integration. Both participants agreed that fiscal integration is necessary step after the creation of monetary union. Finally the panel participants and attendees discussed the roots of crisis, with the emphasis on the bailouts in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus. 1. End austerity policies: there is a strong consensus among academic economists that strong fiscal cuts are stifling growth. This is now supported even by some former institutional austerity hawks, such as the IMF. The EU needs to review spending cuts in the countries that are being bailed out as well as in the core countries.2. Rebalance growth in the eurozone: again, many economists agree that key to getting out of the crisis is a balanced growth in the eurozone. This means stimulating demand in the „core“ countries, especially Germany. This entails either looser fiscal policies or regulatory measures, such as adopting a relatively high minimum wage.3. Change European Commission’s macroeconomic imbalances procedure. The procedure has been widely criticized for actualy supporting rather than working against imbalances. For example, the rules allow larger current account surpluses than deficits. The procedure should be reformed. 4. Fiscal harmonization needs to be followed by tax harmonization. Measures to harmonize taxes are much more needed than the currently proposed „fiscal harmonization“. The current system of taxation allows multinational to use loopholes provided by the complexity of jurisdictions they operate in. There is currently a momentum for vastly increasing transparency. The Withholding Tax Directive will most likely be amended to widen the type of assets as well as countries covered by automatic information exchange. The European Commission has proposed new measures to harmonize information gathering to prevent VAT frauds and there have been major advances recently in pushing for country-by-country reporting. The momentum should be kept and this should be seen as one of the main tasks of Europe’s civil society. Banking union Panel: Jan Zaborsky (editor, Trend economics weekly), Juraj Draxler (Centre for European Policy Studiesand European Alternatives), Viliarm Palenik (Slovak Academy of Sciencesand a member of the European Economic and Social Committee)The discussion was opened by Viliam Palenik, an economist from the Slovak academy of Sciences, member of ECOSOC. He described how ECOSOC tries to steer EU’s discussion on banking union. He mentioned how some proposals that ECOSOC recommended were not adopted into EU legislation, for example a „red card“ rule – disqualification for managers who were on boards of bankrupt financial institutions to be appointed to boards of other institutions. The debate then continued by interventions from Juraj Draxler, who described the broad outline of the proposed banking union as well as the challenges facing modern banking. 5. Support a broad debate on the future of banking and the financial services industry. Banking had changed dramatically in approximately the twenty years‘ run up to the crisis (starting in 1980s/ deregulation moves such as London’s Bing Bang in 1986, removal of capital controls and general acceptance of eurocurrency markets by authorities). Today’s banks don’t „borrow short {from small savers) and lend long (to businesses)“. In many countries, their balance sheets tend to be dominated by mortgage loans and even consumer credit and speculative trading accounts for a large part of their profits. The correction has started, the financial sector has shed millions of jobs worldwide since the beginning of the crisis in 2008.…
HOW MIGRANT NIGHT WORKERS ARE RUNNING THE 24 HOUR ECONOMY
As part of our project to understand how young people cope with making a living, we have also explored how to uncover those people who are hidden from society. Migrant night workers are one of the invisible groups of people who make a living while most of us are asleep or partying. Through our interview with Iulius-Cezar Macarie from the Night Laboratory , we dive into the nooks and crannies late-time economy and the people that make it work (or keep it going?) Tell me about the different types of night work? According to the Labour Force Survey, there are three types of night work: “three shift workers” who rotate working a morning, an afternoon and a night shift, “continental shift workers” who work two mornings, three afternoons and two nights. Both of these are rotational shifts where you have a little break in between the shifts. Then you have “permanent night shift workers” where you start your shift at six in the evening and finish at six in the morning – a 12 hour shift. This is where the problems start. If you look at the UK & EU working time legislation, they stipulate that night workers shouldn’t do more than eight hours shifts. Let’s take police officers as an example. They are outraged at the fact that the police changed their shift pattern to a 12 hour shift at the weekend – when it’s the busiest. How it impacts on their life is that they have Sunday to recover which they will spend sleeping. Then, they start their day shifts on Monday. They have been very dissatisfied with this but they are powerless. That’s an example of permanent night work. Talking about migrant night workers in London, since I started looking at nightwork in 2011, I’ve found that the majority are on low paid jobs. Also, when I was in Sozopol in Bulgaria, the majority of night workers were migrants who lived in one part of Bulgaria but traveled to the coast, working throughout the night doing all sorts of work, like selling food or working in hotels and bars. You wouldn’t find many locals from Sozopol doing low-paid night work. Is it because there are people that would rather do less well-paid jobs but during the day than doing night work? Is it because people doing night work are more resilient than others to cope with these conditions? It’s more a matter of networking. Migrants from the eight Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 arrived in the UK through friends or family ties. Often it happens that whatever those friends or families are doing, the night workers will end up doing the same job, because they have those connections. They say, “You know, I have this friend, he would like to do this kind of work”. For Bulgarians and Romanians, it’s more of an issue of accessibility – work restrictions still exist against these nationals until December 2013. I know qualified Romanian doctors who have to work here as nannies. You get a specific situation where migrants from those countries will go wherever they can work. I spoke to a young man working nights doing quite hard labour – packaging vegetables, starting at 10 at night and finishing the next morning at 11 am, six nights a week. What he told me is that it pays good money. “I don’t pay taxes, so I make more money. Besides that, if I could I would leave this work and go and work during the day”. Then you’ve got rickshaw drivers in London. One of them will say: “I’m doing an MBA course at LSE during the day. At night, I’m a rickshaw driver. The reason why I’m doing this work is that employers will not class me as capable or dedicated as English people. They would not give me a job, so I had to be a rickshaw driver. It was also because I wouldn’t be able to find a daytime job that would make me enough money to pay the rent and bills. So I’m doing something that’s flexible with my studies. On top of that, I’m getting help from my family.” So there are types of night workers where’s a night time bonus in terms of the salary? I didn’t find that. I mentioned earlier people working in the professions, such as the police. These are organisations that by law have to give a bonus for people working night shifts. But for other professions, that’s not necessarily the case. I spoke to a cleaner who had to start a shift from two till nine in the morning. I asked him if you got any extra allowance for working nights. He said “No, I work on a minimum wage”. So, he is not even on a London ‘living wage’ (£8.55), but on a national minimum wage (£6.19). I find this obscene. You were talking about families and friends providing a source of support – psychological, not necessarily financial. It’s interesting you talk about the living wage, because there have been targeted campaigns raising awareness about particular types of workers to secure the living wage for them. The campaigns revolve around a relationship with either the customer – like with HSBC when they told customers “Do you want the cleaners of your bank to earn a decent wage” or with fellow workers with their cleaners. They see them during the day, so they have that relationship, but obviously if you’re a cleaner working at night, you don’t have that exposure to other people, let alone the media. How aware are the media or charities of the conditions that night workers face? Night time workers are unseen. Why are they unseen? You won’t find in the media articles about the life of a night worker. I’ve only come across one article by a Guardian journalist alluding to the film the “Dirty Pretty Things” which is about how migrant workers experience their lives working undocumented and at…
La nuit, les travailleurs immigrés font tourner l’économie
Dans le cadre de notre projet visant à comprendre comment les jeunes parviennent à gagner leur vie, nous sommes partis à la découverte des couches invisibles de la société. Les travailleurs nocturnes immigrés, qui gagnent leur vie pendant que nous dormons ou faisons la fête, constituent un de ces groupes. Notre interview de Iulius-Cezar Macarie du Laboratoire nocturne nous fait plonger dans l’univers de l’économie nocturne et de ceux qui la font fonctionner (ou lui permettent de continuer à fonctionner ?) Pourriez-vous nous expliquer quels sont les différents types d’emplois nocturnes ? D’après l’Enquête sur la population active, il existe trois types d’emplois nocturnes. Les employés en travail posté travaillent soit alternativement le matin, l’après-midi et le soir, soit deux matins, trois après-midis, puis deux soirs. Ces employés ont une courte pause entre leurs périodes de service. Ensuite, il y a les travailleurs nocturnes permanents, qui travaillent pendant douze heures, de 6h du soir à 6h du matin. C’est là que les problèmes commencent :la loi britannique et européenne sur le temps de travail stipule que les travailleurs nocturnes ne doivent pas travailler plus de huit heures d’affilée. Prenons l’exemple des officiers de police : ils sont très en colère depuis les derniers changement dans leurs horaires de travail parce qu’ils doivent à présent travailler douze heures le week-end, qui est le moment le plus chargé de la semaine. Par conséquent, ils n’ont que le dimanche pour récupérer et dorment toute la journée avant de recommencer à travailler le lundi matin. Cela ne leur convient pas du tout, mais ils sont impuissants. Voilà un exemple de travail nocturne permanent. Pour ce qui est des travailleurs nocturnes immigrés, la première chose que je constate depuis que j’ai commencé à m’intéresser au travail nocturne en 2011, c’est que la plupart d’entre eux sont mal payés. Quand j’étais à Sozopol, en Bulgarie, j’ai vu que la plupart des travailleurs nocturnes vivent ailleurs dans le pays et viennent travailler sur la côte la nuit. Ils exercent toutes sortes d’activités, par exemple vendre de la nourriture ou travailler dans les hôtels et les bars. Il n’y a pas beaucoup de Sozopoliens parmi eux. Pourquoi ? Parce que les autres préfèrent un emploi moins bien payé mais pendant la journée ? Ou parce que ces personnes sont davantage disposées à accepter de telles conditions de travail ? C’est plutôt une question de réseaux : les immigrés originaires des huit pays d’Europe de l’Est qui ont rejoint l’UE en 2004 sont arrivés au Royaume-Uni par l’intermédiaire d’amis ou de membres de leur famille. Souvent, ces immigrés se retrouveront à faire le même travail que leurs contacts déjà sur place,lesquels parleront des nouveaux arrivants à leurs employeurs : « J’ai un ami qui aimerait bien travailler ici aussi. » Pour les Bulgares et les Roumains, c’est aussi une question d’acceptation puisque des restrictions contre les ressortissants de ces deux pays resteront en place jusqu’en décembre 2013. Je connais des médecins roumains qualifiés qui sont obligés de travailler ici comme nounous. C’est ce qui arrive lorsque des immigrés venus de certains pays sont prêts à faire n’importe quel travail. J’ai parlé récemment avec un jeune homme qui est employé pour un travail nocturne vraiment pénible : emballer des légumes six jours par semaine de 10h du soir à 11h du matin. Il m’a dit que son travail payait bien :« Je ne paye pas d’impôts, donc ça me laisse plus d’argent, mais malgré ça j’aimerais bien changer pour travailler le jour si seulement c’était possible. » Après, à Londres, il y a aussi les tireurs de pousse-pousse. Un d’eux m’a dit une fois : « La journée, je fais une maîtrise en administration des entreprises à la LES et la nuit, je suis tireur de pousse-pousse. Pourquoi je fais un tel travail ? Parce qu’un employeur me considérera forcément comme moins compétent et dévoué qu’un Anglais. Comme on ne me donne rien d’autre comme travail j’ai été obligé de devenir tireur de pousse-pousse. Je n’ai pas trouvé de travail de jour qui me permettait de gagner assez d’argent pour payer mon loyer et mes factures, alors je fais quelque chose de compatible avec mes études. En plus, j’ai ma famille qui m’aide aussi. Y a-t- il des bonus en termes de salaire pour les emplois nocturnes ? Pas toujours. J’ai déjà mentionné les organismes comme la police que la loi oblige à donner un bonus pour le service nocturne, mais ce n’est pas forcément le cas dans d’autres domaines. J’ai parlé un jour avec un homme de ménage qui avait un poste de 2h à 9h du matin. Je lui ai demandé s’il était payé plus pour travailler la nuit, mais il m’a répondu : « Non, je touche le salaire minimum. » Cela veut dire qu’il ne touche même pas le « salaire de subsistance » londonien (qui est de 8£55), mais le salaire minimum national (6£19). Je trouve cela indécent. Vous avez parlé du soutien, psychologique et parfois financier, des familles et des amis. C’est intéressant que vous parliez du salaire de subsistance, il y a eu des campagnes de sensibilisation à certains types d’emplois afin de garantir le salaire de subsistance aux travailleurs de ce secteur. Ces campagnes sont axées sur la relation entre le personnel de ménage et les clients (par exemple celle de HSBC, qui demande à ses clients : « Voulez-vous que notre personnel de ménage touche un salaire décent ? ») ou les autres employés. Les clients et les employés connaissent le personnel de ménage qu’ils voient pendant la journée, mais le personnel de ménage qui travaille la nuit est moins en contact avec eux et à fortiori avec les médias. Les médias et les associations humanitaires sont-ils conscients du sort des travailleurs nocturnes ? Les travailleurs nocturnes sont invisibles parce que les médias ne s’intéressent pas à eux. La seule chose que j’aie trouvée, c’est un article d’un journaliste du Guardian sur le film Dirty Pretty Things, qui parle des travailleurs immigrés qui travaillent clandestinement la nuit. Mes propres recherches m’ont mené à rencontrer un chauffeur de taxi roumain, que des membres de sa famille ont aidé à venir…
Citoyens invisibles d’une ville aux journées de 24 heures
Les médias ne s'intéressent pas au travail nocturne : pas question pour eux d'en parler. Je me souviens de la fois où j'ai emmené un journaliste de The Economist voir des travailleurs nocturnes roumains : ce journaliste n'a rien trouvé d'autre à leur dire que le gouvernement devrait s'inquiéter de les voir s'installer en aussi grand nombre au Royaume-Uni. Plus de trois millions de Roumains ont quitté leur pays ces trois dernières années. Le gouvernement roumain s'inquiète de la fuite de toute la jeunesse du pays. L'économie nocturne est moins valorisée à Londres que chez eux. D'après l'Observatoire de l'Immigration, 14,4% de la force ouvrière britannique, soit plus de six millions d'individus, sont des immigrés qui vivent à Londres. Leur poids démographique peut difficilement être ignoré ; pourtant c'est bien le cas. Il est important de s'y intéresser davantage et c'est une des raisons pour lesquelles le Laboratoire nocturne cherche à en savoir plus sur eux. Londres est une ville aux journées de 24 heures. Or, pour que les cadres supérieurs puissent jouir de leur train de vie élevé, il faut des gens pour tenir leurs cafés ou laver leur linge. La ville est en ébullition 24h/24 et doit donc tourner aussi pendant la nuit.Qui la fera fonctionner ? Les travailleurs nocturnes ! Pour ce qui est du soutien psychologique, cela dépend des personnes. Les jeunes ne reçoivent pas de soutien de leur famille parce que celle-ci est à l'étranger et qu'ils sont venus seuls au Royaume-Uni. J'ai parlé avec un chef d'entreprise dont le père est venu du Nigeria au Royaume-Uni pendant la première vague d'immigration et qui m'a dit : « Moi, ça me convient bien de travailler de nuit : j'emmène mes enfants à l'école en sortant du travail , puis je passe un peu de temps avec ma femme, je dors et je vais chercher mes enfants à l'école. Je travaille quatre nuits par semaine et après chaque congé, c'est très difficile de retourner au travail le lundi. » Ce rythme de vie a aussi des conséquences sur la santé : des études effectuées par la British Medical Association ont montré que les travailleurs nocturnes encourent 5% de plus de risques de crise cardiaque parce qu'ils ne dorment pas assez. Les travailleurs nocturnes ne reçoivent pas de soins médicaux parce qu'ils n'ont pas le temps de prendre rendez-vous chez un médecin et que cela coûte trop cher. S'ils ont besoin de nouveaux avantages sociaux, c'est bien dans ce domaine. Comment parviennent-ils à rester motivés, concentrés, et tout simplement ne pas devenir fous dans de telles conditions ? Travailler la nuit n'est pas naturel. Je l'ai fait et je serai amené à le refaire dans le cadre de mes recherches. Ça a perturbé tout mon organisme, j'étais debout nuit et jour et je n'avais pas le temps de récupérer. J'ai rencontré quelqu'un qui l'a fait pendant un an : dès qu'il a reçu le droit de travailler dans ce pays légalement, il a préféré travailler en journée. Voici ce qu'il m'a dit : « Je n'arrivais plus à faire face, ce rythme de vie est complètement différent et déséquilibré : je commençais à travailler à l'heure où les autres s'arrêtaient et inversement, je n'avais donc pas de vie sociale. » En fait, les travailleurs nocturnes sont prêts à tous les sacrifices pour avoir une vie sociale. Une femme qui garde des enfants la nuit m'a dit : « Il fait faire des sacrifices pour parvenir à ses fins. » Parler avec ses amis était tellement important pour elle qu'elle était prête à prendre quelques heures quotidiennement pour le faire, même après avoir travaillé toute la nuit. « Si je ne prends pas de temps pour mes amis, ils ne se soucieront pas de moi non plus. Mon but, c'est de rester en contact avec eux, alors quand je rentre d'une nuit de travail, je ne vais pas me coucher tout de suite comme je devrais : je leur téléphone. »C'est le seul moyen pour elle de garder contact avec sa communauté. Vous connaissez beaucoup de gens qui, en rentrant du travail, se disent qu'ils vont tout simplement prendre du temps pour leurs amis ? De toutes façons, la plupart n'en ont pas besoin puisqu'en sortant du travail, ils vont retrouver leurs amis au bar ! Dans quelle mesure cette situation affecte-t-elle l'attitude des travailleurs nocturnes par rapport aux questions politiques et sociales ? On constate une corrélation entre le fait que les travailleurs nocturnes immigrés sont forcés à ce genre de travail et leur rapport à leur culture d'accueil. Je crois que ces immigrés souffrent de devoir travailler la nuit pour vivre alors que ce travail n'est pas du tout valorisé.Le travail de nuit est en quelque sorte un secteur invisible. Ils me disent que la main d'œuvre autochtones ne veut pas de ce genre de travail parce qu'il est si difficile, ce qui influe évidemment sur leur attitude à l'égard des immigrants, qui se sentent discriminés. Ils se demandent : « Je suis citoyen européen, alors pourquoi suis-je obligé de travailler dans ces conditions? »Ils n'ont pas de vie sociale et ne peuvent pas s'intégrer à leur quartier : c'est comme s'ils étaient invisibles. Suivez les mises à jour à propos du documentaire à paraître Invisible Lives: Romanian Night Workers in London, produit par Tim Marrinan et moi-même, qui sera diffusé le 20 juin 2013 au Centre Culturel Roumain de Londres. Elevé en Roumanie, Iulius-Cezar Macarie travaille pour le Laboratoire nocturne. A partir de septembre 2013, il deviendra chercheur fondamental ‘INTEGRIM’ au Center for Policy Studies tout en poursuivant ses études en doctorat ès sociologie et anthropologie sociale à l'Université d'Europe centrale, à Budapest. Son champ de recherche porte sur le travail nocturne et ses conséquences pour les immigrés à Londres. Le Laboratoire nocturne étudie la vie des personnes qui travaillent, gagnent leur vie, survivent ou sont d'une manière ou d'une autre en lien avec la vie nocturne de la ville, que ce soit faute de mieux ou volontairement, pour profiter de l'obscurité, du calme et du manque de surveillance qu'offrent la…
INVISIBLE CITIZENS IN A 24 HOUR CITY
In the second part of our interview on night workers, we ask Iulius Cezar Macarie on why they are ignored as a group of workers.The media is invisible on this subject. These aren’t topics that it wants to tackle. I took a journalist from the Economist once to see Romanian night workers. The journalist just told the worker that the British government should be concerned that his compatriots are coming over to the UK. You have over three million Romanians who have left their country in the last three years. The Romanian government is worried that they won’t have any more young people left. The night time economy isn’t valued as much in places like London. The Migrant Observatory reported that 14.4% of the working population in the UK – over six million people – are migrants living in London. It’s a demographic that you cannot ignore, but I think it really is ignored. It needs to be explored further which is one of the reasons why, with the Night Laboratory, we’re trying to look at these aspects. Think about it, London is a 24 hour city. For the executives to enjoy the high life, you need people to open their coffee shops and do the laundry. The city is running throughout the night so it needs to be maintained throughout the night. Who’s going to do this? It has to be night workers. You ask about the psychological support. It depends who you speak to. If you talk to young migrants, they won’t be concerned about family support, because their family isn’t in the UK. They come here alone. I spoke to a manager whose father had come to the UK from Nigeria in the first few waves of migration. He said “Look, night work suits me. It suits me because I finish my shift, go home, pick up my kids, take them to school, spend some time with my wife, have some sleep and then collect my kids from school. It’s quite difficult, as you have to work four nights a week and once you have a little break, it’s really difficult to come back to work the next Monday.” It has also become a medical issue. Research by the British Medical Association shows that the risk of stroke is 5% higher amongst night workers because they’re up all the time. Night workers don’t get health care, they don’t have time to go to checkups and it costs money. This is where night workers could be given additional benefits. How do they cope in managing these effects to keep motivated, to keep concentrated and just to keep sane? Night work is not a natural phenomenon. I’ve done night work and I’ll be doing night work for my research. It has impacted on me in the sense that I couldn’t recover as I was up day and night. It messed up my system. I met someone who did night work for a year. As soon as he gained the right to work legally in this country, he moved to daytime work because he said “Look, I just couldn’t cope anymore. You have a completely different way of life. It’s mismatched, because when you start work, that’s when most people finish work. When you finish work, that’s when they start, so you can’t get to socialise with them”. In fact, night workers are willing to make a sacrifice to socialise. There’s a night nurse who said “If you want to accomplish something, you’ve got to sacrifice something”. For her what was really important is she would sacrifice a couple of hours every day after her night shift to speak to her friends. She said “If I don’t look after me friends, they won’t look after me. My goal is to keep in touch with my friends. So when I come home from a night shift, I’m not going straight to be as I really need to. I pick up the phone to speak to my friends”. That’s one way for her to keep in touch with her community. How many people do you know who would come home and say I’m not going to do anything, I’m just going to spend some time calling my friends. Most people don’t even need to sacrifice as after work, they can meet their friends down the pub. How does the situation that night workers face affect their attitudes on political and social issues? There’s a correlation between the fact that migrant night workers are forced to do this kind of work and their attitudes on the culture they’re part of. I sense that migrants resent the fact that they’re forced to end up doing night work, which is not valued but serves some purpose. Night work is somehow an unseen sector. People told me that British workers don’t like to do this work because it’s hard. Obviously, this impacts on their attitudes because migrants feel discriminated. They ask “Why should I have to do this work when I’m a European citizen?” They don’t have the possibility of socialising nor integrating in their local community. They’re kind of invisible. Please follow the updates on the up-coming short documentary by film maker Tim Marrinan and me called ‘Invisible Lives: Romanian Night Workers in London’ due to be screened at the Romanian Cultural Centre in London on the 20th June, 2013. Iulius-Cezar Macarie grew up in Romania and collaborates with Nightlaboratory. From September 2013, he will be an ‘INTEGRIM’ Early-Stage Researcher at the Center for Policy Studies, and in parallel a PhD student in Sociology and Social Anthropology, at the Central European University, Budapest. His research interest lies in the field of nightwork and how that impacts on the lives of migrants in London. Nightlaboratory reports on people who work, make a living, survive or operate in one way or another in the nocturnal city, because they have no other option or because they want to benefit from the darkness, quiet and lack of control and…
Solidarité avec les révoltes en Turquie
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Image : http://imgur.com/a/gKAsu, sous licence commune créative Les évènements de la première semaine de juin à Istanbul, Ankara et d’autres ville de Turquie, où des milliers de personnes ont manifesté contre un gouvernement autoritaire et se sont heurtés à une violence disproportionnée de la part de la police, poursuivent un mouvement de démocratisation qui est évident dans toute l’Europe et la Méditerranée, et ont sollicité la solidarité transnationale des militants dans cet espace. Alternatives européennes se joint à ce mouvement. Le déclencheur de ces manifestations – la tentative de démolir le parc Gezi à Istanbul afin de construire un nouveau centre commercial – est une situation familière pour les peuples de toute l’Europe où les biens communs sont privatisés et vendus. Qu’il s’agisse de la vente du système ferroviaire, de la privatisation de l’eau, de la tentative de privatiser les services électriques, de la vente du patrimoine naturel pour l’extraction minière ou le forage, de la vente des espaces culturels, de la fermeture des bibliothèques ou la destruction des espaces verts urbains pour des profits privés, la collusion entre les entreprises privées et le gouvernement afin d’affaiblir les biens communs a été renforcée ces dernières années, soit en utilisant l’excuse de « l’austérité » ou en affirmant que c’est dans l’intérêt du « développement national. » Du nord de l’Angleterre au sud de l’Italie, de Lisbonne à Athènes et Istanbul, cette tentative de privatisation massive doit maintenant faire face à la résistance des citoyens. La combinaison de politiques économiques néolibérales et d’un gouvernement « islamiste » est également de plus en plus familière aux peuples au sud de la Méditerranée. Les Frères musulmans en Egypte se sont inspirés (et ont probablement inspiré) le parti AKP d’Erdogan en Turquie. D’une part, il y a une tentative « d’islamiser » la société à travers des interdictions de boire, une augmentation des dépenses pour les mosquées, l’étouffement de la créativité et de l’opposition et la tentative de soumettre les femmes à une existence de seconde classe. D’autre part, les gouvernements font la promotion de la privatisation, de l’affaiblissement des normes fondamentales du travail et de toute tentative de négociations collectives. La combinaison de politiques économiques néolibérales et de tentatives de déséculariser le gouvernement n’est pas non plus inconnue à l’Europe : les courants conservateurs des Eglises catholiques et protestantes dans plusieurs pays européens se sont alliés à un programme économique néolibéral sur plusieurs questions, de la résistance des LGBT émancipateurs et des droits des femmes à la privatisation de l’éducation. La réponse disproportionnée de la police aux manifestations pacifiques, basée sur l’utilisation massive de gaz lacrymogènes puissants et de canons à eau ainsi que de matraques et de passages à tabac, qui ont entraîné l’aveuglement de plusieurs personnes et, selon certaines sources, la mort de plusieurs manifestants, rappelle les tactiques ratées de Ben Ali et Moubarak (qui sont maintenant réutilisées par Morsi en Egypte), mais également, quoiqu’à une échelle moindre et moins meurtrière, les réactions des gouvernements en Europe. Le régime d’Erdogan croit qu’il peut augmenter le nombre de ses partisans conservateurs en invoquant la menace à l’encontre de la stabilité de la part des manifestants « radicalisés ». Une fois encore, en utilisant des tactiques connues de Londres, Francfort, Le Caire ou Athènes, la brutalité policière est utilisée comme un outil pour tenter de faire passer les manifestants pacifiques pour une menace à l’encontre de la sécurité. Ce mépris cynique pour le droit de manifester, la liberté de réunion et d’association et, de manière générale, le droit de ne pas être d’accord dans une démocratie est scandaleusement familier et ne provoquera que plus d’indignation et une mobilisation citoyenne, comme cela s’est d’ailleurs produit dans le développement de la petite manifestation pour protéger le parc Gezi à Istanbul aux milliers de personnes dans toute la Turquie. Les manifestations en Turquie ont rassemblé des personnes d’opinions politiques et de milieux différents, qui se sentent tous non représentés et insultés par le gouvernement actuel. Les manifestations en cours en Turquie n’ont presque pas bénéficié de couverture médiatique dans les médias turcs. Il est plus évident qu’auparavant que les médias turcs sont sous le contrôle du gouvernement, et la Turquie est le pays ayant le nombre le plus élevé de journalistes en prison. Les citoyens turcs se sont également soulevés contre l’impossibilité de s’exprimer et d’avoir des discussions démocratiques. Les réseaux sociaux leur ont permis de trouver des moyens d’expression transnationaux, et les actes de solidarité sur Internet ont massivement répandu l’information. Les citoyens de toute l’Europe et de Méditerranée savent que les médias dans la région et la liberté d’expression sont menacés, à des degrés différents, et, une nouvelle fois, cela a motivé leurs actes de solidarité envers les Turcs ce week-end. Ces actes de solidarité transnationale sur les réseaux sociaux et sur les places des villes en Europe et Méditerranée, montrent la nature commune des problèmes dans cet espace et l’émergence d’une subjectivité politique croissante pour s’adresser à eux. Nous craignons que les gouvernements en Turquie et ailleurs réagissent à cette émergence avec une panique croissante et de la violence, mais nous sommes sûrs que la force de ce réseau de personnes résistera.
Solidarity with the uprisings in Turkey
image from http://imgur.com/a/gKAsu, under Creative commons licence The events of the first weekend of June in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities in Turkey, where thousands of people demonstrated against an authoritarian government and were met with disproportionate violence by the police, continue a movement of democratisation which is clear across Europe and the Mediterranean, and have solicited transnational solidarity from activists across this space. European Alternatives joins itself with this movement. The trigger of the demonstrations – the attempt to demolish Gezi Park in Istanbul to build yet another another shopping mall – is a situation familiar to people across Europe where common goods are being privatised and sold off. Whether it be the sale of the railway system, the privatisation of water, the attempt to privatise power utilities, the selling of natural heritage for gold-mining or fracking, the selling of cultural spaces, the closing of libraries or the destruction of urban green space for private profit, the collusion between private enterprise and the government in undermining common goods has been reinforced in recent years, whether through the excuse of ‘austerity’ or in the interests of ‘national development’. From the North of England to the South of Italy, from Lisbon to Athens to Istanbul, this attempt at massive privatisation is now facing citizen resistance. The combination of neoliberal economic policies and ‘Islamist’ government is also increasingly familiar to people in the South of the Mediterranean. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has taken a lead from (and perhaps given inspiration to) Erdogan’s AKP party in Turkey. On the one hand there is an attempt to ‘Islamise’ the society through drinking bans, increased expenditure on Mosques, suffocating creativity and opposition and attempting to subjugate women into a second-class existence. On the other hand the governments promote privatisation, the undermining of labour standards and any attempt collective bargaining. The combination of neoliberal economic policies and attempts to de-secularise government are not unknown in Europe either: the conservative currents of the Catholic and Protestant Churchs in many European countries has allied itself with a neoliberal economic agenda around many issues, from resisting emancipatory LGBT and womens’ rights to the privatisation of schooling. The disproportionate response of the police to the peaceful demonstrations based on the massive use of powerful teargas and water canons along with batons and beatings, and which has resulted in the blinding of many people and reportedly the death of several protestors, recalls the failed tactics of Ben Ali and Mubarak (which are now being used again by Morsi in Egypt), but also – albeit on a smaller and usually less deadly scale – the reactions of governments in Europe. The regime of Erdogan believes that it can increase its conservative supporters by invoking the threat to stability from ‘radicalised’ protestors. Once again, using tactics familiar from London, Frankfurt, Cairo or Athens, policy brutality is used as a way of attempting to depict peaceful protestors as a security threat. This cynical disregard for the right to protest, of freedom of assembly and association and in general the right to disagree in a democracy are shockingly familiar and will only provoke further outrage and citizens mobilisation, as indeed already happened in the development from the small protest to protect Gezi park in Istanbul to the many thousands of people throughout Turkey. The protests in Turkey have brought together people of many different political opinions and backgrounds, all of whom feel unrepresented and disrespected under the current government. The ongoing demonstrations in Turkey have received almost no coverage in the Turkish media. It is clearer than ever before that the Turkish media are under the control of the government, and Turkey is the country with the highest number of journalists in prison. It is also in protest against this impossibility of expression and democratic discussion that citizens in Turkey have risen up. Social networks have allowed them to find transnational means of expression, and acts of solidarity on the internet have spread this information massively. Citizens from throughout Europe and the Mediterranean know that media throughout the region and liberty of expression are under threat, in differing degrees – and again this has motivated their acts of solidarity with people in Turkey this weekend. These acts of transnational solidarity across social networks and in the squares of cities across Europe and the Mediterranean show the commonality of issues across this space and the emergence of a growing political subjectivity to address them. We fear governments in Turkey and elsewhere will react with increasing panic and violence to this emergence, but we are sure that the strength of this network of people will resist.
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF A NETWORK
We would love to find out what your interests are, what type of activities you would like to develop and how you want to get involved. Tell us! We want to know what issues motivate you so we can better involve to help shape what we do in the areas you are interested in. This could be coming up with ideas on the issues, organise an event or even work with other groups on the issue. Tell us! In the meantime, find out about the social life of our network online, who makes up our network and how stories are shared below! create infographics with visual.ly As part of our Making a Living project to use creative methods to explore how young people are coping with making a living, we would like to announce an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! See more here!
LA VIE DU RESEAU SOCIAL D’ ALTERNATIVES EUROPEENNES
Nous serions ravis de découvrir vos centres d’intérêts, le type d’activités que vous aimeriez développer et comment vous souhaitez vous impliquer. Parlez-nous-en ! Nous voulons savoir quelles sont les causes qui vous motivent afin de pouvoir mieux vous impliquer dans notre action là où elle vous intéresse, que ce soit en suggérant des idées sur ces thèmes, en organisant un événement ou même en travaillant avec d’autres groupes. Parlez-nous-en ! En attendant, découvrez ci-dessous la vie de notre réseau social en ligne, voyez qui en fait partie en comment vos témoignages sont partagés. Dans le cadre de notre projet Gagner sa vie, qui explore comment les jeunes parviennent à gagner leur vie, nous souhaitons vous parler d’une une occasion exceptionnellepour vous de voir votre oeuvre primée lors de notre festival ! Cliquez ici pour en savoir plus. La vie du réseau social Facebook d’ Alternatives Européennes Basée sur les statistiques de notre page Facebook sur les 30 derniers jours du 1° au 28 mai Statistiques de base : cette page a 6,0k fans, dont 177 nouveaux fans sur les 30 derniers jours La majorité des fans sont des femmes, et ont entre 25 et 34 ans Femmes : 59% Hommes : 41% Géo : Voici les pays où ils vivent (Localisation des fans par pays) Italie Grande-Bretagne France Roumanie Allemagne Belgique Espagne Pays-Bas Bulgarie Etats-Unis Ok, cool, mais quelle est la performance du contenu ? Qui le voit, visite les pages et en parle ? La page a été visualisée 1,9k fois (Visualisation de n’importe quelle partie du contenu) Le contenu a été visité en tout 58 fois (Clic sur n’importe quel lien) et 38 personnes en ont parlé (« J’aime », partages, etc.) Cette frise illustre l’intérêt des fans pour le contenu Qui en parle ? Qui s’implique davantage ? 38 partages de 34 personnes La plupart des personnes qui en parlent sont en Europe et il s’agit surtout d’hommes Viralité : Combien de personnes ont vu le contenu ? Les graphiques suivants illustrent bien la « viralité » et la « portée » du contenu 995 visualisations uniques, dont 848 virales, 34 partages Plus ces chiffres sont proches, plus le contenu est « viral » Personnes ayant vu le contenu n’importe où sur Facebook Personnes ayant partagé le contenu (ce qui en augmente la portée) Personnes ayant vu le contenu après qu’un ami en parle Voici la vie sociale d’ Alternatives Européennes sur les 30 derniers jours
When work doesn’t pay
With our Making a Living project, we’re exploring how young people cope with making a living. The video above by @Avanti_Europe tells the story of Alexia, a Greek civil engineer who hasn’t been paid for work for the last five years…work that she had to invest in herself. We often hear of people scapegoating people for being on benefits because they can’t find a job, but why don’t we hear as much about how many employers are not paying their staff and the lack of social protections for employees? Do you want to find out more about our project on how young people cope with making a living? Would you like to interview people yourself?
Commencez avec lâme, pas avec le sac à main
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Dans le cadre de notre projet making a living (gagner sa vie), nous nous intéressons à l’utilité des différentes formes de soutien permettant d’aider les jeunes à faire face à la précarité. Dans notre dernier article, nous nous sommes intéressés à la situation à laquelle les gens doivent faire face. Ici, nous nous intéressons à leur attitude vis-à-vis de l’état. Commencez avec l’âme, pas avec le sac à main Nous devons changer les mentalités, nous devons nous intéresser à la contribution que les gens eux-mêmes peuvent apporter, pas uniquement en tant que consommateurs mais en tant que citoyens, comme l’a souligné @hilarycottam sur Relational Welfare. Nous devons commencer avec les gens, pas avec les économies, en fournissant le stimulus qui revitalise leur bien-être, pas seulement leur pouvoir d’achat. Nous devons également commencer à changer les arguments. Il ne s’agit pas de savoir qui mérite d’être aidé ou non. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de définir qui est pauvre et qui ne l’est pas. Il s’agit de comprendre comment est vécue cette pauvreté, comment les relations sociales et culturelles des gens définissent ce qu’ils considèrent comme des besoins matériels et ce qu’ils considèrent comme socialement acceptable (« les familles de travailleurs ») ou non (« les profiteurs »). Pourquoi pensez-vous que tellement de gens tiennent à se définir autrement que comme la « classe ouvrière » ? Les gens ne veulent pas inspirer de la peur ou de la pitié. C’est pourquoi beaucoup tentent de se soustraire à la main tendue de l’état. C’est pourquoi ils ont été étiquetés comme « difficiles à atteindre » ou « rarement entendus ». C’est pourquoi même certains des meilleurs services, comme les centres pour enfants, ne les atteignent pas autant qu’ils le pourraient. Respect, dignité et espoir : encourager un sentiment d’appartenance collective La reconnaissance et le respect sont tout aussi importants que la redistribution. Une école qui encourage l’établissement de relations a autant de valeur qu’une école qui encourage la réussite aux examens, selon que nous voulons créer de bons petits consommateurs ou de bons citoyens. La reconnaissance du fait que les services peuvent être améliorés par les intérêts communs au personnel et aux utilisateurs qui travaillent ensemble, en fournissant des services publics qui traitent les gens avec dignité, donne de la valeur à leur contribution et développe un sentiment d’appartenance collective. Bien que beaucoup trouvent difficile d’imaginer la possibilité d’échapper à la pauvreté et à l’exclusion sociale, cela ne signifie pas qu’ils n’espèrent pas, comme le montrent les témoignages de @comm_links. Lorsqu’Obama parle d’ « être le changement auquel nous pouvons croire », cela assimile très bien ce paradoxe. Néanmoins, leurs espoirs luttent constamment contre l’imprévisibilité de leur vie et de la peur qu’elle génère. C’est pourquoi impliquer les utilisateurs dans la coproduction de services publics n’offre pas seulement un plus grand espoir, cela permet aux gens d’utiliser cet espoir et cette énergie afin de travailler avec le personnel pour développer les services qui leur importent. Des paradis consuméristes à des espaces sûrs : du consommateur au travailleur social Les gens regardent souvent en arrière, vers un âge d’or où il y avait un sentiment de voisinage et où les gens étaient fiers de l’endroit où ils vivaient. Mais pour certains, lorsqu’ils regardent où ils vivent, il n’est guère étonnant de les voir trouver refuge dans le paradis consumériste du centre commercial de Westfield ou dans la méritocratie virtuelle de X Factor. Nous fuyons la réalité de notre voisinage et nous fuyons ceux que nous connaissons. Nous avons l’impression d’avoir perdu notre sentiment d’appartenance et notre sentiment de confiance. Nous pouvons nous sentir moins dignes de confiance de nos voisins, moins attachés à notre famille éloignée ou même proche et pourtant, l’amitié et la confiance sont encore plus essentielles dans notre société de plus en plus atomisée. Nous devons créer des espaces sûrs où les gens pourront parler et s’occuper les uns des autres grâce à un meilleur accès aux réseaux de soutien mutuel et à des thérapies conjugales moins chères. Soutenir la prise en charge, non la pénaliser. Sous-traiter les relations et les atouts cachés A la manière dont l’état définit ses « services », les fonctionnaires ne peuvent que s’engager dans des moments spécifiques de la vie des gens et ignorent les complications du reste de leur vie quotidienne. Cela engendre des suppositions de la part de l’état, qui sont renforcées par les gens eux-mêmes. En effet, pour beaucoup, il existe une relation antagoniste avec l’état. Ils se sentent évalués et jugés de tous les côtés, par leurs voisins et les médias et par l’état lui-même. Cela alimente un cercle vicieux évitant à l’état d’échapper aux accusations prononcées par les autres, contre lequel ils portent eux-mêmes des accusations, et selon lesquelles, d’une certaine manière, ils « fraudent le système ». Ce n’est pas qu’ils sont ingrats, mais ils ont l’impression que les institutions ne comprennent pas le monde dans lequel ils vivent. Cette relation existe également pour les fonctionnaires, ils ont l’impression qu’ils ne sont pas dignes de confiance pour servir la population avec efficacité. L’obsession de la performance, de la privatisation et de la personnalisation les empêchent d’autant plus de pouvoir comprendre les personnes qu’ils servent. Nous devons réinvestir dans les ressources émotionnelles et sociales afin que le personnel et les utilisateurs de services fassent les « choix difficiles » sur des questions telles que la cohésion, les maladies chroniques ou les changements climatiques. Ils peuvent résoudre les tensions entre les différent besoins des personnes et leur capacité à participer. Alors seulement, l’état pourra montrer à ses citoyens qu’il est non seulement de « leur côté » mais qu’il travaille avec eux « du même côté ». Nous devons révéler ces « atouts cachés » de réciprocité et de confiance et remodeler le capital social qui met ces atouts en valeur autant que davantage de formes d’engagement reconnues. Bien sûr, nous devons inciter les gens à travailler. Mais cela ne signifie rien aux communautés que nous servons si nous n’aidons pas les gens à s’aider en se…
START WITH THE SOUL NOT WITH THE HANDBAG
As part of our project on making a living, we’re looking at how helpful different forms of support are to help young people cope with precarity. In the last post, we looked at the situation people are faced with. Here we look at their attitudes towards the state. Start with the soul not with the handbag Weed to shift mindsets, we need to look at what people themselves can bring to the table, not just as consumers but as citizens, as highlighted by @hilarycottam in Relational Welfare. We need to start with people not with savings, providing the stimulus that revitalises their wellbeing, not just their spending power. We also need to start changing the arguments. It’s not about who is deserving of help or not. It’s neither only about defining who is poor or not. It’s about understanding how that poverty is experienced, how people’s social and cultural relationships define what they see as their material needs and what they see as socially acceptable – “hard working families” – or not – “benefit scroungers”. Why do you think so many people want to define themselves as anything other than “working class”? People don’t want to feel either deserving of fear or pity. Which is why many try and hide away from the helping hand of the state. Which is they become labelled as “hard to reach” or “seldom heard”. Which is why even some of the best services like children’s centres don’t reach them as well as they could. Respect, dignity and hope – nurturing a sense of collective belonging Recognition and respect are just as important as redistribution. A school which nurtures relationship building is just as valuable as one which nurtures exam success, depending on whether we want to create good little consumers or good citizens. Recognition that services can be improved by the mutual interests of staff and users working together. Providing public services that treat people with dignity, values their contributions and develops a sense of collective belonging. Although many people find it hard to imagine the possibility of escaping from poverty and social exclusion, that doesn’t mean they don’t hope, as is shown in the testimonies from @comms_links. When Obama talks about “being the change we can believe in”, it internalises this paradox very well. Their hopes nevertheless constantly battle against the unpredictability of their lives and the fear it generates. This is why involving users in co-producing public services doesn’t only offer greater hope, it allows people to use this hope and energy to work with staff to develop the services that matter to them. From consumerist havens to safe spaces – from the customer to the carer People often look back to a golden age where there was a sense of neighbourliness and people took pride in where they lived. But for some people, when they look at where they live, it’s little wonder that they escape to the consumerist haven of the Westfield shopping mall or the virtual meritocracy of the X Factor. We escape the reality of our neighbourhoods and we escape who we know. We feel we’ve lost our sense of belonging and our sense of trust. We may feel less trustworthy of our neighbours, less attached to our extended or even immediate families, and yet friendship and trust are even more critical in our increasingly atomised society. We need to create safe spaces for people to talk and look out for one another through better access to mutual support networks and cheaper relationship counselling. Supporting caring, not penalising it. Outsourced relationships and hidden assets Through how the the state defines its “services”, public servants can only engage in specific moments in people’s lives which ignore the complexities of the rest of their daily life. This creates assumptions by the “state” which are reinforced by people themselves. Indeed, for many people there is an antagonistic relationship with the state. They feel assessed and judged from all corners – from their neighbours, the media and the state itself. This fuels a vicious circle of avoiding the state to avoid accusations made by others, about whom they make accusations themselves, that they are somehow “cheating the system”. It’s not they feel ungrateful, but they feel that the institutions don’t understand the realities they live in. For public servants too, that antagonistic relationship exists, they feel they can’t be trusted to serve the public efficiently. The compulsion to performance manage, to privatise and to personalise drives them even further away from being able to understand the people they serve. We need to re-invest in the emotional and social resources for staff and service users to make the “tough choices” on issues like community cohesion, chronic conditions or climate change. They can work out the tensions between different people’s needs and their capacity to participate. Only then can the state show its citizens it is not only “on their side” but working with them “on the same side”. We need to unlock these “hidden assets” of reciprocity and trust and refashion social capital that values these assets as much as more recognised forms of engagement. Of course we need to get people into work. But that means nothing to the communities we serve if we don’t help people help themselves by supporting each other, rewarding care rather than penalising it.
Commencez avec l’âme, pas avec le sac à main
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Dans le cadre de notre projet making a living (gagner sa vie), nous nous intéressons à l’utilité des différentes formes de soutien permettant d’aider les jeunes à faire face à la précarité. Dans notre dernier article, nous nous sommes intéressés à la situation à laquelle les gens doivent faire face. Ici, nous nous intéressons à leur attitude vis-à-vis de l’état. Commencez avec l’âme, pas avec le sac à main Nous devons changer les mentalités, nous devons nous intéresser à la contribution que les gens eux-mêmes peuvent apporter, pas uniquement en tant que consommateurs mais en tant que citoyens, comme l’a souligné @hilarycottam sur Relational Welfare. Nous devons commencer avec les gens, pas avec les économies, en fournissant le stimulus qui revitalise leur bien-être, pas seulement leur pouvoir d’achat. Nous devons également commencer à changer les arguments. Il ne s’agit pas de savoir qui mérite d’être aidé ou non. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de définir qui est pauvre et qui ne l’est pas. Il s’agit de comprendre comment est vécue cette pauvreté, comment les relations sociales et culturelles des gens définissent ce qu’ils considèrent comme des besoins matériels et ce qu’ils considèrent comme socialement acceptable (« les familles de travailleurs ») ou non (« les profiteurs »). Pourquoi pensez-vous que tellement de gens tiennent à se définir autrement que comme la « classe ouvrière » ? Les gens ne veulent pas inspirer de la peur ou de la pitié. C’est pourquoi beaucoup tentent de se soustraire à la main tendue de l’état. C’est pourquoi ils ont été étiquetés comme « difficiles à atteindre » ou « rarement entendus ». C’est pourquoi même certains des meilleurs services, comme les centres pour enfants, ne les atteignent pas autant qu’ils le pourraient. Respect, dignité et espoir : encourager un sentiment d’appartenance collective La reconnaissance et le respect sont tout aussi importants que la redistribution. Une école qui encourage l’établissement de relations a autant de valeur qu’une école qui encourage la réussite aux examens, selon que nous voulons créer de bons petits consommateurs ou de bons citoyens. La reconnaissance du fait que les services peuvent être améliorés par les intérêts communs au personnel et aux utilisateurs qui travaillent ensemble, en fournissant des services publics qui traitent les gens avec dignité, donne de la valeur à leur contribution et développe un sentiment d’appartenance collective. Bien que beaucoup trouvent difficile d’imaginer la possibilité d’échapper à la pauvreté et à l’exclusion sociale, cela ne signifie pas qu’ils n’espèrent pas, comme le montrent les témoignages de @comm_links. Lorsqu’Obama parle d’ « être le changement auquel nous pouvons croire », cela assimile très bien ce paradoxe. Néanmoins, leurs espoirs luttent constamment contre l’imprévisibilité de leur vie et de la peur qu’elle génère. C’est pourquoi impliquer les utilisateurs dans la coproduction de services publics n’offre pas seulement un plus grand espoir, cela permet aux gens d’utiliser cet espoir et cette énergie afin de travailler avec le personnel pour développer les services qui leur importent. Des paradis consuméristes à des espaces sûrs : du consommateur au travailleur social Les gens regardent souvent en arrière, vers un âge d’or où il y avait un sentiment de voisinage et où les gens étaient fiers de l’endroit où ils vivaient. Mais pour certains, lorsqu’ils regardent où ils vivent, il n’est guère étonnant de les voir trouver refuge dans le paradis consumériste du centre commercial de Westfield ou dans la méritocratie virtuelle de X Factor. Nous fuyons la réalité de notre voisinage et nous fuyons ceux que nous connaissons. Nous avons l’impression d’avoir perdu notre sentiment d’appartenance et notre sentiment de confiance. Nous pouvons nous sentir moins dignes de confiance de nos voisins, moins attachés à notre famille éloignée ou même proche et pourtant, l’amitié et la confiance sont encore plus essentielles dans notre société de plus en plus atomisée. Nous devons créer des espaces sûrs où les gens pourront parler et s’occuper les uns des autres grâce à un meilleur accès aux réseaux de soutien mutuel et à des thérapies conjugales moins chères. Soutenir la prise en charge, non la pénaliser. Sous-traiter les relations et les atouts cachés A la manière dont l’état définit ses « services », les fonctionnaires ne peuvent que s’engager dans des moments spécifiques de la vie des gens et ignorent les complications du reste de leur vie quotidienne. Cela engendre des suppositions de la part de l’état, qui sont renforcées par les gens eux-mêmes. En effet, pour beaucoup, il existe une relation antagoniste avec l’état. Ils se sentent évalués et jugés de tous les côtés, par leurs voisins et les médias et par l’état lui-même. Cela alimente un cercle vicieux évitant à l’état d’échapper aux accusations prononcées par les autres, contre lequel ils portent eux-mêmes des accusations, et selon lesquelles, d’une certaine manière, ils « fraudent le système ». Ce n’est pas qu’ils sont ingrats, mais ils ont l’impression que les institutions ne comprennent pas le monde dans lequel ils vivent. Cette relation existe également pour les fonctionnaires, ils ont l’impression qu’ils ne sont pas dignes de confiance pour servir la population avec efficacité. L’obsession de la performance, de la privatisation et de la personnalisation les empêchent d’autant plus de pouvoir comprendre les personnes qu’ils servent. Nous devons réinvestir dans les ressources émotionnelles et sociales afin que le personnel et les utilisateurs de services fassent les « choix difficiles » sur des questions telles que la cohésion, les maladies chroniques ou les changements climatiques. Ils peuvent résoudre les tensions entre les différent besoins des personnes et leur capacité à participer. Alors seulement, l’état pourra montrer à ses citoyens qu’il est non seulement de « leur côté » mais qu’il travaille avec eux « du même côté ». Nous devons révéler ces « atouts cachés » de réciprocité et de confiance et remodeler le capital social qui met ces atouts en valeur autant que davantage de formes d’engagement reconnues. Bien sûr, nous devons inciter les gens à travailler. Mais cela ne signifie rien aux communautés que nous servons si nous n’aidons pas les gens à s’aider en se…
Call for participation: Joan of Art
European Alternatives has been collaborating over 2013 with the “Joan of Art” process, co-organising conferences in Rome’s contemporary art museum and during the opening of the Venice biennale. This is a call for participation related to the next steps of the process. The homogenization of learning and accreditation modes realized through the ‘Bologna Process’ accords with a marketisation of education across Western Europe which threatens the diversity of subjects on offer as vocational subjects and those which lean towards the project of rationality become prioritized in terms of funding and resources. The Venice Process – started at Gervasuti Foundation, Venice, in collaboration with the national Pavilion of the Maldives during the 55th Venice Biennale – aims at offering an alternative education and accreditation system offered by a network of international art institutions. Events – including performances, seminars and workshops – will span the Biennale, culminating in the writing of a free course in art and ecology – written in conjunction with the Maldives Pavilion – and the delivery of a conference on accreditation systems in November 2013. We are issuing an international call out for academics, activists, artists and ecologists to participate in the writing of the free course on art and ecology. Participants will be asked to write a lecture or seminar (remotely) by the end of September 2013 and be available to present the course with other participants in Venice in late November. Joan of Art: Towards a Free Education is an ongoing project started in residence with NOMAS foundation in Rome (2012). It aims at the creation of a free alternative education system delivered via a network of art institutions, globally. Please send all inquires to conceptualmilitancy@gmail.com
Citizen Pact: Interim findings on the future of work
As part of the Citizen’s Pact, we’ve been across the continent, where we’ve enabled people to discuss and develop ideas and proposals on the future of work across Europe (if you’re interested in other themes we’re looking at, check out the Pact website). You can find the outcomes of each of the forums we have been to by clicking on the relevant links, for Berlin, Sofia, Rome, Barcelona, London, Paris, Valencia, Byala Slatina, Madrid, Vannes and again London. If you don’t have time or the energy to read through each of the findings of these forums, as exciting as they are, we have produced a summary of these along with questions we propose for our research workshop for which we recently opened a call for participation to all our members. The people invited to this workshop will be asked to explore these questions to come up with proposals on the future of work we will then open up for discussion and voting for our Citizens Manifesto via our new website (watch this space!) Tell us what you think of the questions and if you can think of better questions, write them in the comments below! Principles The ideas developed through the different consultations are based around a set of principles that Europe should focus on social protection over deficit reduction and in some cases, even over unemployment. Social protection in this context means having universal access to socio-economic rights, including essential public services and common goods, such as education, housing and a basic income. What new forms of social protection are needed to meet new and different work situations? Redesigning support to meet different needs Public services should develop a better understanding of how to match work opportunities with young people’s skills and redesign services around their different needs. Indeed, not all young people will be faced with the same situation or capability to make a living – from school leavers to graduates, from long term unemployed to the self-employed. More and more people are moving between periods of being underworked and overworked, often unsure of if and when they’re going to work from one day to a next. People cope in different ways with precarity. What forms of support are needed to help people cope with different work situations? Actively tackling inequalities in the labour market To tackle specific inequalities, people argued that job and housing applications should be anonymised to reduce discrimination, gender quotas be introduced to break through the glass ceiling. Specific measures should be introduced to compensate young people working in precarious employment, such as targeted training when they are in between jobs. Redistributing the value of work Paid work should be redistributed to tackle unemployment and reduce redundancies, such as through reducing hours of full time employees to take on part time staff. People out of work who volunteer in areas that are socially valuable such as care or community development should also be able to receive a community allowance. Alternative economic markets and socially valuable forms of work should also be incentivised. How should welfare systems help make work pay? What forms of income are needed to value different ways to make a living? Guaranteeing common goods to improve access to work They also advised that the EU should ensure that essential public services are free at the point of use, particularly those that help people access work – such as public transport and broadband even in the most excluded areas, as well as healthcare, especially for those in work where there is a greater physical and mental health risk. What public assets / common goods should be guaranteed to improve access to employment and help people develop socially valuable ways to make a living? Legislating for a common basic income to democratise money Not only are minimum and average wages no longer enough to provide a minimum standard of living with ever increasing housing and utility costs, they’re being squeezed by being put into competition with countries with the greatest poverty and weakest social protection. Participants of several forums proposed that the European Union should legislate that states provide an unconditional basic income to every citizen residing within its country. The benefits this would bring to young people would be centred around building their autonomy to find work and make a living and democratise and redistribute employment and income. How should wages or income be aligned to the average cost of living? Improving education throughout young people’s lives To ensure young people have universal access to learn and apply their skills, further and higher education should be free. The quality of education and training also needs to be improved, with further investment in secondary education and in vocational training. How should the education system better meet young people’s capacities to make a living? Improving the quality and security of apprenticeships and internships Participants proposed minimum standards to ensure young people taking on apprenticeships or internships were protected and paid just like any other worker. The EU should incentivise the spread of apprenticeships through subsidising workplace training for organisations that take on apprentices, paid by a levy on those who don’t. How should apprenticeships and internships be better protected and remunerated? Developing new forms of taxation to finance support To finance the above proposals, people suggested various forms of harmonising taxation at an EU level – including through a financial transactions tax. Building new forms of institutions and partnerships to support employment To raise awareness about these issues and build power to negotiate this both at a local and transnational level, trade unions need to transform themselves to better meet the needs of precarious workers and people out of work, while social dialogue between them, employers and the state should be a prerequisite. While campaigning should build up through new methods such as social networks and citizen’s initiatives, academics should also work with activists and authorities to build the evidence base for these proposals and test them out. How can institutions better understand and meet the needs of people going through different work situations? What new…
Consultation citoyenne sur le pluralisme des médias : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
Pluralisme des médias en Bulgarie : de l'Initiative citoyenne au Pacte citoyen Vendredi et samedi 12 et 13 avril 2013 The Red House, Lyuben Karavelov Street 15, 1142 Sofia Pour en savoir plus sur le Manifeste citoyen, sur la consultation de Sofia et sur l'Initiative Citoyenne Européenne pour une presse plurielle, cliquez ici. Téléchargez ici les résultats de la consultation citoyenne. La consultation sur le pluralisme des médias en Bulgaria organisée par Alternatives Européennes et le Centre pour le Développement des Médias a réuni des journalistes, des représentants des médias et des organismes de défense des droits de l'homme pour débattre de la liberté de presse et du pluralisme des médias en Bulgarie et dans l'UE. Conclusions Tables rondes : questions abordées et propositions clés mises en avant Les propositions énumérées ci-dessous ont été élaborées à partir de discussions utilisant la méthodologie du World Café et reflètent les opinions de la majorité des participants à la consultation des citoyens, même si les idées et les opinions étaient variées. Certaines des propositions ont été évoquées à différentes tables-rondes mais ont été réunies ici dans un souci de clarté. Si vous souhaitez réagir, commenter une proposition ou soumettre d’autres idées, veuillez utiliser l'espace de « commentaires » au bas de la page. Propriété des médias Modérateur : Ivan Radev, Association des JournalistesEuropéens en Bulgaria Si les noms des propriétaires de grands médias étaient connus, leur audience changerait certainement ; mais ceux-ci se cachent trop souvent derrière d'innombrables intermédiaires, représentants légaux dont les noms sont inscrits aux registres. La transparence exige des mesures appropriées, mais beaucoup craignent une surréglementation du marché. Une législation trop stricte (qui poserait la question de possibles abus de pouvoir par des acteurs politico-économiques) peut toutefois être évitée, par exemple en attribuant des parts de marché à des journalistes comme c'est déjà le cas ailleurs dans le monde. Comment identifier le véritable décideur qui se cache derrière tel ou tel média ? Comment éviter davantage de lois de contrôle des médias ? Les journalistes ont-ils un rôle à jouer au sein de l'organisme qui les emploie ? 1. Création d'une base de données internationale des propriétaires : cette base de données sera mise à jour continuellement par des organismes de défense des droits de l'homme et des ONG militant pour la liberté d'information. Elle comprendra le nom et des informations sur toute personne impliquée dans la gestion d'un média (de droit ou de fait), dans différentes langues et avec des liens vers des articles plus détaillés. 2. Boîte à outils : elle contiendra une série d'exemples de textes législatifs nationaux et d'autres réglementations importantes (codes de déontologie, règlements intérieurs de médias) et sera disponible publiquement comme source d'inspiration et base de revendication. 3. Octroi de parts de marché aux journalistes : attribuer à des journalistes ou à leurs représentants des parts de marché au sein de leur média leur donnerait accès à toute information de laquelle ils auraient besoin et leur permettrait aussi d'avoir leur mot à dire dans les décisions importantes, comme la mise en place de nouvelles mesures de contrôle de l'information. Soutien des journalistes lanceurs d'alerte (“whistleblower”) Modérateur : Venelina Popova, journaliste indépendante et lauréate du Prix Panitsa pour son travail de lanceur d’alterte (« whistleblower ») De courageux journalistes risquent leur emploi (et leur vie) pour tenir leurs engagements professionnels et garantir une information de qualité à leur public. Ils peuvent avoir des ennuis s'ils osent dévoiler les astuces auxquelles leurs éditeurs et employeurs ont recours pour manipuler l'opinion publique avec une information faussée. Que peut faire un tel journaliste après avoir dit la vérité et dénoncé les abus de leur employeur ? Qui peut les aider et comment ? 4. Groupes de soutien : ces structures informelles seront composées de journalistes et de représentants d'ONG souscrivant à des critères concrets concernant les lanceurs d’alerte et à leursoutien. Ces groupes seront autogérés, de préférence sous forme de groupe Facebook/e-mail en raison de la facilité à mobiliser de nouveaux membres par ce moyen. 5. Fonds de solidarité pour les groupes de soutien : ce fonds, collecté par le groupe de soutien, sera composé de dons financiers (servant par ex. à financer la procédure judiciaire) et en nature (un toit pour vivre, nourriture, vêtements et chaussures, etc.). 6. Soutien des journalistes concernés afin qu'ils puissent poursuivre leur travail : les groupes de soutien et d'autres journalistes se renseigneront auprès de (leurs) médias s'il est possible d'employer ces journalistes au moins de façon temporaire, à temps partiel ou en freelance. Ils les mettront en relation avec des associations et médias indépendants afin de leur permettre de continuer à exercer leur profession et de gagner leur vie. (Auto)censure Modérateur : Vesislava Antonova, journaliste pour le journal Capital Il arrive que des journalistes soient empêchés de publier certaines informations dans leur intégralité. Parfois ce sont leurs supérieurs (leur employeur, le propriétaire de leur média) qui font pression, mais il arrive aussi que le journaliste lui-même pratique l'autocensure. Dans ce cas, il est important de réfléchir à d'autres moyens de faire connaître les faits occultés. Comment diffuser un article (auto)censuré ? Où l'auteur peut-il le publier sans risques ? 7. Raconter toute l'histoire : tout journaliste devrait avoir le droit de publier l'intégralité d'un article censuré via un autre média, soit sous un pseudonyme soit anonymement. 8. Nouvelles perspectives : l'auteur (sous un pseudonyme), ou encore ses confrères ou des militants des droits de l'homme, doivent pouvoir publier un article censuré sous sa forme originale sur des forums, sur Facebook, etc., par exemple sous forme d'un commentaire sur la version censurée. Liberté des médias alternatifs Modérateur : Imir Rashid, doctorant en communication à la Westminister University et blogueur Les sources totalement indépendantes n'ont pas accès aux grands médias de masse. Les citoyens engagés et les journalistes indépendants ont besoin d'espaces d'échange aux perspectives diverses : les médias alternatifs existent et ont besoin de la collaboration du grand public. A quelles sources alternatives d'information recourir ? Les citoyens et les journalistes indépendants ont-ils un rôle à jouer ? Jusqu'où leur travail, indépendant par définition, est-il viable ? 9. Engagement citoyen : afin de garantir une plus grande pluralité de l'information, les ONG et les…
Citizens consultation on media pluralism: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
Media Pluralism in Bulgaria: from a Citizens Initiative to a Citizens PactFriday and Saturday 12th-13th April 2013 The Red House, Lyuben Karavelov street 15, 1142 Sofia Find out more information about the Citizens Manifesto, about the Sofia consultation and about the European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism: sign here! You can download the findings of this citizens’ consultation here. The consultation on Media Pluralism in Bulgaria, organised by European Alternatives and the Centre for the Development of Media, brought together journalists, representatives of media and human rights defence organisations, who debated issues related to media freedom and pluralism in Bulgaria and the EU. Findings Table discussions: issues to be debated and introduction to the key proposals The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology. They reflect the opinions held by the majority of those who participated in the public consultation, even though their opinions and ideas often displayed a variety of positions. Some of the proposals were developed on several discussion tables, but for the sake of clarity, similar concerns have been merged together. If you wish to react to or comment on a proposal – or even suggest new ideas – please use the “comments” box at the bottom of the page. Media Ownership Moderated by Ivan Radev, Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria Audience of media outlets is likely to alter once the real owners of the outlet become public: however, often media tycoons are hidden behind a countless set of proxies that stand as the legal representatives and have their names in all company registers. Ensuring transparency requires appropriate measures and over-regulation of the market is commonly feared. Excessive legislation may be avoided (as well as the contingent concerns that it might be abused by interested economic/political powers) and one of the good models among many around the world may include assigning journalists with a share in the media outlet. How could we identify who really stand behind a media outlet? What can substitute for additional legislative measures in the media sector? May journalists play a role within their employing company as well? 1. “Media Owners”international online database: to be updated on a continuous basis by Human rights organisations and freedom of information NGOs. Name and background information about the persons related to the ownership (de facto and de jure) shall be given in different languages and supported by links to publications giving further information. 2. Best practices toolbox: as a combination of examples from the national legislation and soft-law (ethic codes, intra-media compliance measures), it will be offered publicly as a model for inspiration as well as grounds for advocacy work. 3. Journalists become shareholders: assigning a share in the media outlet to journalists or a representative of the body of journalists in a media will allow them to have complete access to all the information but also influence the strategic decisions, for example, the introduction of further accountability measures within the media outlet. Whistleblowers’ support Moderated by Venelina Popova, independent journalist, awarded with the Panitsa Award for her whistleblowingCourageous journalists risk their jobs (and lives) for their professional pledges and for sticking to the standards of providing accurate information to the audience of their pieces. Mishaps happen after they disclose the tricks of their editors/employers in manipulating the public with forged information. What can whistleblower journalists do after they disclose the true information and their boss’s misconduct? Who can be involved in their support strategies and what could those consist of? 4. Circle of Supporters: as an informal structure, it will include journalists and NGO representatives that subscribe to concrete criteria about “a whistleblower” and support measures. The Circle will be self-managed, rather as a FB/Mail group which could easily mobilize to help the whistleblower. 5. Solidarity Fund for the Circle of Supporters: run by the Circle of Supporters, the fund will consist of in-kind and pecuniary contributions. The in-kind side might include basic things collected ad hoc as a place to live, food, clothes/shoes, while the pecuniary part might be used for legal aid, for example. 6. Supporting whistleblowers to continue working: the Circle of Supporters/fellow journalists shall ask (their) media outlets if the whistleblower may be hired even on a temporary/freelance/part-time basis. They shall put the whistleblowers in touch with associations/media outlets of independent journalists so that the whistleblower will be able to continue their profession and make a living. (Auto)Censorship Moderated by Vesislava Antonova, journalist at the Capital NewspaperJournalists are sometimes prevented from publishing complete and accurate stories: it might be a superior (the employer/the media outlet owner) or the journalists themselves that is to blame. Other means of covering and giving publicity to the story might be conceived and employed. What are the alternative ways of giving publicity to a (self-) censored piece? How can the author publish their piece without any threat and self-restraint? 7. Sharing the full story: the journalist shall be allowed to give publicity to the complete/genuine story through other media by signing other publications, either as another author (fake name) or by submitting as an anonymous letter to the editor. 8. Providing other perspectives: fellow journalists, human rights activists or the author (under a fake name) to publish censored publications in their original and uncensored form on forums, FB, etc., along with a copy (scanned, transcribed, etc.) of the censored publication. It may take form of a comment underneath an article in the electronic version of the censored article. Freedom through alternative media Moderated: by Imir Rashid, Westminister University PhD Student in Communication Sciences, bloggerMainstream media do not provide a platform for information produced and published fully independently from any interest. Citizens and freelance journalists need a space for diverse perspectives: alternatives to the conventional outlets are out there and require collaborative efforts of the wider public. What sources of news may one resort to instead of conventional media? May citizens and freelance journalists play a role and to what extend their independent work per se is self-sustained? 9. Citizen Journalism: Capacity building NGOs and journalists shall equip wide audiences with the necessary…
GIVING A HELPING HAND
You may remember we invited people to share their stories on how they cope with making a living. This is the second post starting to analyse the findings from this research, focusing on travelling, helping and loving. Click on the visualisation to activate itTravelling Around an eighth of respondents value “travelling” as their number one ambition to help them make a living. Surprisingly around six in ten of these want to travel around the world, some particular countries like China or Japan because it’s always been a dream of theirs, but most others want to travel across the world, obviously when they’ll have time! About a quarter of people just want to travel more regularly, whether that’s for a long vacation, travel at least once a year. A tenth of people want to live in another country, whether that’s as far as South America or Uzbekistan or another European city like Porto. A small minority want to work abroad, whether that’s to do projects in a specific field like international development or a job that enables them to live in a variety of places. Click on the visualisation to activate it Helping Around one in sixteen of the participants value “helping” as their most important aspiration. For about a third of these, this involves providing for their family and friends. For a quarter, this is also about getting involved in their community, because they want to leave a positive legacy, including leaving the planet in a better state than how they found it, but also to keep up their curiosity in life.Around 15% of these want to do so through provoking social change, whether that’s through the film they produce or the campaigns they’re involved in, particularly for marginalised people. For the same proportion, that’s through volunteering, in particular continuing to have time for this activity. Click on the visualisation to activate it Loving Just over 18% value “relationships” as their most important objective. Over two thirds of participants want to start a family, with some aspiring to become good parents. About 15% want to be in a loving and stable relationship, some even striving to have learnt how to love and the meaning of the word, which they feel this is more important than getting married. Just under 10% value as very important keeping their best friends and maintaining a happy life with them and their family, with some striving to meet new people. This analysis shows that having children is an aspiration that crosses generations. What’s fascinating is how little marriage is mentioned as an expectation, at best making the relationship official and at worst, a bureaucratic formality. Click on the visualisation to activate it Feeling Only around 7% valued “feelings” as their number one principle. For close to a third of these, this was about staying happy and even spreading more happiness in the world, while for another third, this was about feeling healthy in mind, body and soul – from good karma to being valued by others. Around one in eight want to feel more autonomous and see it as the precondition for meeting their basic needs. Click on the visualisation to activate it Our next post in this series will explore how important the other expectations young people have, starting with how important you value the traditional expectations that society assumes you will want to achieve – getting a degree, getting a stable job, buying your own house, getting married and having children. Watch this space!
HOST A WORKSHOP
We’re using creative methods in our Making a Living project to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. One of the ways you can get involved is by hosting a workshop to stimulate discussion and get people to interview each other one to one. Take a look below at the tips we learnt from our previous workshops. One of the things we’ve learnt from our previous workshops is that some people find it difficult to talk about the issues without prompts, so we’ve produced a guide of stimulant cards you can use to prompt people to talk about the different issues young people face. Inspired by semiotics, you ask people to pick a selection of keywords and discuss them. Let us know how you get on! Stimulants Workshop from Noel HatchAnd finally, a few lessons we’ve learnt from our workshops Embrace the mess, you need rules for radicals not for robots The start of anything new is inevitably uncomfortable and confusing. Allow for this, as people move closer to getting involved in your activities. If you try to move too quickly to rigidly planning everything, they won’t feel a sense of ownership in it, or at least that’s our excuse… That’s why when we organise workshops we introduce what we do and why we do it in a very informal way, while at the same time encouraging them to help shape our future activities. Don’t take them for granted, value them as people you couldn’t do without When people do decide to get involved and give freely of their time and energy, recognise and value their efforts. This can be as simple as thanking them regularly, buying a round of drinks or getting them to lead parts of your activity. It’s a tricky tightrope to let people discover what they want to do and to galvanise their energies to get involved. Different people have different motivations and skills, which are shaped not just by their lives but also by their moods. What they might be interested one day, they might not the other, or vice versa. This is even more important to consider when you have a group like ours which is run by volunteers. Some prefer running the workshops, others coordinating the work and others putting forward ideas. These are all interdependent , you need a variety of people picking up the baton and sharing between each other, knowing that if they need to pass on the baton for whatever reason, someone else is always there to catch it. Start with your personal story Test it out after this session down the pub, talk about what the spark was that got you involved and quickly you’ll find that people will get excited about the values you stand for.
HOW TO CREATE A SOCIAL MARKET
We’re using creative methods in our Making a Living project to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. One of the ways you can get involved is by writing a case study on a project you know or you’re involved in. Here’s an example our friends from Cluj produced on a project they’re involved in! Take a look below at the tips on how to create a cool case study by documenting a project online and then writing up the methods it uses!
HOW TO SPARK A LIVING
As part of our Making a Living project, we’re also exploring how groups are testing new methods to help people develop their skills. We interviewed Eugenie Teasley, a social innovator who’s helping other young people develop their skills to hack themselves new ways to make a living.We ask her what motivated her to start her business, how young people co-create the projects themselves, how they can translate experiences from their personal life into skills for the workplace and why you need a little spark and mettle to make a living.Your Star Track programme helps people map and launch their dream career. Many people argue that young people should be happy with getting any job. What motivated you to start a programme to help young people think about what they really want to do for a living? There are lots of young people who have realistic aspirations in the UK, but they just don’t have the connections or the resources to help achieve them. And yet there are also lots of people who have found the way to a job that they love who are willing and excited to give advice, support and guidance. I felt I was in a good position to connect these two groups together. One of your Star Track videos talks about it being a “new way to map and launch happy careers (and lives)”. How important is it that young people can feel good about what they want to do for a living? How does Star Track help them do that? There’s always a tension between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, especially when it comes to work. I think that there are a lot of driven and capable young people whose career chances are capped because of where they come from or who they know, and that frustrates me. But at the same time, I think it’s important to learn or to be reminded, that doing work that benefits others is a great thing to look for—not just working for charities, but anything that can contribute to rather than detract from the greater good. Through Star Track we unpick young people’s motivations and ambitions, and see if we can help them map it all to a bespoke course of action that is achievable and beneficial to them and to others. What type of expectations do young people have about how they can make a living when they join your programme? (How) do these change by the time they’ve completed it? We tend to attract young people who want to do something a bit different—non-traditional careers such as design, technology or entrepreneurship — and we try to support them achieve that by connecting them to people who can help them, and also giving them greater insight into themselves and their hopes. A lot of them expect to work a job while developing their skills and interests on the side, which we actively encourage. What type of support do you find most important to help young people cope with trying to make a living? A lot of it comes down to reassurance—that they’re not doing anything wrong; they just haven’t had a break. That and the contacts we can help them make. Most support programmes are delivered to young people. How does inviting young people to co-create your programmes help them (and you!) meet their goals? It means that the programme is as relevant as possible to them, rather than imposed on them. But it also means that we have to be adaptive and responsive. It’s a great reminder that we don’t have The Answer, and it enables young people to take ownership of their own journey too. There is a growing trend of social media tools incentivising people to “pimp their status”. You use social media to engage with young people. How do you think young people can (and are!) using these new skills to build portfolios for their career? There are brilliant examples of young people making films, Gifs or even using Amazon to promote themselves. We want to bring those examples to a greater swathe of young people and encourage them to have the confidence and creativity to do it themselves. Discoverables is an opportunity for young people to showcase all the strengths and skills they have—a bit like Pinterest. We’ve found that young people cope in different ways – emotionally & practically – to try and make a living. Some people are overwhelmed or blame themselves while others look for every opportunity to improve. How do your programmes adapt to helping young people who cope in different ways to cope with their situation? How do their attitudes change over the course of being involved in your programmes? By the end of the programme most young people tend to be more realistic and pragmatic, with a game plan in place of how to get to where they want to go, and a real idea of how long it will take them to get there. There’s no magic trick about making a living doing something that you love. It takes mettle. And spark! How does giving young people the opportunity to work with others to develop & sell products (like Dreamers Supply) help prepare them to make a living? It gives them practical, real world experience of taking a product to market and collaborating with an intergenerational group of people. Discoverables is a way to help you discover your strengths, complete missions to prove you have your strengths, then use your strengths to complete self-directed skills challenges to demonstrate your skills to employers. The Discoverables starts off with asking people different questions about how they feel about different areas of life – not just about their career. How important is this approach to help young people discover what they’re good at? There are key strengths that transcend work and play—things like having a sense of purpose and agency that are important in all aspects of life. Enabling young people to identify and articulate these strengths lays a rock solid foundation for…
Camps d’étrangers en Europe
Le 9 juillet 2013 Outil privilégié de la gestion de l’immigration et de l’asile, l’enfermement des migrants ne cesse de se développer dans l’Union Européennes mais également à ses frontières méridionales et orientales. Les traitements inhumains et dégradants, conséquence directe des politiques et pratiques mises en œuvre, sont quotidiens. Ces violations des droits restent largement cachées : tout est fait pour que ces lieux, et les personnes qui y sont enfermées, soient tenus à l’écart de la société civile et des médias. Notre campagne de visites organisée du 26 mars au 26 avril 2012 a d’ailleurs permis de démontrer, une fois de plus, une volonté évidente des autorités de contrôler, voire d’empêcher ce regard extérieur qui inquiète[1]. Interpellée par sept parlementaires européens en mars 2013[2] au sujet de « l’accès des organisations non gouvernementales (ONG) et des médias aux centres de rétention et au droit à l’information », la Commission Européenne vient de rappeler[3] que « le refus répété, sans justification objective, d’autoriser les visites de centres de rétention porterait atteinte au droit des ONG consacré par l’article 16, paragraphe 4, [de la Directive « retour »] et pourrait être considéré comme une violation ». Une campagne de visites parlementaires a été lancée le 24 avril dernier au Parlement Européen, en soutien aux revendications de la campagne « Open Access ». Plusieurs parlementaires se sont mobilisés pour effectuer des visites afin de renforcer la vigilance, de souligner la nécessaire transparence de ces dispositifs, et de donner plus de visibilité aux problèmes liés à la détention des migrants : il s’agit par ces visites, d’encourager l’évolution des législations européenne et nationale dans le sens du respect des droits de l’Homme. Si les États refusent le plus souvent l’accès de ces centres aux journalistes, celui des associations est soumis à des règles très restrictives et mêmes les visites des élus sont parfois limitées. La campagne de visites menée cette année ne fait pas exception. Le bilan jusqu’à présent est loin d’être satisfaisant, au contraire. Refus d’accès basés sur des prétextes et manque de réponse de la part des administrations sont bien souvent les marques d’une volonté des États de laisser l’enfermement des migrants à l’écart des préoccupations citoyennes. En France, le 13 mai, Hélène Flautre (MEP – Verts, France) a effectué seule une visite du centre de rétention du Mesnil-Amelot, les deux journalistes qui l’accompagnaient n’ayant pas été autorisés à entrer. Au Mesnil, l’incompréhension des retenus vis-à-vis de leur rétention a été palpable et la détérioration des locaux pourtant très récents est particulièrement inquiétante. Plus encore le sont les expulsions d’étrangers malades ou les difficultés de contester la mesure de privation de liberté[5]. De même, le 28 juin dernier, au centre de rétention de Marseille et sur décision du ministère de l’Intérieur, l’accès de deux journalistes a été refusé. Marie-Christine Vergiat (MEP – GUE/NGL, France) et Isabelle Pasquet (sénatrice CRC des Bouches du Rhône) sont donc rentrées seules2 dans ce centre qui a connu des incidents à plusieurs reprises, notamment un incendie en mars 2011 et l’hospitalisation d’une migrante en état critique en juillet 2012. Dans ce centre, les migrants n’ont pas d’accès libre aux fontaines d’eau mais surtout, la pratique de l’isolement est couramment utilisée sans le moindre avis médical, y compris pour des motifs psychiatriques. Pourtant, sur l’accès des journalistes, le ministère de l’intérieur s’était dit prêt, le 4 juin dernier3, à ouvrir l’accès des lieux d’enfermement des étrangers aux journalistes. Les modalités concrètes de cet accès ne sont pas encore connues, mais nous ne pouvons que regretter que les refus opposés aux journalistes ces dernières semaines ne traduisent cette volonté annoncée. Le 16 juillet prochain, Sylvie Guillaume (MEP – SD, France) se rendra au centre de rétention de Lyon. Elle tentera elle aussi d’être accompagnée de journalistes. En Espagne[7], le 10 mai, organisations et journalistes n’ont pas pu accéder au centre d’internement des étrangers (CIE) d’Aluche (Madrid). L’entrée a uniquement été accordée aux représentants politiques, Raül Romeva i Rueda (MEP – Verts, Espagne), Ska Keller (MEP – Verts, Allemagne), Ulrike Lunacek (MEP – Verts, Autriche) et Mauricio Valiente (parlementaire autonome Madrid, IU). Seul un représentant associatif a été autorisé à entrer mais a refusé d’accéder afin de dénoncer les conditions d’accès et de soutenir les autres membres associatifs et nombreux journalistes laissés à la porte. Au CIE de Barcelone (visite le 28 juin), plusieurs députés ont pu entrer, Carmen Romero Lopez (MEP – GUE, Espagne), Dolos Camats i Luis (parlementaire autonome, ICV-EUiA), Gemma Calvet Barot (parlementaire autonome, ERC), David Fernandez i Ramos (parlementaire autonome, CUP). Les médias ont de nouveau été empêchés d’entrer. Ces centres ont déjà fait l’objet de diverses dénonciations concernant les abus dont ont fait l’objet les détenus. L’opacité perdure alors que le 27 juin, le « juge de contrôle » du CIE de Barcelone consacrait le droit des ONG et des avocats à accéder aux lieux d’enfermement[8]. En Italie, pour refuser l’accès des ONG à cinq aéroports, le ministère a considéré que les étrangers en attente de refoulement sont « hébergés » dans les locaux de la police aux frontières le temps nécessaire à la mise en place de celui-ci. Ces lieux ne seraient donc pas des lieux de rétention et les règles concernant l’accès des associations ne s’y appliqueraient pas. Or, il est pourtant clair que les migrants y sont privés de liberté et que ces lieux en ont bien la fonction. Finalement, trois aéroports seront visités, à Rome, Palerme et Bari, mais uniquement par des parlementaires puisque l’interprétation des autorités laisse peu d’espoir à la société civile. Le « monitoring » des « centres d’identification et expulsion » (CIE) dans le cadre de la campagne nationale « LasciateCIEntrare »6 poursuit. Y participent avocats, journalistes, représentants de la société civile et, depuis quelque temps, conseillers régionaux et municipaux. Une visite du centre de Ponte Galeria (Rome), le plus important d’Italie en termes de capacité (360 places), par le Président de la Commission spéciale pour les droits humains du Sénat est prévue dans les prochains jours. La campagne est également engagée contre la réouverture des CIE de Santa Maria…
Centri di detenzione per stranieri in Europa
9 luglio 2013 Strumento privilegiato della gestione dell’immigrazione e dell’asilo, la detenzione dei migranti continua a svilupparsi all’interno dell’Unione europea e ai suoi confini meridionali ed orientali. I trattamenti inumani e degradanti, conseguenza diretta delle politiche e delle pratiche vigenti, sono all’ordine del giorno. Queste vioolazioni dei diritti restano nella maggior parte dei casi nascoste: si fa di tutto affinché questi luoghi e le persone che vi sono detenute siano tenuti lontani dalla società civile e i media. La campagna di visite che si è tenuta dal 26 marzo al 26 aprile 2012 ha permesso di dimostrare, ancora una volta, una volontà evidente delle autorità di controllare, se non impedire questo sguardo esterno che preoccupa[1]. A seguito dell’interrogazione fatta da sette parlamentari europei a marzo del 2013[2] a proposito de “l’accesso delle organizzazioni non governative (ONG) e dei media ai centri di detenzione e del diritto all’informazione », la Commissione europea ha ricordato[3] che « i rifiuti ripetuti, senza giustificazioni obiettive, di autorizzare le visite dei centri di detenzione pregiudicherebbe il diritto delle ONG consacrato dall’articolo 16, paragrafo 4 [della direttiva « rimpatri »] e potrebbe essere considerato come una violazione”. Una nuova campagna di visite parlamentari, a sostegno delle rivendicazioni di “Open Access”, è stata lanciata il 24 aprile scorso al Parlamento europeo. Diversi parlamentari si sono mobilitati per effettuare delle visite e rinforzare così la vigilanza e la trasparenza e dare visibilità ai problemi legati alla detenzione dei migranti. Attraverso queste visite si intende incoraggiare l’evoluzione delle legislazioni europee e nazionali nel senso del rispetto dei diritti dell’uomo. Nella maggior parte dei casi, le autorità nazionali rifiutano l’accesso ai giornalisti e impongono regole estremamente restrittive all’accesso delle associazioni. Talvolta anche le visite dei parlamentari sono sottoposte a limitazioni. La campagna di visite realizzata quest’anno non fa eccezione. Il bilancio non è tutt’altro che soddisfacente. Dinieghi d’accesso pretestuosi e assenza di risposte da parte delle amministrazioni sono il segno distintivo di una volontà degli Stati di lasciare la detenzione dei migranti al di fuori delle preoccupazioni dei cittadini. In Francia, il 13 maggio, Hélène Flautre (MEP – Verdi, Francia) ha realizzato sola una visita del centro di detenzione di Mesnil-Amelot. I due giornalisti che l’accompagnavano non sono stati autorizzati ad entrare. A Mesnil, l’incomprensione da parte dei detenuti rispetto alla loro detenzione e la deteriorazione dei locali, nonostante siano molto recenti, sono particolarmente preoccupanti. Ancor più preoccupanti, le espulsioni di stranieri malati e le difficoltà incontrate dai detenuti per contestare le decisioni di privazione della libertà[4]. Analogamente, il 28 giugno scorso, l’accesso dei giornalisti al centro di Marsiglia è stato rifiutato, con decisione del Ministero dell’interno. Marie-Christine Vergiat (MEP – GUE/NGL, Francia) e Isabelle Pasquet (senatrice CRC, Bouches du Rhône) sono, quindi, entrate sole5 in questo centro, dove si sono verificati diversi incidenti, quali un incendio a marzo del 2011 e il ricovero di una migrante in condizioni critiche a luglio del 2012. In questo centro i detenuti non hanno libero accesso ai rubinetti d’acqua e le misure di isolamento sono correntemente utilizzate, senza previo parere medico e anche nei confronti di casi psichiatrici. Tuttavia, in merito all’accesso dei giornalisti, il Ministero dell’interno si era detto pronto, il 4 giugno scorso6, ad aprire i centri alla stampa. Le modalità concrete di questo accesso non sono ancora note, ma non possiamo che rimpiangere il fatto che i rifiuti opposti ai giornalisti nel corso delle ultime settimane non rispecchino questa volontà annunciata. Il 16 luglio prossimo, Sylvie Guillaume (MEP – SD, Francia) si recherà al centro di detenzione di Lione. Anche lei cercherà di essere accompagnata da giornalisti. In Spagna[7], il 10 maggio scorso, organizzazioni e giornalisti non hanno potuto accedere al “centro di internamento per stranieri” (CIE) di Aluche (Madrid). L’accesso è stato accordato soltanto ai rappresentanti politici, Raül Romeva i Rueda (MEP – Verdi, Spagna), Ska Keller (MEP – Verdi, Germania), Ulrike Lunacek (MEP – Verdi, Austria) e Mauricio Valiente (parlementare autonomo, Madrid, IU). Un solo rappresentante della società civile è stato autorizzato ad entrare, ma ha rifiutato per denunciare le condizioni di accesso e sostenere gli altri membri della società civile ed i numerosi giornalisti rimasti alla porta. Al CIE di Barcellona (visita del 28 giugno), diversi deputati sono potuti entrare, Carmen Romero Lopez (MEP – GUE, Spagna), Dolos Camats i Luis (parlementaire autonome, ICV-EUiA), Gemma Calvet Barot (parlementaire autonome, ERC), David Fernandez i Ramos (parlementare autonomo, CUP). Ai media è stato nuovamente rifiutato l’accesso. Questi centri sono stati oggetto di diverse denuncie a seguito di abusi contro i detenuti. L’opacità persiste, nonostante il 27 giugno il “giudice di sorveglianza” del CIE di Barcellona abbia consacrato il diritto delle ONG e degli avvocati ad entrare liberamente nei luoghi di detenzione[8]. In Italia, per rifiutare l’accesso delle ONG a cinque aeroporti, il Ministero dell’interno ha dichiarato che gli stranieri in attesa di respingimento sono « ospitati » nei locali della polizia di frontiera per il tempo necessario all’attuazione del provvedimento. Non si tratterebbe, quindi, di luoghi di detenzione e le regole riguardanti l’accesso delle associazioni non si applicherebbero. E’, tuttavia, evidente che i migranti sono privati della libertà e che questi luoghi ne hanno la funzione. Alla fine, tre aeroporti saranno visitati, a Roma, Palermo e Bari, ma soltanto da parlamentari, visto che la risposta delle autorità lascia ben poche speranze alla società civile. Il monitoraggio dei “centri di identificazione ed espulsione” (CIE) nell’ambito della campagna nazionale “LasciateCIEntrare” [9] prosegue con la partecipazione di avvocati, giornalisti, rappresentanti della società civile e, da qualche tempo, consiglieri regionali e comunali. Una visita del Presidente della Commissione speciale per i diritti umani del Senato al CIE di Ponte Galeria (Roma), il più importante in Italia per capacità (360 posti), è prevista nei prossimi giorni. La campagna è attiva anche nel denunciare la riapertura dei CIE di Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Caserta) e Palazzo San Gervasio (Potenza), chiusi nel 2011. In Belgio, Marie-Christine Vergiat aveva chiesto di visitare il “centro chiuso” di Bruges accompagnata da una giornalista della RTBF (radio-televisione belga francofona). L’Ufficio stranieri (“Office des Etrangers”) le ha…
Migrant Detention Centres in Europe
9 July 2013 A favoured tool of immigration and asylum management, migrant detention continue to expand within the European Union but also at its southern and eastern borders. Inhumane and degrading treatment occurs on a daily basis as a direct consequence of the policies and practices implemented in Europe. Yet these rights violations remain mostly hidden, as everything is designed to keep immigration detention centres and the detainees away from civil society and the media. The campaign of visits we organised between 26 March and 26 April 2012 demonstrated yet again the clear intention on the part of the authorities to control, if not prevent, any external scrutiny [1]. Following a question by seven MEPs in March 2013 [2] on “the access of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media to detention centres and their right to information”, the European Commission has recently declared [3] that “the repeated refusal to visit detention facilities without objective justification would undermine the right of NGOs enshrined in Article 16 (4) [of the EU Returns Directive], and could be considered as an infringement “. A campaign of parliamentary visits was launched on 24 April 2013 at the Europe an Parliament to support the demands of the Open Access campaign. Several MEPs undertook visits in order to increase public attention, to highlight the need for transparency and to allow more visibility and public awareness of the problems linked to the detention of migrants. These visits aim to push European and national legislation to towards a greater respect for human rights. States tend to prevent journalists from entering these centres and establish very restrictive rules regarding NGOs access. Even MPs are sometimes limited in their ability to enter these facilities. This year’s campaign has been no exception and its outcomes have been far from satisfactory. Inadequate excuses and lack of answers demonstrate a will on the part of States to keep immigration detention out of the public eye. In France, on 13 May, Hélène Flautre (MEP – Green Party, France) undertook a single visit to the detention centre in Mesnil-Amelot. The two journalists who accompanied her were not allowed in. In Mesnil, the lack of understanding on the part of the migrants regarding their own detention was palpable and the dilapidation of the facilities, despite being relatively recent, was particularly worrying. Most disturbing remains the expulsion of sick migrants and the difficulties associated with contesting the validity of their deprivation of liberty [4]. Similarly, on 28 June 2013, upon the decision of the Interior Minister, two journalists were refused access to the Marseilles detention centre. Marie-Christine Vergiat (MEP – GUE/NGL, France) and Senate member Isabelle Pasquet (CRC, Bouches du Rhône) had to enter the Marseille Canet centre alone [5]. This centre has been the stage of several incidents, including a fire in March 2011 and the hospitalisation of a migrant in a critical condition in July 2012. There is no free access to water fountains and the practice of isolation for medical reasons is frequently used with no recourse to consultation by a doctor, including in psychiatric cases.On 4 June 2013 the Ministry of the Interior declared [6] that it would become possible for journalists to access immigration detention facilities. Concrete modalities of this access have not been announced yet and the fact that several journalists have recently been prevented from entering detention centres seems to contradict this statement. On 16 July 2013, Sylvie Guillaume (MEP – SD, France) will visit the detention centre in Lyon. She will also attempt to bring journalists with her.In Spain [7], on 10 May 2013, NGOs and journalists could not enter the Aluche detention centre for foreigners (CIE) in Madrid. Entry was only granted to political representatives Raül Romeva i Rueda (MEP – Green Party, Spain), Ska Keller (MEP – Green Party, Germany), Ulrike Lunacek (MEP – Green Party, Austria) and the independent MP Mauricio Valiente (Madrid IU). Only one NGO representative was allowed to enter the facility but he refused to do so alone in order to denounce the manner in which access was granted and to support the other NGO representatives and the numerous journalists who were left out. At the Barcelona CIE, during a visit on 28 June, several MPs were allowed in in: Carmen Romero Lopez (MEP – GUE, Spain), Dolos Camats i Luis (MP – independent, ICV-EUiA), Gemma Calvet Barot (MP – independent, ERC) and David Fernandez i Ramos (MP – independent, CUP). All media were refused access, however. These detention centres have already been the target of various criticism regarding abuses perpetrated against detained migrants. Opacity continues despite a decision on 27 June 2013 by the “supervision judge” of Barcelona CIE to grant NGOs and lawyers the right to access detention facilities [8].In Italy, in order to prevent NGOs from accessing five airports, the Interior Minister declared that migrants waiting to be pushed-back are ‘hosted’ at the facilities of the border police for the duration required to implement the ”refoulement”. The minister then claimed these facilities did not constitute detention places and that the right of NGOs to see the migrants did not apply. However, it is undeniable that migrants are deprived of their freedom and that these facilities operate in the same way as other detention centres. Eventually, three airports will be visited in Rome, Palermo and Bari, but only by MPs, since it is not possible for civil society organisations to do so within the current interpretation of the law by the Italian authorities.Monitoring of the “Identification and Expulsion Centres” (CIE) as part of the national campaign “LasciateCIEntrare” [9] continues. Participants include lawyers, journalists, representatives of civil society and, more recently, regional and municipal councillors. A visit by the Chairman of the Special Commission for Human Rights of the Senate to the center of Ponte Galeria (Rome), Italy’s largest in terms of capacity (360 places), is expected in the coming days. The campaign is also opposed to the reopening of the CIEs of Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Caserta) and Palazzo San Gervasio (Potenza), closed…
SPIN THE GLOBE
We recently published a challenge for you to take photos in your neighbourhood of places, people and interactions what it feels like to be out of work, look for job, make a living and the economy. Using a new tool, you can now see our first cut of the photos submitted so far. To use the tool, go to Tag Galaxy, go to New Tag and add makingaliving as the tag and click go! Click on a random image from the globe and then once it appears click again to see the description! You can check out what people have handwritten on our issue cards or you can select a random photo and see our interpretation of how it symbolises making a living. It might be an observation about the irony of a neighbourhood being gentrified, a slogan that we could co-opt for our own campaigns or a question challenging us to rethink our economy. It might be more positive, like an example we found on our travels about how people are re-using old resources to re-invent them into something new or a technique that’s inspired us in how we carry out our project. Hidden in there, you can also see photos of us out and about interviewing people and capturing the atmosphere in the places and spaces we’ve visited. We explore how could new ways of making a living might become reclaiming the old forms of making a living from the Barceloneta barrio in Barcelona to observing how containers are the symbol of the globalisation of trade, but are also used as makeshift homes for many who can’t afford to pay the rent from. We question if the sadness and nostalgia of how people used to make a living become art from the Testaccio vicinato in Rome to reflecting how an advert shows us how the ways our generation is trying to find itself is always under construction. We come across on the different tribes of young people campaigning for better ways to make a living on a window in the Kreuzberg nachbarshaft in Berlin. If you want to upload your photo and feature it on the tool, go to the challenge and find out how!
THE PERFECT COUPLE
As part of our Making a Living project to use creative methods to explore how young people are coping with making a living, we recently announced an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers. These have been produced thanks to the stories of over 80 young people across 25 cities in Europe on how they cope with making a living. We’d like to thank Vincent and Gian Paolo for imagining the day in the life of not just one but two Militant Optimists – Hugh and Laura, but this time there’s a catch, you have to complete the story! Hugh is a Scot who works as a civil servant in the Treasury like his father while Clara who’s Portugese, works as a paralegal training to become a lawyer, which is what she has dreamed about since she was a child. Morning Clare made an egg for Hugh so he gets to work full of energy. He worked on a policy paper until 9pm last night, so he needs the energy boost. Hugh goes to a meeting with all the colleagues from his department which is about how the cuts will affect them and who will get made redundant. Another item on the agenda is him presenting an efficient way to manage migration. He wants to use the presentation on migration to impress his bosses that unlike other colleagues who feel guilty about proposing a stricter policy on migration because of the effect it will have on human beings, he wants to show that he doesn’t let his heart dictate his thoughts and focuses instead on the most cost effective way to manage this issue. He feels scared, but is relieved that he wasn’t the one who got the sack. He is sad that others got laid off, but doesn’t have time to dwell on this too much as he needs to think about his career. Afternoon Hugh and Clare meet each other for lunch which they do everyday at 12.30 at the same restaurant. Clare needs to convince Hugh to come with her and her best friend and her husband to a new musical which is a critical success. Hugh needs to avoid lunch lasting too long as he doesn’t want to be seen as taking advantage. Clare asks Hugh if he wants to come to the musical, but he tells her that they need to save up for a house in a more civilised area so they can’t be spending money on frivolous experiences. Clare wants to relax and meet other people as she has been with Hugh since starting at university and sometimes feels the need to have a change of scene. Hugh wants to wait until they’re settled with a house, a stable job and children, before spending money on enjoying themselves. As she was excited about the musical and now Hugh won’t come, she calls her mum to ask her what she would doing at her place – go with the other couple or stay in with Hugh. Now it’s your turn to complete the story, tell us what would Hugh and Clare do in the afternoon and evening, tell us why they do it and how they each feel about what they do. Leave a comment below or email london@euroalter.com and we’ll update the post!
TRANSITIONING FROM WELFARE TO WORK
Welcome to the second part of our interview with Louise Winterburn (@create_tweets), Policy Manager at Locality – about the proposal they’ve made – the Community Allowance. You can read the first part here. Do you think the Community Allowance gives people a greater sense of responsibility around their community? I think it’s absolutely massive. If you ask people “what do you think of the neighbourhood here?” people always mention dog poo, litter and young people hanging out. When you talk to young people, there’s nothing here for us to do and feel sometimes people are getting at them because the only thing you can do is hang out. When you get involved in a community organisation, you have the chance to say who you are, you’re a young person who’s got their own ideas, experience and energy that they’re bringing to the greater good of the community. It means that people get to see you in a different light. That’s really important for community organisations to give people an opportunity to come together. I mentioned the example of people going to old people’s homes to talk to them and to understand what that person needs. That might be the only visit that person has had in quite a long time. You get a massive boost when someone’s told you their issues and you’ve come back with some solutions. It reminds you of the skills that you do have. I don’t think there’s anything more powerful. Some people feel so excluded from society that even working for a community organisation that they’ve probably never interacted with these, so it might not be a sufficient motivator. How would it motivate those people for whom community doesn’t mean anything anymore? All the examples I gave about personal motivators are reasons people may choose to volunteer. The other side of it, which was frustrating for us, with the benefits system, meant that if you said I want a job, we said we can create mini jobs but if the system changed. The motivator there is that we’ve always argued that the benefits system should enable us to pay people. I don’t know about you but money is a motivator. About creating jobs, the only way we can do that is through the Community Allowance. People would be better off because they would be taken these jobs and improving their financial situation. We would then support people to grow into these roles. Locality also trains community organisers which are there to organise the community to give it greater power. Do you think that the Community Allowance would, over time, help build greater power for the community? Community organisers are very much about listening and talking to people and bringing people together to decide over time what they want to take forward. One of the issues we’ve always had is that when you get people together, when you look at what the barriers are, the benefits system always comes up. Many of us are trying to work round these issues and so a community allowance in whatever form gives more options. So if a community wanted to pay these jobs, the community allowance gives them another way of working. In relation to the Work Programme which is a minefield for people working in the welfare arena and even more so for people that have to engage with this programme because they’re unemployed. How does that change the game and does it improve the chances for the community allowance to become integrated into welfare reform policy? It completely is. We did quite a lot of work with welfare providers who wanted to do something like a community allowance within their placements. We do have members within Locality that have contracts with Work Programme providers. What we’re finding is that prime contractors aren’t always been passing people onto community and voluntary organisations. Others have found that they have had people coming through but not in the numbers they were expecting. Some have pulled out and some are still in there trying to make it work. For now, we’ve stepped back from the programme. Do you think that the mood will change in terms of the public putting pressure on the different players in welfare reform to introduce the community allowance which provides a better link between opportunities for work, community action and making work pay? All of these issues seem to be popular amongst public opinion in their own right. What ways could there be a particular message for young people around the Community Allowance? Community organisations do a wide range of jobs from stripping down & renovating buildings to caring for people and campaigning. Communities would really love to employ young people – it’s only by people coming together saying there’s a whole host of jobs that don’t exist and the only reason they don’t exist is because there isn’t a mechanism – like the Community Allowance – which helps those organisations afford them. Young people can sign up on the Locality website and find their nearest community organisation, find out what they’re doing, see what they’re interested in. Take the first step and see what they’re doing – whether it’s training or other activities that people are interested in.
HOW TO MAKE WORK PAY
Through our Citizen’s Pact, we’ve travelled across Europe to find out what young people think are the most important issues around the future of work and what solutions could be developed to tackle these. We know how big a problem unemployment is – in some countries more than most like Spain. We also know from our findings how enthusiastic young people are about helping out in their community and the excellent ways they are using to do this – like social markets in Romania. Now you can discover how a network of community groups have developed a campaign for people without a job to be able to get rewarded for helping out in their community. We spoke with Louise Winterburn (@create_tweets), Policy Manager at Locality – about the proposal they’ve made – the Community Allowance. What are the main issues that the Community Allowance tries to tackle? Really the idea came from people out of work because they saw part-time opportunities or they saw informal opportunities. As many of you are aware, if you are on benefits, it’s very difficult to reclaim, because the system doesn’t cater for being “on and off” benefits, so we were really frustrated by people seeing job opportunities but couldn’t take them, meaning they get out of pocket. So someone would go from benefits to working with a little wage to not being able to do anything.The second frustration was actually for employing organisations. They would see really good jobs, but they would only be short term or part time. If you think of youth workers, they would only need someone for a night, but paid enough to make it worthwhile for someone locked on benefits. So we wanted to tackle two things. The first that the Community Allowance could offer real opportunities in local communities to get things done. We know that local people are the right people for those jobs, but they can’t actually afford, because of the benefits system, to come to us and take the job. So what would happen is either we wouldn’t create the job because we couldn’t get anyone to come and take it, or people would come from outside the area that for whatever reason could afford to take it, so we felt the opportunities to employ local people in a variety of different roles were really missing. It’s because of our benefits system. The Community Allowance would help tackle this. It’s about bringing together those two things. One is tackling the benefits system, so looking at the difficulty of how the system actually wants. So if you are on benefits, you could get an allowance where you’re allowed to earn a certain amount of money in certain circumstances. We should make work pay. We can’t take away benefits straightaway, but what we can do is say if there’s a part time opportunity, we should look at that and tell people to keep the money they’re earning, while they’re actually moving into full time employment. So we put together a piece of work that defined how that would work in our benefits system. What we also did with our community organisations through Locality which has 700 member organisations and 200 partners. We actually think that as community organisations, we’ve got the means to create jobs and we really want local people to be able to take them. So we started looking around and seeing what are the opportunities we’ve got, like working with young people, spending time with older people, identifying with people what their issues are and then coming back to community organisations to say that people mentioned they were lonely or they’ve got problems with their benefits and then responding to it. So it’s actually important as there are jobs that need doing in our communities. What are the particular benefits for it being local people working in those organisations and what are the benefits for the people themselves working locally? In terms of community organisations, quite often, they’ve been set up local people. So for us, it’s about extending these principles. Every day you go into these organisations, there’ll be local people volunteering. For us, it builds on our history, it makes us stronger, if local people are contributing. You will tend to know what the strengths are in a local community if you’re local, you’ll know who the people are. Quite often what you’ll find with someone who’s worked as a volunteer, is they know who to reach out to. In terms of the people volunteering, I‘d hope that they’d would feel they have something in common with that organisation, which interests them because it’s down the road, because it’s offering a service they value and also that you can see the gaps – “you’re missing a trick here or you’re not dealing with this”. There are also very practical things of it being down the road. When you’re first going into work, it’s quite expensive, if you’ve got travel costs on top. If you’ve got something that’s very local can make a real difference (i.e. if you’ve got childcare issues). In terms of the research we’ve done, depending on the work situation that people face will affect their attitudes in other areas. Watch out for the second part of this interview! Locality is a nationwide network of development trusts, community enterprises, settlements and social action centres
MAKING MODELS TO MARKETS
In this week’s update you can find out about how you can join our festival team, how an entrepreneur uses social exchange & networks to make a meaningful living to how an international model is selling shoes to pay her training to become a teacher. You can also find out about a new campaign to make work pay and our challenge of the week of getting under the skin of the city! JOIN OUR FESTIVAL TEAM! RESEARCH FELLOWS TO POP UP ACTIVISTS Do you want to join our festival team in London? From researching ideas, developing activities, organising events to promoting the festival, via creating art, find out about the different roles and exciting ways you can be involved! CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK: GETTING UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY Interview people where they interact to really understand how they live their lives and how the environment affects how they cope. Take a look at the video which shows what this looks like and check out what we learnt from our previous workshops. LIFESTYLE HACKER OF THE WEEK: NETWORKED ENTREPRENEURSHIP ??Discover how a narrative and documentary film maker uses social exchange and networks as a way to make a meaningful living. Edwin often produces work with small groups of friends to celebrate and make visible the joy of the filmmaking process itself, and explore its value as a tool for individual and social change. ZOMBIE GENERATION OF THE WEEK: CREATING AN LA CARTE CAREER Discover how to make a meaningful living, you can work in different professions…all at once. From an international model to a trainee teacher, via selling shoes, find out how a Lithuanian globetrotter makes a living across the world. INVISIBLE CITIZEN OF THE WEEK: TURNING A HOBBY INTO A JOB OUT OF NECESSITY Find out how a Sardinian market trader turned her hobby into a job, out of opportunity…and necessity. After going to a market in Amsterdam we went to a street market in London to interview Consuela, who makes jewellery from vegetable ivory. ISSUE OF THE WEEK: HOW TO MAKE WORK PAY Discover how a network of community groups has developed a campaign for people without a job to be able to get rewarded for helping out in their community. We spoke with Louise about the Community Allowance. CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK: TRANSITIONING FROM WELFARE TO WORK Welcome to the second part of our interview with Locality about the proposal they’ve made, giving a greater sense of responsibility and incentivises people to get involved in their neighbourhood. ? Any other questions? Browse the activities and if there’s something you’d like to work on or would like EA London to do, let us know and follow our Facebook page!
Vidéos du forum de Venise – partie 3/3
Troisième session – Des conflits sociaux et des mouvements constituants pour une autre Europe possible Riche et articulée, ainsi a été la confrontation entre les différents mouvements engagés dans les conflits sociaux. Une discussion qui, débutant par le bilan des innombrables mobilisations qui ont marqué la résistance aux plans d’austérité dans les deux dernières années, a abordé les échéances les plus proches, en commençant avec Blockupy et Altersummit, mais qui surtout s’est interrogée sur comment on pourrait construire un processus constituant par le bas en mesure de connecter les luttes dans une géographie politique nouvelle qui vise à l’Euro méditerranée. Intervention introductive de Marco Baravalle – Sale Docks, Coalition italienne berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Venise, Italie. Gianmarco De Pieri – Tpo Bologne, Coalition italienne berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Bologne, Italie. Alessandro Valera– Alternatives Européennes, Italie. Omeya Seddik– Tunisie. Luca Tornatore– CDC Trieste, Coalition italienne berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Italie. Roberto Morea– Transform ! Italia – Altersummit. Karin Zennig– Blockupy Frankfurt, Allemagne. Eduardo Rubino et Miguel Ardanuy – Juventud sin Futuro, Espagne. Giulia– Macao, Milan, Italie. Daniel Seco– 15M Reforma Electoral, Barcelone, Espagne. Tommaso Cacciari– Laboratoire Morion Venise, Coalition italienne berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Italie. Lorenzo Zamponi– Voglio restare, Italie. Shandy Vela– Dinamo Press, Rome, Italie. Christos Giovanopoulos – Solidarity for All/Dikaioma, Grèce. Elena Dalibot – Alternatives Européennes, France. Ilias Chronopoulos – Secrétaire des jeunes, Syriza, Grèce. Conclusions finales. Berardo Teatro Valle – Rome, Italie.
Video del forum di Venezia – 3/3
III Sessione – Conflitti sociali e movimenti costituenti per un’altra Europa possibile Ricco ed articolato il confronto tra i movimenti impegnati nei conflitti sociali. Una discussione, che partendo dal bilancio delle innumerevoli mobilitazioni che hanno marcato la resistenza ai piani di austerity negli ultimi due anni, ha affrontato le prossime scadenze, a partire da Blockupy e Altersummit, ma soprattutto si è interrogato su come costruire un processo costituente dal basso capace di connettere le lotte in una nuova geografia politica che guarda all'euromediterraneo. Intervento introduttivo di Marco Baravalle – Sale Docks, Coalizione italiana berso BlockupyFrankfurt 2013, Venezia, Italia Giamarco De Pieri – Tpo Bologna, Coalizione italiana berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Bologna Italia Alessandro Valera – European Alternatives, Italia Omeya Seddik – Tunisia Luca Tornatore – CDC Trieste, Coalizione italiana berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Italia Roberto Morea- Transform! Italia – Altersummit Karin Zennig – Blockupy Frankfurt, Germania Eduardo Rubino e Miguel Ardanuy – Juventud sin Futuro, Spagna Giulia – Macao, Milano, Italia Daniel Seco – 15M Reforma Electoral, Barcellona, Spagna Tommaso Cacciari – Laboratorio Morion Venezia, Coalizione italiana berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Italia Lorenzo Zamponi – Voglio Restare, Italia Shandy Vela – Dinamo Press, Roma, Italia Christos Giovanopoulos – Solidarity for All /Dikaioma, Grecia Elena Dalibot – European Alternatives, Francia Ilias Chronopoulos – Segretario dei giovani di Syriza, Grecia Conclusioni finali Berardo Teatro Valle – Roma, Italia
Vidéos du forum de Venise – partie 2/3
Deuxième session – Crise des institutions communautaires, intégration économique et politique par le haut : le futur de la démocratie en Europe Dans la deuxième session, ouverte par Ugo Mattei, il a été possible, grâce aux interventions, d’approfondir d’une part les transformations et la crise des institutions politiques européennes, et d’autre part de s’interroger sur le rapport entre les forces politiques et les mouvements sociaux. Ugo Mattei – Juriste, Université de Turin, Italie. Theano Fotiou – Parlementaire de Syriza, Grèce. Niccolò Rinaldi – Parlementaire européen, groupe ALDE. Roberto Musacchio– Altramente, Italie. Francesco Martone– Responsable national SEL, Italie. Giulio Marcon – Parlementaire indépendant SEL, Italie. Gianfranco Bettin – Adjoint au maire de Venise, Italie. Omeya Seddik – Tunisie. Lorenzo Marsili – Alternatives Européennes. A la conclusion du premier tour d’interventions, il y a eu des contributions et des réponses. Leo Specht Réponses de Theano Fotiou, Francesco Martone e Niccolò Rinaldi. >>>> Continuer pour les vidéos de la troisième session
Video del forum di venezia – parte 2/3
II Sessione – Crisi delle istituzioni comunitarie, integrazione economica e politica dall’alto: il futuro della democrazia in Europa Nella seconda sessione, aperta da Ugo Mattei, è stato possibile attraverso gli interventi approfondire da un la le trasformazione e la crisi delle istituzioni politiche europee e dall’altro interrogarsi sul rapporto tra le forze politiche e i movimenti sociali. Ugo Mattei – Giurista, Università di Torino, Italia Theano Fotiou – Parlamentare di Syriza, Grecia Niccolò Rinaldi – Parlamentare europeo, gruppo ALDE Roberto Musacchio – Altramente Francesco Martone – Responsabile internazionale SEL Giulio Marcon – Parlamentare indipendente SEL, Italia Gianfranco Bettin – Assessore Comune di Venezia, Italia Omeya Seddik, Tunisia Lorenzo Marsili – European Alternatives Alla conclusione del primo giro di interventi ci sono stati contributi e risposte. Leo Specht Risposte di Theano Fotiou, Francesco Martone e Niccolò Rinaldi >>>> prosegui ai video della terza sessione
CO PRODUCING A DIFFERENT ECONOMY
We organised a “world café” on co-production and co-operativism, in other words new alternative economic models that people can develop in their communities. The discussion at this “world café” explored how given governments were unwilling to create better conditions for people’s working conditions, local communities need to develop their sources of power and production of resources. owever, the alternative people-powered economic models are all very different and they have been around for many years. They are now in the spotlight because of the economic crisis, but the last time they were en vogue in the 60s they were defeated. As it’s likely, there may be another financial crisis; these models will become even more of a necessity. So how do we embed these models before they get defeated again and before we have another crisis that we haven’t prepared for? The resounding conclusion was that these alternative economic models need to be social movements to be successful. So moving onto what we could together as local groups across Europe? How can we create the economy we want in a very practical way – whether it’s on the food we buy, the spaces we live in or the public services we use – to develop our own sources of power? Co-produce handbooks on how to create economic models so we can share them amongst cities Start developing social franchising models which can work across different countries Do we need to mobilise people’s energy and time or do we actually need money and legislation to develop and sustain these models? Research what different models exist and what would get people involved to develop these models – individual motivations and the different experiences and motivations from different cultures Connect this research with stories of successful examples as a way of introducing these models to people in the local groups So tell us what you think and if you’d like to get involved in any one or more of these!
IF YOU COULD CREATE A FESTIVAL, WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE
Can a workshop really help you create a festival? Of course not! It took us virtually the time it takes a baby to be conceived to plan the Transeuropa Festival embracing the “open air innovation” in more ways than one.But there are ways you can use an hour to get people to start prototyping the design of a festival. Value feeling as well as need: collect emotional/sensory data and take it as seriously as facts & figuresThe participants of the workshop each represented one of the cities of the festival and had been involved in developing the Network that was responsible for it. So I knew there were common bonds between them (this is just what we can see and feel, but maybe we should have an emotional mapping exercise of the network?) – both on the issues they were interested in, the activities they found exciting and the personal relationships they had built between each other.Uncover the unseen: reveal underlying issues and topics Because we had been coming together as the Network to think more strategically about the themes that connected the festivals in each city together and then bringing that back to our city groups for the specifics, there hadn’t been time to learn on “how” the activities in each city were developed outside of the themes we were working on. So there was a genuine desire for people to celebrate and learn from each other’s stories of how these activities had been created. Authentic advocacy: give people the opportunity to be heard & tell their story With over 200 activities organised for the festival, it was going to be difficult for people to tell the story of each one and we didnt’ know who would be interested in which activity (neither did they!), so we needed to look at how people could share these stories in just under an hour in a way that people not at the workshop could also learn. The workshop was framed around ““what kind of events to run as part of the festival?”” for next year, so as well as learning what had worked well, we still needed to start the process of exploring what type of events we could run for next year’s festival. Remembering that whereas last year, the process of co-production was very much focused on the volunteers (us!) from the previous festival, this year, we have now become a Cooperative, so we need to experiment how to work together across different cities and not just within our cities. So I designed a game whereby I created the following typologies of the activites we had organised in this year’s festival: What principles do you want to adopt? How do you want to involve people taking part in the activities? How do you want to develop the activity? How do you want to involve your partners? What type of activity do you want to organise? Where do you want to organise the activity? Each type of activity was categorised based on the level of resources required to make it happen. You needed to spend one point for those activities circled in red, two for those in purple and three for those in orange. Each person had a budget of 25 points.Stimulate new ideas and behaviours: encourage deeper interaction with spacesAs you were selecting your chosen types of activity, you chose a poster of a public space (see the presentation) and placed the cards on it. This wasn’t just an aesthetic touch, it was to give people a visual idea of how those activities could play out in that physical environment. The public spaces we chose were primarily the different types of space used in the last festival but also included some that weren’t that have been in the spotlight recently, such as Tahrir Square and Plaza del Campo. Design empathetic spaces: what conditions would encourage people to share and interact in the spaces they use everyday? What was perhaps the most interesting is that as people were placing the activities on the public spaces, they suddenly saw connections between them, such as “getting people to produce a documentary” to create visuals and a discussion to “developing workshop techniques” for an “installation” all the way to organise a “performance” in a “forest and that when they came across a type of activity that another citygroup had developed, they asked them how they went about it. A next step that we didn’t have time for was to create a a timeline to pinpoint what you are going to do over the course of planning your festival. And if we had more time, we would want to guide the first part of the session around getting you to work out the strategy for the festival and using the second session to work out how to deliver it. This would be really great for people to experience an accelerated simulation of a festival. Where do you think the game could be used in other contexts? How would you improve the game? If you would like a workshop on how your group, network or organisation could develop its own festival, get in touch!
STRIKING UP RELATIONS
You may have noticed me talking about the Transeuropa Network and wondered what it is? Things never stay still, indeed, we now have a European Alternatives Cooperative so we can better share resources. So I thought it was time that I we went back to where it all began. Each member of the Network will have their story. Over the next few blogposts, I’ll try and tell you mine of how the Network started. The Transeuropa Network was born in the Hanbury Hall. The Hall is where the word ‘strike’ was first coined; it’s where the ladies’ from the local matchstick factory met to address their terrible working conditions. We didn’t strike over work, but like with the match stick ladies, this was the founding meeting of people coming together because they wanted to strike up relationships and match make ideas to develop a festival. We are passionate about developing democratic and creative alternatives and we wanted the Network to develop in a way that was creative, democratic and productive. Creative, using exciting techniques to explore new models. Democratic, using approaches which allow everyone in their local groups and online to take part in this process in ways which suit them. Productive, exploring and testing out different models that everyone feels happy about. As we hopped from table to table to swap ideas on the diverse topics, we started to find out which theme would really make us tick. The criterion we were given were: What issues could act as themes for the festival? Which issue would have the greatest resonance for which city? On a personal level, which themes would we be the most enthusiastic about & want to get involved in? Once we’d done that, we then got into the group of the theme of our choice and started with a blank sheet. And it was amazing to see the insights of people from really different environments and how their cultures shaped their ideas and opinions on the themes, and how clear it was what we wanted to achieve to better involve others in developing transnational activities that didn’t provide the answers to the big questions, but explored the issues by asking the questions in a different way. In fact I remember reflecting on the first meeting that it was very clear that the organisation helping support the network, European Alternatives, wanted to involve people in shaping what the network was going to be and how it developed. And from that meeting, we agreed that one person from each thematic group would write up the discussions from the meeting and these notes would turn into a wiki page which we would build up over the coming months to be more and more comprehensive on the theme, informing local activities and all the work carried out by the network. We also pledged to identify one example of an interesting action performed related to their theme or an example of an urgent issue relating to the theme which we thought the Transeuropa Network should do something about. Each group would then decide on one such action or topic to present at the next meeting. So what can we learn? Embrace the mess; you need rules for radicals not for robots: The start of any activity is inevitably uncomfortable and confusing. Allow for this, as people move closer to being involved. If you try to move too quickly to a rigidly planned activity, they won’t feel a sense of ownership in it. Next post on how we developed the “making a living” theme! In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
EUROPE, la liberté est aussi la participation
Article publié sur la version en ligne du quotidien Il Fatto Quotidiano, le 13 mai 2013 De Andrea Valdambrini Traduction par Marie Maurin On n'a même plus besoin des eurosceptiques pour le dire : l'Union Européenne n'est plus au goût du jour ? et il faut bien admettre que Bruxelles n'a jamais vraiment réussi à exploiter tout le potentiel dont elle disposait au départ, en jouant de ses charmes de démocratie supranationale. A qui la faute ? Sans doute aux séquelles de la crise financière, au drainage des richesses des pays du sud de l'Europe vers l'Allemagne. La faute aussi aux politiques d'austérité et de rigueur qui ont coupé les ailes de l'économie des plus faibles et favorisé les mouvements anti-européens. Dans le meilleur des cas, l'Europe à présent récolte plus de critiques que de soutiens. Et puis il y a les cas extrêmes. Désormais au Royaume-Uni l'éventualité d'une sortie de l'Union est à l'ordre du jour, alors que même en Allemagne s'installent des doutes sur l'Euro et l'Europe. Et chez nous en Italie, pays fondateur, nous le savons : notre européisme se fissure aussi et peut-être pas à tort mais à raison. Mais heureusement l'Europe ne se réduit ni à sa monnaie, ni à l'austérité, et encore moins ? espérons-le ? à cette bureaucratie qui depuis trop longtemps ternit son image aux yeux d'un demi-milliard de citoyens. C'est alors avec plaisir que l'on rencontre parfois des personnes travaillant à un projet de démocratie participative, d'initiative populaire, et visant à rendre aux citoyens ce qui tout simplement leur appartient: leurs droits et une justice sociale. Le Manifeste Citoyen, tel est le nom du projet qui a été débattu il y a quelques jours, lors d'un séminaire qui s'est tenu à Londres. Autour de huit tables, chacune consacrée à un thème différent, les participants ont cherché à élaborer des propositions claires et construites. En définitive, l'objectif était de discuter de problèmes concrets et d'en dégager des idées comme par exemple, sur les droits des migrants, sur un revenu de citoyenneté, sur comment rendre plus transparentes les institutions bruxelloises ainsi que sur les moyens d'augmenter la participation des citoyens à la vie politique européenne. Comment va-t-on procéder? Dans les prochains mois des rencontres similaires seront organisées dans plusieurs villes d'Europe ? une forme de consultation populaire ? et les thèmes soulevés lors de ces différentes rencontres composeront par la suite le véritable «Manifeste Citoyen », une plateforme qui sera présentée aux députés européens avant la fin de l'année. Une participation réelle (et non une consultation en ligne pour une fois) et beaucoup de bonne volonté: cela sera-t-il suffisant? Difficile à savoir. En attendant, n'oublions pas que, même si on n'en parle pas beaucoup pour l'instant, dans un an exactement, nous voterons pour un nouveau parlement européen, qui aura un peu plus de pouvoir que celui d'aujourd'hui. Toujours en 2014, la nouvelle commission sera nommée ? soit le nouveau gouvernement de l'Union ? après deux mandats de José Manuel Barroso à compter parmi les responsables de la très mauvaise gestion du désastre économique paralysant presque tout le continent. A présent que l'union bancaire est en cours et que les politiques fiscales tendent toujours vers une plus grande unification, il ne faudra pas compter seulement sur les gouvernements pour dire non à l'austérité. Nous aussi, citoyens, au-delà des protestations, nous devrons proposer. Proposer pourquoi pas pour montrer la direction et ouvrir la voie d'une Europe plus sociale, qui garantisse efficacement les droits fondamentaux. Puisque nous admettons tous que sur ce point rien n'est fait et tout reste à faire, je dirais qu'il est temps de se mettre au travail.
Europa, la libertà è anche partecipazione
Questo articolo é stato originariamente pubblicato all’interno della versione online de “Il Fatto Quotidiano“ | 13 maggio 2013 di Andrea Valdambrini Non ci vuole mica un euroscettico per dirlo: l’Unione europea oggi non piace più tanto – sempre ammesso che Bruxelles sia mai davvero riuscita a dispiegare il potenziale fascino di democrazia sovrannazionale di cui in origine disponeva. Sarà colpa dei postumi della crisi finanziaria, del drenaggio di ricchezza dai Paesi del sud Europa verso la Germania. Sarà colpa dell’austerità e del rigore che hanno tagliato le ali all’economica dei più deboli e dato respiro ai movimenti anti-europei. Nel migliore dei casi, l’Europa così com’è ispira più critiche che consensi. Poi ci sono i casi peggiori. Nel Regno Unito ormai il tema di un’uscita dall’Unione è all’ordine del giorno, mentre perfino in Germania i dubbi sull’euro e sull’Europa così com’è si fanno sentire. E da noi, Paese fondatore, lo sappiamo: anche il nostro europeismo scricchiola, e forse non a torto. Ma l’Unione Europea non è la soltanto la sua moneta, né l’austerità, e neppure – c’è da sperarlo – la burocrazia che non da oggi ne appanna l’immagine agli occhi del suo mezzo miliardo di cittadini. E fa piacere ogni tanto incontrare qualcuno che lavora ad un progetto di democrazia partecipativa, dal basso, per provare a restituire ai cittadini un po’ di quello che è semplicemente loro: giustizia sociale e diritti. Il progetto si chiama Citizen Manifesto, e se ne è parlato in un seminario tenuto qualche giorno fa a Londra. In otto tavoli, ciascuno dedicato ad un tema diverso, si è discusso per arrivare ad elaborare delle proposte, chiare e stringenti. Insomma, si è cercato di parlare di cose concrete, di tirar fuori idee, ad esempio, su come garantire i diritti dei migranti, avere un reddito di cittadinanza, su come rendere le istituzioni di Bruxelles più trasparenti, e anche su come far partecipare di più i cittadini alla vita politica europea. Nei prossimi mesi ci saranno incontri simili – una sorta di consultazioni popolare – in varie città d’Europa, poi i temi emersi dai vari incontri andranno a comporre proprio il ‘manifesto dei cittadini’, una piattaforma che sarà presentato ai deputati europei entro la fine dell’anno. Partecipazione reale (niente consultazioni web, una volta tanto) e buone intenzioni: servirà davvero a qualcosa? Difficile saperlo. Intanto c’è da dire che, anche se ne parla ancora molto poco, tra un anno esatto si vota per un parlamento europeo che avrà qualche potere in più rispetto ad oggi. Sempre nel 2014 verrà anche nominata anche la nuova commissione – cioè sostanzialmente il nuovo governo dell’Unione – dopo due mandati di José Manuel Barroso, tra i responsabili della pessima gestione del disastro economico in cui ci si trova quasi tutto il continente. A quel punto, con l’unione bancaria ormai in atto e una politica fiscale sempre più unificata, non basterà che a dire no all’austerità siano i governi. Bisognerà anche noi cittadini, oltre a protestare, proporre. Magari per indicare la strada di un’Europa più sociale e che tuteli efficacemente i diritti fondamentali. Dato che non l’ha fatto fino adesso, e che su questo siamo tutti d’accordo, direi che ci si potrebbe cominciare a lavorare.
FROM CREATIVE CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL MARKETS
We’re inviting people to help shape our Festival for 2013 and learn skills on how to create their own in the process. Out of the journey we travelled on (and did we travel!) to develop this year’s Festival and indeed the Cooperative itself, each city group, each member, will have their personal stories of ideas they crafted into activities. The Transeuropa Social Market we’re working on with @tschoollondon is an activity that has been influenced as much by the spaces it took place in (such as @piataautonoma) as by the ideas that gave birth to it, such as the commons. In fact, it began as a question mark! I’ll explain…One of the themes for a recent festival we did was “Social Europe”. Did this mean turning Europe into one transnational pub crawl-booze cruise? Or did it mean exploring what social rights and conditions could improve societies across the continent? Naturally, it was always more likely to be the latter, but maintaining a certain creative ambiguity gives oxygen to the issue to be expressed in an innovative way. This is how the idea of a “social market” came about in the thematic group working on “Social Europe”. It was a “pied de nez” at the policy makers that come up with this triangulating “think tank patois” – so that everyone could be pleased that Europe would have more social justice and more economic efficiency (you may have heard that line before…) More importantly, it was about deconstructing the “social” and the “market” to the meanings that most people assign to them, to socialise with the people around you and to buy and sell at the market the things you need to get by. Except most people don’t do either anymore, with the emergence of the “walled gardens” of gated communities and shopping malls (online and offline), so it’s very difficult to talk about social rights in environments where individual rights dominate. But what about if you started exploring these issues in spaces where people can be social in how they interact with the economy and can make markets work for them and each other. In other words, where the relationship is a more important currency than the transaction. So that’s how the idea of a “social market” came about. Over the next few posts, you’ll see the activities that expressed this idea. People often find it difficult to make sense of the richness of debates about issues that are really complex to grapple with. They will either spend too long fighting over the terms of the debate to control the definition of the solution. Or they will spend too little acknowledging the creative tensions and settle for a weak compromise. If people spend a bit more time exploring the problems in a creative way, they can find more people wanting to come together to create common solutions. In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
FROM UNDERCOVER ECONOMIES TO BEACH EXCHANGES
Why would a network of creative activists want to get involved with a festival around “micro-making”? What has co-designing activities for a festival got in common with pirates, pies or pop up woodshops? How can you “make your own festival” anyway? It all started over a conversation with @dougald, @benvickers and @benlittle on rethinking the university and how the @univproject was setting up at @hubwestminster. Just as the University Project looks to distinguish the institution from the social goods it could produce, the Hub Westminster repurposing the first floor of a high commission building into a “social super studio for civic entrepreneurs ” in the heart of the West End. So when we read this post by @timahrensbach and @stephenfortune ” about creating a Changemakers Festival where “so much is happening at once, it maximises the possibility of cross-fertilisation of ideas“, we wanted to get on board. FROM SILENT BRAINSTORMING TO MAPPING ISSUES It’s ironic that our first activity, the “silent brainstorming” was born in another Hub across the pond in Amsterdam. So people annotated and added to the brainstorm maps on our three themes “new forms of democratic participation, migration and precarity & economic alternatives” with a quick video to get people inspired over how we can open up the discussion on these. But we thought we’d throw in an extra challenge because we love rewarding the question marks! Although the “I wish this was” activity has been used up until now on disused or damaged objects and buildings, we thought that whether we’re talking about precarious living conditions or disused democratic processes, we often hear that there is no alternative. But “our institutions are transformed the moment we decide they are ours to create”, so that’s why people came up with their “I wish it was” from “I wish democracy was intergenerational linking people of all ages through storytelling and creativity” to “I wish the economy was more aware of the need of community public spaces to share knowledge, expertise and resources”. FROM TRAVELLING IDEAS TO A SEMIOTIC STIMULUS Being transnational, travelling is a critical resource the Transeuropa Cooperative invests in. The value of travelling isn’t just in people going from one place to another, it’s ideas moving around too. We wanted the ideas that people had come up with in other cities to “travel into” people’s conversations at the session, so picked out keywords from their brainstorming. As we were looking through the other activities of the Changemakers Fayre, we wanted the different ways others were “micro-making” economic and democratic alternatives to “travel into” the co-creation of our festival, so we picked out keywords from the activities there too. As the themes we work on are still in their embryonic stage, these keywords acted as stimulants on how we uncover unmet needs and come up with creative ideas. We got some really good examples, here’s just three examples of what people came up using the keywords: Fixing = Replanting playgrounds, riots: = What could have been done differently? or Consumption = Prejudices for sale. This was the first time we’d used this technique, inspired by our good friends from Transeuropa Bologna. What could we have done differently? Should we have facilitated a walkabout where people would actually stick “I wish this was” stickers on objects and spaces which represented democracy, migration or the economy? Could we have involved groups that wanted to work with us to put forward keywords so we could have created more visceral connections between the ideas and the people involved? POP UP ACTIVISTS Once people had brainstormed the issues and ideas, We’ve developed a game to help people co-design activities for the festival and we were planning to go through it for the “Create Your Own Festival” session. But given that there wouldn’t be people from the other European citygroups, how could we give participants a flavour of the “black box” of a transnational festival? So we went through all the 250 micro-activities in our last festival and picked out some really compelling examples of techniques people used. So when people mixed the keywords and the techniques together, you got really creative ideas for activities like Undercover journalism & walking & economic alternative = Go undercover walking around a neighbourhood to uncover economic alternatives and interview people to produce an investigative style documentary on the underground economy. Gaming & public space & migration = Invite migrants to think of board games from their cities and develop life sized versions of those to invite the community to play Beaches & partnering with other cities & new forms of democratic participation = Urban beach exchange between different cities to make Spain look like Estonia Festival Techniques View more presentations from Noel Hatch With of course, melt in the mouth muffins and white chocolate cookies, the magic ingredient for making a festival! In Stephen’s interview with Tim about his wishes for the Fayre, he concludes “We’d love for the space to bear the traces and residue of all the ideas and projects that were kick-started within the Fayre, to have something convey all that transpired“. Well, the ideas for activities that people came up during the “Build a Festival” session, like the network itself, will travel… Then, just a week later, we’re off to Sofia for a special transnational festival planning session where the Transeuropa Cooperative will thread the different activities together and join the dots between the different issues people in the different cities want to work on. On the next blogpost, I’ll talk about the ideas that people came up with. In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
Droits des personnes LGBT en Europe : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
Droits des personnes LGBT en Europe : à la recherche de solutions communes Consultation citoyenne pour le Manifeste Citoyen Vendredi 17 mai, 15:00-18:00 Maison des associations, 206 quai de Valmy, 75010 Paris Retrouver le programme ici.Télécharger les propositions ici. Propositions Tables de discussion : questions débattues et présentation des propositions clefs Les propositions ci-dessous ont été élaborées lors de discussions utilisant la méthodologie du World Café. Elles reflètent les positions de la majorité des participants à la consultation citoyenne, bien que les positions et les idées aient parfois été multiples. Certaines de ces propositions ont été avancées sur plusieurs tables de discussion, mais elles ont été réunies ici par souci de clarté. Si vous souhaitez réagir ou commenter une proposition, ou encore présenter de nouvelles idées, merci d’utiliser la case « commentaires » en bas de page. Intervenir contre l’homophobie en milieux scolaires Modération : Jean-Pierre Frémeaux, ContactLa polémique sur l’introduction de l’idée de genre dans les manuels scolaires ou la controverse autour du film d’animation “Le Baiser de la lune” montrent que parler d’orientation et d’identité sexuelle à l’école et aux jeunes ne va pas (encore) de soi en France. Pourtant, à l’âge où les questions de sexualité commencent à se poser, l’homosexualité est souvent source de moqueries, voire de harcèlement. L’éducation et l’auto-apprentissage permettent d’encourager la tolérance, la compréhension et l’acceptation. À l’heure actuelle, quels sont les systèmes mis en place dans les écoles en France pour s’assurer que l’éducation ne délaisse pas la question LGBT ? Que fait-on pour empêcher le harcèlement et les crimes de haine à l’école ? Que peut-on apprendre des bonnes pratiques d’autres Etats de l’Union Européenne ? Que souhaitez pour l’Europe de demain ? Propositions concernant l’éducation familiale :1. Eduquer l’enfant à la sexualité et/ou à la tolérance ; l’ignorance, les clichés, et fausses connaissances se construisent l’intolérance et les discriminations. 2. Soutenir l’introduction, à l’école, les enseignements comme celui du genre ou à des interventions sur l’homophobiepar exemple : si les parents s’y opposent, il peut s’agir d’un frein non négligeable qui conduit parfois les responsables d’établissements ou les enseignants à se limiter, à s’autocensurer Propositions concernant les lieux d’apprentissage (hors école) : 3. Soutenir le rôle des animateursdans les cours de récréations, les colonies de vacances ou les centre d’animation (en particulier dans les quartiers en difficulté) pour lutter contre les discriminations. Dans ces lieux, les enfants sont plus disponibles qu’à l’école, dans des relations souvent moins formelles avec leurs encadrants. Ces lieux sont donc particulièrement propices à l’apprentissage de la tolérance. Propositions concernant l’école : L’école en général a pris du retard en ce qui concerne la lutte contre les discriminations. Elle doit jouer un rôle essentiel en ce qui concerne « l’apprendre à vivre ensemble » et la lutte contre l’homophobie. 4. Renforcer les cours d’éducation civiqueet établir des relations entre cet enseignement et les interventions contre les discriminations et l’homophobie telles quelles sont réalisées par les associations comme le MAG (Mouvement d’Affirmation des Gays, lesbiennes, bi et transsexuel-les), SOS-Homophobie ou CONTACT 5. Développer les CESC dans les collèges et les lycées : ces comités d’éducation à la santé et à la citoyenneté s’inscrivent dans le pilotage de chaque établissement scolaire du second degré. Ils sont une instance de réflexion, d’observation et de proposition qui conçoit, met en œuvre et évalue un projet éducatif en matière d’éducation à la citoyenneté et à la santé et de prévention de la violence, intégré au projet d’établissement : c’est à leur initiative que sont organisées des journées dites d’éducation à la santé et à la citoyenneté ou qu’il est fait appel à des associations (cf. ci-dessus) pour assurer des interventions, contre l’homophobie en particulier. Religions et homosexualité ? Modération : Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, Musulmans Progressistes de FranceBien que de natures diverses, les arguments contre le mariage pour tous, qui a récemment provoqué des débats enflammés en France, ont été souvent liés à la religion – que ce soit la chrétienté, le judaïsme ou encore l’islam, sous couvert d’une lecture particulièrement homophobe, transphobe des grands textes sacrés. Le tiers des organisations à l’initiative des “manifs pour tous”, contre le projet de loi pour le mariage pour tous, étaient en effet liées à des groupes religieux qui partagent tous comme paradigme de détourner sémantiquement certains textes à portée spirituelle. Cette table ronde, à laquelle seront présents différentes associations LGBT des principales grandes religions, portera sur la compatibilité de l’homosexualité et de la foi religieuse, et échangera sur les moyens de faire évoluer un milieu particulièrement hostile aux personnes LGBT. Comment se marient l’homosexualité et la religion ? Comment soutenir les personnes LGBT et croyantes face à certains discours religieux homophobes ? 6. Distinguer les croyants des institutions religieuses et refuser l’amalgame entre religion et homophobie.7. Faire connaître l’existence de nombreux groupes inclusifs de prières à destination des personnes LGBT(musulmans, chrétiens catholiques, chrétiens protestants, juifs, bouddhistes, œcuméniques…), qui offrent aux personnes LGBT un espace et une communauté pour vivre leur foi dans la tolérance et le respect de leur identité et orientation sexuelle. Discrimination et homo-/lesbo-/bi-/transphobie sur les lieux de travail Modération : Sylvain Rouzel-Boisgontier, Homoboulot et Comin-GD’après le rapport de SOS Homophobie sur l’état de l’homophobie en France en 2012, les témoignages d’actes d’homophobie sur le lieu de travail sont en forte hausse par rapport à l’année dernière (+ 36%). Le lieu de travail, par le caractère particulier des relations hiérarchiques (une majorité des actes homophobes recensés étant le fait de supérieurs hiérarchiques), peut être particulier propice à la discrimination homophobe. Ecarts de rémunération (inférieure de 6,2 % en moyenne dans le privé et de 5,5% dans le public pour les hommes homosexuels), harcèlement moral, congé parentalité… : comment lutter contre les discriminations homophobes sur le lieu de travail ? Les actions devraient être mises en place sur le lieu de travail à l’issue de concertations entre les entreprises ou administrations et leurs organisations syndicales représentatives. Proposition sur des chartes des bonnes pratiques envers les personnels LGBT8. Adoption de chartes de bonnes pratiques par les entreprises et administrations : Exemple 1 : évaluation annuelle par 2 ou 3 personnes et non par le…
Citizens consultation on LGBT rights in Europe: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
LGBT rights in Europe: a search for common solutions Citizens’ consultation on the Citizen Manifesto Friday 17 May, 3pm – 6pm Maison des associations, 206 quai de Valmy, 75010 Paris You can find the programme here. Click here to download the proposals. Findings Discussion tables: issues discussed and introduction to the key proposals The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology. They reflect the opinions held by the majority of those who participated in the public consultation, even though their opinions and ideas often displayed a variety of positions. Some of the proposals were developed on several discussion tables, but for the sake of clarity, similar concerns have been merged together. If you wish to react to or comment on a proposal – or even suggest new ideas – please use the “comments” box at the bottom of the page. Fighting against homophobia in the school environment Moderator: Jean-Pierre Frémeaux, ContactThe fierce debates about how the concept of gender is introduced in textbooks and the controversies created by the cartoon “Le Baiser de la lune” – “The Kiss of the Moon” – both show that discussing sexual orientation and identity at school, and with young people in general, is not (yet) a straightforward matter in France. Yet at that age when people start asking questions about their sexuality, homosexuality is often a target of mockery, or even of harassment. Both formal and informal means of learning help to encourage tolerance, understanding, and acceptance. What are the measures currently adopted by French schools to ensure that LGBT issues are not ignored in the classroom? What are we doing to prevent harassment and hate crimes in schools? What can we learn from positive examples set by other member states of the European Union? What can we achieve for the Europe of tomorrow? Proposals regarding a child’s upbringing: 1. Teach children about sexuality and/or tolerance: ignorance, clichés, and false beliefs lead to intolerance and discrimination. 2. Get parents to support educational programmes on issues such as gender, as well as measures against homophobia. If parents refuse, this can create a big stumbling block that sometimes pressures school officials and teachers into restraining themselves and practicing self-censorship. Proposals regarding other places for learning (besides schools): 3. Recognise the important role that people in charge of playgrounds, holiday camps, and community centres (especially in less privileged neighbourhoods) can play in the struggle against discrimination. In these places, children are more receptive than they are at school, and often have a more informal relationship with their supervisors. Such places are therefore particularly suited to the teaching of tolerance. Proposals regarding schools:Generally speaking, our schools are lagging behind in the struggle against discrimination. They should play a pivotal role in teaching children how to “live in harmony” with each other, as well as in the fight against homophobia. 4. Strengthen civic education in the classroom and create links between our schools and those organisations that fight against discrimination and homophobia – for example, the associations MAG, SOS-Homophobie, and CONTACT (in France). 5. Develop the CESC committees in French secondary schools: these committees – devoted to health and civic education – are a part of every secondary school’s institutional structure. They serve as authoritative forums for ideas, remarks, and proposals; they devise, launch, and assess educational projects – integrated with the institution’s programme – that deal with health and civic education, as well as the prevention of violence. Moreover, they are responsible for organising “health and civic education days” and for contacting associations (such as those mentioned above) for help, especially in the struggle against homophobia. Religion and homosexuality Moderator: Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, Musulmans Progressistes de France (Progressive Muslims of France)As varied as they seem, arguments against marriage equality, which have recently sparked passionate debates in France, are often tied to a religion – be it Christianity, Judaism, or Islam – and seek their justification in specifically homophobic and transphobic interpretations of great sacred writings. Indeed, one third of the organizations rallying behind “La Manif Pour Tous” – a movement opposed to the marriage equality bill – is tied to religious groups that all engage in the semantic deformation of certain spiritual texts. With the participation of various LGBT associations representing major religious groups, this round table discussion will revolve around the compatibility of homosexuality with religious faith, and also exchange ideas on how to foster progress in an environment that is particularly hostile to LGBT people. How can homosexuality and religion go hand in hand? How can we support LGBT believers who are confronted with various homophobic religious views? 6. Make a distinction between individual believers and religious institutions and reject fusions of religious faith and homophobia. 7. Advertise the existence of numerous “inclusive” prayer groups for LGBT people (Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, the followers of ecumenical movements, etc.). These groups offer LGBT people a space and community where they can live according to their faith in an environment of tolerance and respect towards their sexual identity and orientation. Discrimination and homo-/lesbo-/bi-/transphobia in the workplace Moderator: Sylvain Rouzel-Boisgontier, Homoboulot and Comin-GAccording to the report published by SOS Homophobie on homophobia in France in the year 2012, the number of homophobic acts in the workplace showed a substantial increase (36%) compared to the figures of the previous year. On account of the specifically hierarchical nature of relationships in the workplace (the majority of the homophobic acts reported were perpetrated by ‘superiors’), such environments can be particularly rife with homophobic discrimination. Inferior wages (the salaries of homosexual men are, on average, 6.2% lower than normal in the private sector, and 5.5% lower in the public sector), psychological harassment, lack of parental leave, etc. How can we fight against homophobic discrimination in the workplace? New initiatives should be adopted in the workplace as a result of cooperative dialogues between businesses or public authorities and their representative union organisations. Proposals for charters that guarantee the fair and equal treatment of LGBT employees: 8. Businesses and public authorities should adopt charters that guarantee…
Consultation citoyenne sur le travail, la protection sociale et la précarité en Europe : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
Vers une Europe sociale : consultation citoyenne sur le travail, la protection sociale et la précarité en Europe Samedi 27 Avril, 13:00 – 15:00 Supermarkt Berlin, Brunnenstraße 64, 13355 Berlin Pour plus d’informations sur le programme (lien en allemand). Téléchargez les propositions établies lors des consultations ici. Débats : problèmes abordés et propositions Les propositions détaillées ci-dessous ont été élaborées à partir de discussions et débats tenus selon la méthodologie du World Café. Ces propositions reflètent les opinions de la majorité des participants aux consultations citoyennes bien que ces idées et opinions aient été diverses. Les propositions ont parfois été évoquées par différents groupes de participants mais ont été rassemblées pour des raisons de synthèse et de clarté du propos. Si vous souhaitez réagir, commenter une proposition ou mettre en avant d’autres idées, n’hésitez pas à utiliser l’espace “commentaires” en bas de la page. Précarité des jeunes et nouvelles formes de précarité Modérateur : David Schmidt, Alternatives EuropéennesEntre les stages non-rémunérés répétés et le plus haut taux de chômage jamais connu, les projets alternatifs à la précarité ont essaimé à travers l’Europe. Que pourrions-nous partager au niveau européen ? Que pourrions-nous demander pour l’Europe afin que le futur du continent européen repose enfin sur sa jeunesse ? Comment aider les jeunes à supporter (tant au niveau matériel que psychologique) la précarité ? Nous nous appuierons sur un projet mené par un groupe local d’Alternatives Européennes à Londres. Ce projet était destiné aux jeunes vivant en situation de précarité (vous pouvez découvrir le projet grâce à cette animation et à ce questionnaire). Qui sont ces nouveaux travailleurs précaires ? Quelles mesures pourraient être prises afin de lutter contre la mise en place de politiques néo-libérales qui prônent la flexibilité au travail au détriment des droits sociaux (en particulier pour les groupes les plus vulnérables) ? 1. Mise en place d’une politique européenne des stages :l’emploi de stagiaires ne doit pas se substituer aux contrats de travail et les stagiaires ont besoin d’une meilleure protection légale contre l’exploitation. Par exemple, afin d’empêcher les entreprises de fonctionner avec des stagiaires aux dépens des employés pleinement rémunérés, celles-ci doivent prouver que les stagiaires n’accomplissent qu’une petite partie de la charge de travail. Par ailleurs, les débutants, jusqu’à présent désavantagés par rapport aux postulants forts de plusieurs années d’expérience, doivent également pouvoir avoir un stage. Cet objectif pourra être atteint çà l’aide d’un quota empêchant les entreprises de ne prendre que des stagiaires qualifiés. Il faut mettre en place un code général des stages, avec notamment un emploi du temps qui détermine les objectifs pédagogiques et le choix d’un maître de stage. Une instance indépendante veillera au respect de ces règles. Les stages devront être rémunérés. 2. Développement de l’apprentissage, permettantt aux jeunes d’être formés à l’école tout en travaillant en parallèle dans une entreprise en tant qu’apprenti (« duale Ausbildung » en Allemagne, « apprentissage » en France). Selon leur taille, les entreprises qui ne prennent pas d’apprentis devraient payer une taxe de formation (peu élevée) afin de supporter la formation. 3. Priorité à l’éducation. Nous ne pouvons économiser sur l’éducation et sacrifier le futur des jeunes sur l’autel de l’austérité. Les coupes budgétaires affectant le domaine de l’éducation et mises en place dans plusieurs pays européens devraient cesser. Les classes devraient comporter moins d’élèves, les enseignants devraient être mieux récompensées et reconnus et le budget alloué à l’éducation devrait être augmenté. 4. Meilleur accès à l’information sur les débouchés, surtout pour les jeunes chômeurs : quels emplois sont disponibles ? Où puis-je être embauché ? Que sais-je faire ? Qu’est-ce que j’aime faire ? Une meilleure information quant aux choix existants faciliterait l’accès au marché du travail. Ces mesures réinstaureraient le droit au travail comme une réalité tangible. Les agences de placement devraient se concentrer sur les jeunes de moins de 25 ans et les aider à planifier leur avenir en leur offrant de nouvelles perspectives, des possibilités de formations afin de développer des compétences qu’ils n’ont pas forcément. 5. Promouvoir l’égalité des sexes. A l’instar des jeunes, les femmes ont été particulièrement touchées par la crise (environ 75% des travailleurs à temps-partiels de l’UE sont des travailleuses. Pour 1/3 d’entre elles ce choix n’est pas volontaire). A emploi égal, les femmes devraient être rémunérées à la même hauteur que les hommes. Afin de renverser la tendance et permettre à des femmes d’atteindre le haut de l’échelle entrepreneuriale (actuellement uniquement 2% des PDG Européens sont des femmes, tous secteurs confondus), la mise en place de quotas pour les femmes (lors de la répartition des sièges dans les conseils d’administration par exemple) pourrait constituer l’une des mesures pour lutter contre la discrimination des femmes au travail. Chômage et sécurité sociale Modérateur : Sebastian Steinbach, Alternatives EuropéennesDe quelles manières la société doit-elle protéger ceux qui ont perdu leur emploi ou ceux qui n’arrivent pas à trouver d’emploi ? Comment évolue votre retraite lorsque vous partez travailler à l’étranger au cours de votre carrière ? Quels devraient être les droits minimums garantis pour les personnes sans emploi ? Quelle politique familiale l’Europe devrait-elle mettre en place afin de garantir les droits maternels et paternels ainsi que l’égalité des sexes ? 6. Garantir les droits fondamentaux de manière inconditionnelle et interdire les sanctions liées au système de sécurité sociale. Les systèmes de sécurité sociale ne devraient pas utiliser la menace d’un arrêt des allocations chômage pour ramener les personnes sans emploi vers le monde du travail. La fraude à la sécurité sociale est de toute manière compensée par les moins-payés versés à certaines personnes (notamment les migrants). Elle est de plus minime comparée à l’évasion fiscale et au coût que ce type de fraude représente. Les sanctions devraient dès lors se concentrer sur l’évasion fiscale en particulier. 7. Empêcher la limitation des droits fondamentaux au nom de la croissance économique. La croissance économique ne devrait pas prévaloir sur les droits fondamentaux des citoyens. L’UE devrait modifier ses priorités et passer de la recherche de la croissance économique et de la réduction du chômage (en promouvant des conditions de travail décentes et la poursuite du plein-emploi) à la protection sociale en Europe. 8. Réduire le…
Citizens’ consultation on work, welfare and precarity in Europe: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
On the way towards a social Europe: citizens’ consultation on work, welfare and precarity in Europe Saturday April 27th 2013, 13:00-15:00 Supermarkt Berlin, Brunnenstraße 64, 13355 Berlin You can find the programme here (in German) Click here to download the proposals.Findings Discussion tables: issues discussed and introduction to the key proposals The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology. They reflect the opinions held by the majority of those who participated in the public consultation, even though their opinions and ideas often displayed a variety of positions. Some of the proposals were developed on several discussion tables, but for the sake of clarity, similar concerns have been merged together. If you wish to react to or comment on a proposal – or even suggest new ideas – please use the “comments” box at the bottom of the page. Youth precarity and new forms of precarity: Moderator: David Schmidt, European Alternatives Between numerous unpaid internships and high unemployment rate, alternative projects to precarity have developed throughout Europe. What could be shared at the European level? What could we call for and demand for Europe so that the future of Europe really belongs to youth? How to help young people cope (practically but also psychologically) with precarity? We will base this on a project led by European Alternatives local group in London on young people and precarity (find out more with these animationand survey). Who are the new precarious workers? What measures could be taken to fight the neo-liberal agendas towards more flexibility in the work place at the expense of social rights (in particular of already vulnerable groups)? 1. Set European standards for internships: Internships must not turn into permanent substitutes for regular employment: Interns should be better protected legally against exploitation. Companies should, e.g., provide evidence that only a certain small share of the work is done by interns, so that they do not turn into permanent substitutes for regularly paid employees. Furthermore, internships should also be available to newcomers, who so far have been at a disadvantage compared to applicants with often many years of internship experience. One instrument would be a corresponding quota that could at the same time prevent companies from offering only internships to those who are sufficiently qualified. Standards for internships are to be introduced, such as having a schedule determining the intended learning process or the assignment of an internship mentor. A third party will control the compliance of these rules. Internships should be paid. 2. Develop apprentice schemes, whereby young people could be trained at school while working in parallel in a company as an apprentice (“duale Ausbildung” in Germany, “apprentissage” in France). Depending on their size, companies that do not offer apprenticeships should pay a ‘training levy’ to support (small) vocational training companies. 3. Focus on education: we cannot save money on education and sacrifice young people’s future on the altar of austerity. If there is one area where cuts should be stopped immediately all over Europe, it is education. Classes should be smaller, teachers should be better rewarded and recognised and more money should be spent on education overall. 4. Strengthen access to information on perspectives, especially for young unemployed people:What is out there? Where am I needed? What am I talented at? What would I enjoy doing? Better information about existing choices would facilitate the access to labour and thus help putting the right to work into reality. The employment agencies should consider people under the age of 25 in a particular way and help them plan their future, offering them new perspectives possibilities of trainings to match the skills they lack. 5. Foster gender equality: with young people, women have been particularly hit by the crisis (about 75% of part-time workers in the EU are women – for 1 out of 3 part-time workers, this is involuntary). For the same position, women should earn the same salary as men. In order to revert the male-dominated positions on top of the hierarchy (in all or most sectors of society – in 2012, only 2% of CEOs in Europe were women), gender quota (for instance when assigning board members or filling job vacancies) are one of the means to help fight discrimination against women in the work place. Unemployment and social security Moderators: Sebastian Steinbach, European Alternatives In what ways should society protect those who lose their jobs or those who are unable to find employment? What happens to your pension if you move country over the course of your career? What minimum rights should be granted to the unemployed? What basic family policy should exist in Europe guaranteeing maternity and paternity rights as well as gender equality? 6. Grant basic rights unconditionally and exclude sanctions from the social security system: It should not be part of a social security system to bring people into work by threatening them with withdrawing payments. Welfare fraud is in many cases more than compensated by benefits underpayment (in particular for migrants), and is very small compared to what fiscal evasion and tax fraud cost: sanctions should in priority focus on the latter types of frauds. 7. Prevent that basic rights are undermined on behalf of economic growth: economic growth should not prevail over citizens’ basic rights. The EU should change its priority from the pursuit of economic growth and the reduction of unemployment (at the cost of decent working conditions and based on the idea of full employment) to social protection for all in Europe. 8. Reduction of working hours for a fairer distribution of existing paid occupations: Less work for the individual, more work for all. Distribute paid volume of work in a socially just way among all who are interested and qualified in order to shield individuals from overwork caused by companies’ cost efficiency calculations and subsequent staff reductions. 9. Make job applications anonymous:make applications anonymous to categorically rule out the hurdle of discrimination based on skin colour, name, age, sex/gender, religion or other characteristics of appearance. 10. Reform legislation for temporary work and labour leasing in…
BLURRING THE PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL TO CREATE SOCIAL PURPOSE
We continue our interview with Edwin Mingard, co-founder of satellite, which produces work that embodies three values, high-quality drama, social engagement and experiments in process and output. You were talking about how many people stick to the norm in terms of work and I was wondering if we went back to what a previous generation would have seen as the norm as young people’s expectation of getting a stable job, getting a house, getting married and having kinds. A lot of things are almost impossible for young people to get. You made the choice in terms of a career that you would never have a stable job. How does that expectation shape other expectations you have about life? I never wanted any of those things at all. In fact, many of them I actively sought to avoid, and that’s not to degrade their value. I have close friends who want, and deserve to have, all of those things and the fact that promise is being taken away from them is really bad. But I think in many ways in terms of a coping mechanism with uncertainty, I was just lucky, as I didn’t want those things from the start, so when I read things about how difficult it is to get a mortgage, I don’t want a mortgage. It doesn’t undermine the fundamental position that someone who wants that should have access to it, but I’d say above that there’s a more general idea of a more stable living environment and of basic food and services. Those things do affect me in the way they affect anybody but that very traditional route, I never wanted it. Francois and the Atlas Mountains – Friends from edwin mingard on Vimeo. Do you have any expectations at that level that feel natural and instinctive? I don’t have any expectations at all around life plans and my future chances at achieving any goal I might set yourself. I think it’s unwise to have those. There are things I definitely want to achieve but I never formulated expectations around them. Often people’s work situation – where they live, what they do, what networks they have. Does your approach on how to make a living – has it affected your attitudes on other areas? The way that I work, the strategy has a social focus and that applies to other areas of my life. I feel quite empowered that if I want to do something I can make it happen. Not that I would be successful, but that I have the capabilities at least to have a go at that, and I see a lot of people who are much more talented than me who clearly don’t feel that way and that’s clearly very sad. It would be hard to say which one influences the other. Regarding people who have completely different life or career trajectories: I’ve met people who do jobs which I would do virtually anything not to end up doing, who still do cool things, like start a project in their community for local kids. For me, that jars a bit. I remember somebody I was talking to who was working for a big bank which has money invested in programmes doing horrific things in the developing world and he set up a project for kids near where he works. He could stop doing both of those and his net effect on the world would be positive, because one is great but the other is so bad. So maybe it’s not pathological. So you need to practice your values whether it’s what you’re paid to do or a hobby? Absolutely, that really hits it. You don’t have people who are colleagues and people who are friends. They can sit anywhere on that spectrum. That helps explain what you were saying about networks. Often people will say these are my social networks and here are my professional networks with people whom I have to work with or network with to get ahead. So the idea of networks is more fluid? Definitely, to the point where it almost doesn’t exist. There are people who are friends of mine who have nothing to do with what I work on. I will still feel free to call on them for a favour on a project I want to run if they have free time or I know that they’re interested in it. Maybe that’s not that radical. If you go back 20 years ago, if you worked in an assembly plant, all of your friends might well work there and live where you live in the local town. Your work and your social network would have been the same. Politics at that time was much more driven by your networks in the workplace – it’s how the trade unions started out. With what you’re describing, practising something that’s socially engaged feels more natural and there isn’t the need to completely change your mindset. For the person you talked about working in a bank, that must be really difficult. From doing something destructive to doing something good. Do you think people have to settle for any job, even if it goes against their values? Does that mean they’re doing to be less engaged socially or even politically, because there’s such a chasm? It’s hard to tell. It’s the feeling that you should do something. It’s going to take place where you bump up against problems in the real world. Say you’re working for a company, whatever the flavour, doing something really terrible at any particular time. Even that will make you ask questions, if you’re doing it in your workplace. People I’ve come across at university, as teenagers they’d been on a protest and now they’re working for a big bank. Those things really jarred with them. Maybe the person I was talking about was doing all this cool stuff, because he was aware of the damage he was causing through his work. It’s the wrong strategy as it compartmentalises your life so much…
GETTING UNDER THE SKIN OF THE CITY
We’re using creative methods in our Making a Living project to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living.One of the ways you can get involved is by interviewing people where they interact. Take a look below at the video we did which shows what this looks like (h/t to @street83 for the editing/prod!) and check out the tips we learnt from our previous workshops.
NETWORKED ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The @southbankcentre is a venue well known for its performances – from opera to spoken word. But it’s also a space where many people – especially freelancers – come with their laptops to work on their projects because of the free wifi. If you can’t afford an office or broadband, then it’s the place to go in central London. Mix many freelancers all in the same space, delicious coffee and terrace overlooking the Thames, and you create an environment that stimulates conversation and that’s why there are so many different groups who meet up there on a range of issues. It’s where our group meets and it’s where we met Edwin Mingard, an artist filmmaker who makes narrative and documentary film who often produces “work with small groups of friends, or in a community setting, for artistic reasons: I want to celebrate and make visible the joy of the filmmaking process itself, and explore its value as a tool for individual and social change”. Like Edwin, almost a third of people who took part in our research want to do work that they enjoy and that they are good at. This was defined as meaningful work that fulfils young people professionally. Around one in eight want to feel more autonomous and see it as the precondition for meeting their basic needs and “want to learn practical skills so they can become independent of the system”. Like Edwin, 15% want to help people through provoking social change, in the case of Edwin, through the films and visual research he produces. Read our interview with Edwin. midnight run from edwin mingard on Vimeo. You’re involved in Satellite Films. How did that come about? I’m involved in a lot of different things and that’s just one part of it. I’d been working freelance for about 5-6 years, depending on whether you count part-time work. I guess I’d put off starting a structure as long as I could. I was involved in other structures, sitting on the boards of community interest companies and helping set up organisations and networks, which are still ongoing. It became necessary and useful to organise the production of work – to have a formal structure and from the point it became useful to the point I actually did it took about four years. I kept putting it off until the last minute. I set that up with a few other people to, in a way, keep doing things we’d always been doing before and to act as a springboard for things we’d always wanted to do but had never got round doing. You said that took four years to set up the organisations. What were the steps from being a freelancer to the point where you are now, where you’ve got that structure? I guess at a point which was five years ago, I was getting work which wasn’t feasible to take on by myself. There were a few people applying for grants as a loosely defined collective and we had to channel our money around our individual bank accounts. For logistics, if you’re working in film you need a lot of equipment and insurance. It was basically obvious you needed a company structure. We would do it through different organisations we already were involved in, like community interest companies or people I know who had organisations and I would put money through them. I guess that became a bit silly and I knew for a long time, that should have happened. I imagine whether you’re getting work with people or setting up a structure, trust is really important. The kind of people that you’ve been involved with – were they pre-existing friends or just random people working in your sector? How did you come to meet them? Stuff like that is very fluid. Networks are quite often larger than most people even realise. The utility of somebody’s skill or interests might be of value in five years’ time. People think on quite a short time scale planning stuff like that. If I know, for example, somebody working in theatre, maybe in 10 years’ time it will be really useful to me. There’s no way to predict that, so you can’t see those things as strictly transactional relationships in the first place. Because it’s about an ethos and a shared set of values but it’s also a way of living. I think you just become friends with those people anyway, you share so many things. And then, if you need something or if they need you, it’s quite easy to bring them in, I think. You talk about using those networks to help you and help them make a living. How about in terms of mutual support to cope with making a living? All of that is true. I remember living in a shared space and seeing people’s different attitudes to sharing in that way. I don’t really know why, but that was my attitude from the start. Maybe it was the way I was introduced to it by people – that you need maximum cooperation, maximum sharing of ideas and information at all times. There’s no advantage to having it any other way. There’s not only no advantage, but the opposite – it’s a pretty depressing way to live and work. But I remember seeing other people who would hear about an organisation doing really great stuff, or some grant funding and keep that really quiet because the guy in the studio next to you might be in competition with you. Those people never really seemed to get on and do that many things or if they did, it definitely didn’t feel like something they had the capacity to do. I would find I was by no means unique in that respect. People around me were all the same, if I heard about something I would tell everyone I knew who it might be of use to, because it’s my general outlook on life. Thinking about it, the advantage of that is…
TURNING A HOBBY INTO A JOB OUT OF NECESSITY
We’re using creative methods in our Making a Living project to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. One of the ways you can get involved is by interviewing people where they interact. After going to a market in Amsterdam we went to a local street market in London to interview people, including Consuela Addari, a trader who originates from Sardinia who makes and sells jewellery from vegetable ivory, under the name of @taghwa. Although every story is unique, you’ll see from the interview that Consuela’s motivations and actions reflect those of many people we’ve interviewed across Europe. From our findings on the objectives young people have set themselves, we see that “people want to learn practical skills so they can become independent of the system”. “Just under a fifth of participants felt making was an important ambition. Almost a third of these want to do work that they enjoy and that they are good at. This was defined as meaningful work that fulfils young people professionally.” For Consuela this is making jewellery that builds on her skills and that protects the planet. “Almost a third want to become financially independent, in particular from their family or to be able to turn their hobby into a job, or to sustain their creative ventures” such as selling jewellery on the market. Remember the infographic on how to turn a hobby into a job? Now you can find out how Consuela turned her hobby into a job out of opportunity…and necessity Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you from, how old you are. OK. My name is Consuela. I’m from Italy. I’m 33 years old, so not that young. I’ve got a little baby as well. This is my only job at the moment, as I can’t go back to work for my child. I can’t go back to full time and not even part-time yet, so I decided to do this, which I had in mind. Because you just had a baby? Yeah. She is 2 years old now. And I have been planning this before she was born, because I knew I was never going to be able to go to work. Why do you think that? Because I would have to pay childcare. So that means all my salary will go into childcare: nursery or child-minders. So I decided to do this, which I had in mind. I used to design and make jewellery a long time ago, but just for fun. So it was a hobby, and now I am trying to make my living. It is very hard. Is it? Very hard. I sell online as well. It is a lot of competition. Even if my jewellery is made out of vegetable ivory, which is a little bit uncommon. Can you tell a little bit more about that? What is it exactly? Yes. Vegetable Ivory is basically, it is also called Tahgwa nut. So basically it is a nut that grows in a big fruit, in a tropical country in South America. The one I buy is from Ecuador, because it is known to be the best quality of Tahgwa in the Amazon Rain Forest. I also use other Amazonian seeds, a few of them. I make the designs myself. And most of the jewellery are unique pieces. So I sell at the market on Sunday, do some events, markets, fairs, exhibitions if I have the chance. But it is very very hard, I have to say. Do you feel supported by the government or by your environment to keep afloat so to speak? I don’t feel supported at all. How come, because you say you’re from Italy, how come…? But I have been living here for 11 years. What made you come to London? I came to finish my university here. I studied English language and communication. So I came here to study and I always worked. I started obviously in restaurants and things like that. And then I ended up, I was a translator in a company for 3 or 4 years. Until I got pregnant and then everything changed [laughs]. But I think it is a good change. I am very positive about this business. Because it is a new material that people don’t really know. It is a sustainable material, so this is very important ecological, eco-friendly. And people are now more keen to buy eco-friendly and sustainable gifts and stuff, and jewellery as well. So I am very positive that it is going to work, and I think it just takes a little bit of time. Because I need to be able to go to places, just to explain to people what the material is, and then once they understand, they take their time, they read, they go online, and then later on they may buy. It is not something that they buy like that. It is also because it is not very cheap. When people are looking for cheap stuff, this is not for them. It is not even expensive, but obviously it is quality. Basically vegetable ivory lasts a lifetime. So it is very strong and resilient. So all the jewellery is made out of that. So it can’t be cheap jewellery. So I probably need to find the right market for it. I am not sure if this is the right place to sell. Because maybe back in Italy there are also some opportunities. I don’t want to go back to Italy. I want to stay here. I like it here. I like it better than Italy. Where are you from? Sardinia. It is an island, an island near Sicily. So how do you see the future for yourself? Do you want to grow your business further? I do this business…
CRÉER UNE CARRIÈRE À LA CARTE
Traduit par Patricia Sorin Après notre interview auprès d’une maman italienne-fabricante de bijoux, nous continuons notre route au marché et allons à la rencontre d’un fabricant de chaussures branché :Shoe Embassy. Tout voyageur sait reconnaître la facture d’une chaussure bien faite, nous nous arrêtons donc pour discuter avec une des commerçantes présentes sur le marché, Edita Tumasonyte, qui, vous le découvrirez à travers cette interview, est également mannequin et enseignante en herbe. Contrairement à la majorité des gens ayant participé à notre projet, Editan’aspire pas à la stabilité qui consisterait à avoir un endroit propre à elle, elle adore aller d’une ville à l’autre et même d’un pays à l’autre, déménageant de Vilnius à Paris, Tokyo et Milan. Près d’un huitième des gens interrogés dans notre étude estime « les voyages » comme étant leur ambition première, les motivant ainsi à gagner leur vie. Là où Edita rejoint la majorité des gens, c’est dans son désir d’apprendre et notamment d’acquérir une qualification qui lui permettra de commencer une nouvelle profession, dans son cas, enseigner aux enfants. Comme un tiers des jeunes, elle tient à avoir un travail plaisant et où elle sera compétente, du mannequin à l’enseignante, tout en découvrant entre-temps les joies et les plaisirs d’être commerçante. Voici l’interview d’Edita par Vincent, Noël et Maxime… Quel est votre travail ici ? Je fais trois choses. Je suis mannequin, je vends des chaussures ici et j’ai un emploi partiel au bureau. Et puis, je poursuis mes études en Lituanie. Quel est votre emploi préféré ? Je pense que c’est d’être mannequin. En fait, je le fais depuis 8 ans. Ici, à Londres ? Ou avez-vous commencez ailleurs ? Oui. Je l’ai fait partout, mais je suis à Londres maintenant depuis deux ans. Qu’est-ce qui vous a fait venir ici ? Je ne sais pas, c’est juste arrivé. Puis, j’ai trouvé ce travail, et commencé à vendre des chaussures. Comment avez-vous donc fait pour trouver ce job ? C’est à mon ami. Je l’ai juste aidé. C’était un ami de mon ex-petit ami. Et comment trouvez-vous ce travail ? C’est dur, mais c’est bien. Nous travaillons tous les weekends. Donc aucune sortie, mais vous pouvez au moins gagner de l’argent pour votre location. Pensez-vous qu’il est facile de gagner sa vie dans une ville comme celle-ci ? Non.C’est dur. C’est la raison pour laquelle j’ai un autre travail. Mais c’est possible. Si vous le voulez. Si vous restez assis à la maison et ne faites rien, vous ne pourrez pas gagner d’argent. Mais si vous travaillez dur, vous y arriverez je pense. Qu’envisagez-vous d’étudier quand vous rentrerez ? J’étudie déjà. Je suis dans ma deuxième année. J’étudie l’enseignement préscolaire. Pourquoi les enfants ? Pourquoi voulez-vous enseigner ? Je ne sais pas. C’est tout simplement comme ça. C’est juste que j’aime les enfants. Voulez-vous devenir enseignante ? Oui, oui, vraiment. C’est mon projet. Donc, vous voyez ces jobs comme étant un moyen de devenir enseignante, et c’est votre but dans le futur ? Oui. Cela va prendre un peu de temps, mais oui. Et pourquoi avez-vous déménagé ici pour la première fois ? Est-ce qu’en Lituanie, la perspective… Non. Je voyageais à travers le monde. Tout comme j’ai vécu à Milan, Paris, Tokyo. Et c’était juste plus facile de rester plus longtemps ici, car je connaissais la langue. Et j’ai eu ce travail, c’était donc plus facile pour moi. Je pense que c’est principalement grâce à la langue. Vous allez rencontrer beaucoup de jeunes gens ici. Bonne chance !
CREATING AN LA CARTE CAREER
After our interview with an Italian jewellery maker-mother, we continue through the market and come across a funky shoe maker Shoe Embassy.Any traveller will recognise the craft of a well made shoe, so we stop and spoke to one of the traders there, Edita Tumasonyte, who you will discover through the interview is also a model and a budding teacher.Unlike the majority of people who’ve participated in our project, Edita does not strive for the stability of having a place she call her own, she loves moving from town to town and even from country to country, having moved from Vilnius, to Paris, Tokyo and Milan. About an eighth of the people we interviewed in our research value “travelling” as their number one ambition to help them make a living. But where she does reflect the majority of people we interviewed is her desire to learn and in particularly achieve qualifications to enable her to start a new profession, in this case to teach children. Like a third of young people, she wants to do work that she enjoys and that she is good at – from being a model to becoming a teacher, while in the meantime discovering the joys and thrills of being a market trader. Over to Vincent, Noel and Maxime for their interview with Edita… What is your business here? I do three things. Modelling, I sell shoes here, and then I have a part-time job in office. And then I’m studying back in Lithuania. What is your favorite job? I guess modeling. Actually I am doing that for 8 years. Here in London? Or you started somewhere else? Yeah. I did everywhere, but I am in London now and have been for two years. What made you come here? It just, I don’t know, happened. And then I found this job, and started to sell shoes. So how did you find this job? It is my friend. I just help out. He was my ex-boyfriends friend. And how is this business going for you? It is hard, but it is good. We do all weekends. So no parties, but you can earn money for your rent at least. Do you feel like you can easily make a living in a city like this? No. It is hard. That is why I’ve got another job. But it is possible. If you want to. If you are going to sit at home and do nothing, you’re not going to get any money. But if you work hard, you can do it I think. What are you planning to study when you go back? I am studying already. I am in my second year. I am studying pre-school education. Why children? Why do you want to teach? I don’t know. I just feel like it. I just love kids. Do you want to become a teacher? Yeah, yeah, definitely. That’s my plan. So you see these jobs as a means to becoming a teacher, and that is your goal for the future? Yeah. It’s going to take some time, but yeah. And why did you move here in the first place? Was it that in Lithuania the perspective is… No. I was traveling around the world. I stayed in like Milan, Paris, Tokyo. And it just was easiest to stay here for longer, because I know the language. And I got this job, so it was just easier for me. I think mainly because of the language. You’re going to find many young people here. Good luck!
IN BETWEEN SPACES
I’ll admit it, I’m not the best fan of organised networking, but RSA Fellows Reboot creates a refreshing change by introducing creative techniques to make it fun. On one of these Reboots, I bumped into Catherine Greig, founder and director of make:good, a “small but mighty design studio that engages with communities to create positive change in their neighbourhood.A few days later, we were sat drinking builder’s tea in her new studio, where the smell of paint and the sound of drilling provided the background senses to the interview. Enjoy!Tell us a bit about what make:good is all about? It’s an architecture design practice that works with community groups in particular neighbourhoods to help them think about change in their space. You studied architecture. How did that influence your design practice? Architecture is definitely one of those courses where what people think it is on the outside is different from what it actually is on the inside. You do a lot of thinking about space – outdoor and indoor buildings, as well as spaces in between buildings. Over the space of six years at university, I started to hone in on what I was really interested in. People on my course mainly focused on buildings, but my work was all about the places in between and how the people who live around these spaces can influence what happens within them and how they’re run. So it was a natural progression that when I left university I knew the work I wanted to do. When you say that you knew what you wanted to do, was there a particular trigger that made you think “this is what I want to do”? It was much more incremental in some ways, figuring that out. make:good has a very wide portfolio of work and it’s about that journey where I’m interested in lots of different things. When I left university I knew that I didn’t want to go and build buildings. That was the one thing that I knew I didn’t’ want to do. There are enough buildings out there. My final project had been quite different to what the rest of my year group were doing, because I started looking more at adventure playgrounds and the way they were set up in the 1970s. I thought that the idea of people taking over an abandoned space and matching it with a need and saying “you know what, let’s just do it ourselves”. I thought “I want to do something like that”. make:good from Make:good on Vimeo. When did the idea for make:good come about, the point at which you didn’t just want to work in that area, but actually set a business up around it?I think that the idea percolated for quite a long time. I’m not going to say that I’m a very speedy person who just came up with an idea and made it happen. After four years of university, I was learning amazing methods, but I liked doing things my own way.I didn’t have an idea of how the business would work financially but I knew the work I wanted to do; there was something about using art practice, drama, performance and architecture and making it into something that puts people at the heart of change. So did you need to do another three years to figure it out? Architecture is a brilliant discipline. You learn so much which is why you want to pursue it. The structure of the course was four yours, then a year out, then two years post graduate. In my third year, I studied in Denmark for a year. I had this epiphany moment just being there. The way they manage housing and spaces in between buildings is very different there. The way they think about public space is very different in Scandinavia in general. That was a really formative year for me and so when I finished my degree, I absolutely could have stopped and gone on and started my business but once I started I wanted to finish. It’s only been in the last couple of years that my professional qualifications has been pretty useful Is that in the eyes of others? Yes, in the eyes of others. There are definitely moments when it legitimises the work that we do and I don’t know why. I don’t project it onto people. But there are certainly situations where we get work from clients on the basis that I’m a qualified architect. A lot of the work that we get around schools and space is because I’m an architect. This is even though they know way more than I do and that the premise of the business is that the people are the experts. Having a professional qualification reassures people. Going back to when you set up make:good in your head, what were the steps that you plotted to set up your business? There was stuff in my head around “what is the message, what do I want to do, who are the clients now and in the future” and finding out as much as I could about those clients. All of that thinking is much more important than getting an office, building or a website or even having a business card. Those are the things that are much easier to do and might make you feel like your business is real. But you still need a really good offer. That’s what I spent a long time doing and the concept was percolating through my final two years of post-graduate – “who commissions this, who gets this work, who delivers this that’s very close to what I want to do and how do I get this work”. Having studied architecture for six long years at UCL, Bath and in Copenhagen, Catherine decided she wanted to work a little differently. After qualifying as an Architect her process became less about planning and building, more about people and their stories first. She set up make:good to combine her appetite…
Citizens’ consultation on Roma coverage in mainstream media: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
“Word of Gitano? The voices that are not heard on TV” Roma people and mainstream media Thursday, 25th of April 2013 Hall ADEIT Degrees, Foundation University-Industry of the University of Valencia, Valencia Find out more information about the Citizens Manifesto, about the Valencia consultation and about the European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism: sign here!You can download the findings of this citizens’ consultation here. The consultation on Roma people and mainstream media, organised by European Alternatives, brought together citizens, journalists and experts on Roma communities and media, who debated issues related to the marginalization of minorities in Spain and the EU and the media coverage of these topics. Participating organisations included the Movement Against Intolerance , FERYP (Forum of European Roma Young People), Ververipen, Rroms for the Diversity, Gitanos.org, International Foundation for Human Rights, Youth amb Initiative , Unió de Periodistes Valencians (UPV), Associació de Periodistes Profesionals Valencians (APPV) Findings Table discussions: issues to be debated and introduction to the key proposals The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology. They reflect the opinions held by the majority of those who participated in the public consultation, even though their opinions and ideas often displayed a variety of positions. Some of the proposals were developed on several discussion tables, but for the sake of clarity, similar concerns have been merged together. If you wish to react to or comment on a proposal – or even suggest new ideas – please use the “comments” box at the bottom of the page. Proposals for media coverage on Roma After an introduction to the topic by Angel Galan, journalist and coordinator of the Movement against Intolerance in Valencia and a round table discussion, the speakers and participants formulated ten suggestions for dealing with collective information about the Roma community and other minorities. Discussions were led by Demetrio Gomez (social activist and spokesperson of the Forum of European Roma Young People, founder of Ververipen and Board of the International Foundation for Human Rights, blogger (batxalo.wordpress.com) and Antonio Cortés Tower from the political party “Youth with Initiative”, youth Roma leader. Mass media is the main transmitter of images, topics and opinions that shape the general opinion on the community and culture of Roma and other minorities. Often, the media prefers to sell negative messages about minorities, such as stories about crimes, poor living conditions and prosecution, thus picturing the minorities with a negative and weak image. Citizens and civil society organisations call upon a fast action and responses against the dissemination of racist and xenophobic messages by the media. Proposals for journalists1. Media coverage of minority groupsmust be in accordance with ethical standards, which means for journalists not to present minority groups in a way derogatory to the group, inducing stereotypes, taking particular care to terms used to define and describe the group.2. Associations between particular individual stories and a minority group such as the Romashould be avoided and information on such cases double-checked. 3. More focus should be given in the media to success stories of Roma people, understood as success in professional, educational or social environments, in order to foster the creation of role models in the community and to acknowledge the existence of difference and diversity within the Roma community. Legislative and general proposals: 4. Media coverage that violates the dignityor that involves discrimination of minorities because of their colour, race, sex, religion or ideology should be included in legislation against hate speech and hate crimes. 5. Create a European Media Councilto regulate and monitor the performance of the media, as called for in the European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism. 6. Introduce compulsory training through university courses targeted at certain groups of professionals such as journalists, lawyers or social workers to raise awareness on minority issues. 7.Society should protect the cultural identity of the Roma community, since the existence of cultural differences is an asset that enriches humanity.
Citizens consultation on the commons in Europe: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
Commons and the broader socialSaturday and Sunday 25th-26th May 2013 Tranzit.ro, Samuel Brassai Street, no 5, Cluj-Napoca Find out more information about the Citizens Manifesto and about the Cluj consultation! You can download the findings of this citizens’ consultation here and vote for the proposals for the Citizens Manifesto here. The consultation on the commons and the broader social, organised by European Alternatives in partnership with GAS(Group for Social Action), transit.roand Critic Atac, brought together representatives of social mobilisations and civil society organisations to debate issues related to the commons in Romania and the EU. Participating organisations and speakers included, GLOC/The Working Group of Civil Society Organizations, Eniko Vincze, Cristina Rat, GAP(Gazeta de Arta Politica)/ Political Art Gazette: Marius Tudor, Biblioteca Alternativ?/ Alternative Library: Veda Popovici , Biocoop/Ecoruralis(Ramona Dominicioiu), Alburnus Maior (Eugen David), Editura Tact (Andrei State), the Bezna Collective, Claca (Mihai Lukacs) Findings Table discussions: issues to be debated and introduction to the key proposals The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology. They reflect the opinions held by the majority of those who participated in the public consultation, even though their opinions and ideas often displayed a variety of positions. Some of the proposals were developed on several discussion tables, but for the sake of clarity, similar concerns have been merged together. If you wish to react to or comment on a proposal – or even suggest new ideas – please use the “comments” box at the bottom of the page. Discussions focussed on various examples of commons, such as land, water or knowledge, as well as on the importance of an educational system directed towards the commons. How communities can organise and cooperate around common goods and how commons can become a driving force for the Romanian social movements to federate was then debated in the second part of the meeting. Overcoming the fragmentation of the social movement Social movements within Romania are divided and fail to defend together a common cause. There is a disconnection of the Romanian social from the broader European movement; Rosia Montana emerged as a gravitation centre for Romanians; it unified them also with other European movements that are gathered along the cornerstone of commons. Commons therefore emerge as a touching point for the social movements within Romania and across the country borders. Commons as a counter-narrative In Romania commons are emerging so as to contract neoliberalism and capitalism.The European Charter of Commons may bring the Romanian social movement further. Yet, Romanian-origin commons shall be added.What are the commons: knowledge, health(care), culture, soil, energy, water, solar radiation, parks, life…Perhaps come up with a common that will be accepted by TNCs so that they oppose less the whole commons concept? How to advocate Commons better in Romania? – Agree on a set of Commons; – Explore and apply best practices of Commons advocacy from other countries. – Cooperate with non-Romanian movements: set up a platform through European Alternatives? – Legislative changes are difficult at the central state level. Therefore, gain the support of mayors and city/municipal counters. Next step: mapping and contacting interested local actors in Romania Three proposals for the Citizens Manifesto on the European Commons 1. Cities and regions should be involved in the review of draft EU legislation on a wide range of aspects related to the commons. They can also spread the message to their members and get more cities and regions to support the commons. Like the Committee of Regions, URBACT, the Assembly of European Regions, City Mayors, REVES network of cities, that have consultative roles, cities and regions will contribute to the protection of commons through different pieces of EU laws, particularly regulations and directives. 2. Initiate a European Citizens Initiative on the commons: this mechanism of direct participatory democracy enables the advocacy of legislation before the European Union institutions: the aim is for a directive or regulation on the commons to be eventually passed and enforced in the 28 Member States. Once approved by the European Commission as an admissible proposal (commons are in conformity with EU’s underlying principles and values), signatures will be collected around Europe and following European citizens mobilisation the European Parliament and the Council will vote on the legislation. 3. Citizens should file a complaint about matters related to the commons (in legal terms referred to as “services of general economic interest”) within the framework of EU legislation. Once the matter is referred to the EU Court by a national court or tribunal (initiating litigation through different member states’ courts will be a useful advocacy strategy), the court, in accordance with article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU will issue a binding judgement that interprets EU law and therefore the protection of the commons will be reiterated without, strictly speaking, enacting new piece of EU legislation. Find all the proposals on commons for the Citizens Manifesto on this page!
FIRST FOOTSTEPS IN EUROPE
We continue with Rhiannon’s journey through Europe. “So my exploration of the possible alternative futures emerging from youth living in this crisis across Europe begins with a journey overseas. For the next three months I will be living in a city within Portugal, Spain and Greece respectively. The aim in each city will be to map the network of groups and individuals, communities and movements within the city, to see how they are connected, to understand their context and to find the spaces where dissent and creation are surfacing. I am hoping to gather and collect people’s stories, experiences and struggles. To find out about their life situation and how the crisis is affecting them, how they are coping, how their relationship to work and the world is changing, and ultimately what space for change they can see. The reason I have chosen Portugal, Spain and Greece as the places to begin my research, is because it is here where the crisis has hit the hardest, where youth unemployment is the highest, where people are experiencing the most brutal side of capitalism. I personally think that as we can no longer continue to live in a system based upon infinite growth, as we exist on a planet with finite resources, and therefore that this is only the beginning of a crisis that will get much worse, across all of Europe. For me this means it is very important to be learning from others experiences, to better inform ourselves to cope with what is coming, and further to create positive new ways solutions out of it. I was recently at a talk put on by Occupied London, a collective that have created a blog to give updates on the Greek crisis, from the people involved on resistance in the streets, in English. One story and message from the talk stands out strongly in my mind. A man who had just been in Greece for the past few months was talking about community’s resistance to their electricity being cut off in the middle of a freezing winter when they couldn’t pay their bills. It had started with a letter to the mayor, and quickly progressed to an occupation of the companies headquarters as well as people blockading homes to stop cuts offs, and skills shares on how to self connect to the grid. In this instance the community had come together to ensure their basic needs came before the profit of the company. However in other areas, this had led to stealing and fighting, to divides between the haves and the have nots and to a weakening of the movement through betrayals from members of the community to the company. It is important to remember he said, that in times of crisis it can go either way, communities can be brought together, connections strengthened, their power realised, positive solutions emerge. Or it can tear them apart, lead to competition, violence, destruction and fear. It is important you learn from us, so you can decide and help shape which of the two realities you want to see emerge from your crisis. This is why I am making the first steps of my research, my investigation, my action within these countries. To learn from people’s successes and failures, from their trials and tribulations, to see how to best facilitate emergence of new and positive solutions to youth unemployment in the UK. I am excited about the lessons to be learned, the people I will meet, the stories of inspiration and despair, the possibility of sharing and bringing back what I have learnt to conversations and projects in the UK, and the possibility of becoming part of a new network of European youth that are acting in solidarity with one another to create the future we know is possible. I will be updating this regularly with stories, experiences, reflections and analysis along the way.Please share your thoughts and feeling on them as and when. In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
THE GENERATION WITH AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE
As part of our Making a Living project, we’ve asked you to come and share your story and observe how people cope with the crisis. Rhiannon went one step further, here’s her story! In 2012 I finished university and entered the world of work. Shocked by the limited and bad options available to me and my friends; in the form of unpaid internships, volunteer placements, jobs we could do before we studied or jobs we were not passionate about and would not enjoy, I set out in search of alternatives in the countries of Portugal and Spain, where youth unemployment is as high as 50%. I thought to myself if half the young population of these countries is not working they must be finding different ways of surviving, living and enjoying life. And what an amazing collection of ideas, solutions and questions they had in store. I am tired of hearing again and again that we are the graduates, the youth, the generation with no future. To me it makes no sense and the reality is in fact quite the opposite. I look around me and on the one hand I see the people of my generation, both friends and strangers, with ideas and time, with energy and passion, people with hopes, desires and dreams, people who are ready and willing to make a change, to do something with their mind and bodies in this crazy world. On the other hand I see the environment in which we are becoming adults, the reality the meets us when we finish school or university; a reality dominated by corrupt politicians and power hungry corporations, by greed and competition, by empty rhetoric and soulless consumerism. Within England I see a government that is privatising the provision of our basic needs such as education and healthcare, that is bailing out the banks whilst discriminating against its most vulnerable, that is increasingly infringing on our freedom of speech. On a global scale I see an economic system that is based on infinite growth, something which is impossible on a planet with finite resources, that in its pursuit of profit above all else is creating poverty, unemployment, exploitation and environmental destruction on a scale never seen before. Which, I ask, is the problem in this reality? Which has no future? Us? The next generation of human beings? Or the economic system that surrounds us? Which gives us more hope? Which gives us the most capacity to enact change? I recently applied for an internship at a charity in London that was set up to challenge the idea of youth being apathetic. Its work involves facilitating and supporting youth in schools to set up project on issues they care about, so they can actively feel and experience their power and ability to create change. One hundred and fifty people applied for this internship, there were only four places. Now what seems crazy in this scenario is that at a time where youth within this country are actively being discriminated against and are being pushed into an increasingly powerless position, with the tripling of university fees and planned cuts in housing and benefits for under 25s. One hundred and fifty people (just in this one example, I’m sure there are many others) are out there ready and willing to work on supporting and empowering youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, albeit for far less than minimum wage, yet because this thing called a ‘job’ does not exist now only four will do so. Again let me ask the question, what exactly is the problem in this scenario? The one hundred and fifty people that want to dedicate their time to challenging youth apathy, or an economic system that does not value and support such endeavours? Let us look at another scenario. The Independent recently reported that there are now forty-five graduates applying for every graduate job in the UK, which means that one person gets the job, whilst forty-four don’t. Now the blame in this scenario is immediately placed on the individual, both by the person themselves, and society and the media around them. This often makes people feel worthless, stupid, disempowered and depressed. The focus is always what could I have done differently? Why am I so incapable? Was I not witty enough? Professional enough? Not profit motivated, not inspiring? How can I pimp up my CV… more unpaid ‘work experience’ that I can’t afford, a masters that I can’t afford? Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against personal improvement and development, nor am I in any sense implying that every person who applies for a job is good enough to get it, but you do not have to have done a degree in maths to work out, that no matter how much we self improve there simply aren’t enough jobs, there will always be those left without, and graduates are by no means at the bottom of this pile. Surely then these are the wrong questions to be asking. The question then becomes what is wrong with this economic system in which there simply aren’t enough jobs? And in my personal opinion youth unemployment is only the tip of the iceberg. So, onto the more exciting and inspiring part, because yes you sigh, we all know the situation is fucking bleak, we do not need to read an article to be told that. So here’s some suggestions, the beginnings of a conversation, and hopefully of action, upon how we can turn this situation around, and actually regain control of our lives, of our futures, of this worlds future in fact. Firstly we need to stop competing with each other for all these underpaid, uninspiring internships and jobs that most often we do not enjoy, most often do not enable us to do what we are really passionate about, and most often merely direct our time and energy into creating more money for a few people that quite frankly do not need more. Where, perhaps, we may…
Towards a Citizens Pact: Civil rights in Europe – proposals for the Citizens Manifesto
Photo: Elena Dalibot Throughout 2013 European Alternatives, its local groups and other partners have been developing the “Citizens Pact for European Democracy” in view of the 2014 European Parliament elections.The Citizens Pact should be understood as a pact between the citizens of Europe – including all people who reside and participate in Europe – and a pact between them and the EU institutions, in which concrete proposals are developed, calling for radical change in European politics.The Citizens Pact is a bottom-up participative process focusing on topics citizens feel strongly about, and more specifically, on matters related to social justice, employment, civil rights (especially for particularly discriminated groups such as migrants, Roma, and LGBT groups), as well as issues related to the institutional structure of the EU.Following series of local consultations across the continent, two days of discussions were organized in Barcelona in June, gathering participants coming from all over Europe. Through different methodologies and tools, the participants were encouraged to reflect on the following issues: Pluralism in the media in Europe Lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* rights in Europe Methodologies to deal with social rights: social theatre as a tool for change Migrant people and Roma communities in Europe. You can download the principal proposals and initiatives from the debates carried out during the two days that have been agreed upon by the different work tables and which the moderators of each workshop have gathered from the participants, and vote for proposals on the Citizens Pact website.
Call for volunteers for the Transeuropa Festival
The fourth Transeuropa Festival is coming soon! The Transeuropa Festival is an artistic, cultural, and political event organised by European citizens for European citizens. It encourages political and cultural exchanges that revolve around Europe and collective action, generating alternative perspectives on the economic crisis, migration, and democratic participation. In October 2013 the Transeuropa Festival will offer a wide range of cultural, artistic, and political events of a transnational character; it will take place in 13 cities spread throughout Europe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologna, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, London, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Sofia, and Warsaw. The festival will conclude with a European forum in Berlin. For the last three years, the festival has taken place in May. This year, however, we have decided to hold it in October, thereby allowing it to coincide with the EU’s “European Year of Citizens”. Our goal? To get even more people to participate in our project. The event will take place 6 months before the elections to the European Parliament, and we will therefore be able to set the tone for promoting a more creative, inclusive, and transnational Europe. Work as a volunteer for the Transeuropa Festival! The TRANSEUROPA festival is run by European Alternatives and its members, who have combined their efforts throughout the year to organise more than 80 events for the festival in October. Accordingly, the months leading up to this event are devoted to the intense mobilisation of activists and campaigners from all over Europe, in order to guarantee a top-class festival that is free and open to all. If you wish to help us organise the festival, please don’t hesitate: become a member of European Alternatives and join one of our local groups in any of the cities involved. Simply write to us and attend an introductory meeting about the festival in your city. You can find the addresses of the local groups of all the cities represented by our network here. Find out what you can do to help us set up the events of this year’s Festival! If you make a contribution to the Transeuropa Festival, you will have the opportunity to interact with our members, either by meeting them in October at the Festival’s events, or later on at the local group meetings that take place every month in various European cities. Furthermore, you will develop your skills in organising campaigns, managing projects, raising funds, and communicating. Are you interested in the Festival’s themes? The rights of European citizens and of migrants, the struggle against discrimination, alternatives to austerity measures, public participation, new means of mobilisation in Europe… So many burning issues and pressing questions that might be of interest to you! Come to the Festival to share your opinions and discuss these questions with European activists. – Engage in dialogue with other members rallying in other cities by discussing mutual interests and shared themes. – Contribute by doing research on a particular topic and proposing suggestions. – Meet European experts who specialise in the aforementioned topics at the festival’s events. Are you interested in the practical side of running events? – Get involved in the planning and the setting up of the events. – Prepare the venues for the events. – Liaise with both our partners and the festival’s speakers. – Work in a team of volunteers. Do you enjoy using the Internet and its social networks? – Participate by making sure that the festival’s Facebook and Twitter pages stay updated and lively. – Help set up live streaming and Skype coverage of the Festival’s events, and contribute to the “live tweets”. – Use your knowledge of the latest technologies and social networks to create an efficient and effective means of online communication between all the cities participating in the Festival. Are you a journalist with good communication skills? – You can help us contact the press by writing press releases and recommending journalists. – Help us reach out to a wider public by developing our communicative strategies. – Link up the Festival in your city with the Festival in the other cities involved by writing articles on the events. – Write articles and interview speakers for our website and the Festival’s blog. Are you passionate about photography and making videos? We need people to document every detail of the Festival’s events in order to share as much as possible with the other cities involved. – You can work as a volunteer photographer for the Festival and record its events, allowing you to promote your work in other European cities. – Likewise, you can film events or conduct video interviews and introduce your talent to a wider audience. Are you a dynamic person with good communication skills who likes to be outdoors? – Help us by putting up posters and handing out the Festival’s programme. – Tell people about our events. – During the Festival, you can help give the speakers and the public a warm welcome by explaining the Festival’s purpose, etc. For more information: Follow us on Facebookand Twitter! Do you wish to learn more about last year’s Festival? Please watch the video of the festival: you will witness scenes from the pan-European festivities, allowing you to discover the Festival’s key themes and important moments. You can also take a look at the 2012 Festival’s transnational programme on its website.
Appel à bénévoles pour le Festival Transeuropa !
L’ouverture de la quatrième édition du Festival Transeuropa approche! Le Festival Transeuropa est un évènement artistique, culturel et politique organisé par des citoyens européens pour des citoyens européens. Il promet un échange politique et culturel autour de l’Europe et de l’action collective pour des visions alternatives sur la crise économique, les migrations et la participation démocratique. En octobre 2013, le Festival Transeuropa proposera une série d’évènements culturels, artistiques et politiques transnationaux, se déroulant dans 13 villes à travers toute l’Europe: à Amsterdam, Barcelone, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologne, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, Londres, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Sofia et Varsovie. Le festival se clôturera par un forum européen à Berlin. Ces trois dernières années, le festival avait lieu en mai. Cette année, nous avons décidé de le décaler en octobre, et de le placer ainsi en plein cœur de l’« Année européenne des citoyens » de l’Union européenne. Le but ? Permettre à encore plus de personnes de participer à notre projet. L’évènement aura aussi lieu 6 mois avant les élections aux Parlement européen, et nous serons donc en mesure de donner le la pour la promotion d’une Europe plus créative, inclusive et transnationale.Devenez bénévole du Festival Transeuropa ! Le Festival TRANSEUROPA est organisé par Alternatives Européennes et par ses membres, se mobilisant toute l’année pour organiser plus de 80 évènements dans le cadre du Festival cette année. Les mois prochains sont donc une période de mobilisation intense pour tous les militants partout en Europe pour proposer un festival de qualité, gratuit et ouvert à tous! Si vous souhaitez participer à son organisation, n’hésitez pas à devenir membre d’Alternatives Européennes et à rejoindre nos groupes locaux dans les villes participantes. Pour cela, écrivez-nous et participez à une réunion de présentation du festival dans votre ville. Les adresses des groupes locaux dans toutes les villes du réseau sont disponibles ici (pour Paris : paris@euroalter.com) Découvrez en quoi pourriez-vous nous aider à mettre en œuvre les évènements du Festival cette année! En vous investissant avec le Festival Transeuropa, vous aurez l’opportunité d’échanger avec ces personnes, soit directement en les rencontrant aux évènements du Festival en octobre, ou plus tard lors des réunions des groupes locaux qui ont lieu tous les mois dans différentes villes en Europe. De plus vous développez vos compétences en matière d’organisation de campagnes, de gestion de projets, de collecte de fonds, de communication… Vous êtes intéressé(e) par les thématiques du Festival: Droits des citoyens européens et migrants, lutte contre les discriminations, alternatives à l’austérité économique, participation citoyenne, nouvelles formes de mobilisation en Europe… Autant de sujets d’actualité et de questions cruciales qui peuvent vous intéressent ! Venez partager votre point de vue et débattre avec des militants européens de ces questions dans le cadre du Festival. – Entrez en discussion avec d’autres personnes mobilisées dans d’autres villes qui sont intéressées ou travaillent sur les mêmes thèmes. – Participez par des recherches sur le sujet et en formulant des propositions – Rencontrez des spécialistes français et européens de ces questions qui participent aux évènements du Festival Vous êtes intéressé(e) par l’évènementiel : – Impliquez vous dans la définition des événements à leur mise en place – Préparez les lieux d’accueil des évènements – Faites le lien avec nos partenaires ainsi qu’avec les intervenants – Travaillez avec une équipe de volontaires Vous aimez utiliser Internet et les réseaux sociaux : – Participez à l’animation des pages Facebook et Twitter du Festival – Aidez à mettre en place le web-streaming et les connections Skype pendant les évènements du Festival, et participer au live-tweet – Apportez votre connaissance des nouvelles technologies et réseaux sociaux pour construire une communication efficace et de qualité sur le web entre toutes les villes du Festival Vous êtes un(e) journaliste et aimez communiquer: – Vous pouvez nous aider à contacter la presse : écrire des communiqués de presse, identifier des journalistes à contacter – Aidez à toucher de nouveaux publics en participant à la stratégie de communication – Faites le lien entre le Festival dans votre ville et dans les autres villes participantes par des articles sur les événements – Rédigez des articles et interviews des intervenants pour le site web et le blog du Festival Vous êtes passionné(e) par la photo et la vidéo: Nous avons besoin de documenter en permanence les évènements du Festival pour informer le plus possible les autres villes participantes! – Vous pouvez être photographe bénévole du Festival et documenter les évènements du Festival, en faisant découvrir votre travail dans d’autres villes en Europe – Vous pouvez également filmer des évènements ou réaliser des interviews vidéo, et faire connaitre ainsi votre talent à un large réseau Vous aimez bouger, être à l’extérieur et communiquer: – Aidez à coller des affiches et distribuer le programme du Festival – Informez les gens à propos des évènements – Pendant le Festival vous pouvez participer à l’accueil des intervenants et du public, expliquer en quoi consiste le Festival etc. Pour en savoir plus : Suivez-nous sur Facebook et Twitter Vous souhaitez vous renseigner sur le Festival de l’an passé ? N’hésitez pas à regarder la vidéo du Festival : vous y trouverez les images des festivités dans toute l’Europe et pourrez découvrir les thèmes et les moments clé du Festival : Vous pouvez aussi consulter le programme transnational sur le site Internet du Festival 2012.
Democracy is a verb not a noun
We often discuss the reform of public services and reform of democracy separately, as if reform could take place in one area without affecting the other. As well as “providing services”, public service organisations are also bound by a duty to “be democratic”. People often confuse this with associating the “being democratic” with specific structures (like committees) or processess (scrutiny). Others see public services as just another service, however it is run. The former risks dividing up the “what people decide” and “what people deliver” into separate functions. The latter risks services being provided without necessarily being democratic or accountable. The “Open House – Creating democratic organisations for the 21st century” event organised by @hublaunchpad & @globalnet21 reminded me of how we at European Alternatives pivoted from a network into a cooperative – a midnight visualisation of how we would organise democratically in a different way, using the analogy with how a flower grows. I asked myself, if only local public services, businesses and civil society could come up with new forms of democratic organisation in such an emergent way! Then I remembered the @borderstocross workshops we helped organise – less about democratic organisations and more how civic initiatives organise democratically across public service, market & community boundaries. In terms of how these collaborations create better democracy, I would categorise them in the following way: Community groups demanding that public services be more democratic, such as People Talk, which uses citizens’ jurys to start dialogue with public services andTenever where decisions are only made when there is 100% consensus – making every opinion important. Community groups demanding that businesses be more democratic, such asSave Greek Water, raising awareness on the dangers of the announced privatization of water services and build resistance to stop or SOM Energia, an energy cooperative which combats oligopolies. Community groups enacting more democratic ways of working, such as the theCitizens Academy creating a school for citizenship to Teatro Valle, reclaiming Rome’s oldest theatre from privatization and transforming it into a shared space governed by and for the community. Public services being more democratic in their interactions with community groups, such as the Tuscan laboratory or CittA@ttiva allowing a group of young civil servants, specialized in social mediation to act freely and to show their accountability by their deeds. A researcher from the workshops commented that this was about “getting more empathetic, and less bureaucratic”. Public services being more democratic with businesses, such as the Overijssel O:0 Partnership, which bridges the gap between community based enterprise and private investors. Businesses being more democratic in their interactions with community groups, such as Malmo community owned care, building grassroots organizations’ capacity to run their own “business” where the revenue is reinvested in the local community. What struck me is that public services and businesses try to be more democratic in how they interact with community groups, while community groups try to be more democratic in how they organise themselves. What happens when public services & businesses are so weak that there is a vacuum of service provision. Does this create a vacuum of democracy? In a rural area of Sweden, the lack of public & private provision of care led to villagers creating their own home car system democratically run and owned by its members. The opposite took place in Peel en Maas, a Dutch council which decided that everything that can be done by society itself must not be done by them, but by society itself. In some cases, the problem isn’t that public services don’t exist, but where a mutual understanding between different actors hasn’t been built and so unplanned conflict can arise…with the unintended consequence of communities creating new forms of democracy without institutions! The story of Occupato Teatro Valle embodies this, a public theatre occupied by artists and performers to save it. Instead of just protesting, it created “citizen shares” so people could invest in the theatre and have a vote from that share to have a say in the running of the theatre. Rather than deciding to devolve everything down to communities without any support or not listening to local citizens on how they want public services to be run, why not bring together public services, businesses & civil society to develop shared principles on how they want their local areas to be run democratically & collaboratively? What better way than to turn these principles into something tangible…like a local currency?
La démocratie est un verbe, pas un nom
Nous évoquons souvent la réforme des services publics et la réforme de la démocratie séparément, comme si l’on pouvait réformer un domaine sans que l’autre n’en soit affecté. Les organismes du service public sont tenus au devoir de “fournir des services”, autant qu’à celui d’”être démocratiques”. Il y a souvent une confusion à ce propos, qui consiste à associer le fait d’”être démocratique” à des structures spécifiques (comme les assemblée) ou des processus (les élections). D’autres considèrent les services publics comme un service ordinaire, et ce malgré leur fonctionnement. Dans le premier cas, on risque une séparation entre “ce que décident les citoyens” et “ce que proposent les citoyens” en fonctions distinctes. Dans le second on risque de voir apparaître des services qui seraient fournis sans être nécessairement démocratiques ou que l’on ne pourrait tenir responsables. La manifestation organisée par @hublaunchpad & @globalnet21, “Open House – Creating democratic organisations for the 21st century“, me rappelle comment, àAlternatives Européennes, nous sommes passés d’un réseau à une coopérative – alors que, la nuit tombée, nous essayions de nous figurer une autre forme d’organisation démocratique, et ce en s’aidant d’une analogie avec le développement d’une fleur. Je me suis alors demandé si les services publics locaux, les entreprises et la société civile seraient eux aussi capables d’imaginer de nouvelles formes d’organisation démocratique de manière aussi véhémente ! Puis je me souvenu des ateliers de @borderstocross que nous avions aidé à organiser – qui traitaient moins la question des organisations démocratiques que la façon dont les initiatives civiques s’organisent démocratiquement, dépassant les limites du service public, du marché et des communautés. Je classerais ces collaborations de façon suivante, d’après leur manière de créer une meilleure démocratie : Les communautés locales exigeant que le service public soit plus démocratique, comme People Talk, qui entame le dialogue avec les services publics à l’aide de jurys citoyens et Tenever,où seules les décisions sont validées lorsqu’elles font consensus à 100% – rendant chaque opinion importante. Les communautés locales exigeant que le monde des affaires soit plus démocratique,comme Save Greek Water, qui sensibilise la population aux dangers d’une privatisation de la gestion de l’eau (annoncée par le Premier Ministre) et élabore la résistance afin d’y mettre un terme ou SOM Energia, une coopérative d’énergie qui combat les oligopoles. Les communautés locales mettant en oeuvre des méthodes de travail plus démocratiques,comme Citizens Academy,qui crée une école de citoyenneté etTeatro Valle, qui soustrait le plus ancien théâtre de Rome à la privatisation et le transforme en un espace partagé, gouverné pour et par la population. Les services publics devenant plus démocratiques dans leurs interactions avec les communautés locales,comme Tuscan laboratory ou CittA@ttiva qui permettent à un groupe de jeunes fonctionnaires spécialisés dans la médiation sociale d’agir librement et de faire preuve de responsabilité dans leur action. Un chercheur desateliers a indiqué qu’il s’agit là de “devenir plus créatif, et moins bureaucratique”. Les services publics introduisant plus de démocratie dans leur rapport à l’entreprise, comme le partenariat entre la ville d’Overijssel et le cabinet 00:/, qui fait le lien entre les entreprises issues du tissu local et les investisseurs privés. Les entreprises introduisant plus de démocratie dans leurs interactions avec les communautés locales,comme le service de soins à domicile de Malmö dirigé par la communauté locale, qui cherche à renforcer les capacités des associations locales à développer leur propre “affaire”, dont le revenu serait ensuite réinvesti dans la communauté locale. Ce qui m’a frappé, c’est que les services publics et les entreprises essaient d’être plus démocratiques dans leur manière d’interagir avec les communautés locales, alors que ces dernières essaient d’être plus démocratiques dans leur fonctionnement propre. Que se passe-t-il lorsque services publics et entreprises sont si faibles qu’elles laissent un vide en terme de fourniture de service? Cela engendre-t-il un vide démocratique? Dans une zone rurale de Suède, le manque de service public & privé poussa les villageois à fonder leur propre système de soin à domicile, géré démocratiquement et appartenant à ses membres. A Peel en Maas aux Pays-Bas, les membres d’un Conseil d’Etat décrétèrent au contraire que tout ce qui peut être mis en place par la population elle-même ne doit pas l’être par eux (les représentants du gouvernement), mais bien par celle-ci. Dans certains cas, le problème n’est pas une absence de service public, mais un manque de compréhension mutuelle entre différents acteurs, ce qui engendre des conflits imprévus… dont la conséquence involontaire est de créer de nouvelles formes de démocratie locale, mais sans institution ! L’histoire d’Occupato Teatro Valle illustre bien cette idée: artistes et interprètes occupent un théâtre public pour le préserver. Plutôt que de se contenter de protester, ils créent des “parts citoyennes” permettant aux gens d’investir dans le théâtre et d’obtenir ainsi une voix, c’est-à-dire la possibilité de participer au fonctionnement du théâtre. Plutôt que de décider de tout déléguer aux communautés locales sans leur apporter aucun soutien ou sans écouter les citoyens et comment ils veulent que les services publics fonctionnent, pourquoi ne pas réunir services publics, entreprises et société civile afin de dégager des principes communs définissant le fonctionnement local, démocratique et participatif désiré? Quelle meilleure voie pour concrétiser ces principes que… la création d’une monnaie locale? Traduit par G. Sciuadone Cet article a été écrit dans le cadre du projet Transnational Democracy Network financé par l’agence Jeunesse en Action du British Council.
From a storytelling bus to a research caravan
Future My Love – The Venus Project Taxi from Sonja Henrici on Vimeo. When I was working at @demos, we proposed that hairdressers should be brought in to advise policy. It was a classic @demos proposal – a blend of human-centred research and savvy buzzword generator. The elder statesman of think tanks, @thersaorg also looked to another touchpoint many of us share – the taxi driver – to help them change their behaviours when it came to fuel consumption as a way of saving money. At our Transeuropa Festival, we put on a storytelling bus between Brixton Village and Brick Lane as part of our treasure hunt, so that people could see the environments change before their eyes as they discovered the hidden stories of the neighbourhoods we passed through. With our work on Transnational Dialogues, we held a research caravan to create conversations between artists from different cultures between Europe and China. Now, @futuremylove is showing a documentary where a taxi driver takes people around the city talking about why we might need a resource-based economy and what that might look like. Taxi drivers are all meant to have the Knowledge, so why not make it include social and economical issues? This year for our festival in London (12th-20th October), we’re organising an urban game by foot …and by bike which will be a different way of rediscovering the city! In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved! Now, @futuremylove is showing a documentary where a taxi driver takes people around the city talking about why we might need a resource-based economy and what that might look like. Taxi drivers are all meant to have the Knowledge, so why not make it include social and economical issues? This year for our festival in London (12th-20th October), we’re organising an urban game by foot …and by bike which will be a different way of rediscovering the city! In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
Festival preparatory meeting held in Sofia
Sofia, Bulgaria August 24 +25 After transforming the high-ceiling rooms of the empty conference venue and its surrounding, comfortably shaded streets, into a transnational headquarter, we, the members of European Alternatives, gathered. With barely a month and a half before the opening of Transeuropa Festival, concrete program elements were discussed, allowing each of us to get a sense of what different shapes our Festival would take, what topics it would explore, what unexpected and exciting partnerships had been born. Planning the Final Forum in Berlin made space for exchanges around the coming European and German elections and the context they create for the release of the Citizens Pact. Meanwhile, just a floor above, the no less transnational SHAREs artist crew held their third and last workshop. As a result, on Saturday night after dusk, the two groups could join in front of Sofia’s main theater and Defense ministry for a trial enactment of the transnational Radio-Ballet, due to open the Festival on October 5th. EA members trying out the Transnational Action in Sofia While we took over public space in a city foreign to most of us, voices and music in our ears led us to simultaneously enact, witness and reflect transnational citizenship. Our next meeting will be held in Paris on the 14th and 15th of September
Alternatives Européennes recrute pour le Festival Transeuropa !
Vous soutenez Alternatives Européennes et croyez en nos objectifs et en notre mission ? En ce moment, c’est l’occasion rêvée pour vous de rejoindre une expérience transnationale et de contribuer au succès du Festival TRANSEUROPA 2013. Le Festival TRANSEUROPA est un festival annuel d’art, de culture et de politique, organisé par une équipe de bénévoles (soutenue par Alternatives Européennes) à travers l’Europe, et qui se déroule cette année simultanément dans de nombreuses villes européennes. En 2013, le festival invite tous les participants à IMAGINER, EXIGER et CONSTRUIRE une autre Europe. Pour cette occasion, nous offrons trois postes : Assistant(e) de coordination : poste à plein temps, basé de préférence à Paris, de juillet à mi-novembre ; Chargé(e) de communication : poste à plein temps, basé à Paris, de juillet à mi-novembre ; Attaché(e) de presse : poste à temps partiel, en free-lance, basé en Europe, de septembre à mi-novembre. Si vous êtes intéressé(e), merci d’envoyer votre CV et lettre de motivation à l’adresse suivante : transeuropafestival@euroalter.com, avant le 8 juillet pour les postes de chargé(e) de communication et d’assistant(e) de coordination ou avant le 15 juillet pour le poste d’attaché(e) de presse. Voir ci-dessous pour plus d’informations sur les différents postes. Assisant(e) de coordination : Vous êtes chargé(e) de la coordination des activités des différents groupes locaux d’Alternatives Européennes et du programme du Festival TRANSEUROPA. Bonne capacité de gestion de projets exigée. Le festival aura lieu du 5 au 27 octobre. Pendant cette période, la charge de travail sera particulièrement importante. CDD de 5 mois, du 1° juillet au 30 novembre. Vous travaillez sous la direction du coordinateur du festival, en proche collaboration avec le chargé de communication et le chargé de communication à temps partiel basé à Rome, ainsi qu’avec un(e) attaché(e) de presse à temps partiel (pour la durée du festival). Poste à plein temps basé de préférence à Paris, éventuellement Rome. Rémunération : 7500 euros pour 5 mois (contrat freelance). Missions : Suivi régulier des groupes locaux Soutien des groupes locaux dans la préparation du programme du Festival Développement de partenariats avec des ONG et des associations artistiques et culturelles Suivi des partenariats existants et mise au point régulière auprès des sponsors et des partenaires Assistance du coordinateur du Festival, selon ses besoins Suivi des dépenses Vérification du bon fonctionnement logistique Suivi logistique pour le festival et les réunions de préparation (notamment à Paris en septembre 2013) Profil : Expérience dans un poste similaire Esprit d’initiative Bonne capacité d’adaptation Capacité de travailler avec des bénévoles Capacité de travailler avec des collaborateurs basés à l’étranger Flexibilité des horaires de travail Langues : anglais courant exigé ; une bonne maîtrise d’autres langues européennes (notamment le français, l’italien ou l’allemand) serait un atout De bonnes références en gestion de projet Chargé(e) de communication : Vous êtes chargé(e) de définir et d’implémenter la stratégie de communication du Festival TRANSEUROPA. Le festival aura lieu du 5 au 27 octobre. Poste basé de préférence à Paris, éventuellement Rome. Vous travaillez sous la direction du coordinateur du festival et en proche collaboration avec le chargé de communication à temps partiel basé à Rome, ainsi qu’avec un attaché de presse à temps partiel (pour la durée du festival). Poste à plein temps, de début juillet à fin novembre 2013. Rémunération : 7500 euros pour 5 mois (contrat freelance). Missions : Amélioration et implémentation de la stratégie de communication du festival Revue et suivi de la production des outils de communication du festival : programme général, programme pour chaque ville, catalogue Supervision du travail des graphistes chargés de la communication autour du festival Développement de partenariats entre médias au niveau européen autour du festival Accompagnement des groupes locaux dans chaque ville afin de s’assurer qu’ils reçoivent tous les supports de communication à temps pour le festival Recueil d’informations auprès des groupes bénévoles locaux dans les villes du festival Mise à jour du contenu des sites Internet du Festival des Alternatives Européennes et du Festival Transeuropa Assurer une communication régulière à-propos du festival Transeuropa sur les réseaux sociaux Mise à jour de la liste de contacts du Festival, avec CiviCRM (programme informatique open source) Organisation de campagnes de diffusion et d’information et suivi des groupes locaux pour l’organisation de telles campagnes dans leur ville Rédaction de résumés et de présentations visant différents publics, communication auprès de secteurs-clé Profil : Diplôme et/ou expérience en communication Une expérience sur un poste similaire (communication pour un événement culturel) serait la bienvenue Une expérience professionnelle en collaboration avec des bases situées à l’étranger serait un atout Langues : anglais et français courant exigés ; l’italien serait un grand atout, d’autres langues européennes seraient également un atout Attaché(e) de presse : Vous êtes chargé(e) des relations avec la presse pour le festival, au cours de la période entourant celui-ci. Vous travaillez en proche collaboration avec le coordinateur du festival et le chargé de communication. Votre rôle est de présenter le festival à la presse, notamment à Bruxelles, en France, en Italie et en Allemagne. Vous travaillez de préférence en freelance. Votre temps de travail est équivalent à deux jours par semaine, du 15 septembre au 15 novembre. Missions : Rédaction d’un dossier de presse Supervision du processus de traduction du dossier de presse par les différentes bases d’Alternatives Européennes Relations avec la presse : présentation du festival, prise de rendez-vous pour des interviews avec les personnalités présentes et les directeurs d’Alternatives Européennes Mise à jour d’une base de données de contacts dans la presse Relations avec les attachés de presse des groupes locaux d’Alternatives Européennes, auxquels vous fournirez les ressources dont ils auront besoin Collection de coupures de presse Rédaction d’un rapport sur la couverture médiatique du festival Profil : Bonne connaissance des médias et de la presse européenne Bonne connaissance de la presse Disponibilité téléphonique et bonne capacité de communication Langues : anglais, français et italien exigés. L’allemand serait un atout
European Alternatives recruits for Transeuropa Festival!
You support European Alternatives and believe in its objectives and mission? There are at the moment great opportunities to join our transnational experience and contribute to the success of TRANSEUROPA Festival 2013. TRANSEUROPA Festival is the annual festival of arts, culture and politics taking place simultaneously in many European Cities every year. It is organised by volunteers all around Europe, supported by European Alternatives Team. This’ year the Festival will invite all participants to IMAGINE, DEMAND and ENACT an Alternative Europe. We are offering three positions: Festival communication officer, foreseen as full time position, based in Paris, from July until Mid-November Festival coordination assistant, foreseen as full time position, based in Paris preferably , from July until Mid-November Festival Public Relations officer, part-time, free-lance, based in Europe, from September until Mid-November If you are interested, please send us your CV and a motivation letter at transeuropafestival@euroalter.com before the 8th of July for Festival Communication Officer and for Festival coordination assistant and before the 15th of July for Public Relations officer. More detailed description of all positions available below. Festival Coordination assistant You will be responsible for coordinating the EA Local Groups and coordinating the programme of TRANSEUROPA Festival. You will be required to have strong project management skills. The dates of the festival are 5th of October – 27th of October. A peak of workload is to be expected in this period. Employment is offered for 5 months from July 1st until November 30. You will be working under the lead of the festival coordinator. You will be working closely with the communication officer, the part time communication officer based in Rome and at the time of the festival with a part time public relations responsible. You would be based in Paris (preferably) or Rome. This is foreseen as a full time position. Remuneration offered is 7500 euros NET (after-tax) for 5 months (freelance contract). Tasks Ensure regular contact with the local groups Support Local Groups in their setting up of the Festival programme Building partnerships with NGOs, cultural and artistic actors Follow existing partnership and provide regular updates to funders and partners Assist the Festival coordinator in all tasks required Follow expenditures Ensure logistics are on track Follow up logistics for the festival and festival preparation meetings (notably in Paris in September 2013) Person: Similar experiences Initiative Flexibility Capacity to work with volunteers Capacity to work with people located in offices abroad Flexibility of working times Fluency in English, good knowledge of other European languages (notably French, Italian, German) would be an asset Project management track record Festival Communication officer You will be responsible of defining and implementing the communication strategy around TRANSEUROPA Festival The dates of the festival are 5th of October – 27th of October. You would be based in Paris (preferably) or Rome. You will be working under the lead of the festival coordinator. You will be working closely with the part time communication officer based in Rome and at the time of the festival with a part time public relations responsible. This is foreseen as a full time position, from July until End of November 2013. Remuneration offered is 7500 euros NET (after tax) for 5 months (freelance contract). Tasks Improve existing communication plan and implement the communication plan Overview and follow the production of the festival communication tools : programme, cities programme, catalogue Lead the work of the graphic designers about the festival communication Build Media partnerships at the European level for the festival Accompany the cities local group and ensure they receive all communication material on time for the festival Collect the relevant information from the festival cities local groups of volunteers Keep up to date the content on the Festival of European Alternatives website and of Transeuropa Festival website Ensure the regularity of communications on social media for Transeuropa Festival Keep up to date the contact list for the Festival using CiviCRM* Organise dissemination and information events and follow up local groups for the organisation of such events in their cities Write briefs and presentations for targeted audiences, communication to key targeted audiences Person: Qualification and/or experience in communication Similar experiences of cultural events communications welcome Experience in working with other offices abroad would be an asset Fluent in English and French. Italian would be a strong asset. Other European languages would also be an asset Public Relations You will be responsible for press relations about the festival around the festival period. You will be working closely with the festival coordinator and communication responsible. Your role will be to present the festival to the press, notably in Brussels and countries such as France, Italy and Germany. You will work preferably as a freelance for the equivalent of two days a week between September and November 15. Remuneration offered is calculated pro-rata based on agreed number of work-days with an indicative full-time equivalent of €1600 NET / month. Your role: Redaction of a press pack Overview the translation process of the press pack with EA offices Contacts the press to introduce the festival and arrange interviews with key invitees of the festival with the press and with European Alternatives Directors with the press Keep up to date a contacts database of the press Keep in touch with the press responsible in each European Alternatives Local Group and provide them with the relevant material to be in contact with the press Track and collect press clippings Write a report of press coverage You Good knowledge of European media and press Good knowledge of the press Availability on the phone and good communication skills Languages: English, French, Italian. German would be an asset
European Alernatives assume in vista del Transeuropa Festival!
Attualmente ci sono grandi opportunità per prendere parte ad un’esperienza transnazionale e per contribuire al successo di Transeuropa Festival 2013.
Sito Web: Work in progress!
European Alternatievs crede fortemente nell’importanza di avere una presenza web funazionale e constantemente aggiornata. Per questo motivo durate l’estate stiamo procedendo a una ristrutturazione completa dei nostri siti. Nel blog di aggiornamento qui sotto troverete informazioni sui vari aggiornamenti che mano mano verranno sviluppati. Ci scusiamo per qualunque disagio causato da questi mesi di lavori online! Aggiornamenti sul lavoro del sito web EA – Luglio 2013: Abbiamo completato il nuovo sito per il progetto “Citizens Pact”, date un’occhiata su www.citizenspact.eu – Agosot 2013: Abbiamo completato il nuovo sito per il Transeuropa Festival: trovate tutto su www.transeuropafestival.eu – Settembre 2013: Stiamo iniziando i lavori più importanti: il restyling completo di euroalter.com. Prevediamo di terminare i lavori entro fine ottobre.
EA website: work in progress!
European Alternatievs strongly believes in the importance of having a functioning and constantly updated online presence. This is why over the Summer we are proceeding to completely overhauling all aspects and functions of our website. On the Update Blog below you will find information on finalised updates as they go live. Please bear with us for any inconvenience you may experience in the meantime! Web Development Updates – July 2013: We have completed the new site for our “Citizens Pact”, have a look on www.citizenspact.eu – August 2013: We have completed the new website for our Transeuropa Festival: you can find everything www.transeuropafestival.eu – September 2013: We are beginning the most important part of our work, the complete restyle of euroalter.com We plan to have the process finished by end of October!
Do you want to work with us?
Job Opening: Online Campaign Manager Application Deadline: September 22nd, 2013 Start-date: October / November, depending on availability Location: Rome, Italy Remuneration: based on experience, indicative range €1,500 – €1,800 NET per month plus benefits Context European Alternatives is launching a European Citizens Initiative on Media Pluralism, leading an ambitious campaign until August 2014 to collect one million online and offline signatures to initiate legislation on progressive media reform in the European Union. The campaign will be organised around a central European coordination, based in Rome, and individual coalitions in countries participating in the campaign (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly more). It will consist of coordinated offline and online action across all participating countries. More information on the campaign website. Organisation European Alternatives is a fast-paced and innovative organisation active throughout Europe to promote European democracy and the emergence of transnational movements and campaigns. The organisation works from offices in Rome, Paris, and Berlin, and has local groups and volunteers in 14 countries. Job Description We are looking for an experienced Online Campaign Manager to lead and coordinate our campaigning over the next twelve months. The Online Manager will be responsible for devising a comprehensive online campaigning strategy to rally and organize relevant groups, organisations and e-activists. We have an ambitious target of 90,000 online signatures per month. Key Functions: – The Online campaign manager sets out and implements a pan-European online communication and campaigning strategy – S/he helps manage activism databases, craft and send emails, drive traffic to the web site, utilise online networking and new media resources, and develops a strong online community. – S/he will be in regular contact with national coalitions across Europe, informing and guiding their online campaigning. – S/he manages constituent lists, segments and targets communications, tracks and analyses response rates, evaluates impact, and works in a team approach to learn from and build off of each online initiative. – S/he implements outreach and engagement with online social networks, bloggers and other communities. – S/he manage communications with e-activists and coordinate electronic responses from e-activists and the public. Including writing email alerts, outreach materials and other web content and graphics for campaigns and general organizational outreach. The Online Campaign Manager will work in the central campaign office in Rome, together with the Campaign Spokespersons, the Campaign Coordinator, and a graphic team. Frequent travel around Europe is foreseen as an integral part of this job. Profile of candidate We are looking for a skilled professional able to quickly take up a role of responsibility and to guide the campaign to success. – You will have relevant professional experience, including management of other people. – You will be a creative user of online campaigning software, including mailing lists segmentation and management, organisation of databases and management of CRM systems (we currently use CiviCRM) – Familiarity with WordPress, Drupal, HTML, CSS, image editing and basic Web and graphic design strongly preferred; capacity for more advanced technical skills is a plus. – Experience with online and/or offline grassroots organising desired -You will have full English fluency, with additional languages a strong asset Employment Terms One-year contract under Italian law, with the possibility of being renewed after the first year Pay based on experience, indicative range €1,500 – €1,800 NET per month plus benefits. Depending on situation, benefits include bonus upon leaving (tfr), generous holiday allowance and flexibility, smartphone contract and lunch vouchers. How to apply European Alternatives is an equal opportunities employer and follows a transparent procedure for all its selections. Please send a CV and a Cover Letter outlining your relevant experience for this job and why you would excel at it to rsvp@euroalter.com by 11:59 pm on 22nd September, 2013. Please include “Online Campaign Manager” in the subject field and include all documents as either PDF or Word attachments. Short-listed candidates will be contacted by late September / early October for an interview and a simple test. While we strive to respond to all applications received, if you don’t hear back from us by mid-October you may assume your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.
Vuoi lavorare con noi?
Il lavoro prevede l’inglese come lingua principale. Il processo di selezione sarà quindi svolto in inglese. Job Opening: Online Campaign Manager Application Deadline: September 22nd, 2013 Start-date: October / November, depending on availability Location: Rome, Italy Remuneration: based on experience, indicative range €1,500 – €1,800 NET per month plus benefits Context European Alternatives is launching a European Citizens Initiative on Media Pluralism, leading an ambitious campaign until August 2014 to collect one million online and offline signatures to initiate legislation on progressive media reform in the European Union. The campaign will be organised around a central European coordination, based in Rome, and individual coalitions in countries participating in the campaign (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly more). It will consist of coordinated offline and online action across all participating countries. More information on the campaign website. Organisation European Alternatives is a fast-paced and innovative organisation active throughout Europe to promote European democracy and the emergence of transnational movements and campaigns. The organisation works from offices in Rome, Paris, and Berlin, and has local groups and volunteers in 14 countries. Job Description We are looking for an experienced Online Campaign Manager to lead and coordinate our campaigning over the next twelve months. The Online Manager will be responsible for devising and implementing a comprehensive online campaigning strategy to rally and organize relevant groups, organisations and e-activists. We have an ambitious target of 90,000 online signatures per month. Key Functions: – The Online campaign manager sets out and implements a pan-European online communication and campaigning strategy – S/he helps manage activism databases, craft and send emails, drive traffic to the web site, utilise online networking and new media resources, and develops a strong online community. – S/he will be in regular contact with national coalitions across Europe, informing and guiding their online campaigning. – S/he manages constituent lists, segments and targets communications, tracks and analyses response rates, evaluates impact, and works in a team approach to learn from and build off of each online initiative. – S/he implements outreach and engagement with online social networks, bloggers and other communities. – S/he manage communications with e-activists and coordinate electronic responses from e-activists and the public. Including writing email alerts, outreach materials and other web content and graphics for campaigns and general organizational outreach. The Online Campaign Manager will work in the central campaign office in Rome, together with the Campaign Spokespersons, the Campaign Coordinator, and a graphic team. Frequent travel around Europe is foreseen as an integral part of this job. Profile of candidate We are looking for a skilled professional able to quickly take up a role of responsibility and to guide the campaign to success. – You will have relevant professional experience, including management of other people. – You will be a creative user of online campaigning software, including mailing lists segmentation and management, organisation of databases and management of CRM systems (we currently use CiviCRM) – Familiarity with WordPress, Drupal, HTML, CSS, image editing and basic Web and graphic design strongly preferred; capacity for more advanced technical skills is a plus. – Experience with online and/or offline grassroots organising desired -You will have full English fluency, with additional languages a strong asset Employment Terms One-year contract under Italian law, with the possibility of being renewed after the first year Pay based on experience, indicative range €1,500 – €1,800 NET per month plus benefits. Depending on situation, benefits include bonus upon leaving (tfr), generous holiday allowance and flexibility, smartphone contract and lunch vouchers. How to apply European Alternatives is an equal opportunities employer and follows a transparent procedure for all its selections. Please send a CV and a Cover Letter outlining your relevant experience for this job and why you would excel at it to rsvp@euroalter.com by 11:59 pm on 22nd September, 2013. Please include “Online Campaign Manager” in the subject field and include all documents as either PDF or Word attachments. Short-listed candidates will be contacted by late September / early October for an interview and a simple test. While we strive to respond to all applications received, if you don’t hear back from us by mid-October you may assume your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.
European Alternatives at the first Falun Democracy Week
In the past few years the northern city of Falun, Capital of the Dalecarlia province in the very heart of Sweden, has developed its original infrastructure for active citizenship and participatory democracy to turn itself into a truly pilot “European Democracy City”. Everything started to become a concrete reality in 2011 when the Falun City Parliament decided to launch the “Democracy City” process. At that time, all the political parties in the “Fullmäktige” – the Local Parliament – Falun has begun the work of establishing a modern “infrastructure for citizen participation”. The purpose was to encourage, facilitate and support its citizens in becoming truly active members of a town in which “every vote counts” on election day and “every voice is heard” at all times. The idea behind this process was to develop ways to strengthen effective people power which matters today more than ever. Recent constitutional revisions in Sweden and the European Union have indeed reinforced citizens’ initiative rights at local, regional and transnational levels. Backing these developments, the Falun City Parliament decided in 2011 to launch the “Democracy City” process promoting active and engaged citizenship. A Road Map to Democracy for Europe On the way to becoming a “European Democracy City”, the elected all-party “Falun Democracy Commission” then outlined an initial roadmap featuring five main areas: Democracy Centres aiming at going beyond the existing established venues through a specific physical space hosted at the various public library venues of the City, offering places for communication, meeting, consultancy and formal decision making on election day; Democracy Navigators to guide interested citizens through the often technocratic and complex world of local politics and administration providing them non-profit professional consultancy service; Young Democracy involving a wide range of youth democracy programmes featuring Youth Democracy Ambassadors and local democracy teaching materials and curriculums for the municipal schools; Democracy Web featuring an online back-up platform for all possible expressions of active citizenship as well as a forum for dialogue between citizens and the institutions; Democracy Networks aiming at bringing together “Democracy Cities” all over the world. In the summer of 2012, Falun City deliberated on a “Democracy Action Plan 2015”, which indicated clear milestones ahead. Within this framework, European Alternatives has been invited to participate in the “Democracy Week 2013” to be held in Falun between September 25 and 29 as part of the European Union’s Year of Citizens and the Council of Europe’s Local Democracy Week. The Upcoming Falun Democracy Week Starting on Wednesday 25 September with a Democracy Fair and a Public Meeting on the role of public libraries in democracies, the initiative itself will run with a wide range of workshops, debates, cultural events, story-telling sessions and a democracy market until a concluding session with music and dances from Falun, Dalecarlia, Sweden, other European countries as well, on Sunday, September 29th. Day by day, various levels of democracy will be addressed: from the local, to the regional, national, transnational and global. This unique gathering of European and global citizens will discuss the many challenges and opportunities of both Sweden and European democracies and future prospects for the direct participation of citizens in the agenda-setting and decision-making processes. Our Campaign and Participation Manager, Anna Lodeserto, will take part with Gerald Häfner (Member of the European Parliament), Elisa Bruno (European Citizen Action Service), Daniel Schily (Democracy International) and Tamara Ehs (University of Salzburg) in the “Seminar on Transnational Democracy in Europe and how the new right of Citizens’ Initiative may influence the forthcoming elections to the European Parliament” which will be held on Saturday 28th during the “Europe Day on Transnational Democracy”. A Special Passport to Active Citizenship A special “Democracy Passport – The Passport to Active Citizenship” has also been expressly designed and published for this occasion: a very modern guide offering inspiration to active citizenship and participative democracy at local, regional, national, transnational and global level. It is the world’s first democracy passport originally conceived as an invitation to other cities, provinces and countries to customize this concept for their own needs. You are welcome to download your own copy – or get a hard copy at Falun Public Library or by contacting the EA Paris- or Rome-based offices. Still one of Sweden’s smaller cities, today Falun is developing a new approach to citizen participation with some important innovation lessons for every city that can be learned in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Stay tuned! Find out more Watch the latest videos from Falun: “Democracy Passport – the Movie” and the “Welcome Address by Maroš Šef?ovi?” Like the Falun Democracy Week Page on Facebook to interact with the growing Falun Democracy Week Community and follow your @democracypass on Twitter Follow the streaming video coverage of many events broadcasted live on the Internet here View the whole programme online here
Their austerity, our democracy
Every worker has the right to working conditions which respect his or her health, safety and dignity. Every worker has the right to limitation of maximum working hours, to daily and weekly rest periods and to an annual period of paid leave. Article 31 of the Charter of Fundamental rights Young people admitted to work must have working conditions appropriate to their age and be protected against economic exploitation and any work likely to harm their safety, health or physical, mental, moral or social development or to interfere with their education. Article 32 of the Charter of Fundamental rights Everywhere we work in Europe we always hear the same answers when we ask about the biggest fear for people’s present and future: citizens and especially young people are worried about finding work, and when they have one, about losing it. They are afraid of being the first generation in at least half a century in Europe to be worse-off than their parents. This is partly due to a hyper-flexible labour market that, while depriving workers of fundamental social rights, puts them in a perennial state of precarious living conditions, known across the continent as precarity and amplified by the crisis since 2007. Crises are the best opportunities to bring about change. Many voices have risen against austerity measures as unique response to the crisis, from the streets, the academia… but they don’t seem to have reached institutions (yet?). With the Citizens Manifesto, we aim at gathering demands for a better, fairer and less discriminatory Europe, collecting proposals on issues of immediate concern to citizens and using the strategic opportunity offered to us by the upcoming elections of the European Parliament next May. The research workshop on welfare in Berlin will focus on guaranteeing fundamental social rights for all in the EU and on opposing the precedence of economic freedoms over them. On the basis of consultation and web proposals, we will discuss issues related to the right to decent living conditions, including social rights, education, housing, pensions, as well as the idea of basic income across the EU, which, as suggested by the European Parliament, could bring increasing security and welfare in the continent. Other research workshops will take place in September on areas closely interlinked with welfare, such as employment, finance, migration or women’s rights. In the meantime, have a look at the bibliography we’ve shared with the participants. If you want to share links of policies and publications on the area of welfare that you think we should look at in preparation of the workshop, add them in the comments below! General: Rapid: EU Press releases database Charter of Fundamental Rights European Social Charter(Council of Europe) European Commission: Aging and welfare state policies DG Employment, social affairs and inclusion Employment and social rights Youth employment Youth Opportunities Initiatives Quality Framework for Traineeships Advice on traineeships and apprenticeships schemes Europe 2020 Strategy Working together for Europe’s young people EU measures to tackle youth unemployment European Parliament: Employment and social affairs committee Special Committee on the Financial, Social and Economic Crisis European Council: Conclusions(notably on youth unemployment) European Economic and Social Committee: Home Active ageing and inter-generational solidarity – EESC position paper Trade unions European legislation search engine European Trade Union Institute European Trade Union Confederation ETUC Athens’ Manifesto ETUC: Social Rights in Europe The Transnational Trade Union Rights Experts Network (TTUR) Manifesto Academics / NGOs Manifesto of the appalled economists Solidar(social justice in Europe and worldwide): Recommendations on the European Social Fund, From welfare to empowerment and participation Watson Philippa, 2009, EU social and employment law, Policy and Practice in an Enlarged Europe, Oxford University Press In the meantime, click on one of the tabs to get involved!
The Citizens Manifesto, A Citizen Answer To The EU Crisis
On December 3rd, European Alternatives, a European transnational organisation promoting alternatives to the current European construction process launches its Citizen Manifesto. Interview with Alessandro Valera, Head of Policy and Participation at European Alternatives. Article by Maxence Salendre Article originally published on Le Journal International Following three years of citizens consultations, debates and panels, they propose a citizen answer to the crisis advocating for a new legal and political agenda which covers various topics from financial reform, work and welfare to media pluralism, migration and detention. Le Journal International : A citizens’ manifesto. What for exactly? Alessandro Valera : The EU has become a quasi-state. It takes care of an increasing number of decisions which affect our lives. Because the European Union is becoming a state, at European Alternatives we believe that its inhabitants need to become active citizens. There is no real democracy without active citizenship. It is of the responsibility of all to check what is done at the institutional level and this is what the Manifesto does. JI: In what way is the Manifesto different from the other participating tools available in a democracy (elections, petitions…)? A.V.: At the moment, the only real tool we possess is the right to vote for the European parliament every five years. But the European parliament is one of the only parliaments in the world which does not have power to initiate legislation. It is more a consultative body. This in a way explains why turnout has been decreasing since we started voting in the European elections in 1979. It illustrates both the lack of popular interest on European issues and the lack of trust. People don’t think their vote can help changing things at European level. Before 2009, people had difficulties understanding who was responsible for what in the EU. Now (especially in the Eurozone), citizens start to see what the EU is responsible for. They start seeing that there are problems which must be solved by the EU only. Raising this awareness is our objective. With the Manifesto we wanted to take a chance to make these elections meaningful. At the moment, European elections concentrate popular anger toward national issues on the EU. We often hear the media talking about the democratic deficit. This means that Members of the European parliament (MEPs) need to be elected by Europeans based on their answer to European issues not national problems. For these reasons we try to breach this gap and in three years we tried to involve citizens to make them express their views and priorities. We want to silence criticisms about the non-involvement of citizens about the EU. There is a timid but growing interest in EU issues and we try to collect them in this document. JI: Is such a participative approach a way to bring citizens back into the field of decision-making? How could you secure this commitment and involvement in the future? Are you still in contact with some of the people who participated in the Manifesto? A.V.: The Manifesto has a four pages long “thank you” list. This shows the number of people who are involved. The Transeuropa network was created out of these panels. When people realised the importance of what we were doing, some decided to join us and created local European Alternatives group in their own city. But we do not want only politically active people to join us. We want to be inclusive and before the European parliament elections we will organise caravans that will go through the EU, stop in cities, present the manifesto, organise public hearings on it. We will take people’s input. We will listen to people who do not see that their issues are to be solved by EU legislation. We had such an example with Italian tomato-farmers. There was a protest in southern Italy about “made in Italy” tomatoes which were collected in China and then sent to Italy to be packaged there. Farmers tried to protest but it didn’t go anywhere. This is exactly the type of problems on which the EU can have an effect (international trade, tariffs, quality of food products). But the farmers were protesting locally and were not addressing the right decision-maker. We told them that they should be careful at the coming European elections. These only happen once every five years and they might want to look at their candidates’ programmes to see what they propose on the topics that are dear to you. JI: When turnout is so low, what do you do to get people interested in EU issues? A.V.: We do not try to take a picture of EU appreciation. There are better tools for that (Euro barometer, European parliament elections). Instead we are trying to gather different people who are politically active at local and national levels and make them see that their struggles are connected to wider and bigger issues. We do not think that leaving the EU or sending back migrants is the solution to our problems. We talked to many people from different communities, we tried to be as inclusive as possible and we tried to connect their opinions. Let us take the topic of “work” for instance. We would set up a panel; invite everyone (i.e. using local newspaper and social media to advertise the event). People were asked to participate according to the World Café method. With a trained moderator they discussed their main problem about the topic with other participants. For the topic of “work”, one table would speak about youth unemployment, maternity or paternity leave, contracts…. And we would try to find issues. We collected the opinions of many citizens (EU passport holders and migrants – everyone interested in the EU). People were invited to discuss these ideas and turn them into meaningful policy proposals. JI: Talking about the proposals. Among the topics covered are social and economic rights, fiscal and economic policy i.e. very technical issues. How did you manage to explain these technical issues to everyday citizens who might not possess all the necessary…
Manifeste Citoyen : La Réponse Citoyenne À La Crise De L’UE
e 3 décembre, Alternatives Européennes, organisation européenne transnationale qui met en avant des alternatives à la construction européenne telle qu’elle s’organise actuellement, lance son Manifeste citoyen. Entretien avec Alessandro Valera, responsable du département Politique et Participation à Alternatives Européennes. Article par Maxence Salendre, Correspondant À Dublin, Irlande Article originalement publié sur Le Journal International Après trois ans de consultations citoyennes, débats et tables rondes, ils proposent une réponse citoyenne à la crise avec un nouvel agenda légal et politique. Cet agenda se concentre sur des sujets tels que la réforme financière, le droit du travail, l’État providence, le pluralisme des médias, l’immigration et les conditions de détention. Le Journal International : Un manifeste citoyen. À cela quoi correspond-il ? Alessandro Valera : L’Union européenne est presque devenue un État. L’UE est responsable de de plus en plus de domaines qui nous touchent au quotidien. C’est parce que l’Union européenne devient un État que nous pensons que les Européens doivent devenir des citoyens. Il n’y a pas de démocratie réelle sans citoyenneté active. C’est de la responsabilité de chacun de s’assurer de ce qui se fait au niveau institutionnel. Et c’est exactement le but du Manifeste. JI : En quoi le manifeste est-il différent des autres outils de participation disponibles dans toute démocratie (élections, pétitions…) ? A.V. : Actuellement, le seul véritable outil que nous possédions est le droit de vote aux élections européennes. Et ce droit n’est utilisable que tous les cinq ans. Le Parlement européen est l’un des seuls Parlements au monde qui ne peut initier de législation. Il agit davantage comme un organe consultatif. Ceci explique pourquoi la participation n’a cessé de décliner depuis les premières élections en 1979. C’est une illustration du manque d’intérêt et du manque de confiance des Européens envers les problèmes de l’Europe. Les gens n’arrivent pas à s’imaginer que leur vote puisse changer quelque chose en Europe. Avant 2009, les gens ne savaient pas vraiment de quoi se chargeait l’Europe. Cette situation commence doucement à changer (surtout dans la zone euro) et les citoyens commencent à comprendre de quels domaines l’UE est en charge. Ils commencent à comprendre que certains problèmes ne peuvent être résolus que par l’UE. Notre objectif est d’aider le maximum de gens à le comprendre.Avec le Manifeste, nous souhaitions rendre leur sens à ces élections. Pour le moment les élections européennes concentrent envers elles toute la colère populaire que les gens ont contre leur propre gouvernement. On entend souvent parler de déficit démocratique. Cela signifie que les députés européens doivent être élus par les citoyens européens pour les solutions qu’ils apportent aux problèmes européens et non aux problèmes nationaux. Nous essayons donc de combler ce déficit en impliquant les citoyens et en leur permettant d’exprimer leurs opinions et leurs priorités. Nous souhaitons réduire au silence les critiques qui dénoncent le manque d’implication des citoyens dans le processus démocratique européen. On sent toutefois poindre un certain intérêt (quoique timide) autour des problématiques européennes. Nous essayons donc de les réunir dans le Manifeste. JI : Cette approche est-elle une manière d’impliquer les citoyens dans le processus de décision ? Comment pensez-vous pérenniser cet intérêt et cette implication dans le futur ? Êtes-vous toujours en contact avec certains des participants du Manifeste ? A.V. : Le Manifeste comprend une liste de remerciements de quatre pages. Cette liste illustre le succès populaire du Manifeste. Le réseau Transeurope a été créé à la suite de ces tables rondes. Lorsque les gens ont réalisé l’importance de ce que nous avions entrepris, certains d’entre eux ont décidé de nous rejoindre et de créer des groupes locaux d’Alternatives européennes dans leurs propres villes. Nous ne souhaitons toutefois pas que le mouvement soit peuplé uniquement de membres politiquement actifs. Nous souhaitons inclure le maximum de citoyens et nous organiserons des caravanes à la suite du lancement du Manifeste. Ces caravanes traverseront l’Europe et s’arrêteront dans certaines villes afin de présenter le Manifeste. Nous écouterons évidemment avec attention les commentaires qui pourront nous être adressés. Enfin nous écouterons et conseillerons les citoyens qui pensent que leurs problèmes ne relèvent pas de l’UE. Pour remettre ceci en perspective je peux vous citer un exemple. Nous avons assisté à une manifestation dans le sud de l’Italie contre la production chinoise de tomates estampillées « produites en Italie ». Les tomates étaient en fait ramassées en Chine avant d’être expédiées en Italie pour être emballées. Les agriculteurs ont essayé de manifester mais leur action n’a donné aucun résultat. C’est l’exemple type d’une situation dans laquelle l’UE a un impact (commerce international, taxes, qualité des produits alimentaires). Mais les agriculteurs manifestaient au niveau local et ne s’adressaient pas aux bonnes instances. Nous leur avons dit qu’ils devraient davantage s’intéresser aux élections européennes à venir. Elles ne sont organisées qu’une fois tous les cinq ans et certains candidats peuvent proposer des idées qui leur conviennent. JI. Comment intéressez-vous les gens à propos de sujets européens alors que la participation est si basse ? A.V. : Notre objectif n’est pas de prendre une photo de l’appréciation populaire envers l’UE. Il existe de meilleurs outils pour ça (baromètre européen, élections européennes). Nous essayons au contraire de rassembler des gens politiquement actifs aux niveaux locaux et nationaux et de leur faire comprendre que leurs problèmes sont liés aux problèmes actuels de l’UE. Nous ne pensons pas que quitter l’UE ou renvoyer les immigrants constituent la solution. Nous avons échangé avec de nombreuses personnes provenant de différentes communautés et avons essayé d’inclure un maximum de gens tout en rassemblant leurs opinions. Prenons le sujet du « travail » en exemple. Nous avons organisé des tables rondes et invité toutes les personnes intéressées en utilisant les médias locaux et les médias sociaux. Les gens ont participé selon la méthode du world café. Un modérateur se trouvait à chaque table pour discuter de chaque sujet avec les participants. Pour le sujet du « travail », les tables rondes pouvaient inclure des discussions sur le chômage, le congé maternité ou paternité, les contrats de travail… Nous avons…
Want to get a free personalised infographic?
Take 10 minutes and fill in our brief questionnaire and you’ll receive a free Making a Living infographic personalised just for you that you can use for your resume! If 10 people or more from your city fill it in, your local group will get an infographic especially for your city, that you can share with other young people and organisations in your city! Sharing stories is at the heart of understanding people – what they perceive and what they experience. You can get people fired up about stories and you can use storytelling to create new meaning that resonates with people, even challenging the way they see the world. We’re exploring how young people cope with making a living. We know that across Europe more than one in five young people are out of work, that almost half of us are in precarious work situations. What about the stories behind the statistics? How do you cope with the crisis? How do you try and make a living? Tell us! What the statistics rarely tell us, is how people cope with these situations. People cope in different ways – emotionally & practically with situations they go through in life. Some people become overwhelmed or blame themselves while others look for opportunities to improve. So we exploring how young people cope emotionally. How do you cope with the crisis? How do you try and make a living? Tell us! What if you’ve already completed the survey? Check out our Design Methods Guide where you can see other exciting ways to take part in the project.
Envie d’un document infographique personnalisé et gratuit ?
Prenez 10 minutes pour remplir notre bref questionnaire et recevez un document infographique „Gagner sa vie“ personnalisé et gratuit qui vous pourrez inclure dans votre CV ! Si au moins 10 personnes issues de votre ville y auront répondu, votre groupe local recevra un document infographique représentant votre ville, vous pourrez ensuite le partager avec d’autres jeunes et d’autres organisations dans votre ville ! C’est en partagent ses expériences que l’on peut comprendre l’autre, ce qu’il ressent et les histoires qu’il a vécues. Grâce aux histoires, vous pouvez éveiller les gens, vous pouvez en racontant des histoires créer un sens nouveau qui trouve de l’écho chez d’autres personnes, qui peut même remettre en cause leur vision du monde. Nous étudions les différentes méthodes employées par les jeunes pour gagner leur vie. Comment faites-vous face à la crise ? Comment parvenez-vous à gagner votre vie ? Dites-le nous ! Ce que les statistiques nous disent rarement, c’est la manière dont les gens font face à ces situations, auxquelles ils sont confrontés de différentes manières sur le plan pratique et émotionnel. Certaines personnes sont accablées ou se sentent fautifs, tandis que d’autres sont à la recherche d’opportunités afin d’améliorer leur situation. Ainsi, nous essayons de comprendre comment les jeunes font face sur le plan émotionnel. Que faire si vous avez déjà répondu à l’étude? Jetez un coup d’œil au Guide de méthodes de conception où vous pourrez découvrir les différentes façons de participer au projet.
Transeuropa Festival 2013 Teaser
Shale gas, global capital, global resistance
Article by Diana IftodiShale gas is a complex issue which is often reduced to just another fight between leftist environmentalists and rightist pragmatic policies. However this distracts the public’s attention from real facts. Most importantly, it is an issue that has become more salient in the aftermath of protests “against the system” worldwide. Such protests have shed light on structural issues we’re facing, or, to paraphrase an official featured in Gasland 2, educated, western societies find themselves in situations similar to former colonies or current third world countries. It seems that capital doesn’t discriminate anymore. On the upside, this surge of protests means that more mature civil societies are readier than ever to take on this problem and assume the power and responsibility to prevent the impact hydraulic fracturing will have on the environment and the livelihood of the communities. Hydraulic fracturing is the method used to release shale gas from impermeable layers of rocks. In short, the method is the last phase of a process which implies installing a derrick, pushing a pipe covered with cement at a depth of more than 2 km and then using very high pressure to push a fracturing fluid consisting of water, sand and toxic chemicals into the ground to crack the rock right open and release the gas. The innovation that allows gas companies to squeeze this gas out of the ground is horizontal drilling, which can spread to as much as 4 km. You’ll hear the gas industry or national governments claim that the technology has been used for the last 60 years, but the truth is that it has only been used since a decade ago. The procedure is very hard to control and even if kept under control it invariably implies that around 80% of the fluid will remain in the ground and eventually migrate to the surface. The Environmental Protection Agency in the USA has quite blatantly avoided supplying the public with a clear-cut study on the method but the experiences of thousands of Americans speaks clearly in documentaries such as Gasland 1 and 2. People have reported methane gas in their water, benzene and other volatile substances in the water and air, water scarcity, earthquakes and strange illnesses appearing in the community. Insurance companies don’t ensure houses in areas around shale gas exploitation and hundreds of towns and communities have voted to ban the method on their territory while others have simply left town. Now, the oil companies want to export this method of exploitation to Europe. Recent reportsfrom the Friends of the Earth Europe show that how shale gas not only is it not a miracle for the energy sector as it could barely represent 2-3% of the European gas demand in 2030, but it will cost Europe much more to develop at the detriment of renewables. Romania supposedly has the third largest shale gas deposit in Europe. If in the USA, Congress exempted gas companies practicing hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act and other environmental laws, in Romania, there isn’t even a need for this as the Environmental Protection Agency has already declared itself in favour of the exploitation. No more use for lobbyists either. The issue of shale gas first arrived in Romania not when the oil companies did but only after licenses were granted, along with warnings received from shale activists in Bulgaria. By that time they had already taken to the streets in great numbers, which prevented a shale gas industry developing. Shale gas exploitation is not a local problem as it can hardly be contained and handled. Even if this wasn’t the case, the perspective is clearly a worldwide exploitation, as the map above shows, and so, the resistance will be just the same. No hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has taken place thus far in Romania. The American company Chevron has a license to explore-develop-exploit almost 900.000 hectares in the counties of Vaslui and Constanta. Several other companies have bid and won licenses for other perimeters in the western part of the country. Recently, the state-owned company Romgaz has also declared its interest in investing in shale gas in the centre of the country, in Transylvania. In fact, in the past year, the company Prospectiuni S.A. has contracted many exploration works throughout the country. If it weren’t for the tens of thousands people who have taken to the streets in the entire country, denounced the government’s lack of transparency and try to raise awareness on the risks implied by the exploitation, no one would think hydraulic fracturing is anything but conventional drilling. Resistance in Romania has articulated along different lines. Some react to corruption, others to the theft of resources and others to the impact in the environment. There are now four legislative projects in Parliament proposing to ban the method but Prime Minister Victor Ponta and president Traian Basescu have both declared themselves in favour of the exploitation and have even tried to promote shale gas as a strategic resource. USA officials have also been very assertive in the matter, as has an adviser to the Prime Minister, Wesley Clarck, a former lobbyist and “player” in the oil industry. After a long series of nationwide protests beginning with March 2012 when the former Prime Minister, followed by thousands of people protesting and marching in Barlad, Vaslui county, the authorities saw that there is no way around public debate. Unfortunately, the debate has yet to take place. The National Agency for Mineral Resources has resumed to create a website which does not debate the issue but makes a purpose out of biasedly busting all the risks around the method. It is strange to see the Romanian agency dare say more than EPA itself to defend the method (The Environmental Protection Agency in the USA). Such actions are reason alone to distrust public authorities. Another example would be how the national Environmental Protection Agency granted the environmental agreement to Chevron for three perimeters in Vaslui county. Not only did the institution not consider the observations supplied…
LEurope au-delà de lEurope : trois jours didées, de réflexions et de stratégies futures.
Le 24 et 25 mai 2013, la ville de Venise a été le théâtre du forum transnational « l’Europe au-delà de l’Europe », un événement qui est né de la collaboration entre Alternatives Européennes et Global Project. L’initiative avait pour but de faire émerger des propositions et des idées pour faire face à l’actuelle crise économique et remodeler l’Europe à la lumière d’un changement politique et social : une Europe qui ne soit pas construite et imposée par le haut, mais qui soit respectueuse des droits de ses citoyens, tournée à la fois vers l’intégration économique et vers le respect de la démocratie et du processus de reconstitution par le bas. Le Forum était articulé en trois sessions, chacune d’entre elles caractérisée par un thème précis et un lieu spécifique. Le 24 mai, au sein de l’Institut Universitaire d’Architecture de Venise (IUAV), il a été question d’aborder d’alternatives possibles à l’austérité, à la crise financière et à la gouvernance de la Troïka. Le deuxième débat a eu lieu le 25 mai dans l’élégante Sala Conisliare de la Mairie de Venise. La clé de voûte de cette rencontre concernait plutôt la crise des institutions européennes et le futur de la démocratie dans le contexte actuel, issu d’une intégration politique et économique conduites exclusivement par le haut. La troisième et dernière rencontre s’est déroulée dans les Magasins du Sale « S.a.L.E. docks », où les mouvements sociaux et constituants pour la création d’une Europe nouvelle ont représenté le cœur du débat et l’occasion pour une réflexion finale sur les stratégies futures nécessaires pour activer le changement politique et social, qui est si indispensable pour sortir de la crise. Dans le détail : Première session – Crise économico-financière, politiques d'austérité et gouvernance de la Troïka : quelles alternatives La première session, qui a analysé la gestion européenne dominante de la crise économique et sociale, a mis au point le concept de « révolution par le haut », tout en rendant manifestes les changements structurels que la nouvelle gouvernance européenne est en train d’apporter aux dynamiques politiques et économiques continentales et au concept-même de démocratie européenne. A partir de cela, le débat s’est concentré d’une part sur les alternatives qu’il est possible de créer pour arriver à une convergence transnationale et d’autre part sur le sens et la perspective stratégique à donner aux demandes récentes de « refonder l’Europe par le bas ». Introduction de Vilma Mazza (Globalproject) et Lorenzo Marsili (Alternative Europee). Argiris Panagopoulos – journaliste de Avgi, Epohi, Kokkino, Grèce. Pablo Elorduy– Diagonal Espagne. Iulia Popovici– CriticAtac Roumanie. Claudio Gnesutta– Economiste, Université La Sapienza, Rome, Italie. Francesco Raparelli – LUM et Dinamopress, Rome, Italie. Leo Specht – Université de Turin (Italie) et de Vienne, Autriche. Srecko Horvat – Subversive Festival, Croatie. Marco Bascetta– Il Manifesto, Italie. Raffaella Bolini – Arci Altersummit, Italie. Giuseppe Caccia – Globalproject, Italie. >>>> Continuer pour les vidéos de la deuxième session
Europe beyond Europe: three days of ideas, reflections and future strategies
Translation by Debora Rinaldi On the 24th and 25th of May 2013, the city of Venice was the venue of the transnational forum “Europe beyond Europe ” an event born out of a collaboration between European Alternatives and the Global Project. The aim of this initiative was to come up with propositions and ideas to face the current economic crisis and reshape Europe in the light of political and social changes: a Europe which is not constructed around a table by political powers but is aware of its citizens’ rights, focused on economic integration but nevertheless respectful of democracy and of the grassroots constituent process. The Forum was structured in three sessions, each one characterised by a specific topic and location. On May the 24th at the Venice University Institute of Architecture (IUAV) discussions focused on possible alternatives to austerity measures, the financial crisis and the Troika governance. The second debate took place on May the 25th at the elegant Municipal Town Hall of Venice. The assembly’s hot topic was the crisis of European institutions and the future of democracy within the current context of political and economic integration conducted from above. The third and final debate took place in the Warehouse of the S.a.L.E. docks, where social movements and constituents for the creation of a new Europe were the focus of debates and an opportunity for final reflections on the future strategies necessary for the realisation of the political and social shift indispensable for a solution to the current crisis. In detail: Session 1- economic and financial crisis, austerity measures and Troika governance: possible alternatives. The first session by analising Europe’s dominant strategies in dealing with the economic and social crisis focused on the concept of a ‘revolution from above ‘ revealing the structural changes that the new European governance is applying to the continental political and economic dinamics and to the concept of European democracy itself. On these premises the focus of analysis were: viable alternative proposals for transnational convergence; a strategic direction and perspective to shape recent requests to ‘rebuild Europe from the bottom upwards’. Introduction by Wilma Mazza Globalproject and Lorenzo Marsili European Alternatives. Argiris Panagopoulos – reporter for Avgi, Epohi, Kokkino Grecia Pablo Elorduy – Diagonal Spagnai Iulia Popovici – CriticAtac, Romania Claudio Gnesutta – Economist, University of La Sapienza, Rome Italiy Francesco Raparelli – LUM and Dinamopress, Rome, Italy Leo Specht -Juror and lecturer Universities of Turin and Vienna, Austria Srecko Horvat – Subversive Festival, Croatia Marco Bascetta – Il Manifesto, Italy Raffaella Bolini – Arci Altersummit, Italy Giuseppe Caccia – Globalproject, Italy Session 2- crisis of community institutions, economic and social integration from above: the future of democracy in Europe. In the second session, opened by Ugo Mattei, through interventions it was possible to investigate, on the one hand, the crisis and transformation of European political institutions and, on the other, to reflect on the relationship between political forces and social movements. Ugo Mattei- jurist at the University of Turin, Italy. Theano Fotiou – Member of Parliament from Syriza, Grecia Niccolò Rinaldi – Member of European Parliament, ALDE group Roberto Musacchio – Altramente Francesco Martone – Internazional director SEL Gianfranco Bettin – Councillor of the Municipality of Venice, Italy. Omeya Seddik, Tunisia Lorenzo Marsili – European Alternatives At the conclusion of the first round of interventions there have been contributions and answers. Leo Specht Answers by Theano Fotiou, Francesco Martone and Niccolò Rinaldi. Video forum of Venice- 3/3 Session 3- social conflicts and constituent movements for the possibility of a new Europe The confrontation between movements involved in social debate was rich and complex. A discussion which, starting from the outcome of the many protests that marked the opposition to austerity measures in the last two years, faced up to the upcoming deadlines, starting with Blockypy and Altersummit, and most importantly posed the question of how to devise a constituent process from the bottom up capable of connecting the struggles within a new political geography that looks towards the euro-mediterranean. Introductory intervention by Marco Baravalle – Sale Docks, Coalizione italiana berso BlockupyFrankfu’rt 2013, Venezia, Italia Giamarco De Pieri – Tpo Bologna, Coalizione italiana berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Bologna Italy Alessandro Valera – European Alternatives, Italy Omeya Seddik – Tunisia Luca Tornatore – CDC Trieste, Coalizione italiana berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Italiai Roberto Morea- Transform! Italy– Altersummit Karin Zennig – Blockupy Frankfurt, Germany Eduardo Rubino and Miguel Ardanuy – Juventud sin Futuro, Spain Giulia Macao- Milan, Italy Daniel Seco – 15M Reforma Electoral, Barcelona, Spain Tommaso Cacciari – Morion laboratory in Venice, Coalizione italiana berso Blockupy Frankfurt 2013, Italia Lorenzo Zamponi – Voglio Restare, Italy Shandy Vela – Dinamo Press, Rome, Italy Christos Giovanopoulos – Solidarity for All /Dikaioma, Greece Elena Dalibot – European Alternatives, France Ilias Chronopoulos – Secretary of youth from Syriza, Greece Final conclusions Berardo Teatro Valle – Rome, Italy
L’Europe au-delà de l’Europe : trois jours d’idées, de réflexions et de stratégies futures.
Le 24 et 25 mai 2013, la ville de Venise a été le théâtre du forum transnational « l’Europe au-delà de l’Europe », un événement qui est né de la collaboration entre Alternatives Européennes et Global Project. L’initiative avait pour but de faire émerger des propositions et des idées pour faire face à l’actuelle crise économique et remodeler l’Europe à la lumière d’un changement politique et social : une Europe qui ne soit pas construite et imposée par le haut, mais qui soit respectueuse des droits de ses citoyens, tournée à la fois vers l’intégration économique et vers le respect de la démocratie et du processus de reconstitution par le bas.Le Forum était articulé en trois sessions, chacune d’entre elles caractérisée par un thème précis et un lieu spécifique. Le 24 mai, au sein de l’Institut Universitaire d’Architecture de Venise (IUAV), il a été question d’aborder d’alternatives possibles à l’austérité, à la crise financière et à la gouvernance de la Troïka. Le deuxième débat a eu lieu le 25 mai dans l’élégante Sala Conisliare de la Mairie de Venise. La clé de voûte de cette rencontre concernait plutôt la crise des institutions européennes et le futur de la démocratie dans le contexte actuel, issu d’une intégration politique et économique conduites exclusivement par le haut. La troisième et dernière rencontre s’est déroulée dans les Magasins du Sale « S.a.L.E. docks », où les mouvements sociaux et constituants pour la création d’une Europe nouvelle ont représenté le cœur du débat et l’occasion pour une réflexion finale sur les stratégies futures nécessaires pour activer le changement politique et social, qui est si indispensable pour sortir de la crise. Dans le détail : Première session – Crise économico-financière, politiques d’austérité et gouvernance de la Troïka : quelles alternatives La première session, qui a analysé la gestion européenne dominante de la crise économique et sociale, a mis au point le concept de « révolution par le haut », tout en rendant manifestes les changements structurels que la nouvelle gouvernance européenne est en train d’apporter aux dynamiques politiques et économiques continentales et au concept-même de démocratie européenne. A partir de cela, le débat s’est concentré d’une part sur les alternatives qu’il est possible de créer pour arriver à une convergence transnationale et d’autre part sur le sens et la perspective stratégique à donner aux demandes récentes de « refonder l’Europe par le bas ». Introduction de Vilma Mazza (Globalproject) et Lorenzo Marsili (Alternative Europee). Argiris Panagopoulos – journaliste de Avgi, Epohi, Kokkino, Grèce. Pablo Elorduy– Diagonal Espagne. Iulia Popovici– CriticAtac Roumanie. Claudio Gnesutta– Economiste, Université La Sapienza, Rome, Italie. Francesco Raparelli – LUM et Dinamopress, Rome, Italie. Leo Specht – Université de Turin (Italie) et de Vienne, Autriche. Srecko Horvat – Subversive Festival, Croatie. Marco Bascetta– Il Manifesto, Italie. Raffaella Bolini – Arci Altersummit, Italie. Giuseppe Caccia – Globalproject, Italie. >>>> Continuer pour les vidéos de la deuxième session
L’Europa oltre l’Europa: tre giorni di idee, riflessioni e strategie future
ll 24 e il 25 maggio 2013, la città di Venezia é stata teatro del forum transnazionale “Europa oltre l’Europa”, un evento nato dalla collaborazione tra European Alternatives e Global Project. Lo scopo dell’iniziativa é stato quello di far emergere proposte e idee per affrontare l’attuale crisi economica e rimodellare l’Europa alla luce di un nuovo cambiamento politico e sociale: un’Europa non costruita a tavolino dall’alto, ma rispettosa dei diritti dei propri cIttadini, volta si all’integrazione economica, ma nel rispetto della democrazia e del processo costituente dal basso.Il Forum si é articolato in tre sessioni, ognuna caratterizzata da un preciso tema e da una location specifica. Il 24 maggio, all’interno dell’ Istituto Universitario di Architettura Venezia (IUAV), sono state affrontate le possibili alternative all’austerity, alla crisi finanziaria e alla governance della Troika.Il secondo dibattito ha avuto luogo il 25 maggio nell’elegante Sala Consiliare del Municipio di Venezia. Il cuore caldo di questo incontro ha riguardato invece la crisi delle istituzioni europee e il futuro della democrazia nell’attuale contesto di un’ integrazione politica e economica condotta esclusivamente dall’alto. Il terzo e conclusivo incontro si é svolto invece all’interno dei Magazzini del Sale “S.a.L.E. docks” , ove i movimenti sociali e costituenti per la creazione di una nuova Europa hanno rappresentato il fulcro del dibattito e lo spunto per una riflessione finale sulle strategie future necessarie per attuare quel cambiamento politico e sociale cosi indispensabile per uscire dall’attuale crisi. Nel dettaglio: I Sessione – Crisi economico-finanziaria, politiche di austerity e governance della Troika: quali alternative. La prima sessione nell’analizzare la dominante gestione europea della crisi economica e sociale ha messo a fuoco il concetto di “rivoluzione dall’alto”, rendendo espliciti i cambiamenti strutturali che la nuova governance europea sta apportando alle dinamiche politiche ed economiche continentali e al concetto stesso di democrazia europea. A partire da questo ci si è soffermati su quali proposte alternative è possibile creare per una convergenza transnazionale e quale senso e prospettiva strategica dare alle recenti richieste di “rifondare l’Europa dal basso”. Introduzione di Vilma Mazza Globalproject e Lorenzo Marsili European Alternatives Argiris Panagopoulos – giornalista di Avgi, Epohi, Kokkino Grecia Pablo Elorduy – Diagonal Spagna Iulia Popovici – CriticAtac, Romania Claudio Gnesutta – Economista, Università La Sapienza, Roma Italia Francesco Raparelli – LUM e Dinamopress, Roma, Italia Leo Specht – Giurista, e docente Università di Torino e Vienna, Austria Srecko Horvat – Subversive Festival, Croazia Marco Bascetta – Il Manifesto, Italia Raffaella Bolini – Arci Altersummit, Italia Giuseppe Caccia – Globalproject, Italia >>>> prosegui ai video della seconda sessione
Al via il Transeuropa Festival!
Il Transeuropa Festival è uno il primo festival politico e culturale in contemporanea in 13 città europee!
Youth Congress 2013: Partecipa al congresso dei giovani europei
La Fondazione Heinrich Böll insieme a European Alternatives (EA), Young European Federation (JEF) e Young European Greens (FYEG) organizza un incontro a Berlino per discutere sul futuro dei giovani in Europa.
For a union of ever more citizens rights
poster for UN Declaration of Human Rights by Niccolo Milanese Over recent years there has been increased discussion of the problem of European Union member countries backsliding when it comes to fundamental rights. Article 2 of the treaty on European Union says that ‘the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between men and women prevail.’ The meaning of these values has been more explicitly listed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which was introduced with the Lisbon Treaty and applies to all EU citizens. Countries seeking to join the European Union need to show that they fulfil the ‘Copenhagen criteria’, which are supposed to ensure that the values of the European Union in the treaties are respected in that country. The case of Italy when it comes to media freedom, and more recently Hungary when it comes to constitutional reform, the independence of the judiciary, rights of minorities and media freedom, have posed what has come to be called the ‘Copenhagen dilemma’, whereby the European Union is very strict about criteria of democracy and fundamental rights for candidate countries, but for its own members has no effective monitoring or sanctioning tools. The one tool that the EU does have in the Treaties is the so called ‘Article 7 procedure’ which leads to the suspension of the voting rights of the ‘offending’ country in the European Council. This ‘nuclear option’ has never been implemented, and many regard the procedure as too vague, too politically charged and too drastic. There is an increasing demand for a clearer, independent procedure, and more options for sanctions. This demand has come from the European Parliament, but also from Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. Maintaining fundamental rights throughout Europe is clearly in the interest of all Europeans, and a country which starts to backslide on them is problematic not only for the people living in that country, but for the whole European Union democratic architecture which relies on democracy at every level: ultimately, a non-democratic country having a voice (and a veto) at the European Council very clearly poses a problem for all the other countries involved. Article 7 of the European Treaties, whilst not effective as a safeguard, has a strong constitutional logic behind it. It is worth noticing already that the respect of fundamental rights – as they are understood by the European Union – is intimately connected with the respect of democracy. One proposal to address the Copenhagen dilemma which has been particularly discussed in the context of the Tavares report on the situation in Hungary, and has been advocated by Princeton professor Jan-Werner Mueller, is the creation of a Copenhagen Committee which would monitor fundamental rights in European countries and give an ‘early warning’ signal where there is cause for concern. This proposal has the advantage of calling for a committee with one specific task and therefore addressing very directly the identified problem, and could potentially be instituted quickly. It is worthy of support for both of those reasons. It has the disadvantages of creating a further European institution where it is not clear that this is necessary, and in so do potentially instituting a particular view of EU fundamental rights which one might find objectionable : namely a view of them which is not political in a specific sense. This is the aspect I want to discuss further. The European Union already has an Agency for Fundamental Rights, with its headquarters in Vienna. This Agency has the mandate to ‘provide the relevant institutions and authorities of the [European] Community and its Member States when implementing Community law with information, assistance and expertise on fundamental rights in order to support them when they take measures or formulate courses of action within their respective spheres of competence to fully respect fundamental rights.’(Article 7, Regulation establishing the European Union Agency of Fundamental Rights). The Agency therefore has the objective of providing expertise and sharing information, and not of monitoring or ‘sounding the alarm’. Advocates of the Copenhagen Committee argue that the political will does not currently exist to change the mandate of the Fundamental Rights Agency to have this monitoring role, and so propose a new institution (which could potentially be merged with the Fundamental Rights Agency at a later date). Whether there is the political will to create a new institution with effective monitoring powers is of course a highly pertinent question. The presupposition of creating the Fundamental Rights Agency in the first place was that ensuring the respect of fundamental rights is not straightforward, and therefore that mutual learning between member states, as well as external advice, is beneficial to states which are trying to promote fundamental rights. Promoting fundamental rights is something we could hope European states will get better and better at, based on experience. Legal mechanisms exist for people who have suffered the loss of their fundamental rights in Europe to redress this, but the ideal, so to speak, is of a society in which no one’s fundamental rights are contravened. An important question is whether understandings of fundamental rights themselves (and not just the strategies used to promote them) develop over time. The history of the development of human rights from the French Revolution onwards clearly suggests they do. The values of the European Union as articulated in article 2 of the treaty are clearly open to different interpretations. What constitutes a society in which ‘justice prevails’ is a timeless question which arguably will not have a definitive answer, just answers which are (we can hope) better and better. Notice that this does not imply that any interpretation of a just society is acceptable: rather that there may be several legitimate interpretations, and that there is some possibility…
Pour une UE des droits citoyens
Par Niccolo MilaneseTraduit par Maxence Salendre Au cours des dernières années, de nombreux pays membres de l’Union Européenne ont fait machine arrière sur les droits fondamentaux, un phénomène qui a alimenté de nombreux débats. L’article 2 du traité de l’Union Européenne énonce que « l’Union est fondée sur les valeurs de respect de la dignité humaine, de liberté, de démocratie, d’égalité, de l’État de droit, ainsi que de respect des droits de l’homme, y compris des droits des personnes appartenant à des minorités. Ces valeurs sont communes aux États membres dans une société caractérisée par le pluralisme, la non-discrimination, la tolérance, la justice, la solidarité et l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes ». La signification de ces valeurs a été formulée de manière encore plus claire dans la Charte des Droits Fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne qui fut introduite par le Traité de Lisbonne et s’applique à tous les citoyens de l’UE. Les pays souhaitant rejoindre l’Union Européenne doivent démontrer qu’ils remplissent les « critères de Copenhague » qui ont supposément été instaurés afin de s’assurer que les valeurs de l’Union Européenne exposées dans les traités soient respectées dans les nouveaux états membres. Le cas de l’Italie concernant la liberté de la presse et, plus récemment, celui de la Hongrie concernant la réforme constitutionnelle, l’indépendance du pouvoir judiciaire, les droits des minorités ou (à nouveau) la liberté de la presse ont posé le problème de ce que certains appellent le « dilemme de Copenhague ». Un paradoxe qui rend l’Union Européenne incroyablement stricte quant aux critères d’entrée concernant la démocratie ou les droits fondamentaux des Etats candidats mais ne lui fournit aucun mécanisme de contrôle ou de sanction pour contrôler ses propres Etats membres. Le seul outil dont dispose l’UE est l’article « 7 procédure » du Traité qui autorise la suspension du droit de vote au Conseil Européen pour le pays fautif. Cette « option nucléaire » n’a cependant jamais été mise en place et nombreux sont ceux qui considèrent la procédure comme étant trop vague, trop radicale et trop dangereuse politiquement. L’instauration d’une procédure plus claire, plus indépendante ainsi que davantage de sanctions a été réclamée. Ces demandes émanent du Parlement Européen mais également de l’Allemagne, des Pays-Bas, du Danemark et de la Finlande. Le respect des droits fondamentaux dans toute l’Europe est clairement dans l’intérêt de tous les citoyens européens. Un Etat qui revient sur ces droits pose problème non seulement pour ses citoyens mais également pour toute l’architecture démocratique de l’UE qui est fondée sur une égalité totale à tout niveau. Un Etat non-démocratique qui possèderait une voix (et un droit de veto) au Conseil Européen serait une épine dans le pied des autres Etats membres. L’article 7 du traité européen, quoique peu efficace dans ses fonctions de garde-fou, soutient une logique constitutionnelle essentielle : le respect des droits fondamentaux – tels qu’ils sont entendus dans l’Union Européenne – est intimement lié au respect de la démocratie. La création d’un “Comité de Copenhague” surveillant le respect des droits fondamentaux dans les pays de l’UE et alertant le Conseil en cas de dysfonctionnement constitue l’une des propositions mises en avant pour résoudre le dilemme de Copenhague. Ce comité a été amplement discuté dans le rapport Tavares(basé sur le cas de la Hongrie) et est soutenu par Jan-Werner Mueller, professeur à l’Université de Princeton. Cette proposition a l’avantage d’appeler à la création d’un comité n’ayant qu’une prérogative ce qui lui confèrerait une rapidité d’action nécessaire en cas de dysfonctionnement. Pour cette raison, le soutien à sa création est primordial. Cette proposition a, en revanche, l’inconvénient d’appeler à la création d’une nouvelle institution européenne pour un objectif dont la nécessité semble limitée. De la même manière, la création d’une telle institution risque de normaliser une vision apolitique des droits fondamentaux de l’UE qui pourrait être remise en question. C’est là l’un des points dont je voudrais discuter en détail. L’Union Européenne possède déjà une Agence des Droits Fondamentaux dont le siège est situé à Vienne. Cette Agence a un mandat simple : « fournir aux institutions et aux autorités compétentes de la Communauté [Européenne] et de ses Etats membres, lors de la mise en place d’un nouveau texte législatif communautaire, toute l’information, l’assistance et l’expertise nécessaire concernant les droits fondamentaux afin de les aider à respecter pleinement ces droits lorsqu’ils formulent ou mettent en place des politiques publiques dans leurs domaines de compétences respectifs » (Article 7, Régulation établissant l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne). L’objectif principal de l’Agence est donc de fournir l’expertise et l’information nécessaires aux états membres et non de les contrôler ou de servir de signal d’alarme. Les défenseurs du Comité de Copenhague soulignent l’absence de volonté politique pour changer le mandat de l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux en faveur d’un rôle de surveillance. Ils proposent dès lors la création d’une nouvelle institution (qui pourrait fusionner avec l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux à une date ultérieure). Une question essentielle reste cependant en suspens : existe-t-il une volonté politique suffisante en Europe pour créer une nouvelle institution dont les pouvoirs de contrôle seront effectifs ? A l’époque de la création de l’Agence des Droits Fondamentaux, le présupposé de départ était simple : le respect des droits fondamentaux ne s’auto-réalise pas et, dès lors, l’apprentissage mutuel entre les Etats membres et grâce aux activités de conseil externe sont bénéfiques aux Etats souhaitant promouvoir les droits fondamentaux. La promotion des droits fondamentaux est un domaine dans lequel nous serions en mesure d’espérer que les Etats de l’UE, par leur expérience, s’améliorent. Il existe en Europe des mécanismes législatifs visant à réparer les torts commis aux personnes ayant souffert de la perte d’un ou plusieurs droits fondamentaux. L’idéal restant évidemment l’établissement d’une société dans laquelle aucun de ces droits ne soit restreint ou déchu. Il est également essentiel de savoir si la compréhension des droits fondamentaux(et non uniquement les stratégies mises en place pour les promouvoir) évolue avec le temps. L’histoire du développement des droits de l’Homme, depuis la Révolution Française jusqu’à nos jours semble le démontrer. Les valeurs de l’UE apparaissant dans l’article 2 du Traité sont…
Telling stories to make a living
“The interview was prose at the time but it’s poetry in the memory” We’re using creative methods in our Making a Living project to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. One of the ways you can get involved is by interviewing your friends, other young people or organisations working with young people. You can see an interview of one our members carried out. “It was time to do something with my abilities. It was an emotional urge to do something. And it was especially frustrating when I did not succeed for a whole year. That really makes you doubt yourself.” What should I do? You can use can email them a selection of the Survey Questions for an email interview You can meet them for an interview and record it on your phone or a voice recorder Explain the content of the debate will be published on www.euroalter.com Ask them if they would like to get further involved in the Project or with European Alternatives Write up the interview and send it to london@euroalter.com What should I interview them about? You can interview people on the following areas to understand this issue Young people’s basic living situation How young people feel they’ve achieved and what they expect of the future How they cope emotionally and practically with making a living What support they value How their work situation on your attitudes on society. This will help us produce an analysis that can help us compare between cities to produce the scenarios & guide. On the next slide are examples of how you can interview young people, do share other methods you want to use! Any questions ask Project Team at london@euroalter.com. What should I think about? Concentrate on the answers from the interviewee If you feel they want to talk more about a question, ask them to tell you more Question anything you don’t understand from the interviewee At the end of the interview Ask them at the end if there is something you haven’t asked they’d like to share Thank them for participating, ask them for their email address so they can check the interview and find out how they can get more involved in the Project Advise them that their interview will be published on www.euroalter.com and may be featured in guide on how young people cope with precarity Advise them that their interview will be used to develop the personas & scenarios After the interview Concentrate on the answers from the interviewee Write down the answers in the Survey Questionnaire Send the interview to the Interviewee to check they are happy with it Send the interview to the Project Team How else can I get involved? Imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020, fill in in our survey on how you’re coping with making a living. Discover how you can use creative methods to take part where you live. Print our survey or see how to identify stories to interview your friends. We will feature the content you produce in our scenarios, animation, guide and on this website!
Raconter des histoires pour gagner sa vie
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino« L’entretien était en prose à l’époque mais le souvenir est de la poésie » Nous utilisons des méthodes originales dans notre projet Making a Living (Gagner sa vie), afin de mettre à jour vos expériences sur la façon dont vous vous en sortez pour tenter de gagner votre vie. Nous les utiliserons pour développer des scénarios et un guide sur comment, tout en faisant face à la crise, les jeunes créent de nouvelles manières de gagner leur vie. L’un des moyens de participer est d’interviewer vos amis, d’autres jeunes ou des organisations qui travaillent avec des jeunes. Vous pouvez voir une interview de l’un de nos membres qui a été réalisée. « C’était le moment de faire quelque chose de mes compétences. Je me sentais poussée à faire quelque chose et après une année d’échec c’était particulièrement frustrant, ça te fait vraiment douter de toi-même. » Que dois-je faire ? -Vous pouvez leur envoyer un message avec une sélection de questions de sondage pour une interview par mail. -Vous pouvez les rencontrer pour une interview et les enregistrer sur votre téléphone ou un dictaphone. -Expliquer que le contenu du débat sera publié sur www.euroalter.com. -Leur demander s’ils souhaitent s’impliquer davantage dans le projet ou avec Alternatives européennes. -Rédiger l’interview et l’envoyer à london@euroalter.com. A propos de quoi dois-je les interviewer ? Vous pouvez interviewer les personnes sur les sujets suivants pour comprendre ce problème : -Les conditions de vie de base des jeunes. -Comment les jeunes ont-ils l’impression d’avoir réussi et qu’attendent-ils de l’avenir. -Comment s’en sortent-ils émotionnellement et dans la pratique pour gagner leur vie. -A quel soutien attachent-ils de l’importance. -Comment leur situation professionnelle affecte-t-elle leur comportement en société. Cela nous aidera à produire une analyse qui nous aidera à faire une comparaison entre les villes, afin de produire le scénario et le guide. Sur la page suivante se trouvent des exemples de manières dont vous pouvez interviewer les jeunes ; n’hésitez pas à partager les autres méthodes que vous souhaitez utiliser ! Pour toute question, envoyez un message à l’équipe du projet à london@euroalter.com. A quoi dois-je penser ? -Concentrez-vous sur les réponses données par la personne interviewée. -Si vous avez l’impression qu’ils veulent parler davantage sur une question, demandez-leur de vous en dire plus. -Demandez-leur d’éclaircir ce que vous n’avez pas compris. A la fin de l’interview -Demandez-leur s’il y a quelque chose dont vous n’avez pas parlé et qu’ils souhaitent partager. -Remerciez-les pour leur participation, demandez-leur leur adresse mail afin qu’ils puissent vérifier l’interview et se renseigner sur les différents moyens de s’impliquer davantage dans le projet. -Informez-les que leur interview sera publiée sur www.euroalter.comet qu’elle figurera dans un guide sur la façon dont les jeunes font face à la précarité. -Informez-les que leur interview sera utilisée afin de développer des personnages et des scénarios. Comment puis-je m’impliquer autrement ? Imaginez une journée dans la vie d’un jeune en 2020, complétez notre sondage sur comment vous parvenez à gagner votre vie. Découvrez comment vous pouvez vous servir de méthodes originales pour participer à l’endroit où vous vivez. Imprimez notre sondage ou cherchez à savoir comment identifier des histoires pour interviewer vos amis. Le contenu que vous produirez figurera dans nos scénarios, nos animations, notre guide et sur ce site internet !
« Last night a DJ made my life »
Notre projet Making a Living (Gagner sa vie) s'intéresse aux jeunes qui cherchent à gagner leur vie à-travers l'Europe. Dans ce cadre, nous vous encourageons à interviewer vos amis, familles et d'autres jeunes de votre entourage. Ces interviews alimenteront notre recherche et nous aideront à établir des schémas du rapport des jeunes au travail, pour le festival. Maxime Hofman s'est rendu dans les rues d'Amsterdam, où il a rencontré une jeune fille diplômée d'Université qui est devenue DJ. Voici son interview. Bienvenue dans la génération Lifestyle Hacker. Pour commencer, pourriez-vous vous présenter ? J'ai 26 ans, j'habite à Amsterdam depuis 9 ans et j'ai une licence de Langue et Culture Espagnole. Maintenant, je fais complètement autre chose : je travaille dans une agence de location, les gens viennent me voir pour louer les services d'un DJ. A côté, je fais aussi du son moi-même avec mon groupe. Nous avons beaucoup de succès, nous sommes pris tous les week-ends. Il y a deux ans, avec mes amis, nous avons juste décidé de nous y mettre. Tout le monde a toujours de ces idées : commencer un groupe ou un blog vidéo de cuisine, mais si tu n'as pas envie que ça reste « juste une idée » tu dois aller de l'avant. C'est ce qu'on a fait. Comment avez-vous fait ce pas ? De réaliser ce rêve ? Tout à coup, tout est allé très vite à cause de facteurs externes. Nous étions un groupe de 10 filles, dont certaines travaillaient pour des magazines connus et des agences de relations publiques, ce qui fait que toutes ensemble, nous disposions d'un très large réseau. Tout le monde a trouvé notre concept super intéressant parce que rien de tel n'existait déjà. Au début, nous n'avions pas de compétences particulières mais les 10 filles habillées sexy sur scène suffisaient à attirer un public nombreux. Et puis nous étions très présentes, tout le temps en train de danser sur scène. Après que nous ayons décidé d'aller de l'avant, nous étions sur scène toutes les deux semaines. Nous ne parvenions pas à faire tout le son, mais les fêtes étaient géniales. A partir de là, nous avons vraiment appris à faire du son, en nous entraînant et nous produisant souvent. C'est ce qui a fait aussi que les autres DJ nous respectent plus. En fait, quand tu débutes, ils te voient comme si tu piquais leur public, c'est aussi comme ça que moi je vois les autres nouveaux DJ maintenant. Des fois je pense que ce n'est qu'une bande de djeuns qui nous piquent notre public. Je comprends tout à fait pourquoi les anciens pensaient ça de nous avant. Mais maintenant, nous sommes reconnus pour nos choix musicaux et ils nous trouvent bien cools. Maintenant on connaît notre boulot et on fait du bon son. Êtes-vous satisfaite du résultat de votre projet ? Très satisfaite. La seule raison pour laquelle je suis toujours à Amsterdam et pas au Mexique, c'est mon groupe. Les mecs savent toujours qu'ils viennent ensuite. Je suis très heureuse et comme nous nous voyons tellement souvent, nous sommes toutes devenues de très bonnes amies. Pourquoi avoir décidé de travailler aussi dans une agence de location ? En tant que DJ, nous ne gagnons pas énormément d'argent et nous devons le partager entre nous 4. En fait, c'est plus de l'argent de poche. Avant, je travaillais dans les bars. J'ai validé ma licence en 2010 et nous avons commencé le groupe en 2011. Après la licence, j'ai fait le tour du monde et à mon retour, nous avons commencé le groupe et je travaillais dans les bars. En attendant, je faisais des stages parce que je savais qu'il fallait que je fasse plus que ce que je faisais déjà. Des stages dans votre domaine d'études ? Non pas du tout, parce que je savais déjà pendant ma dernière année d'études que je n'avais pas envie de travailler dans ce domaine. Je suis très heureuse d'avoir appris l'espagnol, mais j'ai terminé ma licence seulement pour ne pas m'endetter, parce que lorsque vous validez votre diplôme, le gouvernement transforme votre prêt étudiant en don. Après ma licence, j'ai fait un stage pour un festival de musique, en marketing, parce que je savais que je voulais travailler dans le monde de la musique. J'ai beaucoup appris et j'ai surtout tissé de nombreux contacts dans ce domaine, par exemple le directeur du festival qui m'a aidé par la suite à davantage m'intégrer. Après le stage, j'ai de nouveau travaillé dans un bar tout en cherchant un travail dans la musique, mais ça ne marchait pas. J'étais souvent près de réussir, mais chaque fois je passais juste à côté. Maintenant ça me réjouit parce que je me rends compte qu'un poste de marketing n'aurait pas été pour moi. Finalement, mon ex-patron m'a arrangé un stage pour un autre festival. Je travaillais en relation avec les artistes et suis entrée en contact avec les chargés de location. Je trouvais ça beaucoup plus sympa que le marketing. Tout de suite après le stage, j'ai été embauchée par l'agence de location pour laquelle je travaille maintenant. Donc vous avez choisi de ne pas travailler dans votre domaine d'études parce que vous vouliez faire quelque chose qui vous plaît plutôt que quelque chose pourquoi vous étiez qualifiée. Exactement. J'ai terminé l'université pour me prouver à moi-même que j'en étais capable. Je ne travaillais presque pas à la fac. J'ai profité du divorce de mes parents pour changer d'école, pour une école moins cotée. J'ai fait des études surtout pour montrer que je pouvais achever un cursus universitaire, mais je n'ai pas beaucoup apprécié. Avec le recul, je me rends compte que je n'ai pas tellement appris. Je ne me souviens même pas de ce que j'ai appris, à part de la langue espagnole, mais ça, c'est parce que j'ai passé six mois au Mexique, pas parce que j'ai fait des études…
Last night a DJ made my life
Our Making a Living project is trying to find out how young people cope with making a living across Europe. As part of this, we’re encouraging you to interview your friends, family and others you know about how they cope. These will feed into our research and help us design scenarios on young people’s relationship with work for the festival. Maxime Hofman went onto the streets of Amsterdam and met a university graduate who became a DJ. Here’s the interview she carried out with her. Welcome to the Lifestyle Hacker generation. Could you first tell me something about yourself? I’m 26 years old. I have been living in Amsterdam for 9 years, and I finished a bachelor in Spanish Language and Culture. Now I’m doing something totally different, because I’m a booker at a booking agency. People come to me to book DJs. Besides that I’m spinning records myself, with my DJ group. And then I turn myself in My DJ group. We’ve become very successful. We’re booked every weekend. Two years ago me and my friends just said: let’s do this. Everybody has always got these ideas, like ‘let’s start a band, or let’s start a video-blog on cooking’. But if you don’t want it to stay ‘just an idea’, you really have to make it happen. That’s what we did. How did you end up taking that step? To actually realize this idea? It suddenly went very fast, due to external factors. We were a group of 10 girls, and some of us worked at influential magazines and PR agencies. So joined together we had a very large network. And everyone found our concept super interesting, because it did not yet exist. At the beginning we did not have any spinning skills, but there were 10 girls in sexy dresses on stage, so that was a guarantee for a good party. We were also very abundant, we were always dancing around the stage. After we decided to just do it, we were on stage within two weeks. We couldn’t spin at all, but the party was great. From then on we have really learned to spin, by practicing and performing often. That also made other DJs respect us more. Because when you start, you’re actually stealing their gigs. That’s how they see that. That’s how I see it now with other new DJs. Sometimes I think, you are just a bunch of hipsters stealing our gigs. I understand very well why they thought the same about us. But now we are valued for our choice of records and they think we’re pretty cool. By now we can spin and it looks good. Are you happy with the way your idea turned out? I’m very happy. My DJ group is the only reason I am still in Amsterdam and not in Mexico. Boyfriends always know they’re second place. So I am very happy and the girls have become very good friends, because you see each other very often. Why did you choose to also work at a booking agency? As DJs we do not make much money. We have to divide it between the four of us. It really is more like pocket money. I used to work in bars. I graduated in 2010 and in 2011 we started the DJ group. After graduation, I went on a trip around the world, and when I came back we started the DJ group and I worked in bars. And in the meantime I did internships, because I knew I had to do something more that what I was doing. Were those internships in your field of study? No not at all, because during the last year of my studies I already knew I did not want to work in that field. I am very glad to have learned Spanish, but I only finished it so I would not have a student debt. Because if you graduate, the government turns your loan into a gift. After graduation I did an internship for a music festival, at a marketing position, because I knew I wanted to work in the music industry. I’ve learned a lot, and especially got to know a lot of people in the field. The director of the festival for example, helped me get further into the industry later on. After the internship I worked in a bar again, while trying to apply for jobs in the music business. But it did not work. Often I came pretty close, but every time I just didn’t make it. Now I am happy about that, because those marketing jobs wouldn’t have been right for me. In the end my former boss arranged an internship at another festival for me. I did the artist-handling, and got to talk to bookers. I found it way more fun than marketing. Right after the internship I got hired by the booking company I now work for. So you’ve chosen not work in the field of your studies, because you wanted to do something you liked, instead of something you were qualified for? Exactly. I have finished university to prove to myself that I could do it. In high school I was very lazy. I used my parent’s divorce to go to a lower ranked high school. So I’ve studied purely to prove that I can finish a scientific education, but I did not enjoy it very much. Looking back, I did not even learn that much. I don’t even remember what I’ve learned, except for speaking Spanish. But that’s because I got to go to Mexico for six months, not because I’ve studied Spanish in Amsterdam. It doesn’t make sense at all. I knew pretty quickly that it was not what I wanted. What does work mean to you? Work is not purely to make money, because I earn the minimum wage, but I’m doing something I really love. I’m excited to go to work every morning. I earn more now, but it also brings along some…
How to turn your hobby into a job
One of the key messages we’re picking up from our Making a Living project, is that there is a new breed of young people we’re calling Life Hackers.They will have changed their expectations about what’s important to them in life, focusing instead on building relationships and applying their skills to make a living. They’ve gone through different stages of coping, from initially reflecting on their situation to looking for ways to improve as a way to stay resilient and even to become independent of pressures that traditional work lifestyles impose. Although many of these are unemployed or underworked, they make use of their networks to share assets and skills. Would you quit everything and turn your hobby into a job? How to turn your hobby into a business infographic by CarlaJuniper.
COMMENT FAIRE DE SON LOISIR UN METIER
Un des points-clé de notre projet Gagner sa vie est qu’il existe un nouveau type de jeunes que nous appelons les Life Hackers. Ceux-ci ont des attentes différentes concernant ce qui compte pour eux, attachent de l’importance plutôt aux relations et mettent à l’œuvre leur savoir-faire pour gagner leur vie. Ils sont passés par plusieurs étapes, de la réflexion initiale sur leur situation à la recherche de progrès pour tenir dans la durée et même se libérer des pressions imposées par les emplois traditionnels. Bien qu’ils soient souvent au chômage ou en situation de sous-travail, ils se servent de leurs réseaux pour partager leurs atouts et leur savoir-faire. Et vous ? Seriez-vous prêt à tout laisser tomber pour faire de votre loisir un métier ? How to turn your hobby into a business infographic par CarlaJuniper. Marre de votre travail ? Passez-vous vos journées de travail à rêver d’évasion ? Si vous avez une passion et un don, pourquoi ne pas en faire votre métier ? Combinez passion et travail quotidien pour un mode de vie plaisant. Les entreprises qui connaissent le plus de succès sont dirigées par des personnes qui aiment ce qu’elles font. La passion est un carburant qui permet de rester motivé face aux pressions de la vie entrepreneuriale. Pour construire une entreprise économiquement viable, vous devrez opérer au sein d’un marché en croissance rapide avec une forte demande. Cependant… la demande ne suffit pas : les entrepreneurs doivent comprendre les besoins-clé de leur marché et savoir les satisfaire afin de créer et entretenir un marché compétitif. Pour démarrer une entreprise basée sur votre loisir, vous devrez : 1) Vous assurer de la viabilité de votre localisation en termes de marché et de concurrence. 2) Vous assurer que la concurrence n’est pas trop féroce. 3) Bien vous renseigner sur le marché existant : évitez tout stress superflu en vous préparant autant que possible ! 4) Soyez prêt à contacter des associations en lien avec votre loisir et demandez-leur des statistiques sur la croissance ou la régression du marché dans votre région. 5) Cherchez un moyen de vous démarquer de la concurrence : réfléchissez à un « argument de vente unique » (AVU) qui vous avantagerait. Location de skis ET massages gratuits ! 6) Gardez un marketing simple : ne vous compliquez pas la vie, mais analysez les attentes de votre cible et répondez-y en toute simplicité. Proposez-leur un design attractif, des offres uniques et des cadeaux. Et, bien sûr, utilisez Internet et les réseaux sociaux. 7) Dépassez les attentes ! Assurez à vos clients un service de qualité : la clientèle satisfaite vous fera de la publicité par le bouche-à-oreille et de nouveaux clients accourront, ce qui vous permettra de réduire vos investissements de marketing. 8) Soyez prêt à consacrer beaucoup de temps à votre entreprise. 9) Déléguez les taches : n’essayez pas de tout faire tout seul. 10)Développez des partenariats avec d’autres entreprises non concurrentes sur le même marché : vous pourrez échanger. Et voilà ! Notre guide pour faire de votre loisir un métier. Succès garanti ! PS : Si Stan peut le faire, alors vous aussi vous pouvez !
We all want to be young
From our Making a Living project, young people are finding it really challenge to figure out what’s worse: expecting not to have the things your parents had, and preparing yourself for alternatives to getting a job, a house or even a degree – or assuming everything’s going to be OK, until you realise that your dreams have been privatised, getting yourself into debt to even grab a slice of them back. We know that how society brings up its children is critical to how it shapes itself as a nation – its history, its symbols and its practices. But each generation will often forget what the previous generation had to fight for, rights and resources it takes for granted. That’s why the infographic below shows really well what each of our generations have fought for. But there’s a wider issue too. Our grandparent’s generation fought and got the welfare state, our parents took to the streets for individual liberties. The challenges for our generation can only be solved by working together across borders. We All Want to be Young infographic
Nous voulons tous être jeunes
Traduction : Murielle LouailD’après notre projet « Making a living » ( Gagner sa vie), la jeunesse doit appréhender le défi d’envisager le pire : s’attendre à ne pas pouvoir bénéficier des choses dont ses parents ont profité, se préparer à des alternatives pour trouver un emploi, une maison ou même un diplôme – ou supposer que tout ira bien avant de réaliser que ses rêves ont été privatisés, s’endettant pour espérer bénéficier de quelque chose en retour. Nous savons que la façon dont une société élève ses enfants détermine sa construction en tant que nation, son histoire, ses symboles et ses coutumes. Cependant, chaque génération oublie souvent ce pour quoi se sont battues les précédentes, les droits et les ressources étant perçus comme acquis. Le graphique ci-dessous illustre bien les luttes des générations passées. Mais il y a également une question plus vaste. La génération de nos grands-parents s’est battue et a obtenu l’Etat providence, nos parents sont descendus dans la rue pour les libertés individuelles. Le défi de notre génération ne peut se résoudre qu’en travaillant ensemble à travers les frontières.
Seguiteci in diretta stamattina da Bruxelles!
Lampedusa: Incontro al Parlamento europeo per una nuova politica migratoria Parlamento Europeo, Sala P5B001 Giovedì 17 ottobre 2013, 9:30 – 12:30 Watch live streaming video from euroalter at livestream.com Per l’agenda e piu informazioni sul’evento clicca qui. Dopo i recenti accadimenti di Lampedusa da più parti è arrivata la richiesta di un ruolo più incisivo delle istituzioni europee affinché la politica d?asilo europea possa essere ripensata e il trattamento disumano che si accompagna al movimento delle persone lungo le frontiere smetta di essere routine. Nei centri di detenzione amministrativa, così come già denunciato da UNHCR, Consiglio d?Europa, e lo stesso Parlamento europeo, trattamenti disumani e situazioni di violazioni sistematiche dei diritti umani sono all?ordine del giorno. Il prossimo giovedì 17 ottobre 2013 al Parlamento Europeo di Bruxelles verrà organizzato un momento di confronto con la presenza del Ministro dell’Integrazione Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, di diversi europarlamentari fra cui Hélène Flautre e Marie-Christine Vergiat, al quale è invitata anche la Commissaria Europea per gli Affari Interni Cecilia Malmström. L?incontro vedrà altresì la partecipazione e l?interazione di rappresentanti della società civile impegnati in campagne contro la detenzione amministrativa in Italia (coalizione LasciateCIEntrare, ASGI, CGIL) oltre che rappresentanti dalla Francia, Spagna, Ungheria e Regno Unito. L?incontro è promosso da European Alternatives, ONG transnazionale che ha lavorato attivamente con le organizzazioni coinvolte in attività di monitoraggio e denuncia promuovendo sin dall?inizio una discussione anche a livello istituzionale sulle possibilità di alternative alla pratica della detenzione amministrativa per lo sviluppo di una nuova politica migratoria europea. European Alternatives è da sempre impegnata nell?ambito della difesa dei diritti dei migranti e, in particolare, nel contrasto alla prassi della detenzione amministrativa e nella promozione della libertà di circolazione delle persone in Europa. Quest?impegno si è concretizzato in particolare nel lavoro costante al fianco delle campagne per l?accesso dei giornalisti e dei rappresentanti della società civile ai centri di detenzione per migranti: LasciateCIEntrare, rete di associazioni, giuristi e giornalisti attivi sul territorio italiano, e Open Access Now, campagna transnazionale lanciata da European Alternatives insieme a Migreurop, rete di organizzazioni attive in Europa e nei paesi del Mediterraneo, nel 2011.
Follow us Live this morning from Brussels!
A new migration policy for Europe European Parliament, Room P5B001 October 17th, 2013, 9.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. euroalter on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free FOR A FULL PROGRAM AND MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE EVENT SEE HERE. In the past three years, European Alternatives has organised a number of specific sessions of discussion on migrants’ rights and the politics of detention, which represents a growing and worrisome issue across Europe. This area of work culminated over the last two years in the coordination and implementation of transnational campaigns against the administrative detention and the role of civil society organisations and media in reporting the conditions of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants held in administrative detention in many EU Member States, notably through the Open Access Now (officially launched jointly with the Migreurop network in 2011) and LasciateCIEntrare campaigns (broad-based coalition of associations based in Italy calling for access to the detention centres for journalists and CSOs against the suspension and restrictions on the right to information), joined in 2011. FOR A FULL PROGRAM AND MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE EVENT SEE HERE. The envisaged future process will build on this campaigning experience gained so far in the coordination and implementation of specific transnational coalitions, aiming at raising awareness amongst both European politicians and the general public about the defence of migrants’ rights, the routinisation of immigration detention, and the participation in thematic networks working on these issues at the European level, including the EYCA (European Year of Citizens Alliance) working group on European and inclusive citizenship that is elaborating a final proposal to be presented at the European Parliament, and citizens manifesto being developed by European Alternatives in advance of the European elections in 2014, as part of the citizens’ pact of European Alternatives calling for greater citizen participation in European decision-making. The aim is to expand the scope of these activities to a more active role in contrasting detention and proposing solutions that go beyond the right of access to the centres and the defence of the right to information for citizens. This meeting will offer the opportunity for a reasoned and constructive debate with Member of the European Parliament, Ministries of EU Member States, and other institutional and civil society representatives from throughout Europe. The event will focus on alternatives to custody following administrative decisions, the reduction of the length of detention and the conditions of detention as analysed during the course of a much broader consultation process involving activists, civil society organisations, journalists and legal experts.
Festival Transeuropa : vivez l’Europe !
Article par MAXENCE SalendrePublié sur Le Journal International, le 4 octobre 2013 Du 4 au 27 octobre, Alternatives Européennes organise le Transeuropa Festival, un festival culturel organisé simultanément dans 13 villes européennes pour célébrer l’Europe, ses citoyens et promouvoir de nouvelles alternatives à la construction européenne actuelle. Affiche officielle du Transeuropa Festival 2013 Alternatives Européennes, une organisation européenne transnationale qui met en avant des alternatives à la construction européenne telle qu’elle s’organise actuellement organise le festival Transeuropa dans 13 villes européennes du 4 au 27 octobre. De Paris à Cluj-Napoca en passant par Bologne, Varsovie, Lublin ou Bratislava, un ensemble d’activités artistiques, cinématographiques, de débats, conférences, d’entretiens avec des députés européens seront au programme de cet événement citoyen. Organisé par les groupes locaux d’Alternatives Européennes dans chacune des villes participantes, le festival se veut un lieu de partage et d’échange autour de l’Europe, de sa culture, de ses pratiques démocratiques et de son évolution. Rencontre avec Niccolò Milanese, co-président de Alternatives Européennes. Le Journal International : Un festival pour connecter la culture, le sentiment européen et l’Union européenne en tant qu’institution, comment vous est venue cette idée ? Niccolò Milanese : L’idée est née d’une frustration (comme tant d’autres actes politiques). Frustration car nous sentions comme un manque d’originalité dans la culture et la philosophie en Europe. Frustration due en partie au manque d’ambition politique ainsi qu’au manque d’alternative politique et culturelle réelle. Au début, notre envie d’agir ne venait pas principalement de l’Union européenne mais nous pensons que l’Europe est l’une des dernières utopies existantes, notamment pour ceux qui ont la chance de vivre dans cette partie du monde. Toute expérimentation politique et culturelle intéressante se réalisera certainement au niveau européen. Nous souhaitions donc récupérer une partie du potentiel utopique de l’Europe de la main des institutions européennes (l’Europe a d’abord été le rêve d’un poète avant d’être un projet politique). De la même manière, nous essayons d’élargir le débat sur des thématiques européennes. Nous le faisons en invitant des artistes, des écrivains, des philosophes à créer un festival sur l’Europe et en impliquant les citoyens dans la création de ce festival qui reflète leurs désirs d’avenir. JI : Le mélange festival culturel / Union européenne, simple stratégie pour accueillir des citoyens de plus en plus eurosceptiques ou manière de mettre en avant une Europe plus culturelle et transnationale ? NM : Nous pensons que l’Europe et l’idée du projet européen sont essentielles pour notre destinée collective et que si nous laissons ces idées tomber en désuétude, elles seront remplacées par des alternatives régressives, nationalistes et xénophobes. Notre objectif n’est cependant pas de « vendre » l’idée de la construction européenne. Nous encourageons les citoyens à être « euro-critique » envers l’Union européenne et l’un des rôles du festival est justement de remettre en question, de manière démocratique, les institutions gouvernantes de l’Europe. La composante culturelle de notre activité vise à faire émerger une subjectivité européenne ou une série d’imaginaires européens. Cela implique de poser des questions et de dépasser les frontières nationales qui gouvernent encore très largement nos interactions sociales, politiques et artistiques. Des alternatives politiques peuvent apparaître lorsque l’on remet en question le paradigme de l’état-nation notamment sur les manières dont il régit nos vies communes. JI : Le festival est aussi l’occasion de mettre en avant le travail des groupes locaux d’Alternatives Européennes, de quelle manière ces derniers ont-ils participé à l’organisation de l’évènement ? NM : Le festival n’existerait pas sans les groupes locaux ! Nous avons organisé le festival pour la première fois à Londres en 2007. A l’époque, il était connu sous le titre original de « London Festival of Europe ». Dès la clôture de la première édition, nous avons été contactés par de nombreux citoyens européens qui souhaitaient s’impliquer davantage dans l’organisation de nos activités et nous aider de quelque manière que ce soit. C’est d’ailleurs ainsi que nous avons créé Alternatives Européennes. Nous ne pensions organiser que le festival au début. Nous avons impliqué de nombreuses personnes dans l’organisation du festival chaque année à Londres ainsi que dans la gestion de nos campagnes et de divers projets tout au long de l’année. En 2010 nous avions suffisamment d’expérience pour organiser le festival dans différents lieux simultanément (ce qui n’est pas simple !). Cette année-là, il a été organisé dans 4 villes, 12 villes en 2011, puis 14 en 2012 et enfin 13 villes cette année. Peu importe leur lieu de résidence dans le monde, les gens peuvent rejoindre Alternatives Européennes. Quand une ville compte au moins 4 membres actifs, nous pouvons commencer à organiser des activités du festival dans cette localité. Les membres se rencontrent régulièrement tout au long de l’année afin de décider ce qui devrait être organisé durant le festival et nous travaillons ensemble pour trouver des financements, organiser les campagnes de communication etc. JI : Euroscepticisme grandissant, seuls 34 % des citoyens voient de manière positive l’impact de l’UE sur l’économie, le festival peut-il être un moyen de développer de nouvelles alternatives à l’austérité ? Lesquelles ? NM : Nous comprenons que seule une minorité de citoyens jugent l’Union européenne de manière positive : nombre de décisions européennes actuelles sont problématiques. Nous pensons qu’il est possible de réformer l’UE en adoptant une approche ascendante et citoyenne, radicalement différente de l’approche descendante qui a dominé le processus décisionnel européen jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Nous essayons de montrer aux gens qu’il est possible d’avoir un impact en tant que citoyen en Europe et qu’il est possible de changer les choses. De la même manière, nous ne pensons pas que le futur de l’Europe ne doive concerner que les institutions officielles, le futur de l’Europe implique aussi la manière dont les citoyens européens interagissent entre eux. Nous pouvons changer les attitudes et passer de la concurrence, la peur ou la répugnance à la coopération et à la confiance si nous organisons des évènements pour que cette coopération et cette confiance se développent et se communiquent. C’est là aussi l’objectif du festival. Quand il s’agit de développer des alternatives…
Transeuropa Festival: live Europe!
ARTICLE by MAXENCE SALENDRE First published on LE JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, OCTOBRE 4th 2013 From October 4 to October 27, European Alternatives organises the Transeuropa Festival, a cultural Festival organised simultaneously in 13 European cities to celebrate Europe, its citizens and promote new alternatives to the current European construction process. Zoom on the Festival and its organisers. DR European Alternatives, a European transnational organisation promoting alternatives to the current European construction process organises the Transeuropa Festival in 13 European cities from October 4 to October 27. From Paris to Cluj-Napoca passing by Bologna, Warsaw, Lublin or Bratislava, numerous artistic and cinematographic activities, debates, conferences, meetings with MEPs will be scheduled for this citizen event. Organised by the local groups of European Alternatives, the Festival aims at being an event to share and discuss about Europe, its culture, its democratic practices and their evolution. Niccolò Milanese, co-president at European Alternatives answered our questions. Le Journal International: A Festival to connect culture, European-ness and the European Union. How did this idea come to you? Niccolò Milanese: It was born out of frustration (as most political acts are): frustration at what we felt was a staleness in culture and philosophy in Europe, frustration at a lack of political ambition and a lack of real political and cultural alternatives. Our motivation wasn’t primarily about the European Union, but we think that Europe is the last remaining utopia for those of us that live in this part of the world, that all interesting cultural and political experimentation will be at least on a European level. So we wanted to try to recover the utopian potential of Europe from the European institutions (Europe was a poet’s dream before a politicians’ project) and to try to open up the discursive space in debates about ‘Europe’. We tried to do this by inviting artists, writers, philosophers to create a festival about Europe, and also involving European citizens themselves in creating a festival about their own future. JI: About the mix between a cultural event and the European Union, is that a simple strategy to attract citizens who are more and more Eurosceptic or is it a way to promote a more cultural and more transnational Europe? NM: We believe that Europe and the idea of the European project are very important to our collective destiny, and if we let these ideas be torn down, they will be replaced by regressive, nationalistic and xenophobic alternatives; but nevertheless, we are not in the business of trying to ‘sell’ the idea of Europe to anyone. Indeed, the kind of attitude we would think it would be desirable for citizens to have in the European Union would be a ‘Euro-critical’ one: and encouraging people to question democratically the institutions governing Europe is one of the roles of the festival. The cultural component of our activity is about promoting the emergence of a European subjectivity, or series of European imaginaries, which are question and go-beyond the national borders which still largely govern our social, political and artistic interactions: political alternatives can be opened up by questioning the paradigm of the nation state in all the ways it influences our lives together. JI: The Festival is also a moment to shed light on the local groups of European Alternatives. How did they get to participate in its organisation? NM: The festival would not exist without our local groups! We organised our festival for the first time in 2007, in London: at that time it had the surprising name ‘London Festival of Europe’. From the first edition we were contacted by many people across Europe who wanted to get involved in our activities and somehow help. This was in-fact how we started the organisation European Alternatives (at first we had just thought to organise the festival). We involved many of these people in organising our festival each year in London, and in running campaigns and other projects throughout the year. By 2010, we were sufficiently developed to run the festival in several places simultaneously (which is not easy!). In 2010 we organised it in 4 cities, then in 12 cities in 2011, 14 in 2012 and in 13 cities this year. People can join European Alternatives wherever they are in the world, and when there are at least 4 members in one locality we can think about doing the festival there. The members meet regularly throughout the year to decide what should be in the festival, and we work together to find funding, advertise etc. JI: Only 34 %1 of EU citizens who judge positively the EU, the growing anti-Europe sentiment, can the Festival be a way to develop new alternatives to austerity? Which one? NM: We can understand why only a minority of EU citizens would judge the current EU positively – there are many things to dislike. We think that it is possible to reform the EU by adopting a radically different approach from the ‘top-down’ approach which has dominated up until now: a bottom-up, citizen-led approach. We see ourselves as trying to show as many people as possible that it is possible to have an impact as citizens in Europe, and that we can change things. Secondly, we don’t think the future of Europe is all about the official institutions, it is also about the ways citizens relate to one another on a horizontal level: we can change attitudes from one of competition, fear, or loathing between peoples to one of cooperation and trust if we put in place occasions for this to happen and be shown. The festival is one such place. When it comes to alternatives to austerity, there are a number of very concrete proposals in our citizens manifesto for this – from banking reform to introducing bankruptcy legislation for sovereign debtors. The solutions are out there, the political will has to be built amongst the population to show cooperation is possible. Our political leaders are failing dramatically at that. JI: European Alternatives also works on a Citizens Pact for Democracy which will be proposed to…
Le Réseau Transeuropa se retrouve à Londres!
Les 8 et 9 octobre, le Réseau Transeuropa s’est réuni à Londres pour une réunion très enthousiasmante et productive. Alternatives Européennes souhaite remercier tous les membres – nouveaux et plus anciens- qui sont venus de toute l’Europe pour participer à cette réunion et aider à construire une base commune pour renforcer le développement du Réseau Transeuropa. Alors que le Réseau célébrait sa première année d’existence, les participants ont partagé le succès rencontré dans chaque ville où a été créé un groupe local de militants. Cela a été permis par un travail et un investissement très important des membres. Cependant, ce résultat n’est pas une surprise compte tenu de l’enthousiasme des “nouveaux” et “anciens” membres que l’on a pu encore voir à cette réunion. La rencontre a été inaugurée par une présentation d’Alessandro Valera, qui a mené diverses activités afin de “briser la glace” et notamment le jeu de la “chaîne humaine”, dont le but était de montrer qu’il est possible de briser toute barrière transeuropéenne potentielle. Cette réunion correspondait également à une consultation citoyenne portant sur le thème “Légalité et Lutte contre le crime organisé”, introduite par Kennedy Talbot et Giulio Robino, deux experts dans ce domaine, et suivi d’un stimulant débat. Les participants ont participé à un brainstorming en silence, sur les trois thématiques sur lesquelles travaillera le réseau cette année (Crise économique/ Migrations/ Nouvelles formes de participation démocratique) Dimanche, le déjeuner “You make me feel so….” était censé être une sorte de “buffet” européen, les participants devant amener de la nourriture qui représente le mieux l’esprit de leur ville. Le déjeuner a finalement bien reflété les racines italiennes d’Alternatives Européennes avec 20 pizzas amenées sur un plateau. Néanmoins, certains participants dévoués ont amené de délicieux produits de leur pays, ce qui par ailleurs a été très apprécié du reste des membres! Le Festival Transeuropa a particulièrement retenu l’attention et stimulé l’enthousiasme de chacun, donc pour préparer le Festival de l’année prochaine nous avons hâte d’accueillir les suggestions et idées de tant de nouveaux Européens passionnés! Voici quelques commentaires des participants du week end : “Nous pensons que vous menez un super travail et nous sommes heureux de partager avec vous cette aventure européenne. C’est super d’avoir un espace où l’on peut échanger des idées, opinions et projets…Nous sommes revenus de Londres avec beaucoup d’énergie!!!” (Nouveau membre de Barcelone) “Merci encore pour ce super TN-Meeting, j’ai passé un week end très enthousiasmant à Londres!” (Membre de Berlin)
Transeuropa Network goes to London!
This past weekend the Transeuropa Network met in London for a truly inspiring and productive meeting. European Alternatives would like to thank all the members – new as well as old – who came from throughout Europe to participate to the meeting, and helped constitute a common ground for further development of the Transeuropa Network. Whilst the Network was celebrating its one-year birthday, participants shared the successes of each city group which have been achieved due to the hard work and dedication of members. However, this comes as no surprise considering the enthusiasm displayed by all the ‘new’ as well as ‘old’ faces at the meeting. The meeting kick-started with an introduction by Alessandro Valera, who took us through various ice-breaking games, among which, the ‘Human Chain Game’ which indeed did live up to its objective of breaking down any potential trans-European barriers. The meeting also coincided with a citizens’ consultation on ‘Legality and the Struggle Against Organised Crime’ which was introduced by Kennedy Talbot and Giulio Rubino, two experts on the matter, and followed by stimulating debate. The participants engaged in silent brainstorming, on the three thematics the network will elaborate throughout the year ( Economic Crisis | Migration | Alternative modes of Democratic Participation). Sunday’s ‘you make me feel so…’ lunch was supposed to be a sort of European pot-luck, with participants bringing food which best represents the spirit of their own city. This lunch ended up reflecting the Italian roots of EA manifested by 20 pizzas brought to the door. However, some dedicated participants did bring delicious pastries from their countries, which was indeed appreciated by the rest of the crew! The notion of the Transeuropa Festival particularly attracted much attention and stimulated enthusiasm, so for the planning of next year’s festival we are looking forward to welcoming the inputs of so many new passionate Europeans. Here are some comments of the participants from the weekend: “We think that you’re carrying out really a good job and we’re happy to share with you this European adventure. It’s great to have a space where one can exchange ideas, opinions and projects. … We came back from London with great energy!!!” (New Member from Barcelona) “Thank you again for this great TN-Meeting, I had such an inspiring and wonderful weekend in London!” (Berlin member)
A day in the life of
As part of our Making a Living project to use creative methods to explore how young people are coping with making a living, we would like to announce an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers. These have been produced thanks to the stories of over 80 young people across 25 cities in Europe on how they cope with making a living. To create a day in the life in 2020, just follow these simple steps: 1. Select one of the personas 2. Download the template 3. Describe how they go about the day based on the elements of the persona you have chosen 4. Have a look at an example a few of our members created of a day in the life in 2020 5. Describe how they would act, react, feel, think & interact in 2020 using the template! 6. Use photos from Make a Living or take your own photos that represent what you’ve written. 7. Send your “day in a life” to london.euroalter.com 8. We will publish your “day in the life” on our website and showcase it at our festival! Any queries, just get in touch! Day ?n the Life – Template from Noel Hatch
UNE JOURNEE DANS LA VIE DE…
Une journée dans la vie de… Dans le cadre de notre projet Gagner sa vie qui explore à l’aide de méthodes créatives comment des jeunes parviennent à gagner leur vie, nous souhaitons vous parler d’une occasion exceptionnelle pour vous de voir votre œuvre primée lors de notre festival ! Nous avons développé une méthode vous permettant d’imaginer une journée dans la vie d’un jeune en 2020 à l’aide des personnages que nous avons développés : Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists et Lifestyle Hackers. Ces personnages sont le fruit des témoignages de plus de 80 jeunes de 25 villes européennes qui nous ont raconté comment ils parviennent à gagner leur vie. Pour inventer une journée de vie en 2020, suivez ces quelques étapes simples : 1. Sélectionnez un personnage 2. Téléchargez le template 3. Racontez leur journée d’après les éléments indiqués pour le personnage choisi 4. Jetez un coup d’œil aux exemples créés par quelques-uns de nos membres 5. Décrivez le comportement, les réactions, les sentiments, les pensées et les relations de votre personnage en 2020 en vous servant du template ! 6. Servez-vous des photos du projet Gagner sa vie ou prenez vos propres photos pour illustrer votre texte. 7. Envoyez le résultat à london.euroalter.com 8. Nous publierons votre « Journée de vie » sur notre site Internet et la diffuserons lors de notre festival ! Si vous avez des questions, contactez-nous ! Day ın the Life – Template from Noel Hatch
Laction transnationale SHAREs en ouverture du Festival Transeuropa
Une action transnationale Chaque année, le Festival Transeuropa débute le 4 octobre avec une action transnationale se déroulant simultanément dans toutes les villes partenaires du Festival afin d’encourager les participants à s’engager au côté de leur ville et des espaces publics, et, encore plus important, au côté d’autres participants présents dans différentes villes d’Europe. Cette année, l’action transnationale en ouverture du festival dans 13 villes est le résultat de SHAREs, un projet artistique mené par Alternatives Européennes. SHAREs Le projet SHAREs – Action Transnationale d’Information lancera le Festival Transeuropa avec une action transnationale ouverte au public. Cet événement public sera le résultat d’une série d’ateliers, menés par le collectif artistique Ligna composé d’artistes venant de dix pays européens, et axés sur le rôle et l’utilisation de la Radio à la fois en tant que média de communication et d’éducation mais aussi en tant qu’éventuel outil pour explorer l’idée d’action collective. Partant d’une théorie de Bertold Brecht affirmant que « la concentration accrue d’appareils mécaniques, de même que la spécialisation accrue de l’éducation, exigent une sorte de rébellion de la part de l’auditeur, son activation et son réengagement en tant producteur », les artistes observent les stratégies d’appropriation d’un média de masse tel que la radio et sa relation avec l’espace public. Tout en gardant à l’esprit la mobilisation récente et toujours en cours dans le monde, l’action réfléchira à la relation entre de nouveaux modes de partage d’information fournis par les nouvelles technologies et d’éventuelles pratiques de collaboration qui en émergent. L’action transnationale deviendra une affaire publique puisque l’intervention artistique réinjecte les résultats du procédé de réflexion dans le discours public et ses verdicts. SHAREs est un projet se déroulant sur 18 mois et conçu comme une plateforme pour développer la collaboration transnationale impliquant des opérateurs culturels, des artistes, des journalistes, des activistes, des philosophes et des étudiants de 10 pays européens dont l’Allemagne, la Turquie, l’Espagne, l’Italie, la Bulgarie, la Roumanie, la Pologne, la Serbie, la République Tchèque et le Royaume Uni. Le titre, en tant que le projet lui-même, présente une dichotomie basée sur l’idée d’une économie qui se trouve suspendue entre des marchés boursiers – dont les dynamiques et les logiques semblent être inaccessibles pour la majorité des gens, bien que leurs effets sur la vie des gens soient extrêmement tangibles – et des formes d’organisation alternatives fondées sur la solidarité et sur l’idée de ‘biens communs’, notion réinventée et exempte de toute connotation idéologique. Plus d’informations sur les caractéristiques de l’action seront bientôt disponibles sur le site du Festival ! Des membres d'Alternatives Européennes répètent l'action lors d'une rencontre le weekend du 24-25 août.
L’action transnationale SHAREs en ouverture du Festival Transeuropa
Une action transnationale Chaque année, le Festival Transeuropa débute le 4 octobre avec une action transnationale se déroulant simultanément dans toutes les villes partenaires du Festival afin d’encourager les participants à s’engager au côté de leur ville et des espaces publics, et, encore plus important, au côté d’autres participants présents dans différentes villes d’Europe. Cette année, l’action transnationale en ouverture du festival dans 13 villes est le résultat de SHAREs, un projet artistique mené par Alternatives Européennes. SHAREs Le projet SHAREs – Action Transnationale d’Information lancera le Festival Transeuropa avec une action transnationale ouverte au public. Cet événement public sera le résultat d’une série d’ateliers, menés par le collectif artistique Ligna composé d’artistes venant de dix pays européens, et axés sur le rôle et l’utilisation de la Radio à la fois en tant que média de communication et d’éducation mais aussi en tant qu’éventuel outil pour explorer l’idée d’action collective. Partant d’une théorie de Bertold Brecht affirmant que « la concentration accrue d’appareils mécaniques, de même que la spécialisation accrue de l’éducation, exigent une sorte de rébellion de la part de l’auditeur, son activation et son réengagement en tant producteur », les artistes observent les stratégies d’appropriation d’un média de masse tel que la radio et sa relation avec l’espace public. Tout en gardant à l’esprit la mobilisation récente et toujours en cours dans le monde, l’action réfléchira à la relation entre de nouveaux modes de partage d’information fournis par les nouvelles technologies et d’éventuelles pratiques de collaboration qui en émergent. L’action transnationale deviendra une affaire publique puisque l’intervention artistique réinjecte les résultats du procédé de réflexion dans le discours public et ses verdicts. SHAREs est un projet se déroulant sur 18 mois et conçu comme une plateforme pour développer la collaboration transnationale impliquant des opérateurs culturels, des artistes, des journalistes, des activistes, des philosophes et des étudiants de 10 pays européens dont l’Allemagne, la Turquie, l’Espagne, l’Italie, la Bulgarie, la Roumanie, la Pologne, la Serbie, la République Tchèque et le Royaume Uni. Le titre, en tant que le projet lui-même, présente une dichotomie basée sur l’idée d’une économie qui se trouve suspendue entre des marchés boursiers – dont les dynamiques et les logiques semblent être inaccessibles pour la majorité des gens, bien que leurs effets sur la vie des gens soient extrêmement tangibles – et des formes d’organisation alternatives fondées sur la solidarité et sur l’idée de ‘biens communs’, notion réinventée et exempte de toute connotation idéologique. Plus d’informations sur les caractéristiques de l’action seront bientôt disponibles sur le site du Festival ! Des membres d’Alternatives Européennes répètent l’action lors d’une rencontre le weekend du 24-25 août.
SHAREs transnational action to open Transeuropa Festival
Transnational Action Each year the Transeuropa Festival opens on October 4th with a transnational action taking place simultaneously in all Festival cities, encouraging participants to engage with their cities and outdoor spaces, and more importantly with others who are located in different cities throughout Europe. This year, the transnational action opening the Festival in 13 cities is the result of SHAREs, an artistic project run by European Alteranatives. SHAREs The project SHAREs – Informing Transnational Action will open the Transeuropa Festival with a public transnational action. The public event will be the result of a workshop series lead by the artistic collective Ligna with artists from ten European countries and which focuses on the role and use of Radio as a communication and educative medium as well as a potential tool to explore the idea of collective action. Starting from Bertold Brecht’s theory affirming that “the increasing concentration of mechanical devices, as well as the increasing specialisation of education, require a sort of rebellion of the listener, his activation and his reinvolvement as producer”, the artists look at strategies of appropriation of a mass medium such as the radio and its relationship with public space. Keeping in mind the recent and ongoing mobilisation taking place worldwide, the action will reflect on the relationship between new ways of sharing information offered by new technologies and the potential collaborative practices that emerge as consequences of that. The transnational action will become a public affair, as the artistic intervention feeds the results of the reflection process back into public discourse and its verdicts. SHAREs is an 18 months long project conceived as a platform to develop a transnational collaboration involving cultural operators, artists, journalists, activists, philosophers, and students from 10 European countries including Germany, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Serbia, Czech Republic, UK. The title as the project itself, presents a dichotomy based on the idea of an economy that is suspended between stock markets – whose dynamics and logics appear to be inaccessible to the majority of people, although their effects on people’s lives are extremely tangible – and alternative forms of organisation based on solidarity and on an idea of ‘commons’ which is re-invented and understood beyond any ideological connotation. More details on the specifics of the action will soon be available on the Festival website! European Alternatives activists try out the action in one of Sofia’s squares, over the weekend of August 24-25
From parenthackers to post-hackers
There are more graduates finding themselves out of work. Qualifications are becoming less useful to finding a job. When militant optimists lose their job, they fall apart, which is perhaps why they are so protective of their current jobs. Many millenials have been brought up that they need to strive to become militant optimists. But given how unrealistic that prospect it is for most young people, will millenial parents bring up their children to become lifestyle hackers instead? Militant optimists can become too careerist, but increasingly they are replaced in the job market by the zombie generation as the permanent 9-5 contracts they were in get replaced by temporary zero hour contracts. Militant optimism therefore becomes a temporary situation as sooner or later, their job will get zombified. The zombie generation struggles for meaning. Invisible citizens are disillusioned and negative about everything. However, they have more freedom than they realise. Procrastination is strangely active. It can be “organised” as a way to put some distance between you and the facts. It’s partly why some invisible citizens become life hackers. Another reason is that invisible citizens keep trying to find jobs the traditional way and some eventually realise that the only viable option left is to create their own living and become a lifestyle hacker. Invisible citizens look for stability. How can you create interaction between invisible citizens and lifestyle hackers to overcome their difficulties? When we talk about migration, we often hear of stories of people who are desperate for any work and so at best they epitomise the zombie generation – working all hours of the day and night – and at worst, they’re invisible citizens – unable to get any work or support, because of lack of connections and even legal restrictions. However, there are young migrants who are lifestyle hackers, who either go in search of a different life and know they’ll have to work in the informal economy to make a living in their new country. Others may have friends in other countries who constitute the basecamp of a new network they can start to build – to get advice, make friends and even to help them create a business or sell their products. Lifestyle hackers find an opportunity in everything and their network always comes first. It is perhaps because they are more aware than others about their situation. They make connections and have sophisticated uses for technology. The network comes together as the temporary structures move away. The lifestyle hackers exchange skills and densify their network. However, because they rely on their personal connections to make a living, often these relationships can be strained, albeit in a different way to zombie generation who have no time to see their friends and loved ones. What will a lifestyle hacker be like in 2020? A post-hacker or hacker 2.0? Lifestyle hackers don’t want competitors in their network as they know how destructive this would be to the flow of collaboration within it. They protect their network much more than other people, as they rely so much on it. Lifestyle hackers find ways to organise to meet their basic needs. They work in areas where they’re exposed to people. For them, money becomes less important as they look to new forms of credit and exchange. Lifestyle hackers have a network to create & find opportunities and help create a sense of belonging. Lifestyle hackers sees other people as assets and as potential collaborators, while the zombie generation sees everyone as a competitor. With lifestyle hackers not relying on formal forms of support like jobcentres and many invisible citizens giving up hope on these through past unsuccessful experiences at getting work through this channel, will jobcentres look to focus primarily on people like invisible citizens who can’t call on anyone for support in their network, or will they close down because they have less people queuing up?
EA’s annual general meeting live today from Berlin!
Memebers of European Alternatives meet today in Berlin for the Annual General Meeting to discuss the successes of the past year and the goals and objectives for the following ones. (Not a member yet? Join now)
100 Special Screenings of Closed Sea for the World Refugee Day 2012
European Alternatives supports the Campaign against the policy of “pushing-back” migrants “No More Push-Backs!” (Mai Più Respinti!) launched by ZaLab, the Italian production company involved in participatory videos and community documentaries projects, in cooperation with Open Society Foundations and Amnesty International on the occasion of the 11th annual World Refugee Day. On 4 December 2000, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Resolution 55/76 where it noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and that the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) had agreed to have International Refugee Day coincide with Africa Refugee Day observed on June 20 each year. The General Assembly therefore decided that, from 2001, the 20 June would be celebrated as World Refugee Day to raise awareness of the inhuman condition of refugees and to draw the public’s attention to the millions of refugees worldwide who are forced to flee their home countries because of war, religious or political persecution during one internationally recognised day. Since then, the World Refugee Day became an annual event and it is now celebrated in different ways all over the world. In 2012, several celebrations will take place all around Italy including more than 100 simultaneous screenings of Andrea Segre and Stefano Liberti’s documentary “Closed Sea” (Mare Chiuso) which followed the migrants “pushed-back” – most of those people being asylum seekers originating from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan – during and after that they had been rejected at the Southern Borders of the European Union and forcibly returned to Libya, where they were detained in inhumane and degrading conditions and submitted to a variety of abuses, including torture.This way, on the occasion of the 11th annual World Refugee Day, in more than 60 Italian cities so far (from the northest in Agordo to the southest scheduled in Caltagirone, Sicily), cinemas, theatres, schools, universities, community centres, libraries, museums will screen the documentary by Stefano Liberti and Andrea Segre and hundreds of NGOs, associations, institutions and private citizens are subscribing to the Campaign to say “stop” to the push-backs of migrants, for which Italy has already been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on February 2012. The Italian Senate’s Human Rights Commission will also host a special screening open to the public (info and requests for accreditation at: dirittiumani@senato.it) of the documentary at 3:30 p.m. European Alternatives supports all the initiatives launched to promote the Campaign “No More Push-Backs!” coherently with its transnational ongoing commitment calling on the governments of the Member States and on the EU institutions to act in order to ensure that civil society representatives and the press have access to the detention centres and defending migrants’ rights at the international, regional and local level. For all these reasons, in the past few months we have continuously called, together with our European partners, on MPs and those who do have access to migrant detention centres to push for respect and improvements of the national and European legislation in this field. Furthermore, because the EU is increasingly ‘externalising’ its migratory policies, pushing non-member states to set up detention centres on their own territory to prevent migrants from entering Europe, we insisted on the need for the full implementation of procedures that guarantee openness and transparency in these non-European countries, too. • Screenings Calendar & Venues • Synopsis of the Documentary “Closed Sea” • “Closed Sea” on Open Society Foundations • Text of the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol
100 Projections simultanées de Closed Sea pour la Journée mondiale des réfugiés 2012
Le 4 décembre 2000, l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies a adopté à l’unanimité la résolution 55/76, où il figure que l’année 2001 marque le 50ème anniversaire de la Convention de 1951 relative au statut des réfugiés. L’Assemblée note également que l’Organisation de l’unité africaine (OUA) a accepté que la Journéeinternationale des réfugiés coïncide avec la Journée du réfugié africain qui se tient chaque année le 20 juin. L’Assemblée générale a donc décidé qu’à partir de 2001, le 20 juin deviendra la Journée mondiale des réfugiés, afin d’attirer l’attention, pendant une journée internationalement reconnue, sur les conditions inhumaines infligées aux réfugiés, ainsi que sur les millions d’entre eux forcés de quitter leur pays à cause de guerres, de persécutions politiques ou religieuses. Depuis, la Journée mondiale des réfugiés est devenue un événement annuel célébré de diverses manières partout dans le monde. En 2012, l’Italie accueillera plusieurs célébrations, parmi lesquelles plus de 100 projections simultanées du documentaire Closed Sea (Mare Chiuso), réalisé par Andrea Segre et Stefano Liberti. Ce documentaire fait suite aux « renvois » de migrants (dont la plupart sont des demandeurs d’asile originaires d’Éthiopie, d’Érythrée, de Somalie et du Soudan), lorsqu’ils ont été arrêtés aux frontières sud de l’UE et renvoyés de force en Libye, où ils ont été détenus dans des conditions inhumaines et dégradantes, et soumis à de multiples abus, y compris la torture. Ainsi à l’occasion de la 11ème Journée mondiale des réfugiés, le documentaire de Stefano Liberti et d’Andrea Segre sera projeté dans plus de 60 villes italiennes (depuis Agordo au nord, jusqu’à Caltagirone, ville la plus au sud, en Sicile), par des cinémas, théâtres, écoles, universités, centres communautaires, bibliothèques et musées. Par ailleurs, des centaines d’ONG, d’associations, d’institutions et de citoyens souscrivent à la campagne disant « stop » aux renvois de migrants, pour lesquels l’Italie a déjà été condamnée par la Cour européenne des droits de l’Homme en février 2012, à Strasbourg. Une projection spéciale ouverte au public se tiendra à la Commission des droits de l’Homme du sénat italien, à 15h30 (pour toute information ou demande d’accréditation, s’adresser à : dirittiumani@senato.it). Alternatives Européennes soutient toutes les initiatives promouvant la campagne « Plus de renvois ! », parallèlement à son engagement transnational et à ses demandes aux gouvernements des États membres, ainsi qu’aux institutions de l’UE, pour qu’ils fassent en sorte que les représentants de sociétés civiles et la presse aient accès aux centres de détention, et également qu’ils défendent les droits des migrants aux niveaux local, régional et international. C’est pourquoi au cours des derniers mois nous avons sans cesse, conjointement avec des partenaires européens, demandé aux membres du Parlement et à ceux qui ont accès aux centres de détention d’insister sur le respect et l’amélioration de la législation européenne et nationale dans ce domaine. De plus, étant donné que l’UE « externalise » inlassablement sa politique migratoire, et pousse des États non membres à installer des centres sur leurs propres territoires pour empêcher l’entrée des migrants en Europe, nous avons insisté sur la nécessité de mettre en place des procédures garantissant l’ouverture et la transparence de ces pays non européens. • Calendrier et lieux des projections. • Synopsis du documentaire « Closed Sea ». • « Closed Sea », à l’Open Society Foundations. • Texte de la Convention de 1951 pour les réfugiés et Protocole de 1967
Lampedusa: Incontro al Parlamento europeo per una nuova politica migratoria
Dopo i recenti accadimenti di Lampedusa da più parti è arrivata la richiesta di un ruolo più incisivo delle istituzioni europee affinché la politica d’asilo europea possa essere ripensata e il trattamento disumano che si accompagna al movimento delle persone lungo le frontiere smetta di essere routine.
A new migration policy for Europe
European Parliament, Room P5B001 October 17th, 2013, 9.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m. Live streaming will be available here: www.livestream.com/euroalter [Please, register online here before: October 11, 2013] In the past three years, European Alternatives has organised a number of specific sessions of discussion on migrants’ rights and the politics of detention, which represents a growing and worrisome issue across Europe. NGOs representatives, associations, academics, professionals and citizens from different EU member states gathered to discuss ways to prevent the damaging and unnecessary detention of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees; to share concerns about current regularisation programmes for undocumented migrants and to seek alternatives to the detention practice also through the adoption of EU legislation in this field. Detention of migrants is a widespread practice across the EU and, despite the existence and their clear economic advantage, alternatives to detention remain vastly unused. This area of work culminated over the last two years in the coordination and implementation of transnational campaigns against the administrative detention and the role of civil society organisations and media in reporting the conditions of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants held in administrative detention in many EU Member States, notably through the Open Access Now (officially launched jointly with the Migreurop network in 2011) and LasciateCIEntrare campaigns (broad-based coalition of associations based in Italy calling for access to the detention centres for journalists and CSOs against the suspension and restrictions on the right to information), joined in 2011. The envisaged future process will build on this campaigning experience gained so far in the coordination and implementation of specific transnational coalitions, aiming at raising awareness amongst both European politicians and the general public about the defence of migrants’ rights, the routinisation of immigration detention, and the participation in thematic networks working on these issues at the European level, including the EYCA (European Year of Citizens Alliance) working group on European and inclusive citizenship that is elaborating a final proposal to be presented at the European Parliament, and citizens manifesto being developed by European Alternatives in advance of the European elections in 2014, as part of the citizens’ pact of European Alternatives calling for greater citizen participation in European decision-making. The aim is to expand the scope of these activities to a more active role in contrasting detention and proposing solutions that go beyond the right of access to the centres and the defence of the right to information for citizens. This meeting will offer the opportunity for a reasoned and constructive debate with Member of the European Parliament, Ministries of EU Member States, and other institutional and civil society representatives from throughout Europe. The event will focus on alternatives to custody following administrative decisions, the reduction of the length of detention and the conditions of detention as analysed during the course of a much broader consultation process involving activists, civil society organisations, journalists and legal experts. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION DOCUMENTS Download flier for the event Full Agenda Event on Facebook CONTACTS Conference Organising Committee Ms. Anna Lodeserto Ph.: (Belgium) +32 494686102 Ph.: (Italy) +39 345 32 31 023 E-mail: a.lodeserto@euroalter.com Ms. Paula V. Espinosa Giménez Ph.: (Italy) +39 324 6039466 E-mail: p.espinosa@euroalter.com Office: +39 06 81178272 (Phone) / +39 06 89566573 (FAX) Press Officer: Mr. Alessio Pisanò Ph.: (Belgium) +32 (0) 488 88 2350 E-mail: press@euroalter.com For further information, please write to: europa@lasciatecientrare.it
EA at NECE Conference 2013
Networking European Citizenship Education “The European Union and the Promise of Democracy: What can Citizenship Education and Civil Society contribute?” 14-16 November 2013, The Hague (the Netherlands) Full program available here. Europe’s ongoing economic crisis has engendered a crisis of confidence in the European project and the costs and benefits of further European integration. The democratic deficit of the European Union has now become more and more visible and contributes to the backlash in support for the EU. It has also become very clear now that the economic crisis is dividing Europe and may ultimately lead to the break up of the EU. Against this background this year´s NECE Conference will deal with challenges for citizenship educators across Europe. With an eye to the elections to the European Parliament in May 2014, NECE 2013 will explore the topics of participation and democratisation and focus on the EU’s democratic deficit for discussing possible consequences and the role for citizenship education. The conference in The Hague will offer opportunities for a critical debate on four levels: 1. Scenarios and outlines for the future of the EU 2. European civil society and the ‘democratic deficit’ of the European Union 3. Role of citizenship education in the European crisis 4. Practical approaches and projects of citizenship education Opportunities to actively take part will be provided in numerous workshops, a world café and an open forum. Also, a project market for European models and good practice projects in citizenship education is offered. At the end of the conference, participants are invited to draw up a public ‘Conference Paper’ with recommendations on the topic of democratisation and participation in the EU. Frans Timmermans, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, the well-known Dutch publicist Paul Scheffer, professor of European Studies at Tilburg University and Lorenzo Marsili, executive director of European Alternatives have already confirmed their participation. The conference language is English (no simultaneous translation). There is no conference fee. The organisers do not cover travel and accommodation costs. Places are limited! Register here! We are looking forward to welcoming you in The Hague – hometown of our NECE partner ProDemos – House for Democracy and the Rule of Law and centre of governance in the Netherlands, as well as home to many institutions aimed at improving international justice and peace! If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the conference management at: E-Mail: nece-thehague2013@lab-concepts.de Web: www.nece.eu
Vaincre le déficit démocratique
Ivan Botoucharov Dessin : Dan PerjovschiArticle original publié le 22 mai sur OneEurope Si l’UE veut réduire l’immense fracture entre ses citoyens, elle aura besoin d’une approche proactive visant à les sensibiliser à leurs droits, leurs pouvoirs et les opportunités dont ils jouissent. Cet événement était organisé à Londres dans le cadre d’une série de rassemblements citoyens intitulée Pacte citoyen, qui vise à trouver des solutions afin de réduire la fracture entre l’UE et ses citoyens, à l’initiative d’Alternatives Européennes, une organisation européenne impliquée dans la recherche de solutions transnationales à nos problèmes communs.Les conclusions des débats seront incluses dans un « Manifeste citoyen » qui sera présenté aux députés européens à un moment crucial pour eux : juste avant les élections européennes. La société civile A Londres, lors de cet événement, il y avait 8 tables de discussion consacrées chacune à une question visant à démocratiser l’Union européenne. J’ai eu le plaisir de modérer le stand sur « Mobiliser et unifier la société civile », un sujet qui me tient particulièrement à cœur et que je sais être capital pour la construction démocratique dans n’importe quelle société. De nombreux Européens, intelligents et enthousiastes, m’ont honoré de leur participation au débat. Voici nos conclusions : GLOCAL – Penser global, agir local La plupart des citoyens européens ne connaissent pas leur droits et leurs devoir et ne réalisent même pas à quel point leur vote est important. Ces dernières années, le taux de participation aux élections régionales et nationales n’a eu de cesse de chuter, plus encore aux élections européennes (encore récemment, la première élection de députés européens en Croatie n’a atteint qu’un taux de participation de 20,75%, dans un pays qui venait de voter pour son entrée dans l’UE avec une large majorité). En ce qui concerne l’UE, les citoyens européens ne comprennent même pas pourquoi ils votent, quels sont les pouvoirs des institutions bruxelloises et quelles décisions y sont prises. Ceci est dû au manque de débat et de sensibilisation des citoyens à leurs droits, pouvoirs et devoirs. Par ailleurs, ce que les Européens veulent vraiment savoir, c’est en quoi les grandes politiques européennes les affecteront personnellement, eux, leur famille et leur communauté. Or, il y a très peu d’information à ce propos. Il est possible de sensibiliser la société aux conséquences directes des politiques nationales et européennes sur leur vie quotidienne par un réseau de militants bien informés et enthousiastes dans chacune des régions. Les campagnes politiques qui ont connu le plus de succès sont celles qui ont réussi à développer un réseau militant sur le terrain, pas celles dont l’organisation était centralisée. Ces militants font un travail de sensibilisation à l’impact et l’importance des grandes décisions politiques dans leur ville, département ou région. Les Obama Mamas, un groupe de militantes locales qui expliquait clairement les promesses électorales et choix politiques d’Obama, d’une façon simple et du point de vue de leur communauté, ont connu un grand succès. On apprend que ce groupe militant était déjà en place, il n’a pas été créé par l’équipe de campagne d’Obama mais il s’agit plutôt de structures existantes de la société civile, qui se sont tout simplement réunies pour agir à cette occasion. Autre exemple : le Mouvement 15-M espagnol, plus connu sous le nom d’Indignados préféré par les médias, qui a politisé une grande partie de la société, dont des personnes de toute catégorie sociale et mode de vie. Et ce, sans avoir accès à aucun des principaux médias, sans même distribuer de tracts ou aller vers leurs concitoyens, mais en organisant tout simplement des conférences locales où ils pouvaient recevoir des informations. Il existe déjà de nombreuses organisations de la société civile actives sur le terrain, partout en Europe et dans toutes les régions. Elles sont présentes au sein des communautés locales, ont des militants qui s’intéressent aux grandes lignes politiques de l’UE et comprennent aussi les enjeux locaux. Ces organisations ont besoin de soutien et de ressources à la hauteur de leur enthousiasme afin d’en pérenniser les résultats. Ce qui nous amène au point suivant : EDUCATION Pour une politisation de la société, les citoyens doivent être informés et sensibilités à leurs droits et devoirs, du moins en quoi leur voix compte. Cela peut se faire par exemple par des conférences, des événements, des débats et par les réseaux sociaux. Comme je le mentionne au paragraphe précédent, les initiatives ascendantes émanant du terrain ont l’avantage d’être ancrées au cœur des communautés locales et donc d’être à même de comprendre celles-ci au mieux. Du point de vue de l’UE, elles sont à même d’atteindre les citoyens dans toutes les régions, pas seulement les europhiles et le microcosme politique de Bruxelles. L’UE n’est pas en mesure de gérer le militantisme, les débats et la sensibilisation dans toutes les régions, mais elle peut soutenir des organisations existantes qui le font. Par exemple, l’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne est un projet intéressant de la Commission Européenne, dont la promotion n’a cependant été l’objet d’aucune subvention ; par conséquent, rares sont ceux qui en ont seulement entendu parler. Par conséquent, jusqu’ici les ICE n’ont récolté que peu de soutiens, essentiellement du « microcosme bruxellois », la communauté des personnes qui s’intéressent à la politique européenne. Nous voici donc arrivés au point de comprendre qu’il est nécessaire de sensibiliser les citoyens européens à leurs droits et pouvoirs, que ce but sera atteint de façon optimale par l’information sur les conséquences des politiques européennes pour eux et leurs communautés, et que l’UE doit prendre davantage d’initiatives afin d’atteindre tous ses citoyens, dans toutes les régions et pas seulement à Bruxelles, et ce par des réseaux locaux. Les organisations eux-mêmes doivent toutefois également devenir plus proactives. Il existe actuellement des milliers d’organisations « pro-européennes » qui font un travail assez similaire : écrire des articles, organiser des événements et des débats, tout en refusant généralement de collaborer entre elles en raison de certains privilèges. UNITE Pour unifier leur message et lui donner une plus grande portée, les différentes organisations de la société civile doivent collaborer. Même sans ce secteur sans but lucratif, dans lequel il ne saurait ni…
Busting the Democratic Deficit
By Ivan Botoucharov Drawing: Dan PerjovschiThis article was originally published on OneEurope on May 22nd If the EU wants to close the huge gap with its citizens, it has to pro-actively approach them and explain their rights, powers and opportunities. On the evening of the 8 May, civil society activists from all over Europe, from as far as Northern Sweden and Barcelona, gathered at Europe House in London, with one aim: to find concrete solutions to the democratic deficit of the EU. The initiator was European Alternatives, a pan-European organization which provides transnational solutions to our common challenges. The event they organised in London was part of a series of citizens gatherings, under the common title “The Citizens Pact”, which aims to find solutions for bridging the great gap between the EU and its citizens. The conclusions from these debates will become part of “The Citizens Manifesto”, which will be introduced to MEPs at their most susceptible time: exactly before the European Parliament elections. The Civil Society At the event in London there were 8 tables, each focusing on a different aspect involved in democratizing the union. I had the great pleasure of moderating the table on “Mobilizing and Uniting the Civil Society”. A topic I feel strongly about, and which I know is crucial to ensuring democracy in any and every society. A number of very bright and enthusiastic Europeans honored me, by joining this discussion. Here are the conclusions from our debate: GLOCAL – Think Global, Act Local Most citizens are not aware of their rights, and of their obligations, they do not even understand how important their vote is. The turn-out at regional and national elections in recent years keeps falling, and none more so than at the European elections (only recently the first EP elections in Croatia achieved only 20.75% turn-out, in a country which overwhelmingly voted in a referendum to join the EU recently). In the case of the EU, the citizens do not even understand what they are voting for, and what powers and decisions are made at the Institutions in Brussels. This is because there is not much debate and education on citizens rights, powers and obligations, and also because what people really want to know is how the big policies will affect THEM, their family and their community, something which is rarely communicated. It is possible to educate society and to explain how national and EU policies will directly effect them, by having a network of knowledgeable and enthusiastic activists in the regions. The most successful political campaigns have not been those which are centralized, but those that have managed to create a network of activists at a local level. Activists which explain the relevance and importance of the big policies in the local area, region, or town. The “Obama Mamas“ were a very successful group of local activities which explained Obama’s election promises and policies clearly, simply and from the point of view of their community. What we can learn from them is that this community of activists was already in place, it was not created by the Obama Campaign, but rather some of the existing civil society structures were simply catalyzed and united. Another example is the very successful Spanish “15-M Movement” (more commonly known as “Indignados”, due to the media preferring this name), which politicized a large part of society, including people of all classes and walks of life. They achieved this without access to any major media, without even leafleting, or approaching people, but simply by organizing local assemblies, which citizens could gain information from. Indeed there are many civil society organisations at a grass-root level, based in all parts of Europe, in all regions. They have access to the local communities, they have activists which are interested in the big policies coming out of the EU, which also understand their local area. What these organizations need are support and resources to match their enthusiasm and to quantify its effect. And this brings us to the next point: EDUCATION In order to achieve a politicization of society, the citizens need to be educated and aware of their rights and obligations, at least of why their vote matters.This can be achieved through, for example, assemblies, events, social debates and social media. As discussed in the previous main point, the grass-root, bottom-up initiatives, have access to their local communities, and are the ones that best understand it. From a EU point of view, they are able to actually reach the citizens in all regions, beyond the Euro-enthusiasts and political geeks in the “Brussels Bubble”. The EU cannot micro-manage civil activism, debates and education in all regions, but it can support existing organizations in these regions. The “European Citizens Initiative” for example, is a good project of the European Commission, however with no funding for its promotion, very very few people have even heard of it. As a result, the ECIs have so far gained few votes, and those are primarily from the “Brussels Bubble” – the community of people interested in EU politics. So very well, we have reached the point where we understand we need to educate citizens on their rights and powers, and that this can best be achieved by communicating how it will affect them and their community, and also that the EU needs to be more pro-active in reaching out to all citizens, in all regions (not just the Brussels Bubble), through the local networks. However, the organizations themselves need to be more pro-active as well. Currently there are thousands and thousands of “pro-European” organizations doing quite similar things – writing articles, making events, organizing debates, and usually refusing to co-operate due to certain vested interests. UNITY In order to achieve a greater reach, and to spread a united message, the many civil society organisations need to collaborate. Inevitably there are vested interests, fights for funding and strange notions of “competition” in this non-profit sector where there cannot and should not be competition in the way that there is in the for-profit business sector. It is a difficult task, but what can be done to get more collaboration and unity is to: Create a common vision, a common campaign, which many organizations, initiatives, and…
Il Processo di Venezia
EA è lieta di sostenere Il Venice Process, una seria di performance, seminari e workshop svolti a Venezia nel periodo di apertura e di chiusura della Biennale.
The Venice Process
Saturday 23 November 16.00-24.00 16.00: Film presentation “Towards a Militant Conceptualism” by Seemab Gul 16.30: Workshop “Hug the system!” curated by Worm and Roodkapje 19.00 – 24.00: It’s Sauna Time! Aperitivo + Party The Venice Process aims at offering an alternative education and accreditation system offered by a network of international art institutions. Events – including performances, seminars and workshops – have spanned the Venice Biennale, culminating in the presentation of a free course in art and ecology and a series of events around the theme of ecology and alternative education from November 20-24, 2013 Simultaneously, a boat which has been recycled and modified to run on LPG and incorporate a sauna by artists Harold de Bree, Laut Rosenbaum and Nick Tulinen will be available to use for the public where it will run regularly from locations across Venice, providing an opportunity for reflection on the theme of climate change. The Venice Process will appear at Five Years gallery, London, from 28th November to 1st December 2013 for four days of seminars and performances. Schedule 4pm Presentation of film directed by Seemab Gul (to be screened from 20th November to 24th November). 4.30pm Worm, Roodkapje and No Grande Navi. ‘Hug the System’ Workshops on ecology. 7pm aperitivo and Sauna Time! DJ sets from Worm until late. With interventions from Paolo Camia Synopsis of Events SOS Sauna Boat — Harold de Bree, Laut Rausenbaum, Nick Tulinen. As described above. Body of Water — Jaakko Mattila and Antii Tenetz. Body of Water is ongoing research project in collaboration with Joan of Art that aims aim to visualise remote visual and data feeds in an exhibition context, enabling the audience to interact directly with the piece by triggering remote sensors that will change the information fed to a centralised screen. Artist taxi Driver – Mark McGowan the artist taxi driver will continue his youtube sketches from a Venice Taxi, discussing themes of ecology, free education and the Venice Biennale. Stop, Motion. — Paolo Camia. Paolo Camia, practitioner and teacher of the Feldenkrais Method will present a performance around the themes of movement, the body and education, responding to the daily movement of revellers in the J Bar, Gervasuti Foundation’s bar area. Towards a Militant Conceptualism is a film by Seemab Gul, co-written by Mike Watson, dealing with the political capacity of art in the contemporary world. The film explores personal experiences of protest, dealing with agents of the State and questioning the origins of law. This project is an open argument on protest and its relationship to art ending with the proposition of art as a form of protest. Worm and Roodkapje at SaLE Docks — Hug the System! WORM and Roodkapje (Little Red Riding Hood) from Rotterdam will present a varied program, that consists of lectures, performances, workshops and entertainment. The program will be part of the Ridiculum of the WORM Parallel University and it’s De-Activism manifesto (wpu.worm.org). In this series of events we will encourage an teach people to develop strategies on how to dismantle systems by promoting systemical detours, acts of parasitism, avoiding responsibilty, andfunctional lieing. Al in favor of gaining our professional lifes back from the bureacrats, auditocrats en other dictatorial accreditation obligations. The WORM Parallel University strongly believes the interaction between people is the only guarantee fro educational succes. Together with our sisters from Roodkapje we will use every means nescessairy to get to our goal. This will include an intensive on site research in Venice and professional hugging capacities. With: Hajo Doorn (principal WPU), Eric de Hartigh (Mister Roodkapje), Aline Yntema (curator/artist), Amy Wu (media activist), Tim Braakman (designer), Joost Bult (performer/professional) en Nikki Rosa Ootjers (performance artist) About Joan of Art: At Joan of Art we believe that teaching and learning are ongoing processes we should be freely available to all. Through performances, spectacles and parties we aim to promote ongoing enquiry. Joan of Art’s founding curator Mike Watson has been in residence with Gervasuti Foundation for the duration of the Biennale.
How to make a living
These infographics by @auralab show how young people cope with making a living in 2020 through the eyes of our imaginary characters – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists & Lifestyle Hackers. These scenarios are based on the research by European Alternatives who’ve travelled from community centres to skyscraper boardrooms, from country parks to street markets to uncover how young people are coping with the crisis in creative ways – from a rickshaw driver turned MBA student to a dustbin man turned serial entrepreneur, from social markets in Transylvania to cooperative villages in Andalucia. Come and see these at the Transeuropa Festival and have inspired the design of urban games and a designathon where you can put yourself in the shoes of these imaginary characters to try and make a living a day in 2020…without any money. Making a Living Across our transnational cooperative which brings young designers, makers & campaigners from cities across Europe – we were witnessing how different people were coping with the crisis. For many in the Mediterranean or Balkans like Barcelona, Rome or Belgrade, it was virtually impossible to find a job. In cities like London, Amsterdam or Berlin, it was the opposite, people couldn’t catch a breadth as they were juggling several “mini-jobs” at a time. But at the same time, they were sharing stories of how their neighbourhoods were creating ways out of their situation. Zombie Generation or Lifestyle Hackers? Future Scenarios from Europe in 2020 So we decided we’d go and find out how young people across Europe cope with trying to make a living. We’ve travelled from community centres to skyscraper boardrooms to local festivals across the continent to uncover how young people are coping with the crisis in creative ways – from a rickshaw driver turned MBA student to a dustbin man turned serial entrepreneur. We’ve interviewed young people from urban parks to street markets. Building on the insights we’ve uncovered, we’ve designed scenarios on how people will make a living in 2020 through the eyes of our imaginary characters – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers. Because we wanted to show that young people cope emotionally in different ways – from being scared about what to do next to seeking advice from anyone who will listen. We also wanted to highlight that through the process of coping, young people are “rehearsing” what they want the future to look like and in the process, help others imagine different ways of living in society. From gaming techniques to help people develop their portfolio to documentaries to provoke social change via getting children to make market stalls, we’ve been inspired by the methods young entrepreneurs use to help people find meaning. As Catherine Greig from Make Good highlights in our interview with her “Physically making something, whether it’s repairing a wall or painting is really powerful. Sometimes it’s a totally tangential activity that allows you get deeper in the conversation and get different perspectives – the time it takes to make a jumper or build a wall.” We’ve helped young people to design their own festival. That’s why people will be able to play urban games at our festival with people from other cities across Europe imagining they had to make a living in 2020 and…survive for a day. They will also be able take part in our designathon to develop creative solutions to help people find work. Using creative methods, we’ve used young people’s insights and ideas to develop a guide on how, through coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. From the bomeurs on the Spanish underground to French single mothers joining occupations via English graduates travelling Europe to discover alternatives. From social marketsin Romania to “cooperativas integral” in Spain via commoningin New Cross, young people are already exchanging their resources to help each other. This is why we’re collaborating with Trade School to develop a pop-up skills exchange where people can learn how to develop coops to facilitating consensus to mapping opportunities to develop new projects. It’s why we’re hosting our festivals at two makerspaces at Lime Wharf and Makerversity. It’s why we’re partnering with Borders to Crossto showcase practical experiments that push public, civic, and market organizations to rethink the ways they relate to each other. Many people mock Generation Y as being more like Generation Why – a generation without a purpose. But many young people are creating new ways of making a living, which start from making sense of the world around them to “making” their way out of the crisis. From urban games to a designathon, from an exhibition on future scenarios to workshops on creative resistance, the Transeuropa Festival is happening in 13 cities across Europe to imagine, demand & create new ways of living. See http://bit.ly/transeuropafest for the London programme.
Meet the young hackers finding new ways to live
Since the economic crisis, young peoples’ expectations have become dreams. But our generation are coming up with innovative lifestyles based on new communities and the common good: I call them the “lifestyle hackers”. Noel Hatch, co-chair of the Cooperative, describes in Open Democracy how the Making a Living project has uncover a new tribe of young people creating new lifestyles. Protestors at a demo against European youth unemployment holding placards with the statistics. Credit: Demotix Our generation is confused about the future. It’s difficult to know what’s worse: expecting not to have the things that your parents had, or assuming everything’s going to be OK until you realise that everything – whether it’s a job, a house to call your own, or even a degree – has been privatised. In the past, people mostly knew where they stood and where they’d end up. But our generation was taught we could aspire to climb the social ladder higher than our families had ever been before…with school a waiting room to prepare us for the workplace. Since the economic crisis started, though, many of us have fallen further down the ladder than we started off, with few jobs on the market and tuition fees becoming more and more expensive. If the expectations we’ve been brought up with have now become dreams, how we cope with the shock will affect not just how we can build a better future, but whether we can conceive of a better future at all. While this narrative echoes across the media, there is another story that is waiting to be told. As part of the “Making a Living” project, the European Alternatives Cooperative has travelled across the continent meeting and speaking with young people, to find out how they are dealing with the social and personal challenges presented by austerity politics Austerity by default, resilience by design From our research, we’ve uncovered how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people across Europe are changing their mindset about what is important to them, in what the Spanish call “cambiar el chip”. As one of the young people we met, Rhiannon Colvin, says: “Instead of searching for jobs, I will search for people, people who have similar values, questions, hopes and dreams.” Although a quarter of young people across the EU are unemployed, they have gone through different stages of coping, from reflecting on their situation to looking for ways to stay resilient. Some have become independent of the pressures that traditional work lifestyles impose, whether through choice or constraint. In the same way that technology hackers share “source code” with others to help program applications, there is a new generation of young people we could call “lifestyle hackers”, who identify and share “common goods” to help others make a living. These common goods are resources that meet basic needs and that can be shared with others, like a place to stay, food to eat or skills they can share. Lifestyle hackers have become experts at spotting resources around them. Groups like the London-based New Cross Commoners, for example, navigate this journey through “exploring their neighbourhood to understand which resources [we can] collectivize and use as commons”. They believe that “it will be a matter of gradually shifting from an individual to a collective approach when coping with needs and using skills and resources.” Paolo Plotegher from the New Cross Commoners explains that the group came together “through a desire of engaging more deeply with our neighbourhood. Many of us study at Goldsmiths, which is located in New Cross, the New Cross Commoners is also a way to break the separation between the university and the neighbourhood.” “There are other motivations for the New Cross Commoners,” he continues, “it is not just discontent with academia and its privatization, but also the desire to learn differently, and to experiment with ways of living together that can provide an alternative to the option of competing individually as part of a job market.” On the other side of Europe, the Cooperativas Integral are another platform for young people to self-organise. Rhiannon visited the local Granada cooperative. She says: “For housing people either squatted abandoned buildings, pieces of land or lived in the caves.” In order to eat, Rhiannon says, “Most people ´recycled´ food from bins and restaurants and seemed to have quite amiable relations with the workers and owners. If this failed there were always the soup kitchens that offered free food.” But does self-organizing through the Cooperativas Integral meet other basic needs – like filling spare time? Rhiannon adds: “For entertainment somehow people always seemed to have a couple of Euros for a beer that they gained through playing music on the streets, making crafts or perhaps selling weed, and this city is full of free and fun things to do such as concerts, film showings, discussions or juggling in the park whilst watching the sun set over the Alhambra.” The methods described above to develop social resilience are never more important than in times of crisis. In Athens, for example, where one community acted to stop their electricity being cut off in the middle of a freezing winter when they couldn’t pay their bills. It started with a letter to the mayor, and quickly progressed to an occupation of the companies’ headquarters, people blockading homes to stop cuts offs, and skills shares on how to self-connect to the grid. Although the occupations only lasted several days, the skills shares have helped people access electricity themselves. This is the crux of what it means to be a lifestyle hacker. It’s not about young people creating new ways to get ahead in life, it’s about helping those around them imagine new ways of making a living. As Ejos Uribo, founder of Graft & Glamour, highlights: “There is a domino effect in terms of seeing entrepreneurs in your community. A lot of them mentor young people in inner cities where they grew up. [They] know the nihilism and lack of empathy of young people who grow up…
Festival de Films Frontières du visible à l’invisible
Le Festival 'Frontière(s), du visible à l’invisible' a sélectionné des documentaires de jeunes réalisateurs européens, qui développent une approche artistique de la question des frontières physiques, sociales et intangibles et des drames ou histoires humaines qu'elles engendrent. Alternatives Européennes est partenaire de Belleville en vue pour cette initiative. La remise en cause des frontières et des formes d'exclusion et d'inégalités qu'elles créent au sein du territoire européen ou entre les ressortissants des pays européens et des pays tiers est central pour Alternatives Européennes. Les droits de l'homme, valeur fondatrice de l'Union Européenne, sont-ils respectés lorsque les migrants sont détenus en centre de rétention administrative pour des durées allant jusqu'à 18 mois – comme le souligne la campagne Open Access Now que nous coordonnons avec Migreurop? Et que dire du droit à la mobilité des citoyens européens, notamment les plus pauvres, dans un espace Schengen aujourd'hui remis en question? Nous vous invitons à assister à l'une des projections, qui se dérouleront entre le 16 et le 18 Novembre 2012 au cinéma Le Nouvau Latina, et au débat modéré par Alternatives Européennes le samedi 17 novembre. Pour vous orienter, n'hésitez pas à consulter le calendrier des activités (PDF). Dans le cadre du mois du documentaire, le Festival propose un programme varié composé de projections, rencontres avec les réalisateurs, débats et ateliers participatifs. Trois jours pour penser les frontières à la lumière des jeunes créations européennes !
A day in the life of
As part of our Making a Living project to use creative methods to explore how young people are coping with making a living, we would like to announce an exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers. These have been produced thanks to the stories of over 80 young people across 25 cities in Europe on how they cope with making a living. To create a day in the life in 2020, just follow these simple steps: 1. Select one of the personas 2. Download the template 3. Describe how they go about the day based on the elements of the persona you have chosen 4. Have a look at an example a few of our members created of a day in the life in 2020 5. Describe how they would act, react, feel, think & interact in 2020 using thetemplate! 6. Use photos from Make a Living or take your own photos that represent what you’ve written. 7. Send your “day in a life” to london.euroalter.com 8. We will publish your “day in the life” on our website and showcase it at ourfestival! Any queries, just get in touch! Day ın the Life – Template from Noel Hatch
UNE JOURNEE DANS LA VIE DE…
Une journée dans la vie de… Dans le cadre de notre projet Gagner sa vie qui explore à l’aide de méthodes créatives comment des jeunes parviennent à gagner leur vie, nous souhaitons vous parler d’une occasion exceptionnelle pour vous de voir votre œuvre primée lors de notre festival ! Nous avons développé une méthode vous permettant d’imaginer une journée dans la vie d’un jeune en 2020 à l’aide des personnages que nous avons développés : Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists et Lifestyle Hackers. Ces personnages sont le fruit des témoignages de plus de 80 jeunes de 25 villes européennes qui nous ont raconté comment ils parviennent à gagner leur vie. Pour inventer une journée de vie en 2020, suivez ces quelques étapes simples : 1. Sélectionnez un personnage 2. Téléchargez le template 3. Racontez leur journée d’après les éléments indiqués pour le personnage choisi 4. Jetez un coup d’œil aux exemples créés par quelques-uns de nos membres 5. Décrivez le comportement, les réactions, les sentiments, les pensées et les relations de votre personnage en 2020 en vous servant du template ! 6. Servez-vous des photos du projet Gagner sa vie ou prenez vos propres photos pour illustrer votre texte. 7. Envoyez le résultat à london.euroalter.com 8. Nous publierons votre « Journée de vie » sur notre site Internet et la diffuserons lors de notre festival ! Si vous avez des questions, contactez-nous ! Day ın the Life – Template from Noel Hatch
Actors and actresses wanted!
We are urgently looking for actors interested in roleplaying our imaginary characters in the Making a Living Project as part of the Transeuropa Festival, which will take place on the 19-20 October at Makerversity, London. The Making a Living Project has explored scenarios on how young people cope with their living, what alternative ways of living shape the future generation. The process led project developed scenarios about making a living in 2020 through the eyes of our imaginary characters Invisible Citizens, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers. We would like these Personas to come alive, and bring the experience of the scenario as close as possible to the audience. It is not a stage play with a set time frame, but a more informal interaction (of these characters) with the visitors/participants coming to the festival. The roles will be paid £50 for each actor for 4hrs on Saturday starting from 12.00 to 16.00 at Makerversity. Please get in touch if you are interested and see the description of the Making a Living Personas, from which you can choose the character you feel you could be.
Les jeunes Egyptiens nous rappellent ce que la démocratie veut dire
Article de Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Laure Rostoucher Les dirigeants internationaux et la presse internationale sont obnubilés par la question de savoir si ce qui s’est passé en Egypte la semaine dernière constitue un coup d’état et si cela met la démocratie en danger. Cette question ne me semble pas très pertinente. L’Egypte sous la présidence de Mohammed Morsi était le théâtre d’un étouffement de la liberté d’expression, de l’expulsion des ONG étrangères, de la détention d’activistes et d’agressions à l’encontre d’artistes, d’une criminalité sexuelle organisée, d’une violence accrue dans les rues et de pénuries alimentaires si graves que l’on a frôlé le désastre humanitaire. C’est aussi là que le parlement a été suspendu, que le Président s’est placé au-dessus des lois, sans possibilité de recourset qu’un seul parti – celui des Frères musulmans, élu à la présidence en juin 2012 sur la seule base d’un appui réticent de la part des Egyptiens qui ne voulaient pas voter pour un ancien membre du régime Moubarak -, a ignoré royalement tous ceux qui n’appartenaient pas au parti, installa ses propres apparatchiks au pouvoir, à un maximum de postes, et fit tout son possible pour détruire tout adversaire potentiel. L’Egypte sous Morsi n’était pas une démocratie. Nous ne devons pas regretter son renversement. Il y a de sérieuses raisons de s’inquiéter du futur du peuple en Egypte. La dernière fois que l’Etat a été laissé aux mains de l’armée, les atteintes aux droits de l’homme ont été fréquentes. Il existe un risque évident – qui a d’ailleurs déjà commencé à se manifester – d’une augmentation des affrontements entre les partisans des Frères musulmans et le mouvement de rébellion qui força Morsi et son gouvernement à se retirer. Les conséquences du nouveau plan d’action défini par l’armée concernant les modifications constitutionnelles et la mise en place de nouvelles élections sont imprévisibles et sujettes à de nombreux risques. Il y a néanmoins une chose pour laquelle nous n’avons pas à nous inquiéter, et c’est le risque encouru par la démocratie et son futur dans le pays. Un nombre sans précédent d’Egyptien-ne-s se sont en effet mobilisés, et ce précisément pour défendre la gouvernance du peuple par le peuple. La manifestation du 30 juin a sans doute été la plus grande de l’histoire humaine, alors même qu’elle prit source dans la mobilisation des jeunes et leur collecte de signatures en porte-à-porte. Dès avant 2011, un groupe de jeunes gens, dévoué et héroïque, s’est mobilisé sans relâche – malgré la détention, la torture et les tirs à chaque étape – une première fois contre Moubarak, puis contre le CSFA (Conseil Suprême des Forces Armées), et enfin en nombre énorme contre Morsi, précisément pour défendre l’idée d’une Egypte démocratique, libre et plurielle. Ils ont agi de manière très pacifique, rendant clairement explicite leur rejet de toute forme de violence et leur volonté de ne pas être associés aux abus perpétrés par le gouvernement ou l’armée. Il n’est évidemment pas sûr que l’après-Morsi soit meilleur que l’avant: mais nous pouvons être à peu près certains du fait que le peuple égyptien fraîchement émancipé ne prendra aucun répit avant d’avoir atteint une société démocratique plus juste, au sein de laquelle chacun a une voix et dispose du minimum nécessaire à une vie décente, à commencer par du pain en gage de nourriture. Depuis 2011, le nombre de contestataires a augmenté constamment, à mesure que la peur des Egyptiens diminuait. Cette peur était d’abord celle de se poser des questions: qu’est-ce qu’une société acceptable? Le fonctionnement de notre pays est-il juste et équitable? Et ensuite celle de se mobiliser pour changer les choses. Ces peurs n’étaient et ne sont pas cantonnées aux Egyptiens – elles sont fréquentes dans la plupart des régions du monde, y compris dans les “démocraties établies”. Ces dernières années révélatrices d’une prise de conscience mondiale sont prometteuses pour tant de jeunes gens pour la raison précise qu’elles montrent de plus en plus de personnes qui se libèrent de ces peurs. L’exemple égyptien, tout comme celui du précurseur tunisien, fait office de modèle dans cette prise de conscience globale et suscite les espoirs de toute une génération à travers le monde. La réaction extrêmement hésitante de la presse internationale et de la communauté internationale à la seconde vague révolutionnaire en Egypte révèle à la fois une peur du changement, une peur face aux masses populaires et une vision hypocrite de la démocratie. Les puissances “occidentales” ont soutenu les dictateurs d’Afrique du Nord durant des années afin de préserver la stabilité dans ces pays – une stabilité leur permettant de poursuivre leurs propres intérêts stratégiques dans la région – tout en négligeant totalement le bien-être des populations. Elles s’excusent docilement après le renversement de Ben Ali et de Moubarak, alors qu’elles montrent aujourd’hui, en réaction au renversement de Morsi, la même tendance à privilégier la stabilité par rapport au bien-être. Les appels à la tenue rapide de nouvelles élections afin de remettre au pouvoir un gouvernement démocratiquement élu sont irréfléchis: c’est justement une procédure trop précipitée qui mena à cet affreux choix entre Frères musulmans et Ancien Régime aux dernières élections présidentielles. Il faut laisser aux nouvelles forces politiques le temps de s’organiser et leur donner une vraie chance de mener campagne. La réaction d’Erdogan est éloquente et prévisible étant donné les récents soulèvements qui ont eu lieu dans le parc Gezi. Il répéta sa litanie, selon laquelle Morsi ayant été élu démocratiquement, la majorité devrait être en droit de gouverner. Mais la démocratie n’implique pas que la majorité règne sur la minorité – il s’agirait sinon de ce que John Stuart Mill nomme la “dictature de la majorité”. Il ne faut pas non plus que les élections et les bulletins de vote ne décident de tout. Peu importe combien de fois on nous le rappelle, il demeure une propension forte à oublier que certains dictateurs parmi les plus destructeurs dans l’histoire de l’humanité – Hitler et Mussolini – ont tous deux été élus par les urnes avant…
Young Egyptians are reminding us what democracy means
by Niccolo Milanese International leaders and the international press are fixated on the question of whether what has happened in Egypt in the last week is a coup-d’etat, and whether it endangers democracy. This seems to be peculiarly the wrong question to be asking. Egypt under the Presidency of Mohammed Morsi was a place of suppression of freedom of speech, expulsion of foreign NGOs, the detention of activists and attacks on artists, of organised sexual aggression, increased violence on the streets and of food shortages on a scale threatening a humanitarian disaster. It was a place in which the parliament had been suspended, in which the President placed himself above the law and beyond appeal, and in which one party – the Muslim Brotherhood – which had been elected to the presidency only on the basis of reluctant support from Egyptians who did not want to elect someone from the previous Mubarak regime, totally disregarded everyone outside its own party, installed its own apparatchiks in as many positions of power as it could, and did as much as it could to destroy all potential challengers. Egypt under Morsi was not a democracy. We do not need to regret that he has been overthrown. There are many good reasons to be concerned about the future of people in Egypt. When the army last controlled the state, human rights abuses were frequent. There is an obvious risk – already starting to manifest itself – of increased clashes between supporters of the Muslim brotherhood and the rebellion movement that has forced out Morsi and his government. The outcomes of the new roadmaps defined by the army for constitutional change and new elections are unpredictable and subject to many risks. One thing we can be less concerned about is the risk to democracy and its future in the country. Egyptians mobilised in unprecedented numbers precisely to defend the rule of the people by the people. The 30th June was probably the largest protest in human history, and was organised starting from a youth movement collecting signatures door to door. Since before 2011, a dedicated and heroic group of young people have mobilised continuously – despite being detained, tortured and shot at every stage – firstly against Mubarak, then against the SCAF, then in massive numbers against Morsi, precisely to defend the idea of a plural, free and democratic Egypt. They have done so peacefully, making highly explicit that they reject any form of violence and will not be associated with the abuses of the government or the army. It is of course not sure that what follows Morsi will be better than what was before: but we can be quite sure that the newly emancipated people of Egypt will not rest until they have achieved a democratic and more just society, in which everyone has a voice and everyone has the minimum required for a decent life, starting with bread to eat. Since 2011 the number of protestors has grown continuously as Egyptians lose their fear. That fear was firstly one of posing questions: what is a good society? Does our country work in a fair and just way? And secondly a fear of mobilising to affect change. Those fears were not and are not limited to Egyptians – they are common in most parts of the world, including in ‘established democracies.’ These recent years of global awakening are hopeful for so many young people precisely because they show more and more people shedding these fears. The Egyptian example, like the Tunisian precursor, is a leading example in this global awakening, and has the hopes of a generation from across the world attached to it. The extremely hesitant reaction of the international press and international community to the second wave of the revolution in Egypt shows both a fear of change, a fear of the masses, and a hypocritical view of democracy. ‘Western’ powers supported dictators in North Africa for years on the basis of preserving stability – a stability enabling them to pursue their own strategic interests in the region – with total disregard for the wellbeing of the peoples of those countries. Following the overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak, they meekly apologised. Now in their reactions to the overthrow of Morsi they are showing the same tendency to value stability above wellbeing. The calls for quick elections to restore a democratically elected government are short-sighted: it was precisely a process that was too rushed that resulted in the horrible choice between the Muslim Brotherhood or the Old Regime at the last Presidential elections. There must be time for the newer political forces to organise themselves and have a fair chance to campaign. The reaction of Erdogan is telling and predictable given the recent uprisings in Gezi Park: he repeated his mantra that Morsi had been democratically elected and that the majority should be entitled to govern. But democracy does not mean that the majority should rule over the minority – that, as John Stuart Mill termed it, would be a ‘dictatorship of the majority’. Nor should elections at the ballot box be allowed to decide everything. No matter how many times we are reminded, there is a persistent tendency to forget that some of the most destructive dictators in human history – Hitler and Mussolini – were both elected at the ballot box before suspending democracy in their countries and manufacturing continued support through biased educational programs, militarisation of the population and the outlawing of dissent. Only a minority of individuals dared to resist. References to European fascism need to be deployed carefully and sparingly given their powerful charge, but events of recent months and the change in global discussions around democracy seem to me to make the provocation necessary. The greatest threat to the future of democracy in Egypt is not the people of the country, but the collapsing economy and the food crisis: prerequisites for the very survival of the people. There is a need for massive international aid…
Observez votre quartier
Connaissez-vous l’expression : « Une image vaut mille mots » ? Des peintures rupestres des chasseurs préhistoriques à Altamira aux communautés urbaines de l’Est londonien, les supports visuels illustrant des moyens de gagner sa vie abondent depuis toujours.Nous nous servons de méthodes créatives afin de rassembler vos témoignages sur comment vous gagnez votre vie, grâce auxquels nous développons des scénarios et un guide sur les moyens employés par les jeunes qui font face à la crise en créant de nouvelles façons de gagner leur vie. Peut-être avez-vous déjà répondu à notre sondage, mais n’osez pas effectuer d’interviews. Alors, voici une façon pour vous de vous impliquer ! Nous allons bientôt créer une carte illustrée à l’aide de photos, montrant ce que signifie gagner sa vie pour des personnes vivant dans des quartiers à travers l’Europe. Cette carte sera présentée lors de notre festival et publiée sur notre site Internet. Pour cela, nous avons besoin de vous ! Pour découvrir comment vous pouvez nous aider, voir ci-dessous. Si vous souhaitez toujours vous impliquer davantage voici une autre occasion exceptionnelle pour vous de voir votre oeuvre primée lors de notre festival ! Nous avons développé une méthode vous permettant d’imaginer un jour dans la vie d’un jeune en 2020, grâce à nos personnages : Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists et Lifestyle Hackers. Observez votre quartier Matériel nécessaire : · Questions du sondage · Thèmes du projet · Cahier & stylo · Caméra / smartphone Allez faire un tour dans votre quartier Prenez des photos d’endroits, d’objets ou de scènes qui vous font penser aux thèmes du projet ou qui évoquent ce qu’on ressent quand on est au chômage, qu’on cherche du travail ou qu’on veut gagner sa vie Écrivez pourquoi vous avez décidé de prendre cette photo et ce à quoi elle vous fait penser, par rapports à ces thèmes Téléchargez vos photos avec leur description sur www.flickr.com, avec le tag #makingaliving
Observe your neighbourhood
Have you ever heard the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words”? Visuals have been used to represent how people make a living from prehistoric hunters in Altamira to communities in East London. We’re using creative methods to uncover your experiences on how you cope with trying to make a living. We’ll use these to develop scenarios and a guide on how, through the process of coping with the crisis, young people are creating new ways of making a living. You might have already completed our survey, but feel a bit shy about interviewing people. We’ve got an activity you can get involved in! We’re looking to create a map of what making a living means to people in neighbourhoods across Europe through photos. We will showcase this at our festival and on our website and we need your help! Find out how below! If you’re still begging for more to get involved in, here’s another exciting opportunity for you to have your work showcased at our award winning festival! We have created a method where you can imagine a day in the life of a young person in 2020 using the personas that have been developed – Invisible Citizens, Zombie Generation, Militant Optimists and Lifestyle Hackers.
The Citizens Manifesto: our demands for Europe
European Alternatives: Civil society demands pledges by MEPs after 3 years of consultations in Europe Concrete political proposals for change at EU, elaborated by European citizens through the Citizens Pact, a bottom-up participatory process, will be presented to MEPs on 3 and 4 December in Brussels. After 3 years of a total of over 60 consultations with the citizenry across Europe and wide-spread presence on the street and online, the first draft of the Citizens Manifesto will be presented at the European Parliament so at to advocate for a new political and legislative agenda, covering, inter alia, civil rights, work and welfare to media freedom, migration and detention, finance. 03 December, 18.30 – 20.00 (European Parliament, 60, rue Wiertz, building Altiero Spinelli room 5G1): Key activists in the Citizens Pact process, including world famous artist Tania Bruguera are demanding a set of concrete civil claims to be taken up by the MEPs, particularly in light of the upcoming elections for the European Parliament. On the MEPs side, confirmed speakers include: Gerald Häfner (Greens / European Free Alliance), Committees on Legal Affairs and on Constitutional Affairs Andrew Duff (ALDE), member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs; Rui Tavares (Greens / European Free Alliance), vice-chair of the Special Committee on Organised Crime, Corruption and Money Laundering and member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE); Sergio Gaetano Cofferati(Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament), vice-chair of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection 04 December 2013, 18.00-20.00 (Espace Marx, Rue Rouppe, 4; 1000 Bruxelles) A discussion, an aperitif: “We, the people of Europe….” European Caravans shall be kicked off to spread the message of the Manifesto throughout Europe. Citizens, local activists and representatives of civil society organizations are launching Europe-wide journey of the European Caravans. They are travelling the continent and meeting with those who feel voiceless in the European debate, reaching out to Europeans where they are and amplifying their voices at the European level. We will be joined by activist, filmmaker and philosopher Bleri Lleshi who will speak about how we can amplify the effect of local political struggles and resistance movements. This will introduce a discussion on the role a citizens’ manifesto can play in stimulating transnational bottom-up movements for equality and democracy. Speakers and participants include, among others: Bleri Lleshi, philosopher, activist and documentary filmmaker Lorenzo Marsili, Alessandro Valera, Elena Dalibot, Daphne Büllesbach, Rosen Dimov, European Alternatives (Rome, Paris, Berlin, Sofia) Dobrica Veselinovic, Ministarstvo Prostora / Ministry of Space, Belgrade Further information, programme and registration on the Citizens Pact website or at e.dalibot@euroalter.com
Alternative reali: Per un nuovo patto sociale europeo
Alternative Europee sostiene l’ondata transnazionale di proteste per un cambio radicale nella risposta europea alla crisi finanziaria e per un ritorno a un controllo democratico sulle politiche economiche, e avanza 9 proposte concrete per il rilancio del patto sociale europeo. Negli ultimi mesi quasi tutti i paesi europei sono stati soggetti a politiche di austerità, tagli ai servizi di sicurezza sociale, nella tendenza generalizzata a spostare sui più deboli i costi della crisi e del salvataggio delle banche. Le politiche di austerità non stanno funzionando. Non sono né democratiche, né giuste, né una via realistica per uscire dalla crisi. Tagli al Welfare, privatizzazioni forzate, e una riduzione del costo e della dignità del lavoro stanno trascinando i paesi europei in un circolo vizioso di riduzione della produzione economica e crescita del deficit, al tempo stesso favorendo gli stessi interessi economici e finanziari che sono stati i primi responsabili della crisi. La crisi ha svelato l’illusione che voleva i mercati capaci di autoregolarsi, perciò ora spetta alla politica prendere nuovamente le redini dell’economia. In Europa, il rilancio dell’economia richiede decisioni coordinate. Al momento queste decisioni sono prese senza alcuna partecipazione democratica, e con risultati che gran parte dei cittadini percepiscono come totalmente ingiusti. Le proteste sono un segno di questo sentimento condiviso di ingiustizia. Il patto sociale europeo basato su un’economia sociale di mercato redistributiva è stato sospeso, e ora viene riscritto dalle élites economiche e dai loro deboli portavoce politici. Le proteste che si stanno diffondendo a livello transnazionale possono essere viste come una riconoscimento del carattere costituente della crisi permanente, e un rifiuto democratico di avere un nuovo patto siglato a scapito della grande maggioranza dei cittadini. Le proposte per uscire dalla crisi portate avanti dai leader politici rischiano non solamente di dimostrarsi inefficaci, ma di consegnare un grande numero di persone a un futuro privo di speranza e di benessere economico e sociale. Se i paesi economicamente più deboli vengono messi sotto la tutela dei paesi economicamente più forti, cresce il rischio di creare due classi di cittadinanza, dove i cittadini dei paesi ricchi hanno più potere nel definire il futuro dell’Europa rispetto ai cittadini dei paesi poveri. Questa non è né democrazia reale né uguaglianza reale. Alternative Europee rifiuta la falsa logica di quanti lamentano l’assenza di serie alternative. Alternative per il rilancio del patto sociale europeo esistono e sono chiaramente espresse, con proposte sia sul fronte delle entrate che delle spese. Tra queste: Anticipare al 2012 l’implementazione della Tassa europea sulle transazioni finanziarie. Implementare una Carbon Tax a livello europeo. Trasferire il debito pubblico dei paesi dell’eurozona in eurobond garantiti collettivamente. Emettere “project bonds” dell’Unione europea per un piano di investimenti in energie rinnovabili e mobilità urbana sostenibile. Limitare l’ineguaglianza negli stati europei e richiedere misure strutturali per una redistribuzione della ricchezza. Stabilire un reddito minimo europeo. Garantire il diritto di accesso ai beni comuni, tra cui educazione, salute, servizi di base, alloggio. Cambiare il mandato della Banca Centrale Europea per includere il controllo dei livelli di disoccupazione, ed estendere alla BCE il diritto di stampare denaro e comprare debito pubblico direttamente dal tesoro a tassi di interesse ridotti. Sviluppare un nuovo patto di crescita e stabilità con la partecipazione della cittadinanza e delle rappresentanze parlamentari a un livello direttamente europeo. La costante degenerazione della coesione sociale nei paesi europei può essere fermata a partire da politiche economiche ragionevoli e giuste. Se ciò non dovesse accadere, sarebbe giustificata una radicalizzazione del conflitto sociale e delle richieste. Una mancata ristrutturazione del patto sociale europeo porterà ugualmente al riemergere di nazionalismi e razzismo, i cui segni sono già evidenti nella crescita di partiti xenofobi e di estrema destra nella maggioranza dei paesi europei. Riprendere controllo dell’economia richiede la costruzione di uno spazio europeo politico e democratico, capace di prendere l’iniziativa e che risponda direttamente alla cittadinanza. Ora più che mai, è chiaro che l’unica possibilità per i cittadini europei di riconquistare il controllo democratico della propria società è effettuare un salto verso una completa unione economica e politica, mettendo fine alla sottomissione degli stati nazionali alle terapie shock dei mercati finanziari. Assieme ai movimenti sociali, alla società civile, e ai cittadini di tutta Europa e oltre, Alternative Europee accetta la sfida della mobilitazione permanente e si impegna a dedicare tempo e risorse alla lotta per una democrazia reale e un’eguaglianza reale in tutta Europa.
Alternatives réelles: pour un nouveau pacte social européen
Traduction : Sara Petrucci Alternatives Européennes soutient la vague transnationale de manifestations réclamant non seulement un changement de direction radical dans la réponse de l’Europe à la crise financière, mais aussi la restauration du contrôle démocratique sur le processus décisionnel économique ; Alternatives Européennes avance ainsi 9 propositions concrètes. Au cours de ces derniers mois, presque tous les pays européens ont subi une politique d’austérité, des coupes dans leur système de sécurité sociale, ainsi qu’une tendance générale à faire payer – de manière disproportionnée – le coût de la crise économique et du sauvetage des banques aux parts les plus faibles de la société. Les politiques d’austérité ne fonctionnent pas. Ce n’est ni un moyen démocratique, ni un moyen juste, ni un moyen efficace de sortir de la crise. En effet, les coupes dans le système d’aide sociale, les privatisations forcées et la réduction des coûts de la main-d’œuvre entrainent les pays européens dans un cercle vicieux de production économique en recul et de déficits croissants, tout en favorisant les intérêts économiques et financiers responsables du déclenchement initial de la crise. L’idée selon laquelle les marchés sont capables de s’autoréguler a été démantelée par la crise, c’est pourquoi il revient à la politique de reprendre le contrôle sur l’économie. La survie de l’économie européenne nécessite que des décisions politiques soient prises de manière coordonnée. Actuellement, ces décisions sont prises sans aucune participation démocratique et donnent des résultats que les citoyens perçoivent comme complètement injustes. Les manifestations observées dernièrement sont l’expression de ce sentiment commun d’injustice. Le pacte social européen, basé sur une économie sociale de marché redistributive, a été suspendu et est maintenant en train d’être réécrit par les élites économiques et leurs faibles porte-paroles politiques. Les manifestations qui se répandent au niveau international peuvent être perçues comme une prise de conscience quant au moment constituant déclenché par la crise, et comme un refus démocratique à l’encontre de la signature d’un nouveau pacte sans que les citoyens ne soient consultés. Les propositions avancées par les chefs d’Etat pour sortir de la crise risquent non seulement de s’avérer inefficaces, mais aussi de reléguer un grand nombre de citoyens à un avenir sans espoir et sans bien-être économique et social. Si les pays les plus pauvres économiquement sont placés sous la tutelle des pays les plus riches, il existe un risque qu’une citoyenneté à deux vitesses fasse son apparition – dans ce cas de figure, les citoyens des pays riches auront plus d’influence sur le futur de l’Europe que ceux des pays pauvres. Ceci n’est ni une réelle démocratie, ni une réelle égalité. Alternatives Européennes refuse la fausse logique de tous ceux qui affirment qu’il n’existe aucune autre alternative sérieuse. En effet, des alternatives pour relancer le pacte social européen existent bel et bien et sont exprimées très clairement. Celles-ci comprennent à la fois des propositions visant à augmenter les recettes et des propositions visant les dépenses. Il s’agit de propositions telles que: 1. Anticiper à 2012 la mise en place d’une taxe sur les transactions financières à l’échelle de l’UE. 2. Mettre en place une taxe sur le carbone à l’échelle de l’UE. 3. Lancer un processus de transition de la dette publique de la zone euro vers des euro-obligations garanties de manière conjointe. 4. Emettre des obligations soutenues par l’UE pour financer l’investissement dans les énergies renouvelables et dans la mobilité urbaine durable. 5. Réduire les inégalités de revenus pour tous les Etats membres de l’UE et demander des mesures structurelles pour une redistribution de la richesse. 6. Etablir un revenu de base européen. 7. Garantir le droit d’accéder aux biens communs, parmi lesquels l’éducation, la santé, les services de base, le logement. 8. Changer le mandat de la BCE pour y inclure le contrôle des niveaux de chômage, ainsi que le droit d’imprimer de l’argent et d’acheter des obligations directement des trésors publics à des taux d’intérêt bas. 9. Développer un pacte de croissance et de stabilité renouvelé qui soit élaboré avec la participation citoyenne et parlementaire directement au niveau européen. La dégradation continue de la cohésion sociale dans les pays européens peut être endiguée avec des politiques économiques justes et raisonnables. Si ces efforts se soldent par un échec, cela justifiera une radicalisation du conflit social et offrira un nouveau souffle à des demandes davantage radicales. De la même manière, l’incapacité de restructurer le pacte social européen mènera à la réémergence des nationalismes et racismes, dont les signes se sont déjà manifestés à travers une montée des partis d’extrême droite et xénophobes dans la plupart des pays européens. La reprise du contrôle public sur l’économie requiert la construction d’un espace démocratique européen capable de prendre des initiatives et d’être directement responsable devant les citoyens. Aujourd’hui plus que jamais, il est clair que la seule chance pour les citoyens européens de reprendre le contrôle démocratique sur leurs sociétés est de se lancer dans une union politique et économique complète, mettant ainsi fin à la soumission totale des Etats à la thérapie de choc des marchés financiers. Ensemble avec les mouvements sociaux, la société civile et les citoyens européens et au-delà, Alternatives Européenne accepte de relever le défi de la mobilisation permanente et s’engage à consacrer son temps et ses ressources pour se battre en faveur d’une démocratie et d’une égalité réelles pour toute l’Europe.
Real Alternatives: For a new European social pact
European Alternatives supports the transnational wave of protests demanding a radical change of direction in Europe’s response to the financial crisis and a restoration of democratic control over economic decision-making, and advances 9 concrete proposals. In recent months almost all European countries have been subject to a politics of austerity, cuts to the social security system, and a general tendency to disproportionately place the cost of the economic crisis and of saving the banks onto the weaker parts of the population. Austerity politics is not working. It is neither a democratic, nor a just, nor an effective way out of the crisis. Cuts to welfare, forced privatisations, and reduction of labour costs are dragging European countries in a vicious circle of declining economic output and increasing deficits, whilst favouring the very same economic and financial interests that were responsible for the crisis in the first place. The idea that markets can autoregulate themselves has been exploded by the crisis, and therefore politics must take control over the economy again. In Europe, the survival of the European economy requires coordinated political decisions to be taken. At the moment, they are being taken with no democratic participation, and with results that many citizens perceive as totally unfair. Current protests are a manifestation of this shared feeling of injustice. The European social pact based on a redistributive social market economy has been suspended, and is in the process of being re-written by economic elites and their weak political spokespersons. The protests spreading internationally can be seen as a recognition of the constituent moment triggered by the permanent crisis, and as a democratic refusal to have a new pact signed above the citienzs’ heads. The proposals of the most powerful heads of state for exiting the crisis risk not only being ineffective, but consigning large numbers of citizens to a future bereft of the hope of economic and social wellbeing. To the extent that economically poor countries are put under the tutelage of economically rich countries, there is a risk of two-class citizenship opening up as well – where the citizens of rich countries have much more of a say in the future of Europe than the citizens of poor countries. That is neither real democracy, nor real equality. European Alternatives refuses the false logic of all those claiming that no serious alternatives are being put forwards. Alternatives for the relaunch of the European social pact exist and are being very clearly expressed, counting both revenue-raising and revenue-spending proposals. Including: Anticipating the implementation of a EU-wide Financial Transaction Tax to 2012. Implementing an EU-wide Carbon Tax. Transitioning eurozone public debt to jointly guaranteed Eurobonds. Issuing EU-backed project bonds to finance investment in renewable energies and sustainable urban mobility. Capping income inequalities for all EU states and demanding structural measures for a redistribution of wealth. Establishing a European Basic Income. Guaranteeing the right of access to common goods, including education, health, basic services, housing. Changing the mandate for the ECB to include controlling unemployment levels, and granting the ECB the right to print money and buy bonds directly from public treasuries at low interest rates. Developing a renewed growth and stability pact which is elaborated with citizen and parliamentary participation at a directly European level. The sustained degeneration of social cohesion in European countries can be halted with reasonable and just economic policies. Failure to do so will justify a radicalisation of social conflict and give further momentum to more radical demands. Failure to restructure the European social pact will equally lead to the re-emergence of nationalisms and racisms, the signs of which have already been manifested through the rise of far-right xenophobic parties in most European countries. Regaining public control over the economy requires the construction of a democratic European political space able to take initiative and to be directly accountable to citizens. Now more than ever, it is clear that making the jump to a complete political and economic union is the only chance for European citizens to regain democratic control over their societies, ending the complete subservience of national states to the shock therapy of financial markets through unaccountable supranational impositions. Together with social movements, civil society, and citizens from throughout Europe and beyond, European Alternatives accepts the challenge of permanent mobilisation and pledges to devote its time and resources to fight for real democracy and real equality throughout Europe.
Citizens consultation to shape an EU of democracy, fundamental rights and participation: findings for the Citizens Manifesto
To be or not to be in the EU: is that the question? Citizens’ consultation to shape an EU of democracy, fundamental rights and participation Wednesday May 8th 2013, 17:30-20:30 Europe House, 32 Smith Square, SW1P 3EU LondonFind out more information about the Citizens Manifesto and about the London consultation. You can download the findings of this citizens’ consultation here. Table Discussions: Issues Discussed and Key Proposals Put Forth The proposals numbered below were elaborated through discussions using the World Café methodology and reflect the positions of the majority of participants to the citizens’ consultation, even though ideas and positions were diverse and sometimes in disagreement. Some of the proposals (e.g. regarding education or powers of the European Parliament) were raised on different tables but were merged here for the purpose of clarity. If you’d like to react to or comment a proposal or put forward other ideas, please use the “comment” box at the bottom of the page. Your rights – who is the best protector of them? Moderator: Emma Fenelon, AIRE Centre The protection of your rights is guaranteed at a number of levels, be they local, national, European or international.What are the rights that the European Union (EU) grants to its citizens and what are the responsibilities attached to these rights? How could citizens know better about them? What are the obstacles to the full enjoyment of these rights and how could they be overcome? 1. Methods of holding the UK accountable for failing to implement EU law need to be more effective: allowing the UK to be the guardian of implementing laws it has no interest in implementing is not a good incentive structure – particularly when the methods of holding the UK accountable (infringement proceedings, litigation) are so expensive in terms of time required and money necessary 2. Need to counter-act an increasingly migrant-hostile culture in which people are being encouraged to turn on one another following increasing levels of inequality in financial crisis. Currently there is a lack of provision of language lessons with services being severely cut back. We witness a phenomenon of ‘white flight’ from certain areas in London. 3. Children should be taught about diversity and this should be included in civic studies curricula. Young people’s need should be taken into account more, the lack of proper jobs plan for young people in UK is a challenge The EU, its citizens, its denizens: discussing migrants’ rights in the European Union Moderator: Don Flynn, Migrant Rights NetworkIf the European Union is to be more than a single market of free movement for goods and capitals and if we refuse a dual system where some people would have more “freedom to move” than others, then the question of migration in the EU is fundamental. Any form of political union poses the fundamental question of how we want to welcome difference and live together. As proved by the enflamed rhetoric of UKIP and by ministers’ plans of negative campaigns for Bulgarians and Romanians, the debate on whether the UK should stay in the EU or not opened the door to an outbidding against migrants (from other EU member states or not) as causing a drain on the Welfare State. Faced to the risk of identitarian closure that a possible withdrawal of the UK from the EU could provoke, how can migrants be prevented from becoming the scapegoats in this crisis? What should be the basic rights guaranteed for migrants everywhere in Europe? To what extent can Europe, with its commitment to ‘unity in diversity’ and its variable geographies, offer an alternative model for integration in a community? How can the securitarian discourse be deconstructed in relation to the migration issue? How does the institutional framework of the migration and asylum policy, linked to security issues rather than human rights, affect people’s perception of the matter? 4. Need for more co-ordination on long-term residents policies: More data is needed on how long-term third-country nationals are disadvantaged by their lack of status 5.Improve legal advice in the field of immigration (bad legal advice in large part due to lack of expertise) 6. Acknowledge studies and research available on migrationin the discourses, notably the evidence that migrants follow jobs, not benefits, and regional variances of migration. What do we want from Europe? Moderator: Aneta Kubala, British Youth CouncilThe Second World War ended on May 8th 1945, a day celebrated as the “Victory in Europe Day”; the idea of a European Union then started to make its way around the will to maintain peace in Europe. Almost 70 years later, what is our project for Europe? Earlier this year, a poll by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and by the Fabiansshowed that there is a strong generational divide in the UK in terms of attitudes towards the EU, with a majority of young people (67% for the 18-34) in favour of the UK staying in the EU, against a 23-point lead amongst the 60+ and a 35-point lead amongst those aged 40-59 to to leave the EU. The future of the EU belongs to its youth: what is the EU we want to live in? Is a single market enough? Can a new shared vision for the European project emerge from the current economic, social and political crisis? 7. Better EU education at school and more information available to the wider public: it is very important to see results, to show statistics of how EU laws impact on young people’s lives, to raise local and national awareness notably through events. There is a lack of education in the way the EU operates and what its functions are not just for young people but across the board. A costs/benefit analysis about what young people will lose/gain would help increase understanding of what is at stake if the UK leave the EU. 8. Invest more in people not capitaland focus on young people: the Youth Guaranteeseems an interesting idea but not many people know about it. Similarly, there is also a lack of awareness about the European Job centre (Eures). 9. Simplify the language and the…
Consultation citoyenne pour la démocratie, les droits fondamentaux et la participation : propositions pour le Manifeste Citoyen
Etre ou ne pas être dans l’UE : est-ce la question ? Consultation citoyenne pour la démocratie, les droits fondamentaux et la participation Mercredi 8 mais 2013, 17h30-20h30 Europe House, 32 Smith Square, SW1P 3EU Londres.Traduction : Audrey Ubertino Pour obtenir plus d’informations sur le Manifeste Citoyen et sur la consultation de Londres, vous pouvez télécharger les conclusions de cette consultation des citoyens ici. Tables rondes : questions abordées et propositions clés mises en avant. Les propositions énumérées ci-dessous ont été élaborées à partir de discussions utilisant la méthodologie du World Café et reflètent les opinions de la majorité des participants à la consultation des citoyens, même si les idées et les opinions étaient variées et parfois en désaccord. Certaines des propositions (par exemple, celles concernant l’éducation ou les pouvoirs du Parlement européen) ont été évoquées à différentes tables-rondes mais ont été réunies ici dans un souci de clarté. Si vous souhaitez réagir, commenter une proposition ou soumettre d’autres idées, veuillez utiliser la zone de « commentaires » au bas de la page. Vos droits : qui les protège le mieux ? Modératrice : Emma Fenelon, centre AIRELa protection de vos droits est garantie à un certain nombre de niveaux, qu’ils soient locaux, nationaux, européens ou internationaux. Quels sont les droits que l’Union européenne accorde à ses citoyens et quelles sont les responsabilités liées à ces droits ? Comment les citoyens peuvent-ils en savoir davantage sur ces droits ? Quels sont les obstacles au plein exercice de ces droits et comment peuvent-ils être surmontés ? 1. Les méthodes utilisées pour tenir le Royaume-Uni responsable de la non-application des lois de l’UE doivent être plus efficaces : permettre au Royaume-Uni d’être le gardien de l’application des lois s’il n’a aucun intérêt à les appliquer n’est pas une bonne structure de motivation, en particulier quand les méthodes utilisées pour tenir le Royaume-Uni responsable (procédures d’infraction, litiges) sont aussi onéreuses en termes de temps et d’argent nécessaires. 2. Besoin de neutraliser une culture de plus en plus hostile aux immigrés, où la population est encouragée à se retourner les uns contre les autres suite à une augmentation des niveaux d’inégalité en temps de crise financière.Actuellement, il existe un manque dans la mise à disposition de cours de langues, à cause des réductions budgétaires sévères dans les services. Nous assistons à un phénomène de « white flight » (fuite des Blancs) dans certains quartiers de Londres. 3. La diversité devrait être enseignée aux enfants et devrait être incluse dans les programmes d’éducation civique.Les besoins des jeunes devraient être mieux pris en compte, le manque d’emplois convenables pour les jeunes au Royaume-Uni est un véritable problème. L’UE, ses citoyens, ses habitants : discussion autour des droits des migrants dans l’Union européenne. Modérateur : Don Flynn, Réseau des droits des migrantsSi l’Union européenne doit être plus qu’un marché unique de libre circulation des biens et des capitaux et si nous refusons un système double où certaines personnes devraient avoir plus de « liberté de circuler » que d’autres, alors la question de la migration dans l’UE est fondamentale. Toute forme d’union politique pose la question fondamentale de comment nous souhaitons accueillir la différence et vivre ensemble. Comme le démontrent la rhétorique enflammée de l’UKIP (Parti pour l’indépendance britannique) et les plans de campagnes négatives pour les Bulgares et les Roumains par les ministres, le débat sur la question de savoir si le Royaume-Uni reste ou non dans l’UE a ouvert la voie à une surenchère contre les migrants (venant d’autre Etats-membres de l’UE ou non) et représente une lourde charge pour l’Etat providence. Face au risque de repli sur soi que pourrait causer un possible retrait du Royaume-Uni de l’UE, comment peut-on éviter aux migrants de devenir les boucs-émissaires dans cette crise ? Quels devraient être les droits de base garantis aux migrants partout en Europe ? Dans quelle mesure l’Europe peut-elle, avec son engagement pour « l’unité et la diversité » et ses géographies variables, offrir un modèle alternatif pour l’intégration dans une communauté ? Comment le discours sécuritaire peut-il être déconstruit par rapport à la question de la migration ? Comment le cadre institutionnel des politiques de migration et d’asile, lié aux questions de sécurité plutôt que des droits de l’Homme, peut-il affecter la perception de la population sur le sujet ? 4. Besoin de plus de coordination sur les politiques concernant les résidents de longue durée : il faut davantage de données sur la façon dont les ressortissants de pays tiers de longue durée sont désavantagés du fait de leur absence de statut. 5. Améliorer le conseil juridique dans le domaine de l’immigration(de mauvais conseils juridiques sont en grande partie dus à un manque d’expertise). 6. Prendre plus compte des études et recherches disponibles sur la migration dans les discours, en particulier la preuve que les migrants suivent le travail, et non les allocations, et les écarts régionaux de migration. Qu’attendons-nous de l’Europe ? Modératrice : Aneta Kubala, Conseil de la Jeunesse britanniqueLa Seconde Guerre mondiale s’est achevée le 8 mai 1945, un jour célébré comme le « jour de la Victoire en Europe » ; l’idée d’une Union européenne a alors commencé à se dessiner autour d’une volonté de maintenir la paix en Europe. Près de 70 ans plus tard, quel est notre projet pour l’Europe ? Plus tôt cette année, un sondage réalisé par le Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung et la société des Fabiensa montré qu’il y a un fossé important entre les générations au Royaume-Uni en termes d’attitude vis-à-vis de l’UE, avec une majorité de jeunes (67% pour les 18-34 ans) pour que le Royaume-Uni reste dans l’UE, contre une avance de 23 points chez les plus de 60 ans et une avance de 35 points chez les 40-50 ans pour que le Royaume-Uni quitte l’UE. L’avenir de l’UE appartient à sa jeunesse : dans quelle Europe souhaitons-nous vivre ? Le marché unique suffit-il ? Une nouvelle vision commune pour le projet européenne peut-elle émerger de la crise économique, sociale et politique actuelle ? 7. Une meilleure formation scolaire de l’UE et plus d’informations disponibles pour le grand public : il est très important de voir les résultats, de montrer les statistiques sur la façon dont les lois de l’UE affectent la vie des jeunes, de susciter un…
Relaunched! European Initiative for Media Pluralism
European Alternatives relaunches its flagship campaign “European initiative for media pluralism“. We have until August 2014 to collectd one million online and offline signatures throughout Europe to pass legislation defending the freedom and pluralism of the media across the continent. The situation of media freedom and pluralism in the European Union is worsening. Fast. Hungary’s media is being increasibly subjected to the illiberal policies of Viktor Orban. Excessive concentration and influence of economic groups such as Murdoch’s distort the British media landscape. Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania experience a dangerous overlap of economical, media, and political interests in the hands of the same persons. But without free, independent, and pluralistic media citizens are deprived of the possibility to keep power accountable. Corruption and maladimistration prosper, personal business and political interest replace the common good of all, minorities face increasing marginalisation. The deterioration of media pluralism and media freedom in Europe is above all a threat to democracy. European institutions have, so far, refrained from taking a strong stance in defence of media freedom and pluralism across the continent. This is why we have relaunched the European Initiative for Media Pluralism, together with nearly one hundred organisations, media, and professional bodies from throughout the continent. We are running a European Citizens Initiative, a new tool of participatory democracy allowing at least one million citizens in at least 7 EU states to present directly to the European Commission a legislative proposal. We demand of the European Commission to draft a Directive on media pluralism containing: a) effective legislation to avoid concretration of ownership in the media and advertisement sectors; b) guaranteed independence of supervisory bodies from political power; c) definition of conflict of interests to avoid media moguls occupying high political office; d) monitoring systems to regularly check the health and independence of the media in member states. Over the coming months we aim to mobilise citizens from throughout Europe to stand up and demand that the European institutions show their commitment to fundamental rights and civil liberties, even when member states increasingly fail to do so. For this we need to reach the crucial figure of one million signatures, a number which will allow to open a legislative process at EU level. If you or your organisation want to give a hand we are looking for help in all the 28 European member states! Please write an email to Alessandro Valera, campaign coordinator, on a.valera@euroalter.com To start, you can easily sign the initiative online. Join us and stand up for your rights!
Rilanciata: Iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dell’informazione!
European Alternatives rilancia la sua Iniziativa europea per il pluralismo dei media. Abbiamo fino ad agosto 2014 per raccogliere un milione di firme online e offline in tutta Europa per passare una direttiva europea che protegga la libertà e il pluralismo dell’informazione in tutta Europa. La libertà e il pluralismo dei media sono sotto attacco in Europa. L’erosione del diritto a un’informazione indipendente, libera e plurale è una minaccia al pieno esercizio della cittadinanza europea. Ma è un diritto che i cittadini europei possono rivendicare, firmando oggi a sostegno dell’Iniziativa Europea per il Pluralismo dei Media. Chiediamo all’Europa, grazie al nuovo strumento di democrazia diretta previsto dal Trattato di Lisbona, l’Iniziativa dei Cittadini Europei , di salvaguardare con norme comuni e vincolanti il diritto a un’informazione indipendente e pluralista, come sancito dalla Carta dei Diritti Fondamentali dell’Unione Europea. L’Italia per troppo tempo è stata un esempio negativo, con un servizio pubblico radiotelevisivo assoggettato alla politica, oltre alla commistione del potere economico, politico e mediatico consentita per legge, legittimando così un conflitto d’interesse senza pari al mondo. E purtroppo abbiamo fatto scuola: il peggioramento della normativa nel nostro paese è stato seguito da mosse restrittive anche in altri, come l’Ungheria, la Bulgaria e la Romania. Anche in un paese con un sistema mediatico maturo come la Gran Bretagna, le inchieste in corso sul gruppo Murdoch stanno dimostrando come è la democrazia a soffrire in situazioni di concentrazione eccessiva dei media. L’Iniziativa dei Cittadini Europei per il Pluralismo e la Libertà dei Media, che raccoglie oltre cento tra associazioni e organizzazioni della società civile in tutta Europa, gode anche del sostegno di numerose testate giornalistiche, di personalità del mondo della cultura, dello spettacolo, della politica e delle università. La nostra ambizione è quella di mobilitare i cittadini per rivendicare l’impegno delle istituzioni europee a sostegno dei diritti civili e delle libertà fondamentali, anche quando gli Stati li trascurano, come sempre più sta avvenendo. Chiediamo, in particolare: 1) Una legislazione efficace per evitare la concentrazione della proprietà dei media e della pubblicità; 2) una garanzia di indipendenza degli organi di controllo rispetto al potere politico; 3) la definizione del conflitto di interessi per evitare che i magnati dei mezzi di informazione occupino alte cariche politiche; 4) sistemi di monitoraggio europei più chiari per verificare con regolarità lo stato di salute e l’indipendenza dei media negli Stati Membri. Per questo abbiamo bisogno di raggiungere un milione di firme, un numero che permetterà all’Iniziativa e a tutti i cittadini che partecipano alla campagna di aprire un nuovo processo legislativo a livello Europeo. Firmare è semplice e può essere fatto anche online, fallo ora a questo link! Vuoi dare una mano all’Iniziativa individualmente o come organizzazione? Puoi contattare Alessandro Valera, coordinatore della campagna, su info@mediainitiative.eu Unisciti a noi per difendere i tuoi diritti: www.mediainitiative.eu/it
Transeuropa Festival 2013. An interview with Ségolène Pruvot
Transeuropa Festival 2013 is starting soon under the slogan “IMAGINE. DEMAND. ENACT.” We have interviewed Transeuropa Festival Coordinator Ségolène Pruvot, who tells us about the Festival, its reasons and visions. Why a trans-European festival? Europe is too often perceived as a union of nation states, while Europe is far more complex. It is a network of links and interconnections between places and people. It does not respect the boundaries of the nation state. Places and stakeholders of political decision-making are often beyond the nation states, which unfortunately makes national democracies in many respects obsolete. Democracy at the European level is to reinvent in order to maintain the ability of Europeans to decide themselves of their future. Transeuropa Festival acknowledges this reality and offers to build it further. A truly European Festival cannot be that of one location but must be multifaceted. Transeuropa Festival stimulates exchange and discussion between people who do not physically live in the same place, but share common interests, want to build together the future of Europe and affirm their commitment to democracy. “Imagine. Demand. Enact.” What do you aim to accomplish under this slogan? Europe is often presented as an institutional construction, which should be accepted as such because in a globalized world countries cannot act, cannot be influential and powerful if they act separately. The sentence “There is no alternative” prevails in the political discourse around Europe and created a certain form of rejection of Europe, maybe as the only alternative. 2013 is ‘The European Year of Citizenship ‘ that was most likely unnoticed by the majority of Europeans. The Elections to the European Parliament coming up next year will probably mobilize few voters, for whom they have little meaning and impact. Transeuropa Festival is a proposal to give a meaning to the term ‘European citizenship’, which Europeans could appropriate and invest. “Imagine” calls for everyone to mobilise in a creative activity. Through various activities, participants are encouraged to think about what a shared political community and what European society are. The Festival program includes artistic activities, which do not directly refer to Europe, but open up new ways to think about the ‘living together’. Transeuropa Festival opens with the artistic performance ‘Air Time’, which asks listeners/actors on what is ‘the collective’, and this in 10 European countries simultaneously. “Demand” is one of the key elements of active citizenship. To be heard, it is necessary to have articulated one’s demands in an understandable way for those to whom one wants to demand change and those who may want to get involved. European Alternatives — through the process of the Citizen Pact — has worked for three years to formalize specific requests for political changes in Europe. We want, through Transeuropa Festival and activities such as the (Mani)fests or through the Final Forum of the Festival in Berlin, to invite all those who would like to participate in this movement, and we would like to make it easier for them formulating their own demands for Europe. “Enact” is a call for action. It is not necessarily a call to political action, but to reinvention of modes of action in the community to think (and rethink) Europe and what binds us to others. Transeuropa Festival proposes participatory activities in urban areas (urban games, bike rides, walks, living libraries) which offer to participants the possibility to be actors and not just spectators. European Alternatives also tries to use all opportunities to act as a citizen at the European level. Therefore, we launched a European Citizens’ Initiative for Media Pluralism, for which we currently collect signatures. This initiative will be represented in the Festival. What are the Festival’s highlights? What are your favourite events? The art performance Air Time, which will open the festival in 10 countries on Saturday 5th October at 1.30 PM (London Time), is an original creation by 13 artists. It is a performance in which every listener is part of a community of listeners and players for a joint action in an urban area where passers-by become spectators only of their presence. I love activities in which one can both move and think, such as the Transnational Walks that will take place in Bologna, Berlin and Barcelona, made of urban games, which take walkers through a city but also invites to discover two other cities. The Living Libraries, in which one can ‘read a book-person ‘ with ‘books’ moving between cities, proposes this year to rethink precariousness and ways to cope with is. There are also very rich programs in cities like Lublin and Cluj, which annually question usual wisdoms and common representations. The opportunity to interact with members of the European Parliament and ask them to respond to proposals Citizen Manifesto seems also to be a rare opportunity to have a dialogue with representatives of European citizens. The Transeuropa Forum in Berlin on 25th, 26th and 27th October 2013 will offer a kind of ‘best of’ Festival where activities offered in the cities will be taken to Berlin’s audience and to the participants coming from Festival cities for the occasion. Saturday the 27th of October will focus on ‘Demands’ – What do we demand for Europe?: a highly meaningful discussion to be held in Berlin after the re-election of Angela Merkel. Whom does the Festival aim to reach? Transeuropa Festival is open to all those who may they have a critical analysis towards the European construction and European policies are interested in the idea of Europe and believe in its potential, or to those who wish to make their voice heard via artistic and cultural contributions, or as an active citizen with a more political approach. Transeuropa Festival activities are free and open to all. Festival organizers (i.e., members of European Alternatives) will be present at each event and will be available to provide information on the Festival, on the organisation and on the opportunities to get involved. What is European Alternatives? Which role does it want to play in the European political arena? European Alternatives is a transnational organisation, with individual…
KNOW YOU’RE SKILLED
In the second part of our interview make:good, find out how Catherine plotted her steps to setting up her own agency and how she gets kids to create and make solutions in their schools and communities. How did you get your first clients?I had just left university and so didn’t have a professional network. I was probably the least believable person. You definitely need to have a nerve that I wouldn’t have now, like being prepared to ring people up and go “I’ve got this really interesting approach, I’d like to share it with you”.I spent a couple of years where I worked part-time and did make:good part-time. During that time, I finished my post graduate qualification. I spent my time at make:good speaking to so many people. I applied for little bits of funding – just like £1K – to deliver a couple of projects which would give me something to say “this is what I want to do”. I therefore had some examples to take to people. Eventually people paid me to do a professional piece of work, nothing big, some of those are still clients because they understand what I’m doing and there’s a synergy. Some people don’t remember that I used to come with stuff printed out at home. It wasn’t particularly glossy, but having an example, sharing it and talking to as many people as possible was really important. How did you make the decision to move full-time on make:good? It was pretty scary. I was slightly pushed, I wanted to do it and I went to half days in my job and thought I could do a couple of mornings a week in the office and then the rest of the time do make:good. My employers thought I wasn’t committed to the future of their organisation. It was like saying “can I work enough to pay my rent and then take a risk with the rest of the time?” It looks like that up until then, your employers were reasonably accommodating to you working on the side setting up make:good? When I was interviewed for the job with them, I told them that this was my intention from the start to set up make:good in my spare time. I think they didn’t really believe that I would actually do it. I initially asked if I could do a four day week.I was running jobs onsite that were going to get built. It was very difficult for them to say “we’ll flick you out and get someone else in”. They weren’t accommodating, they just knew I worked really hard.It was a case of them thinking it would be worse for their business to let me go. It benefitted them as they had someone who was really enthusiastic to learn and do these projects. I’ve had the same situation now as an employer with my own team when they want to go part time. You let them, but you know they’ve got one foot out of the door. Just going through some of your make:good projects, one of your key values is how you involve all the people that are affected by the issues that you’ve been asked to work on. You involve people not just so they can have their say but also to help them use research and design techniques to uncover problems and develop solutions themselves. For example, when the kids do the research themselves and come up with a solution to create market stalls. How important is it to show them how their skills can help them find out about their community?I never want to be tokenistic and ask people “what do you want” and they say “I want a swimming pool” which doesn’t really give them any context. The idea that a community is one homogenous group of people doesn’t exist, actually you can have a community of interest too and within that there’ll still be many disparate groups.It’s more about empowering people of all ages to have the skills throughout their lives. When I’m asked something as a young person, I’m thinking about it, not just from my frame, but from many different perspectives, because the reality of the choices that need to be made is that they are influenced by different perspectives. It feels patronising to say “tell me what you think” and then for me in my office to make a decision on the basis of how many people said x, y or z. Physically making something, whether it’s repairing a wall or painting is really powerful. Sometimes it’s a totally tangential activity that allows you get deeper in the conversation and get different perspectives – the time it takes to make a jumper or build a wall. Do you think that those methods could help young people plan and visualise their career? Whenever we go into a school, college or youth group, it’s really powerful to share your story and say “this is the process I’ve used, but you can use it your way”. There isn’t a right or wrong, there are just choices and opinions. That’s a skill that prepares people for the real world out there. There are very few jobs that you can just walk into. Everything we would use shifts so quickly, the tools you use. For some people that’s scary that we won’t tell people whose piece of work is better than others because they are so used to that hierarchy. I was looking at the wall and seeing the “Know You’re Skilled”. Tell me more about that. One of the biggest barriers to getting people involved in projects is confidence across all age groups, people not feeling like they’ve got something to contribute, so we started to think about the skills we have as individuals within the business. Being an architect is not my core skill in terms of really getting work done, being chatty is more important or not getting flustered. On projects we wanted to create a peer group where people share. It’s hard to identify your own skills, you…
International Forum «Migrant Detention in Europe and Beyond: What perspectives?»
Migreurop, European Alternatives and the Observatoire de l’enfermement des étrangers (OEE, France) are currently working to organise an international meeting around migrants’ detention in Europe and the Mediterranean Region. The event is set to take place in Paris at the CISP Maurice Ravel on Friday, December 6th, under the title “Migrant Detention in Europe and Beyond: What perspectives?” within the framework of the “Open Access Now” Campaign. European Alternatives, as partner organisation, has been working on the defence of migrants’ rights and the free movement of citizens for many years. This area of work culminated over the last two years in the coordination and implementation of transnational campaigns on administrative detention and the role of civil society organisations and media in reporting the conditions of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants held in administrative detention in many EU Member States. This was done mainly through the “Open Access Now” campaign (officially launched with Migreurop in 2011), as well as through the participation in 2011 to the “LasciateCIEntrare” broad-based coalition of Italian associations calling for access to detention centres – known as “CIE” in Italy – for journalists and CSOs against the suspension and restrictions on the right to information. The Paris Forum is intended for all those involved in any aspect of campaigning and informing about immigration detention and challenging detention policy and practice. It will offer the opportunity to look at various critical issues related to migrants’ detention in key European and Mediterranean countries and will critically assess civil society actions in the mobilisation of public awareness around these problems, especially after the latest migrant boat disaster off Lampedusa. On this date, a first version of the “Dynamic Map” of detention camps for ‘foreigners’ in Europe and Mediterranean Countries, a participatory project which is currently being worked on by the cartography group within the Migreurop Network, will also be presented to the public. Journalists who are taking part in “Open Access Now” transnational campaign, those who are engaged in the mobilisation led by the “LasciateCIEntrare” coalition in Italy, those who participated in the Open Access Parliamentary Visits 2013 or earlier, and some representatives from Reporters Without Borders will take part in the event. The meeting consists of two parts as follows: two round-tables (in the morning) and four working groups (in the afternoon) dealing with new challenges regarding: the administrative detention of migrants and the study of alternatives to this practice; the work with the media in this area and the challenges to the right to information; the possibilities and challenges for visitors of detention centres; the methods to act together against detention outside of Europe. European Alternatives representatives will be in charge, together with Mediapart and Libération, of the working group “Travailler avec les médias” (Working with the Media) which foresees the active participation and contribution of delegates from Attac, The Human Rights League, the Balkans and Caucasus Observatory, Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (CNHI), Kisa (Cyprus), Cimade, the Italian National Association of Intercultural Press (ANSI), Maison des Journalistes, amongst other international organisations. Whereas the morning session is open to the public who registers before December 3, 2013, the working groups are restricted to members of the Steering Committee of the “Open Access Now” Campaign in addition to those of the organising partners. For further information and to register, please write to: oaconference6dec@gmail.com.
Are young Turks occupying Gezi park model European citizens?
Are young Turks occupying Gezi park model European citizens? by Niccolo Milanese The massive street protests in Turkey over recent weeks – triggered by plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi park and spiralling into expressions of widespread discontent at authoritarian government and forceful attempts to quieten dissent – have solicited the European institutions to give a response. This response has been ambiguous on the part of the High Representative for External Affairs, who has called for ‘restraint on both sides’ – that is to say both on the side of the protestors and of the government – and much stronger on the part of the European Parliament which adopted a joint-party resolution condemning “disproportionate and excessive force by the Turkish police in its response to the peaceful and legitimate protests” and deploring the arrogant attitude of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to those in disagreement with his policies. Erdogan, for his part, reacted angrily to the resolution of the EU parliament, asking “who do they think they are?” It is opportune to re-examine the relations between Turkish people and ‘Europe’ and thereby reconsider the meaning of ‘European Citizenship’. On the basis of this reconsideration, a profound answer can be perhaps given to Erdogan which is likely to be more troubling to him than he might anticipate. As is forcefully argued the Enacting European Citizenship research project led by Engin Isin of the Open University, ‘European citizenship’ is too frequently reduced to ‘citizenship of the European Union’, which is only conferred on citizens of member states of the European Union. The current and past activism of Turkish citizens can serve as a useful reminder that European Citizenship – when looked at from the individual citizens’ perspective – is the right to claim rights through a wider set of ‘European’ institutions including the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the invocation of a set of ‘European’ values and rights which are embodied in the idea of the European Union and its associated institutions. As Bahar Rumelili and Fuat Keyman point out in their studies of European Citizenship in Turkey as part of the same ENACT research project, Turkish citizens have over recent years been articulating claims as European citizens through many of these institutions and invoking many associated values. They have made appeal to the European courts as well as the European Parliament to claim the right to conscientious objection – recognised in all Council of Europe member states except for Turkey and Azerbaijan – for example. Similarly, youth organisations in Turkey take part regularly in European Union supported ‘Youth in Action’ projects. The program of the EU explicitly promotes “a sense of active citizenship, solidarity, tolerance among young Europeans and to involve them in shaping the Union’s future” – and thereby admits that young Turks, despite not being EU-citizens, have a role in “shaping the Union’s future”. A Turkish youth organisation sits on the advisory council of the Council of Europe, and thereby has a say in policy affecting all Council of Europe countries from a youth perspective. The accession negotiations are another significant opportunity for civil society and citizens to articulate their demands. Rumelili and Keyman give the examples of gender equality organisations that have lobbied for the importance of the creation of an Equal Opportunities Commission in these negotiations, and Kurdish citizens who have made the Kurdish question a central issue of EU-Turkey relations. Many more examples could be given. To act as a ‘European’ citizen does not mean to accept unquestioningly the ‘European’ standards, values, decisions or institutions associated with Europe. The example of young Turks appealing to the European courts to claim a right to conscientious objection is a good example to show this, as well as perhaps revealing something profound about the current protests and the reaction they have had from the Turkish political establishment. There are reportedly over 5000 cases of objectors in Turkey, although not all of them are publicised. The examples Rumelili and Keyman give are of two objectors in the late 1990s, Osman Murat Ülke and Halil Savda. Ülke was called to the conscription office in 1995 and stated his objection. In 1996 he was charged with “cooling down the citizens’ enthusiasm for military service” under the anti-terrorism law Article 318, and spent 701 days in prison. In 1997 he made an application to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that recent developments in Europe have shown that conscientious objection is a fundamental human right. That is, he claimed rights as a European, based on what is the case for citizens of the European Union, without being a EU citizen himself. In a landmark judgement, the Court found Turkey to be in breach of Article 3 of the European Charter on Human Rights, and sentenced the Turkish State to pay 11000 euros to Ülke. Article 3 is an article on the individual’s rights never to be subjected to torture or inhuman treatment. The Court also noted that the Turkish state needed urgently to come up with some legal arrangements ensuring the right of conscientious objection, although no steps have subsequently been taken in this direction. Ülke himself was critical of the court for not referring to Article 9 of the Charter which refers to freedom of belief and conscience. Ülke asserts that conscientious objection is an ethical stance against the militaristic structure on which not only the Turkish state, but all nation-states are built. So it is not a matter of a particular individual’s ill-treatment by the state, but rather an issue of the structure of all nation-states. Ülke has been supported in this argument by another conscientious objector, Halil Savada, who objected to military service in 2004 and was imprisoned for 17th months. In 2008 he was found to be “not fit for military service” by a military health council, which based its report on his alleged “anti-social behaviour, lack of masculinity and Turkishness”. Savada has been critical of the EU and…
Les jeunes Turcs qui occupent le parc Gezi sont-ils des citoyens européens modèles ?
Par Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Audrey Ubertino Les importantes manifestations en Turquie ces dernières semaines – déclenchées par le projet de construction d’un centre commercial à la place du parc Gezi et qui a dégénéré en expressions de mécontentement général contre le gouvernement autoritaire et en tentatives énergiques d’apaiser les contestations – ont sollicité les institutions européennes afin qu’elles donnent une réponse. Cette réponse a été ambiguë de la part du Haut représentant des Affaires étrangères qui a appelé à la « retenue des deux côtés » – c’est-à-dire à la fois du côté des manifestants et du côté du gouvernement – et elle a été bien plus forte de la part du Parlement européen qui a adopté une résolution commune à tous les partis, qui condamne « l’usage excessif et disproportionné de la force par la police turque en réponse au manifestations pacifiques et légitimes » et qui déplore l’attitude arrogante du Premier ministre turc Erdogan vis-à-vis des personnes en désaccord avec sa politique. Erdogan a, quant à lui, réagi avec colère à la résolution du Parlement européen en demandant « pour qui se prennent-ils ? ». Il convient de réexaminer les relations entre le peuple turc et « l’Europe » et, ainsi, de reconsidérer la signification de « citoyenneté européenne ». Sur la base de cette reconsidération, une réponse approfondie peut peut-être être donnée à Erdogan qui sera probablement pour lui plus troublante que ce à quoi il pourrait s’attendre. Comme le soutient énergiquement le projet de recherche Enacting European Citizenship(Promulguer la citoyenneté européenne), mené par Engin Isin de l’Université ouverte, la « citoyenneté européenne » est trop fréquemment réduite à la « citoyenneté de l’Union européenne », qui est uniquement accordée aux citoyens des Etats-membres de l’Union européenne. Le militantisme actuel et passé des citoyens turcs peut servir à rappeler que la citoyenneté européenne – du point de vue de chaque citoyen – est le droit de revendiquer des droits grâce à un ensemble plus large d’institutions « européennes », dont le Conseil de l’Europe et la Cour européenne des droits de l’Homme, ainsi que l’invocation d’une série de valeurs et de droits « européens » qui sont incarnés dans l’idée de l’Union européenne et de ses institutions associées. Comme Bahar Rumelili et Fuat Keyman le montrent dans leur étude de la citoyenneté européenne en Turquie, dans le cadre du même projet de recherche ENACT, les citoyens turcs ont, ces dernières années, exprimé des revendications en tant que citoyens européens à travers nombre de ces institutions et ont invoqué de nombreuses valeurs associées. Ils ont fait appel aux tribunaux européens ainsi qu’au Parlement européen, afin de revendiquer le droit à l’objection de conscience – reconnu dans tous les Etats membres du Conseil de l’Europe, sauf en Turquie en Azerbaïdjan – par exemple. De la même façon, les organisations de jeunesse en Turquie prennent régulièrement part aux projets « Jeunesse en action », soutenus par l’Union européenne. Le programme de l’UE valorise explicitement « un sens de la citoyenneté active, la solidarité, la tolérance des jeunes Européens et le fait de leur faire jouer un rôle actif dans la création de l’avenir de l’Union » – et admet ainsi que les jeunes Turcs, malgré le fait qu’ils ne soient pas citoyens de l’UE, ont un rôle dans « la création de l’avenir de l’Union ». Une organisation de jeunesse turque siège au conseil consultatif du Conseil de l’Europe et, ainsi, a son mot à dire quant aux politiques concernant tous les pays du Conseil de l’Europe, du point de vue des jeunes. Les négociations d’adhésion sont une autre opportunité importante pour la société civile et les citoyens d’exprimer leurs exigences. Rumelili et Keyman donnent les exemples des organisations défendant l’égalité des sexes qui ont fait pression pour l’importance de la création d’une Commission pour l’égalité des chances dans ces négociations, et des citoyens kurdes qui ont fait de la question kurde une question essentielle des relations entre l’UE et la Turquie. Beaucoup d’autres exemples pourraient être donnés. Agir comme un citoyen « européen » ne signifie pas accepter aveuglément les normes et les décisions « européennes » ou les institutions associées à l’Europe. L’exemple des jeunes Turcs faisant appel aux tribunaux européens, afin de revendiquer le droit à l’objection de conscience en est un bon exemple, ainsi que, peut-être, le fait de révéler quelque chose de profond sur les manifestations actuelles et la réaction qu’ils ont obtenue de la part de l’institution politique turque. Selon certaines sources, il y aurait plus de 5000 cas d’objection de conscience en Turquie, bien qu’ils ne soient pas tous médiatisés. Les exemples donnés par Rumelili et Keyman sont de deux objecteurs de conscience de la fin des années 1990, Osman Murat Ülke et Halil Savda. Ülke a été appelé au bureau de conscription en 1995 et a déclaré son objection. En 1996, il a été accusé de « refroidir l’enthousiasme des citoyens pour le service militaire », selon l’article 318 de la loi anti-terroriste, et a passé 701 jours en prison. En 1997, il a fait une demande auprès de la Cour européenne des droits de l’Homme, prétendant que les récentes évolutions en Europe ont montré que l’objection de conscience est un droit de l’Homme fondamental. Il a revendiqué ces droits en tant qu’Européen, basé sur ce qui se passe pour les citoyens de l’Union européenne, sans être lui-même un citoyen de l’UE. Dans un arrêt qui a fait date, la Cour a constaté que la Turquie enfreignait l’article 3 de la Charte européenne des droits de l’Homme, et a condamné l’état turc à verser 11 000 euros à Ülke. L’article 3 est un article sur les droits des personnes à ne jamais être sujettes à la torture ou à des traitements inhumains. La Cour a également constaté que l’état turc devait prendre de toute urgence des dispositions légales afin d’assurer le droit à l’objection de conscience, bien que rien n’ait été fait dans ce sens par la suite. Ülke lui-même a critiqué la Cour pour ne pas s’être référée à l’article 9 de la Charte, qui concerne la liberté de croyance et de conscience. Ülke affirme que l’objection de conscience est une position…
Le site participatif «Close the Camps» est finalement en ligne
393. C’est le nombre de camps fermés pour étranger-e-s apparaissant sur le site Closethecamps.org mis en ligne aujourd’hui. Recensés dans les pays de l’Union européenne (UE), les pays candidats à l’adhésion à l’UE, ceux éligibles à la politique européenne de voisinage (PEV) voire les États qui collaborent à la politique migratoire européenne, ces camps ont tous été opérationnels entre 2011 et 2013. Ces chiffres ne révèlent que l’enfermement en camps fermés[1] (où la privation de liberté des personnes étranger-e-s est totale), des espaces qui sont emblématiques de nombreuses violations des droits fondamentaux des populations migrantes. Depuis plus de 10 ans, Migreurop recense et documente ce phénomène. Afin de mettre en lumière cette réalité complexe et multiple et de sensibiliser le plus grand nombre de personnes à ces questions, le réseau s’appuie notamment sur l’outil cartographique. La «Carte des Camps», parue dans sa cinquième version en 2012, permet d’illustrer l’évolution et la multiplication des lieux de détention d’étranger-e-s. Au-delà de son travail de récolte et de diffusion de l’information, Migreurop souhaite mobiliser toutes celles et ceux qui s’opposent aux mécanismes d’enfermement et d’éloignement des migrant-e-s en vue de défendre leurs droits fondamentaux. La campagne Open Access Now, lancée en 2011 avec Alternatives Européennes, et demandant un accès inconditionnel de la société civile et des journalistes aux centres de détention d’étranger-e-s, a permis de souligner et rappeler l‘opacité qui continue d’entourer ces lieux d’enfermement : difficultés – pour les associations, les chercheur-e-s, les proches des détenu-e-s et tout-e citoyen-ne – d’accéder aux informations concernant ces dispositifs,contacts parfois difficiles avec les personnes enfermées, entraves à la mise en ½uvre d’actions de soutien et de certaines initiatives de revendication et sensibilisation sur le sujet. De ce constat est née, au sein du réseau Migreurop, l’idée de travailler à la mise en place d’une base de données et la création d’une «Cartographie dynamique de l’enfermement des étranger-e-s», qui visent à promouvoir l’accès pour le plus grand nombre de personnes aux informations concernant la détention administrative et ses conséquences sur la vie et les droits des personnes migrantes. Ce projet participatif et ambitieux fut présenté publiquement le 6 décembre 2013 dans le cadre de la rencontre internationale «L’enfermement des étranger-e-s en Europe et au-delà: quels horizons?» organisée à Paris par Migreurop, Alternatives Européennes et l’Observatoire de l’Enfermement des Étrangers (OEE, France). Aujourd’hui, dans le cadre du projet de l’antiAtlas des frontières qui est à l’origine d’une exposition qui se tiendra du 13 décembre jusqu’au 1er mars à La Compagnie, lieu de création à Marseille, le réseau met en ligne le site et espère que de nombreuses contributions viendront alimenter cette initiative contre «l’Europe des camps». Pour plus d’informations, veuillez contacter: contact@migreurop.org. [1] L’enfermement des étranger-e-s se matérialise également par des lieux dits « ouverts » qui relèvent de la même logique de contrôle administratif et social (cf. la note de Migreurop sur l’enfermement des migrant-e-s). Si le réseau a toujours proposé une typologie relativement large de la notion de « camps », seuls les lieux fermés sont à ce jour pris en compte dans la base de données mise en place par Migreurop, qui sert de support de la plupart des cartographies offertes sur le site.
The collaborative website «Close the Camps» is finally online
393. This is the number of closed camps detaining migrants that appear on the Closethecamps.org website launched today. These camps have all been in use between 2011 and 2013, and are located in the European Union’s (EU) countries, in accessing countries which have applied for membership to the EU, in those that qualify for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and in some of those which participate in the European migration policies. These figures only reflect detention in close camps[1] – i.e. sites where migrants are totally deprived of liberty. These places are emblematic of the numerous human rights violations migrants are facing. For over a decade, Migreurop has systematised data collection and has documented that phenomenon. The network is especially using maps to cast light to this complex and diverse reality, to raise awareness of these questions and reach the widest audience possible. The “Encampment Map”, the updated fifth version of which was published in 2012, is a useful tool to illustrate the development, both in nature and in numbers, of detention sites for migrants. Beyond the collection and dissemination of information, Migreurop aims to mobilise all those who oppose mechanisms that result in the detention and the removal of migrants, to defend their fundamental rights. The Open Access Now campaign, launched in 2011 in partnership with European Alternatives, calls for unconditional access for civil society members and for journalists to immigration detention centres, has helped emphasise and recall that opacity keeps surrounding these detention sites: obstacles faced by NGOs, researchers, families and friends of migrants, citizens to access information, difficulty to contact detainees, obstruction to supportive actions and to some awareness and advocacy campaigns on these matters. The collaborative project “Dynamic mapping of the detention of migrants” aims to facilitate the access to information on immigration detention and its consequences on the life and the rights of migrants. This ambitious initiative was presented publicly on 6 December 2013 in the framework of the international meeting entitled “Detention of migrants in Europe and beyond: what perspective?” held in Paris by Migreurop, European Alternatives and the Observatory on the Detention of Migrants (Observatoire de l’Enfermement des Etrangers – OEE, France). Today, the network is launching this website, in the broader context of the AntiAtlas of borders project, which is organising an exhibition at the Compagnie, Marseille (France), between 13 December 2013 and 1 March 2014. For more information on the collaborative project “Dynamic mapping of the detention of migrants”, please email the project team with any queries or feedback (English /French/Italian) you have: contact@migreurop.org. [1] The detention of migrants can also occur in «open» sites that follow the same logic geared towards administrative and social control (see Migreurop brief on the detention of migrants). Although the network has always brought forward a large typology of the notion of “camps”, only closed camps have been taken into account so far in Migreurop’s database on which most of the maps available on the website are based.
Call for videomakers
Call for videomakers / Project “Vote for the voiceless” European Alternatives (EA) is looking for six videomakers to bring their unique combination of journalistic news-gathering, their cinematic eye and their “activist soul” to co-produce, co-direct, shoot and edit short videos and a transeuropean documentary film of about 60 minutes in length, in the context of the project “Vote for the voiceless”. If you want to be part of a great transnational project, you are welcome to join our team. PROJECT DESCRIPTION “Vote for the voiceless” is the continuation of a 3 year long process that EA has been running and that has come to produce the Citizens Manifesto (www.citizenspact.eu) which will form a main part of the project in order to mobilize people across Europe for the next European parliament elections. In April 2014, 6 campers will go around Europe for ten days collecting people’s opinions, particularly of those whose voices are silenced the most in the public sphere. The main routes are likely to cover Rome to Zagreb; Prague to Budapest; Berlin to Lublin; Paris to London; Barcelona to Lisbon; Cluj to Athens. Each of these campers will include 5 people: a Community organiser, a logistic manager/administrator, a videomaker, a communication person and a cartoonist. Countries involved: Italy, Croatia, Slovenia , Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Germany , Poland , France, Belgium, Netherlands, UK, Spain and Portugal TASKS During the 10 days travel, the videomaker will be responsible of the shooting and editing of short videos that will be posted/put online on a daily basis: shooting the route and the events, interviewing people, editing vox-pops, editing short original formats. The outputs will be decided together with the other videomakers during a preparation meeting at the end of January. During this preparation meeting, the videomakers will come together, take part in a training and plan together the different video formats that will be produced during the travel. After the travel, each videomaker will have to edit a 10-15 minutes short video which will be part of a common transeuropean documentary film about the project. Travel costs and accomodation will be covered and a remuneration fee will be provided. REQUIREMENTS The videomakers will have to: – attend the preparation meeting in Berlin, on January 24th and 25th. Travel costs and accommodation will be covered. – be available around mid-April for 10 days of travel, shooting and editing. Travel costs and accommodation will be covered. – bring her/his own equipment during the travel (camera, laptop to edit the short videos, microphone) – possibilities to rent some equipment. – to produce a 10-15 minutes short film that will be part of a transeuropean documentary film about the project Travel costs and accommodation will be covered and a remuneration fee will be provided. SKILLS REQUIRED – cinematic eye – very good skills in camera operating/shooting and in editing videos – skills in interviewing/journalism – fluent English and at least one language of the countries involved – experiences in working with activists, for non-profits CONTACT Please send your references, your CV, a short description of your motivations to take part in this project and your wishes for the route you would like to follow to Séverine Lenglet: s.lenglet@euroalter.com DEADLINE The deadline for application is 07 January 2014. The approximate date for completion of the documentary film is August 2014.
Aspirations for 2014
We invited young people across Europe to share their stories on how they cope with making a living. As part of this, we asked them to tell us what they wanted to achieve in 2014. From how important young people value want to rediscover making, learn new skills to finding a place they can call their own…without forgetting earning a living, click on the infographic below to discover the aspirations of young Europeans for this year! What do you want to achieve for 2014? Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.
NOUS SOMMES LE BIEN COMMUN
Traduit par Audrey Ubertino En cherchant à savoir comment les gens tentent de s’en sortir pour gagner leur vie en temps de crise, nous entendons beaucoup d’histoires sur la manière dont les gens utilisent les ressources autour d’eux afin de s’aider, eux et leurs voisins, à faire face. Certaines de ces ressources sont ce que beaucoup considèreraient comme faisant partie du « bien commun » : l’eau, la nourriture, la nature, etc. C’est pourquoi nous débusquons des personnes qui aident à protéger et à découvrir les bien communs dans leur région, afin d’aider leurs communautés à les utiliser collectivement pour gagner leur vie. C’est en partie ce pourquoi les occupants du parc Gezi se battent à Istanbul. Nous avons même eu une caravane des biens communs et nous avons une activité où les gens peuvent les découvrir dans leurs quartiers. Vous devez penser que l’idée de bien commun relève davantage des places de villages et des fermes, mais nous avons trouvé un groupe dans l’une des régions les plus urbaines du monde, New Cross (quartier du sud-est de Londres). Voici l’interview que nous avons réalisée avec les New Cross Commoners. Comment sont nés les New Cross Commoners ? Nous nous sommes réunis dans un désir de s’engager davantage dans notre quartier : beaucoup d’entre nous font leurs études à l’université de Goldsmith, qui se trouve dans le quartier de New Cross, et les New Cross Commoners sont également un moyen de briser la séparation entre l’université et le quartier. Les New Cross Commoners ont d’autres motivations que le simple mécontentement vis-à-vis du monde universitaire et de sa privatisation, il y a également le désir d’apprendre de manière différente et d’expérimenter de nouvelles façons de vivre/de gagner sa vie ensemble, qui peuvent fournir une alternative à la concurrence individuelle dans le cadre du marché du travail. Qu’entendez-vous par « biens communs » ? La signification de « biens communs » et de « mise en commun » est quelque chose que nous tentons de comprendre ensemble, par rapport à la vie de New Cross, le quartier où beaucoup d’entre nous vivent, travaillent, étudient, et par rapport à nos expériences, et avec le rassemblement des New Cross Commoners eux-mêmes. Pour nous, il n’est pas tellement important d’établir des définitions abstraites de « biens communs », mais plutôt de comprendre leurs effets, le potentiel d’émancipation sociale et politique que peuvent avoir les biens communs. Pour répondre de manière plus précise, nous pouvons dire que les biens communs impliquent : 1. Une ressource collective, matérielle ou immatérielle 2. Un processus de mise en commun, ce qui signifie que les gens doivent se rassembler afin d’employer les ressources en s’organisant et en luttant avec l’état et le marché, 3. Une communauté non-homogène : le rassemblement de personnes doit perturber la séparation sociale basée sur les classes, l’âge et ainsi de suite. Qu’est-ce qui fait des biens communs dans un contexte urbain quelque chose d’unique ? Nous ne sommes pas sûrs de savoir comment répondre à cette question, en partie parce que nous considérons l’opposition rural/urbain comme problématique, et en partie parce que nous n’avons pas d’expérience directe des biens communs et de la mise en commun en dehors du contexte urbain. Peut-être pourrions-nous dire que, en ce qui concerne Londres/New Cross, les termes « biens communs » sont généralement associés avec les terres et avec quelque chose qui était défini juridiquement et qui a disparu il y a longtemps. Afin d’expliquer la notion de biens communs, nous utilisons parfois l’exemple d’une place : une place publique contrôlée et réglementée depuis en-haut, par la municipalité, qui la nettoie et qui exerce légalement des restrictions vis-à-vis de son utilisation. Une place publique est privatisée si, par exemple, elle est vendue à une société en tant que propriété et, dans ce cas, le contrôle est souvent plus sévère, et l’enceinte peut également devenir physique. Cette même place devient un bien commun lorsque les gens commencent à l’utiliser collectivement et à s’organiser, en dépit et contre le contrôle que la municipalité ou que la propriété privée y exercent. Quelle est l’importance des biens communs pour un quartier comme New Cross ? New Cross est l’un des quartiers de Londres qui a été le plus durement touché par les coupes budgétaires des services publics : beaucoup de bibliothèques municipales ont déjà fermé, l’hôpital et la caserne des pompiers sont menacés, les logements sociaux sont eux aussi privatisés malgré une longue liste d’attente de personnes et de familles sans logement. Le gouvernement liquide ce qui est public et, en même temps, encourage les citoyens à se réunir et à s’entraider en utilisant la rhétorique de la « grande société ». Un exemple de projet de « grande société » est le nouveau type d’école libre encouragé par le gouvernement, où « free » (libre, gratuit) a le même sens que « liberté » néolibérale : ces écoles sont libres de rivaliser, elles ne sont pas organisées par les parents, les enseignants et les élèves mais confiées par les parents à des patrons, dont le travail est, en fin de compte, de garantir leur compétitivité en tant qu’entreprise. Il s’agit d’un problème complexe qui concerne les biens communs, étant donné que les biens communs peuvent être produits dans les interstices entre les « coupes budgétaires » et la « grande société », et contre eux. Afin d’aider les jeunes à comprendre comment ils pourraient mettre en place des activités similaires à l’endroit où ils vivent dans toute l’Europe, quelles sont les différentes mesures que vous avez prises depuis que l’idée des New Cross Commoners est née et où en êtes-vous aujourd’hui ? Les New Cross Commoners ont un site Internet où toutes les étapes du processus sont notées : le site est également destiné à être une boîte à outils que tout le monde peut utiliser. Nous avons débuté les New Cross Commoners il y a peu de temps et nous devons consolider le processus avant d’établir d’autres sortes d’engagements avec des personnes dans toute l’Europe, mais nous pensons déjà à la possibilité d’organiser des échanges avec des personnes qui opèrent de manière similaire en Europe, afin d’apprendre les uns des autres. Quelles sont les méthodes que vous utilisez pour trouver des biens communs dans New Cross et…
We are the common good
In exploring how people are trying to cope with making a living in the crisis, we’re listening to many stories about how people are using resources around them to help them and their neighbours get by. Some of these resources are what many of us would consider as being part of the “common good” – water, food, nature, etc. That’s why we’ve been uncovering people who are helping protect and discover common goods in their area to help their communities use these collectively to make a living. It’s partly what the occupiers of the Gezi Park are fighting for in Istanbul. We even had a caravan of the commons and have got an activity where people can uncover these in their neighbourhoods. You might think that the idea of the common good has more to do with village squares and farms, but we’ve found a group in one of the most urban areas in the world, New Cross. Here’s an interview we had with the New Cross Commoners. How did New Cross Commoners come about? We came together through a desire of engaging more deeply with our neighbourhood: many of us study at Goldsmiths, which is located in New Cross, and the New Cross Commoners is also a way to break the separation between the university and the neighbourhood. There are more motivations for the New Cross Commoners, it is not just the discontent with academia and its privatization, but also the desire to learn differently, and to experiment ways of living / making a live together that can provide an alternative to the option of competing individually as part of a job market. What do you mean by the commons? The meaning of commons and commoning is something that we are trying to understand together, and in relation with the life of New Cross, the neighbourhood where many of us live, work, study, and in relation with our experiences, and with the coming together of the New Cross Commoners itself. For us is important not so much to come up with abstract definitions of commons, but to understand their effects, the potential for social and political emancipation the commons can have. To answer more precisely, we could say that the commons imply 1. a collective resource, either material or immaterial 2. a process of commoning, which means that people have to come together to make use of the resource by organizing together and struggling with the state and the market 3. a non-homogenous community: the coming together of people has to disrupt the social separations based on classes, ages and so on What’s unique about the commons in an urban context? We are not sure how to answer this question, partly because we consider problematic the opposition between rural and urban, partly because we don’t have direct experience of commons and commoning outside urban contexts. Perhaps we could say that in the context of London / New Cross the term commons is usually associated with land and with something that used to be juridically defined and it has disappeared a long time ago. To explain the commons we sometimes use the example of a square: a public square is controlled and regulated from above, from the municipality, which cleans it and also legally exercises restrictions to its use. A public square gets privatized if, for example, it is sold to a company as part of an estate, and in this case the control is often more strict, the enclosure might become physical as well. The same square becomes a common when people start using it collectively and organize themselves despite and against the control the municipality or the private estate exercise on it. What is the importance of the commons for a neighbourhood like New Cross? New Cross is one of the neighbourhood in London where the cuts to public services are hitting harder: many public library are closed already, now the hospital and the fire station are under threat, council flats are also privatized despite of long waiting list of people and families without a house. The government is selling off what is public and at the same time encourages citizens to get together and help each other through the rhetoric of the “big society”. An example of a “big society” project is the new type of free schools encouraged by the government, where “free” is such as in neoliberal “freedom”: those schools are “free” to compete, they are not organized by parents, teachers and students, but entrusted by parents to managers whose job is ultimately to guarantee their competitiveness as businesses. This is a complex issue, and it has to do with the commons, inasmuch commons can be produced in the interstices between “cuts” and “big society”, and against them. To help young people understand how they could set up similar activities where they live across Europe, what were the different steps you took since the idea of New Cross Commoners came about and where you are now? The New Cross Commoners has a website where its process is recorded: the website is also intended to be a toolbox available for everybody to be used. We have started this New Cross Commoners not long ago and we have to consolidate the process before coming up with other kind of engagements with people across Europe, but we are already thinking the possibility of organizing exchanges with people operating in similar ways in Europe in order to learn from each other. What are the methods you use to find commons in New Cross and stimulate their circulation? If we talk about methods, in practical terms, when we meet we try to combine different things: reading and discussing, walking and visiting places, making and doing (making maps and models, cooking food, digging and planting… we even do physical exercises together!). This is also a way of learning to collectivize different things and aspects of our lives. And it is an attempt to do things differently also by questioning the separation between needs and desires. An example: reading and discussing theory becomes different from the kind…
EA attacked by Daily Mail
This is a short introduction we can decide on
New service: EU migration policies
European Alternatives has long been committed to fighting against inhuman and restrictive practices in the management of migration to Europe. We have co-created the European network Open Access Now and taking active part in the Italian campaign LasciateCIEntrare. We have now inaugurated a new and free information service on EU-level developments providing information on migration and detention policies and news, and on the extent of the need for transnational advocacy and campaigning for migrants’ rights. The service is articulated around a monthly interactive newsletter (please download a copy of the very first issue here). To sign up, please leave your details using the form below. Subscription form * indicates required Email Address * Name * Surname Country City Organisation Language * ItalianoEnglish You can also download the latest digital issues of the EA Migration Area & Detention Programme eNewsletters here below: Newsletter #5 – December 2013 Newsletter #4 – November 2013 Newsletter #3 – October 2013 Newsletter #2 – August 2013 Newsletter #1 – July 2013 For further information, please write to: rome@euroalter.com.
Nuovo servizio per aggiornamenti su politiche migratorie
Siamo lieti di offrire un nuovo servizio per restare aggiornati sugli sviluppi in tema di politiche migratorie UE
Le Invasioni Barbariche
Articolo di Mauro Longo Si diceva che sarebbero arrivati a decine di migliaia solo il primo giorno, nella mattina di Capodanno 2014. Che l’invasione sarebbe stata di portata e dimensioni tali che il paese, privo di antidoti e strategie, sarebbe presto stato messo in ginocchio e portato al collasso, dopo aver visto spremute tutte le risorse fino all’ultimo penny. Si diceva che il Welfare State sarebbe crollato sotto il peso delle richieste di sussidi di disoccupazione e di spese mediche a carico del contribuente. E invece. Il 1 Gennaio sono state definitivamente rimosse le limitazioni all’impiego di cittadini bulgari e rumeni all’interno dell’Unione Europea. In Gran Bretagna il governo aveva paventato un numero di arrivi sostanziosi, in un momento in cui i discorsi sull’immigrazione (da un punto di vista principalmente politico, più che numerico) e sull’Europa sono entrambi temi particolarmente sensibili. Tra le varie proposte al vaglio del governo nei mesi precedenti alla rimozione delle limitazioni, spiccavano la proroga delle limitazioni stesse (in palese violazione dei principi di base dei Trattati Europei), una campagna pubblicitaria da sviluppare in Romania e Bulgaria sulle pessime condizioni meteorologiche nel Regno Unito, il divieto per i cittadini europei di accedere alle cure mediche gratuite e al sistema di benefit. Nel frattempo però nessuno si è preoccupato di farsi trovare preparato di fronte alle necessità di integrazione ed inclusione di nuovi migranti: un problema peraltro preesistente all’apertura delle frontiere per i cittadini bulgari e rumeni. Piuttosto che prevedere misure per alleviare la pressione su case, sanità ed servizi pubblici, il governo si è premurato di restringere l’accesso ai benefit, nonostante svariati studi mostrino che il migrante comunitario in Gran Bretagna è un contribuente netto (cioè paga più tasse e utilizza meno sussidi pubblici del cittadino britannico). Nonostante stime semi-ufficiali del governo prevedano l’arrivo di soli 13.000 cittadini bulgari e rumeni nel 2014 (i maligni dicono che stime ufficiali non siano state rilasciate perché “troppo positive”), e nonostante chi effettivamente avesse voluto trasferirsi da quei due paesi lo ha probabilmente già fatto (oltre 150.000 cittadini di Bulgaria e Romania attualmente vivono e lavorano nel Regno Unito), la politica e il governo hanno fatto tutto il possibile per inasprire i toni, col rischio di creare un problema laddove il problema non esisteva. L’ambasciatore rumeno a Londra si è fatto una risata, dicendo che i lavoratori del suo paese preferiscono emigrare verso Italia e Spagna, paesi latini come la Romania. Ma a più riprese si è rischiato l’incidente diplomatico, con rumeni e bulgari di volta in volta raffigurati come criminali, nullafacenti, parassiti. Non sono ancora disponibili cifre ufficiali, ma da ciò che si è visto negli aeroporti londinesi la mattina del 1 Gennaio, l’invasione non c’è stata. Sul primo volo atterrato a Londra da Bucarest nel nuovo anno, solo un passeggero arrivava con l’intenzione di cercare lavoro in Gran Bretagna. Gli altri erano turisti o residenti che tornavano a Londra dopo il Natale passato a casa. Nel frattempo il governo Cameron insiste con discorsi che sembrano spingere la Gran Bretagna sempre più verso il baratro dell’uscita dall’Unione Europea. Vengono quasi quotidianamente rilanciati allarmismi sull’immigrazione comunitaria, sulle ingerenze della Corte Europea per i Diritti Umani, su leggi e regolamenti comunitari che frenano il rilancio dell’economia britannica. Ma si dimentica che, con regolarità, le stime catastrofiche vengono smentite dai fatti e dalle cifre ufficiali; che le grandi industrie con base nel Regno Unito hanno esplicitamente avvertito il governo che si trasferiranno altrove nel momento in cui la Gran Bretagna dovesse uscire dall’Unione Europea; che si cerca di scaricare sull’Europa la responsabilità di fallimenti tutti inglesi. Ma il 2015 è anno di elezioni e, si sa, l’immigrazione è un tema sensibile. Al baratro penseremo dopo.
Another Flood in the UK
Article by Mauro Longo They told us that they would have arrived by the tens of thousands just on the first day, on New Year’s Day of 2014. They told us that the invasion would have been of such dimensions that the country, without a proper strategy to counter it, would have soon been on its knees. Resources would have been exploited to the very last penny. The benefit system would have collapsed, submerged by benefit applications and NHS expenses, paid for by the British taxpayer. But then. On the 1st of January, restrictions to the employment of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals within the European Union were lifted. In the UK, the government feared a massive influx of A2 nationals looking for jobs, at a moment where the government is struggling to keep up to speed with its own pledge of reducing net migration to tens of thousands, an anti-European sentiment is gaining momentum and UKIP is putting pressure on the Conservatives from the right. Proposals to tackle this ‘invasion’ ranged from an advertising campaign to be run in Romania and Bulgaria about the adverse weather conditions in the UK, to a ban on access for European nationals to public housing, work benefits and free health services, to a cap on the numbers of future EU migrants entering the UK. In the meantime though, no one actually worried about proposing measures to better integrate new migrants into local communities. Rather than enforcing measures to alleviate the pressure on housing, the NHS and other public services, the government came up with a time-limit before new migrants can apply for benefits. Notwithstanding numerous studies proving that EU migrants to the UK have been, so far, net contributors to the public coffers. In addition to that, semi-official government estimates forecast the arrival of only 13.000 Romanian and Bulgarian nationals in 2014 (with many Labour MPs claiming that official figures were not released because ‘too positive’). And figures of Romanians and Bulgarians already living and working in the UK (about 150.000) suggest that those who wanted to look for a job in the country have already done so. Regardless, politicians did everything they could to raise the temperature on such a sensitive issue, running the risk of creating a problem where a problem was nowhere to be seen. The Romanian Ambassador to the UK laughed the British claims off, underlining that Romania is a Latin country and its citizens would rather move to Italy or Spain, where it is easier for them to learn the language and where large Romanian communities already exist. But a diplomatic incident has been waiting to happen for a while, and now Cameron seems to have managed succeeded in causing it: he singled out the Polish as an example of migrants abusing the benefit system, provoking a row with the Polish government. Official figures are not available yet, but it looks as if the feared invasion of Romanians and Bulgarians did not take place after all. On the first flight, landing at Luton airport on the 1st of January, only one passenger declared the intention of looking for a job in the UK: the others were either tourists or residents coming back to their jobs after the winter holidays. Nonetheless, the Conservatives keep taking steps that seem to lead to an exit from the EU. Issues with intra-EU immigration, EU regulations, the European Court of Human Rights emerge almost daily. No one seems to remark however that these catastrophic estimates on the negative impact the EU has on the UK are not confirmed by official figures; that international businesses have warned the government they will move out of the UK the day after the UK ends their membership to the EU; and that, as is often the case everywhere in Europe, the national government is trying to blame the EU for its own failures. But the 2015 general elections are coming close, polls show a worrying growth of UKIP popularity and, we all know, immigration is a sensitive topic for the public opinion. Whether all this political nonsense will eventually benefit the UK has yet to be seen.
EA attacked by Mail on Sunday
European Alternatives has today been accused of spreading “Marxist propaganda” by the Mail on Sunday. In particular, the article picked up on our flagship projects Citizens Manifesto and Transeuropa Festival. The newspaper accuses us of being anti-capitalist and wanting to increase the rights of migrants, Roma people, and the poor. European Alternatives takes fundamental rights – including rights of minorities and of those well-off – seriously. We campaign for a Europe free from discrimination and based on principles of social justice and equality. We believe the Daily Mail should be ashamed for even suggesting that ethnic minorities are less deserving of fundamental rights than the majority. The newspaper further accuses us of spreading pro-EU propaganda with EU money. European Alternatives has a diversified funding base, and receives funding from some of the most established private foundations in Europe as well as from individual members. The quality and impact of our work is recognised and supported across the continent by the private as well as the public sector. We take particular pride in discovering that our work impacts on nationalist right-wing forces in the UK to such an extent as to stimulate this virulent attack. Being attacked by the newspaper who has backed Hitler in the 30s makes us convinced that we are on the right track with our project to change Europe for the better. Want to show your support for European Alternatives and for a Europe based on democracy, equality and solidarity? Share this article with your friends, or join our organisation today!
The Guardian – “As the European elections approach, it’s time to stop the politics of cowardice”
Opinion article by Niccolò Milanese – As the European elections approach, it’s time to stop the politics of cowardice “European democracy will only be built by citizens throughout the continent engaging in productive debates about our common future. When that real conversation happens, more people will realise that advancing on many of the things we care most about – from preventing global warming, promoting employment and a decent living standard for everyone, to guaranteeing the fundamental rights of minorities – requires acting on a transnational scale. Our organisation is called European Alternatives precisely because we think that in this part of the world Europe is the most appropriate level to act on these issues, but Europe needs alternative policies from the ones it currently follows. Not everyone will agree with the proposals we make, and that is exactly as it should be. The European elections should be precisely the moment to discuss these alternatives.”
When Right-Wing Extremism Becomes Impune
It was not long ago that Golden Dawn, an ephemeral extremist party in Greece, became notorious in the political landscape with party members hitting their opponents (above that, it was a female colleague). With the emergence and establishment of the far-right in domestic politics around Europe, the transnational political space is increasingly vulnerable. Xenophobic speech and acts surrounded the latest waves of immigrants coming to Europe due to the Arab Spring, the Syrian crisis or other reasons threatening their physical integrity and lives. Shockingly and similarly, Europeans are about to treat belligerently other Europeans: extremist rhetoric often appears to be the only rescue ship for exhausted conventional politics that fails to listen to the citizenry. ‘Right-wing extremist Siderov and the EU’, by Nikola Arnaudov (c)The Bulgarian political stage has turned into a landmark example of this disturbing trend. While citizens from all social groups and party affiliations have got together for everyday (and night!) rallies in the streets of their cities, towns and villages since June, the precarious government survives with the support of the golden votes of the right-wing extremist group entitled ‘Attack’ represented in the parliament. Some might remember their MEP Dimitar Stoyanov (step-son of the party leader Siderov) who attacked fellow MEP Livia Jaroka on grounds of her Roma origin, but since the government depends on Siderov’s band he and his accomplices are capable of doing any crime (particularly hate crimes) without any penalty. The police would not punish him when he assaults protesters: even the opposite, they would pursue the protesters. Along with attacking compatriots (though ‘Attack’ announces themselves as the most Bulgarian party) has turned into a daily routine but is now nothing compared to attacks of foreigners. Syrian immigrants are pronounced ‘Islamic terrorists’, ‘jihadists’ and ‘murderers’ through all communication channels ‘Attack’ uses (including their own party TV and newspaper), and foreign politicians stepping in Bulgaria are shouted at with ‘colonists’. In the last few hours Siderov went beyond the last imaginable border: during a flight, where the only authority is exercised by the pilot flying the airplane, he assaulted VERBALLY AND PHYSICALLY a French diplomat. Madam Stephanie du Mortier is a France-born European citizen working for the least dangerous political tool – the cultural institute of France entitled Alliance Francaise, but was unlucky to appear in the same airplane with Siderov and his crowd. Siderov’s physical violence stopped when he landed at Varna airport when the local airport authorities intervened…and be subject to his continuous verbal aggression. Siderov is still free and even more powerful. He was not charged with any offence, and this is not the first, nor it is going to be the last time that he will be impune. The country’s attorney-in-chief when asked today by worried Bulgarian and European media said that he will not demand Siderov’s immunity to be lifted by the parliament. And there is no surprise. People continued rallying in the streets, knowing that the political control over the law-enforcement and judiciary authorities continues. Siderov will not be surprised by another, more critical report of the European Commission coming out in February (Bulgaria has been always scrutinized by the EU for the unreformed court system and unpunished organised crime that controls the political establishment during the so-called transition to democracy): it is expected that he would use the report as a reason to be more vocal and brutal. The only hope for Bulgarian citizens remains solidarity of the European citizens. People of other countries rallying in the streets and demanding an EU country with working democracy is what could make a shift, and bring the voice back to people. Until then Siderov-type monsters will grow and mutate throughout the continent, unless citizens are empowered through genuine participatory mechanisms and unite transnationally through platforms like European Alternatives. Written by: a Bulgaria-born European that has been rallying for months and gratefully facing the solidarity of fellow European citizens
European essay competition among high school students: Europe, my future!
The Dutch group of European Alternatives (EA) and SEC would like to invite national centres to organize a national essay competition Europe, my future among high school students/students under 25 years. The essay competition implies that the participating countries organize the competition themselves and simultaneously. The winning essay in each country will be published in a magazine of the country concerned including some (translated) summaries of other winning essays from other countries. Finally the winners of each country will be invited to present their ideas and/or join a public discussion on ‘Europe in the 21st century’ at one or more events organised by EA. The jury in each country could consist of a publisher, member of EA and/or SEC, university professor, authors, etc. The idea is that every participating student can write their essay in his/her mother tongue and the outcome of the competition will be the beginning of a new transnational dialogue. We are curious how other EA groups feel about this idea and are very looking forward to your reaction. EA AMSTERDAM and SEC AMSTERDAM
Concours européen de dissertation pour les lycéens : Europe, my future
Traduit par Jessica Tsala Le groupe néerlandais d’Alternatives Européennes (AE) et le SEC Amsterdam souhaitent promouvoir dans les pays européens, l’organisation d’un concours de dissertation national intitulé Europe, my future adressé aux lycéens de moins de 25 ans. Les états participants devront organiser eux-mêmes le concours, qui aura lieux simultanément dans tous les pays. Dans chaque pays, la dissertation gagnante sera publiée dans un magazine national, avec certains résumés traduits des travaux ayant gagné à l’étranger. Pour conclure, les gagnants de chaque pays seront invités à présenter leurs idées et/ou à participer à un débat public sur « L’Europe au 21ème siècle » à l’un ou à plusieurs des événements organisés par AE. Les jurys pourront être composés d’éditeurs, de membres d’AE et du SEC, de professeurs d’université, d’auteurs, etc. Le but est que chaque lycéen ayant participé puisse lire sa dissertation dans sa langue maternelle. Ce concours va permettre d’entamer un nouveau dialogue transnational. Nous aimerions savoir ce que pensent les autres groupes d’Alternatives Européennes de cette idée et nous sommes impatients de recevoir vos réactions. AE AMSTERDAM et SEC AMSTERDAM
Time to equalise wages across Europe?
Unemployment is an issue faced by many people across Europe. In some regions, over half of people don’t have a job, like in Granada in Spain, the world champions of unemployment, where unemployment benefits don’t even exist anymore. It’s why we’re calling for equal minimum wage across the EU in our Citizens Pact. What’s fascinating from the infographic below on the progress made by different European countries…which shows how for some, an equal minimum wage won’t change so much, but for others it will have a massive impact on their everyday lives.
Changing the educational system to social exchange
For the 2013 Transeuropa Festival in Warsaw, we held a one-week long workshop on precarity and unemployment. It started with establishing main questions: what is your dream job? what are your qualifications, education and professional experience? what do the young unemployed, if they don’t have a job? how can we encourage young people to start their own business? howe can we provide young people with skill useful in professional life? As a result of the discussion four main fields of activities were defined development of courses at universities focusing on practical skills, such as constructing business plans and management regular consultations in city offices and simplification of procedures related to starting one’s business sustained collaboration between employers and universities enabling to meet the current needs of the market creating co-working more spaces, where young people can examine their business ideas and present them to eventual business partners. The event held at the end of workshop involved also an example of social exchange system: wymiennik.org based on barter. It has over 3500 offers and nearly 2000 members. One of them, Beata participated in Warsaw meeting explained how it works. Her activity on wymiennik concerns cooking skills, she organizes “cuisine reunions”, during which she teaches how to bake traditional polish cakes or make preserve products from seasonal fruits. Her role is to provide knowledge and space, but the participants are responsible for supplies: fruits, vegetables, sugar, flour, jars, etc. Those meeting has a multilevel impact. They allow people to be more creative in the kitchen and better plan the expenses, but it is also an opportunity, during time spent on making the products, to exchange different skills among each other. By Natali Szelachowska
Faire de l’éducation un échange social
Traduit par Claire DUGUE Dans le cadre du Transeuropa Festival de 2013 à Varsovie, nous avons tenu un atelier d’une semaine sur la précarité et le chômage. Nous avons commencé par établir les principales questions : – Quel est le métier de vos rêves ? – Quelles sont vos qualifications, votre parcours scolaire et vos expériences professionnelles ? – Que font les jeunes chômeurs s’ils n’ont pas d’emploi ? – Comment peut-on encourager les jeunes à lancer leur propre affaire ? – Comment pouvons-nous leur fournir des compétences qui leur soient utiles dans la vie professionnelle ? Au terme de la discussion, quatre champs d’activité principaux ont été définis : – L’instauration de cours universitaires se concentrant sur les compétences pratiques telles qu’établir un business plan et le management. – Des rendez-vous réguliers dans les bureaux de la ville et une simplification des procédures relatives au lancement de son activité. – Une collaboration soutenue entre les employeurs et les universités qui permette de répondre aux actuels besoins du marché. – Créer plus d’espace de travail commun où les jeunes peuvent étudier la viabilité de leurs projets commerciaux et les présenter à de potentiels partenaires d’affaires. A la fin de l’atelier, un exemple de système d’échange social était présenté : celui de l’organisation wymiennik.org. Il y a plus de 3500 offres et près de 2000 membres. L’un d’entre eux, Beata, a participé au meeting de Varsovie et a expliqué comment l’organisation fonctionne. Son activité sur wymiennik concerne les compétences culinaires, elle organise des « réunions cuisine » au cours desquelles elle enseigne l’art de cuisiner les gâteaux traditionnels polonais ou de faire des conserves à partir de fruits de saison. Son rôle est d’apporter son savoir-faire et de fournir un espace de travail, les participants doivent apporter le nécessaire: fruits, légumes, sucres, farine, ustensiles… Ces rencontres ont un impact à différents niveaux : non seulement elles permettent aux participants d’être plus créatif et de mieux planifier les coûts, mais le temps passé à cuisiner et à échanger des compétences les uns avec les autres représente aussi une opportunité. Natali Szelachowska
Schooling the system
You may be asking how #outcomefest came about, otherwise known as theFestival of Amazing Outcomes, taking place on 21st January at@hubwestminster. Let’s go back to first principles. What is it that motivated people to apply to become Scholars on the @hublaunchpad? What was the “rocket fuel” that led us to give up rainy evenings and freezing weekends to meet a bunch of random people, many of which (gasp) weren’t working in the same sector, or even (double gasp) working on the same issues? On top of that, we were challenged to work together (virtually or “in-school”) to apply knowledge we’d learnt from Scholarship workshops on the spot. Was it the promise of free food & booze? You can’t argue with toffee apples, jerk chicken and punch! OK, so free food does play a role, but more importantly, from what I’ve picked up from conversations with other Scholars, it’s all of the above. It’s not despite people coming from other sectors that Scholars signed up, it’s because they do…so we could help each other rethink issues we were struggling to tackle with in our own sectors. Like local government officers learning from the startup world how to bootstrap a public service or entrepreneurs acknowledging that influencing commissioning is more important than just writing funding applications. It’s not despite people working on different issues, it’s because they were…becauseinnovation often happens through solutions that meet needs from different walks of life. People tackling housing issues also need to look at issues surrounding older people and care. People focusing on unemployment could benefit from taking into account the issue of loneliness. I only realised the importance of this after I joined the Scholarship. I joined it more to get a better idea of “why” people were passionate about the issues and “how” they were tackling them. But perhaps what’s more important is how we work together on how we change the system rather than just the issues within it. So here you go, that’s one of the reasons why our unconference is focusing on how we tackle systemic issues to achieve common outcomes. If you haven’t signed up to the event, do so now. Even better, suggest a session you’d like to run on the day!
Réduire la société civile au silence en incriminant la liberté de discussion
Traduit par DUGUE Claire Les chambres parlementaires britanniques ont adopté un projet de loi visant à limiter les cas dans lesquels les organisations de la société civile peuvent faire campagne sur des questions d’intérêt général en période d’élection. Le projet de loi ‘Transparency of Lobbying, Non Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill’ (la transparence des lobbys, le soutien aux partis politiques et l’encadrement des syndicats) ne contribuera guère à minimiser l’influence exercée par les entreprises ni à la rendre plus transparente. Son impact sera simplement de limiter à 20 000 livres par an en Angleterre et 10 000 livres par an en Ecosse, au Pays de Galles et en Irlande du Nord, coût salarial inclus, le montant que les associations caritatives et organisations à but non lucratif pourront de dépenser pour faire campagne sur un thème. Au-delà de ce montant, l’organisation devra enregistrer ses dépenses auprès de la Commission électorale qui les supervisera et les contrôlera selon des modalités restant à définir). Ces montants restreignent drastiquement la possibilité de faire campagne sur des thématiques telles que les changements climatiques, l’Union européenne, la lutte contre la pauvreté, les fermetures d’hôpitaux et d’école, ou encore la défense des droits des animaux. La mise en place de formalités administratives complexes est encore plus préoccupantepuisqueles œuvres de charités, organisations à but non lucratif et groupes de réflexion devront désormais signaler qu’ils se réunissent lorsqu’ils font campagne. Cela va avoir un effet dissuasif sur la mobilisation des organisations. Selon la loi, les restrictions budgétaires seront appliquées à toute dépense qui “peut raisonnablement être considérée en période électoral comme ayant pour but de promouvoir ou participer à la réussite électoral” : I) D’un ou plusieurs de ces partis officiels II) D’un ou plusieurs de ces partis officiels ou assimilés qui défendent (ou non) certaines mesures III) Des candidats qui détiennent et défendent (ou non) certaines opinions ou des candidats appartenant à cette même catégorie de candidats » La façon dont est rédigé l’article est essentielle, car la définition est si large que faire campagne sur une quelconque question politique controversée risquerait de tomber sous le coup de cette loi: si une association caritative faisait campagne pour la défense des droits des animauxet que certains candidats préconisaient des mesures similaires et d’autres non, alors la campagne serait assujettie à ces restrictions. Les actions visées relevant du champ d’application de cet article incluraient alors la rédaction de lettre à l’attention des candidats ou des députés, l’achat d’espace publicitaire dans la presse écrite, la distribution de tracts dans les rues ou encore l’organisation de débats. L’article précise clairement que la campagne n’aura pas à être explicitement favorable à un candidat ou à un autre pour tomber sous le coup des restrictions. Cela constitue donc clairement une limite stricte à la capacité des sociétés civiles à influencer l’agenda politique et à participer au processus d’élaboration de politiques pertinentes. La « loi bâillon » fait face à une forte opposition de la plupart des organisations de la société civile du Royaume-Uni, de la « rightwing Tax-payers alliance » et la « Countryside Alliance » aux groupes de gauche comme « Compass », des cyber militants de « 38 Degrees » à la « Royal Society for the Protection of Birds » (Société Royale pour la Protection des Oiseaux), et du « Womens’ Institute » (Institut des Femmes) aux « Friends of the Earth » (Amis de la Terre). Beaucoup de ces organisations comptent bien plus de membres que les partis politiques et cela pourrait bien être la raison pour laquelle elles semblent tant effrayer les députés. En réalité, ces organisations enrichissent les débats politiques et contribuent à la vie démocratique en sensibilisant le public à des questions importantes, elles jouent également un rôle essentiel en permettant aux électeurs d’être suffisamment bien informés pour être capable de faire des choix politiques responsables. Sous prétexte de s’attaquer au du lobby des entreprises et d’empêcher les situations typiquement américaines où l’argent achète les sièges politiques, le gouvernement britannique a présenté une mesure législative qui ne va résoudre aucun de ces potentiels problèmes, mais sévèrement limiter la possibilité des organisations de la société civile d’informer le public. C’est un contournement tant de la démocratie, que des libertés d’expression et d’association, qui sont garanties aussi bien par le droit Anglais que le droit européen. Il n’y a plus qu’à espérer que la loi fassel’objet d’un recours au Royaume-Uni ainsi que devant la juridiction européenne, et qu’elle sera révisée le plus tôt possible. L’absence de médiatisation dans la presse nationale au Royaume-Uni montre que les magnats des médias, qui dictent une large partie du débat public du pays, ne sont pas mécontents que les voix critiques et indépendantes de la société civile se fassent plus silencieuses. Chaque citoyen, même s’il n’est pas membre d’une organisation concernée par ce projet de loi, devrait se lever et prendre la parole ces prochains mois pour protester contre la pénalisation de la liberté de débat.
Gagging civil society: criminalising peaceful debate
The UK Houses of Parliament have passed a bill that limits the extent to which civil society organisations can campaign on issues of general interest in election years. The ‘Transparency of Lobbying, Non Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill’ does little to limit either corporate lobbying or promote transparency. What it does do is limit the amount that charities and non-profit organisations can spend on campaigning on an issue in England to £20000 a year, £10000 a year in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including any staff costs. Beyond this amount the organisation would have to register its spending with the Electoral Commission which would oversee and control spending (in ways yet to be defined). These sums already limit dramatically the right to campaign on issues such as climate change, the European Union, combatting poverty, saving a hospital or school from being closed down, or promoting animal rights. Even more problematic is the complicated array of bureaucratic requirements that charities, non-profits and think tanks would have to show they are meeting when they campaign. This will act as a deterrent for organisations to raise their voices. To quote the bill, the restrictions will apply to any expenditure which ‘can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success at any relevant election for i) One or more particular registered parties ii) One or more particular registered parties who advocate (or do not advocate) particular policies or otherwise fall within a particular category of such parties iii) Candidates who hold (or do not hold) particular opinions or who advocate (or do not advocate) particular policies or who otherwise fall within a particular category of candidates’ The way clause has been drafted is crucial, because the definition is so wide that campaigning on any politically contentious issue would count: if a charity were to campaign on animal rights and some candidates were advocating similar policies and others not, then the campaign would fall under the restrictions. The kinds of action that could fall under this clause might include writing letters to candidates or parliamentarians, buying advertising in the press, distributing publications in the street, or holding debates. The clause is clear that the campaigning would not have to be explicitly for one candidate or another to fall under the restrictions. This is clearly a severe limit on the ability of civil society to influence the political agenda and inform good policy making. The ‘gagging law’ raised opposition amongst almost all civil society organisations in the UK, from the rightwing Tax-payers alliance and Countryside Alliance to left wing groups like Compass, from online campaigners 38 degrees to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, to the Womens’ Institute and Friends of the Earth. Many of these organisations have very many more members than any political parties do, and that may well be why members of parliament are apparently so scared of them. The reality is that these organisations enrich political debate and make democracy work by raising public awareness of important issues and have an essential role in promoting a well-informed public capable of making responsible political choices. Under the cover of saying that they will deal with corporate lobbying and prevent USA style situations where big money buys political seats, the UK government has stealthily brought in legislation that will deal with neither of these potential problems, but severely limits the possibility of civil society organisations to inform the public. This is a travesty of democracy as well as the right to free speech and association, which are guaranteed both through UK as well as European law. We can hope that the law will face legal challenges through the UK as well as European courts, and that it will be reviewed as soon as possible. The lack of coverage in parts of the mainstream press in the UK of the passage of the bill shows that media moguls who dictate large parts of public debate in the UK are not displeased that critical and independent civil society voices will be more silent. Individual citizens – in principle not covered by the bill if they are not organised – may have to stand up and speak up these coming months to protest against this criminalisation of free debate.
BAVAGLIO ALLA SOCIETÀ CIVILE: LA CRIMINALIZZAZIONE DI UN DIBATTITO PACIFICO
Il Parlamento britannico ha approvato un disegno di legge che limita gli ambiti nei quali le organizzazioni della società civile possono portare avanti delle campagne su questioni di interesse generale negli anni delle elezioni.
The Charter of Lampedusa and the quest for alternative citizenship and migration policies
European Alternatives is delighted to be an integral part of the process towards drafting a Lampedusa Charter for a new migration policy.
AAA : Agence A vous d’Agir
We are delighted to present out new participatory rating agency for programmes of candidates to the European elections From ‘founding fathers’ to ‘the failure of the European machine’ to the ‘polish plumber’ and ‘the Brussels bubble’, the debate on the European Union (EU) is sprinkled with expressions which only too often replace the political debate on the European project, with frozen images, lacking information, visibility and clear alternatives. The famous ‘democratic deficit’, a common expression if anything, certainly feeds itself with this lack of debate.This is true particularly in France. The support of the European Union has never been so shaky within a context of economic, financial and political crisis which has translated into an identity crisis at an EU level. France, one of the countries behind the EU project and country which has for a long time been seen as one of the motors of the EU, has seen the level of support for the EU fall by 15 points, from 65%to 45% between 2012 and 2013. Over one year, the new ‘sick man of Europe‘ has lost more support to the European project than its fellow members, (notably Greece and Spain), both with regards to the EU and economic integration.Europe is therefore ‘out of order’, but Europe is also just about out of ideas. What is the Europe that citizens dream of? What project would resonate well with the European public but also those normally excluded from the debate, notably the youth, but also women, migrants, the elderly? Which European alternatives exist on the themes which are important for citizens? The youth who are the future of the European project and who as such should particularly make themselves heard (and be heard), are particularly disengages with debates regarding Europe; it is by far the most significant group among the abstainers (71% of 18-24 year olds did not vote in the European elections of 2009). The unemployment rates reach soaring levels: with over a 10% increase in France in just one year, by now one in four young people under the age of 25 are affected. The project AAA: “Act-up Agora Agency” aims to spark debate on parties’ programmes and manifestos for the European elections thanks to a ‘participative rating agency of programmes’. This agency will consist of the assembly of citizens who will participate in the final debate in Lyon next April, and possibly in other European cities. Playing on the feeling of lack of political choice (as the title suggests), and symbolising largely the power of rating agencies such as the well-known AAA in France, the project aims to engage European citizens in France (French or European from member states) within the debate beyond the usual suspects and within the context of the European year of citizens. It aims to allow a dialogue on Europe, its objectives, its means and its vision for the future between citizens who do not define themselves as pro-European and their representatives, in order to build a debate around the upcoming European Parliament elections and their role. The objective is to favour the exchange of ideas on the European project so as to allow the stakes of the European elections to emerge with clarity, notably with regards to first-time voters among the youth. Finally, the aim is also to encourage citizens to develop proposals for Europe and to participate actively to the development of alternatives. The project is made up of the studying of the programmes and of a participatory debate. In a first moment (January and February) the working group which will analyse the manifestos will be formed. Would you like to take part? More information here! The group will meet in Lyon on February 22 and 23 (dates to be confirmed) and will define the central question on which the manifestos will be analyzed (for example youth policy, employment, ecology, security, energy, solutions to the crisis, etc.). They will establish an analysis scheme of the programs and manifestos of the European parties with the May elections of the European Parliament in sight and according to their positions (or lack of) on the central question defined beforehand by the young participants. Numerous examples of candidate ratings will inspire the elaboration of the evaluation criteria and the analysis format, such as the example of the candidate ratings of the French presidential elections of 2012 elaborated by Transparency International France ( on the ethics of public life), SOS Homophobia (on the rights of LGBT people), or Génération Précaire (on youth policies). This research and analysis will allow for informed and constructive debates on the European Union throughout the project. In a second moment (April 2014) a participatory debate will be organized in Lyon based on the analysis of the party programs and the themes of the election campaigns, during which participants and key actors will compare the proposals of the parliamentarian candidates and will be invited to compare their political choices and/or elaborate proposals on alternatives. The group of participants will then discuss and take a position with regards to the candidate proposals, thus becoming the ‘national rating agency’ of the parties and elaborating a vision of the EU they hope to live in. European parliamentarians (from the relative French constituencies but also from other EU countries) and the candidates to the European Parliament (EP) elections will be invited to attend and exchange views with the public and to react to social issues by explaining how their election to the EP would make a difference: a debate on ACTA, the fiscal pact, the parliamentarian budget, migrant rights in Europe, etc. Both throughout and at the closing of the debate, participants among the public will be encouraged to comment on themes central to the parliamentary elections. Finally, prior to the EP elections, a journal presenting the results of the citizen rating agency AAA will be published, and will compare different party proposals relevant to the theme of the debate. Would you like to take part to the project of find…
AAA: Act-up Agora Agency
We are delighted to present out new participatory rating agency for programmes of candidates to the European elections From ‘founding fathers’ to ‘the failure of the European machine’ to the ‘polish plumber’ and ‘the Brussels bubble’, the debate on the European Union (EU) is sprinkled with expressions which only too often replace the political debate on the European project, with frozen images, lacking information, visibility and clear alternatives. The famous ‘democratic deficit’, a common expression if anything, certainly feeds itself with this lack of debate.This is true particularly in France. The support of the European Union has never been so shaky within a context of economic, financial and political crisis which has translated into an identity crisis at an EU level. France, one of the countries behind the EU project and country which has for a long time been seen as one of the motors of the EU, has seen the level of support for the EU fall by 15 points, from 65%to 45% between 2012 and 2013. Over one year, the new ‘sick man of Europe‘ has lost more support to the European project than its fellow members, (notably Greece and Spain), both with regards to the EU and economic integration.Europe is therefore ‘out of order’, but Europe is also just about out of ideas. What is the Europe that citizens dream of? What project would resonate well with the European public but also those normally excluded from the debate, notably the youth, but also women, migrants, the elderly? Which European alternatives exist on the themes which are important for citizens? The youth who are the future of the European project and who as such should particularly make themselves heard (and be heard), are particularly disengages with debates regarding Europe; it is by far the most significant group among the abstainers (71% of 18-24 year olds did not vote in the European elections of 2009). The unemployment rates reach soaring levels: with over a 10% increase in France in just one year, by now one in four young people under the age of 25 are affected. The project AAA: “Act-up Agora Agency” aims to spark debate on parties’ programmes and manifestos for the European elections thanks to a ‘participative rating agency of programmes’. This agency will consist of the assembly of citizens who will participate in the final debate in Lyon next April, and possibly in other European cities. Playing on the feeling of lack of political choice (as the title suggests), and symbolising largely the power of rating agencies such as the well-known AAA in France, the project aims to engage European citizens in France (French or European from member states) within the debate beyond the usual suspects and within the context of the European year of citizens. It aims to allow a dialogue on Europe, its objectives, its means and its vision for the future between citizens who do not define themselves as pro-European and their representatives, in order to build a debate around the upcoming European Parliament elections and their role. The objective is to favour the exchange of ideas on the European project so as to allow the stakes of the European elections to emerge with clarity, notably with regards to first-time voters among the youth. Finally, the aim is also to encourage citizens to develop proposals for Europe and to participate actively to the development of alternatives. The project is made up of the studying of the programmes and of a participatory debate. In a first moment (January and February) the working group which will analyse the manifestos will be formed. Would you like to take part? More information here! The group will meet in Lyon on February 22 and 23 (dates to be confirmed) and will define the central question on which the manifestos will be analyzed (for example youth policy, employment, ecology, security, energy, solutions to the crisis, etc.). They will establish an analysis scheme of the programs and manifestos of the European parties with the May elections of the European Parliament in sight and according to their positions (or lack of) on the central question defined beforehand by the young participants. Numerous examples of candidate ratings will inspire the elaboration of the evaluation criteria and the analysis format, such as the example of the candidate ratings of the French presidential elections of 2012 elaborated by Transparency International France ( on the ethics of public life), SOS Homophobia (on the rights of LGBT people), or Génération Précaire (on youth policies). This research and analysis will allow for informed and constructive debates on the European Union throughout the project. In a second moment (April 2014) a participatory debate will be organized in Lyon based on the analysis of the party programs and the themes of the election campaigns, during which participants and key actors will compare the proposals of the parliamentarian candidates and will be invited to compare their political choices and/or elaborate proposals on alternatives. The group of participants will then discuss and take a position with regards to the candidate proposals, thus becoming the ‘national rating agency’ of the parties and elaborating a vision of the EU they hope to live in. European parliamentarians (from the relative French constituencies but also from other EU countries) and the candidates to the European Parliament (EP) elections will be invited to attend and exchange views with the public and to react to social issues by explaining how their election to the EP would make a difference: a debate on ACTA, the fiscal pact, the parliamentarian budget, migrant rights in Europe, etc. Both throughout and at the closing of the debate, participants among the public will be encouraged to comment on themes central to the parliamentary elections. Finally, prior to the EP elections, a journal presenting the results of the citizen rating agency AAA will be published, and will compare different party proposals relevant to the theme of the debate. Would you like to take part to the project of find out more about it?…
Participate to the Act-up Agora Agency!
Take part in our Rating Agency and have your say on the political manifestos of the main European parties ahead of the elections!
How does the workforce across Europe evolve?
We’ve explored what young people across Europe would like to achieve over the next 10 years. How does this match up with the evolution of the workforce across the continent? We wouldn’t recommend going to become a builder or a plumber, instead look to work in an office and even more so…in a bank. But more importantly, don’t just look at the trends, do what feels good to you! Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.
Comment la main d’œuvre à travers l’Europe évolue-t-elle?
Traduit par Marie StagnaraNous avons étudié ce que les jeunes européens souhaiteraient accomplir dans les 10 prochaines années. Comment cela correspond-il à l’évolution de la main d’œuvre à travers le continent ? Nous ne vous recommanderions pas de devenir un ouvrier du bâtiment ou un plombier, essayez plutôt de travailler dans un bureau, voire même… dans une banque. Mais le plus important n’est pas de suivre les tendances mais de faire ce qui vous plaît! Explorez plus d’infographies comme celle-ci sur la plus grande communauté de design duweb – Visually. Source:
Putting the Entrepreneur into NEETS
As part of international #womensday we want to celebrate the impact young women have on helping other young people cope with making a living. That’s why we’re really chuffed to share with you our interview with Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin Co-Founder of @wearesnook and Director of@thisisthematter. @thisisthematter is a newspaper run, produced and published entirely by young people. Each edition is their public response to a question asked by the government or a business. @thisisthematter helps young people realise they can make anything happen, whilst giving them the confidence to stand up for what they believe in. It teaches skills that are essential to employers by getting young people to form teams, undertake research, work to deadlines and pitch what they’ve produced. For the clients it is an innovative and effective way of engaging with young people. @thisisthematter is a collaboration between @wearesnook, a social innovative service design agency and @youngscot, the national youth information and citizenship charity for Scotland. The Matter Movie from The Matter on Vimeo. How did @thisisthematter come about? @thisisthematter started off being pitched to the Working Well Design Challenge which is asking the question “can you solve the issues around youth unemployment”. I really wanted to do something around that, as around all the projects that we do at @wearesnook, we get a lot of insights about young people through interviewing them for other clients. I get really disappointed that young people don’t really have a lot to do even though there are things to do. But those things are just not catering to what they need or would like to do. My family grew up in and around Craigroyston and Muirhouse, a neighbourhood in Edinburgh, which has it’s challenges, to be honest. We did a project there and I met a person who inspired me to do this, who just spent all the day at home doing nothing and then drinking in the park in the evening. I thought, “what if there was an activity that inspired people to do something different and get off their backsides”. @thisisthematter could be a filler for that. It really made me think about creating this new kind of programme. NEETS is all about education, employment and training. We should have an E for entrepreneur! There’s no trajectory for those young people to do that. When you look at skills programmes, they’re to get people to do crap jobs. I want to think about how you can take entrepreneurship and add that into the term NEETS. Then, the third thing came from a talk I had online on careers. Someone asked a question about entrepreneurship and the first thing they said was “how do we get young people into being more entrepreneurial?” The answer someone gave was “start with identifying the gap in the market.” You’re like, “come on, gap is like a shop to them”. It was silly advice, all about Alan Sugars. We need to demystify what the term entrepreneurship means. So we came up with a back of a napkin idea. It was getting young people to research and design a newspaper. It was really successful in its first pilot, so we said we’d run two pilots. When we ran the first one, we did it with Edinburgh Council, there were 600 people. The client posed the question about how young people’s voices could be heard in community planning and partnership. So what we do is recruit people from a local youth centre. We meet them around four to five times over the programme. We provide them with content about what we’re going to be doing, it’s almost like a micro enterprise, i.e. “what’s the aim, what’s the mission statement, what are the roles in the team”. We give them a challenge and help them build up their communications and enterprise skills online. We give them research techniques “what do we mean by vox-popping in the community, what do we mean by doing a stakeholder map to identify who you need to speak to in the community”. Over the eight weeks, we meet them to supervise their research and then teach them how to be do copywriting, editing and design the newspaper. Across the whole process, everything’s shared online and there is a launch event. The first one we had at the council and there was about 30 people which was a quite a good turnout given it was the first meeting. It went really well. The group of young people we had presented magically. They organised everything before we got there. They were asked for interviews by a couple of local newspapers. The local councillor came and took one of their ideas through the community grant process. We’ve done a second pilot, which we’re finishing now, which has been more difficult, but we’ve produced thicker content for the newspaper. The elevator pitch of what we’re trying to do is shape youth consultation online by getting young people to research, design and publish a newspaper which answers the question set by client. The whole point, without labouring too much on this, is that we do teach employability skills as we go that increases people’s confidence and develops their customer service skills, the things that are in every single policy paper. Through evaluating that on our pilot, it’s showing an increase in those skills. For me, the most important thing above all of that is that after the Edinburgh pilot, we asked the young people what they got from it and they talked about confidence. The said “we believe we can make anything happen”. That for me, was a real winner because we’ve got a group from an area which is very deprived. Probably the last two generations haven’t been in work and you’ve got young people going “everything’s achievable”. They’re tweeting people in Dundee about their newspaper and selling it. It’s great to have people stepping out of their geographic and mental boundaries. Read the next parts of the interview at Making a Living
Entreprendre : la solution pour l’emploi des jeunes ?
Traduit par Jessica TSALA Dans le cadre de la journée internationale de la femme #womensday, nous voulons mettre en lumière, l’impact qu’ont les jeunes femmes qui aident leur génération à s’en sortir dans la vie. C’est pourquoi nous sommes très heureux de partager avec vous notre interview de Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin co-fondatrice de @wearesnook et directrice de@thisisthematter. @thisisthematter est un journal entièrement dirigé, produit et publié par des jeunes. Chaque numéro est leur réponse publique à une question posée par le gouvernement ou une entreprise. @thisisthematter aide les jeunes à prendre conscience qu’ils peuvent réussir, tout en leur faisant gagner l’assurance dont ils ont besoin, pour défendre ce qu’ils croient. Le programme forme aux compétences recherchées par les employeurs, en encourageant le travail en équipe, les travaux de recherche, le respect des délais et la capacité de défendre son travail. Pour les clients, c’est un moyen innovant et efficace d’entrer en contact avec la jeune génération. @thisisthematter est le fruit d’une collaboration entre @wearesnook, une agence de création spécialisée dans le service social innovant et @youngscot, une association caritative écossaise qui défend la citoyenneté et l’information de la jeunesse. The Matter Movie from The Matter on Vimeo. Comment est né @thisisthematter ? @thisisthematter a été lancé lors de sa présentation au Working Well Design Challenge, qui pose la question suivante : « pouvez-vous résoudre les problèmes liés au chômage des jeunes ? ». Je voulais vraiment faire quelque chose pour améliorer cette situation, car au cours de tous les projets sur lesquels nous travaillons à @wearesnook, nous en apprenons beaucoup sur ces jeunes, lors d’interviews que nous réalisons pour d’autres clients. Je constate avec déception, que les jeunes n’ont pas beaucoup de choses à faire, bien qu’il en existe. Mais ces choses ne correspondent tout simplement pas à leurs besoins ou aspirations. Ma famille a grandi dans les environs de Craigroyston et Muirhouse, dans un quartier d’Édimbourg, qui pour être honnête, n’est pas sans histoires. Nous y avons réalisé un projet et c’est là que j’ai rencontré la personne qui m’a inspiré. Elle passait ses journées chez elle à ne rien faire, puis le soir, elle se rendait au parc pour boire. J’ai alors pensé, « que se passerait-il, s’il existait une activité qui puisse inspirer les gens, afin qu’ils aient envie de faire quelque chose de différent et d’être actifs». @thisisthematter pourrait en être l’initiateur. Cela m’a vraiment amené à imaginer la création de ce nouveau concept de programme. L’acronyme NEETS (terme britannique qui qualifie la jeunesse sans diplômes, sans emploi et sans formation, NDLT) ne prend en compte que l’éducation, l’emploi et la formation. Un E devrait y être ajouté pour entrepreneur ! Aucune voie n’offre à la nouvelle génération cette possibilité. Si l’on regarde du côté des programmes de qualification, on se rend compte qu’ils destinent à des emplois précaires. Je veux trouver un moyen de prendre l’entreprenariat et de l’inclure dans le terme NEETS. Ensuite, le troisième élément a émergé d’une conversation en ligne sur les carrières professionnelles. Quelqu’un a posé une question portant sur l’entreprenariat et la première chose qui a été dite, c’est « comment faire pour que les jeunes deviennent plus entreprenants ? ». Une personne a répondu « en commençant par identifier le fossé qui existe sur le marché.” On a bien envie de lui répondre, “encore faut-il qu’ils en aient les moyens”. C’était un conseil stupide, du Alan Sugars tout craché. La définition du terme entreprenariat a besoin d’être démystifiée. C’est à partir de ce constat que nous est apparue une idée. Celle de permettre aux jeunes de penser et de créer un journal. Le premier numéro pilote a rencontré beaucoup de succès, donc nous avons décidé d’en lancer un deuxième. Le conseil municipal d’Édimbourg a participé au premier lancement, il y avait 600 personnes. La question du client portée sur comment la voix des jeunes pouvait être entendue sur les questions de partenariat et d’aménagement de la communauté. Ce que nous faisons, c’est recruter des personnes issues de centres de proximité pour la jeunesse. Nous les rencontrons quatre à cinq fois au cours du programme. Nous leur fournissons le contenu en lien avec ce que nous allons faire, c’est presque comme une micro-entreprise, c’est-à-dire que nous leur indiquons “le but, la mission et la distribution des rôles dans l’équipe”. Nous leur lançons un défi et nous les aidons en ligne, à développer leur compétences entrepreneuriales et en communication. Nous leur apportons des techniques de recherche en leur expliquant ce que nous entendons par vox-popping dans la communauté, ou par dresser un organigramme servant à identifier la personne à qui s’adresser dans la communauté ». Durant les huit semaines, nous les rencontrons pour superviser leurs recherches, puis nous leur donnons des cours sur comment rédiger, éditer et concevoir un journal. Tout au long de la procédure, tout est partagé en ligne et un événement est organisé pour le lancement. Le premier s’est tenu à la mairie et près de 30 personnes étaient présentes, ce qui n’est pas si mal pour une première. Tout s’est vraiment bien passé. Le groupe de jeune que nous suivions, a fait une présentation magnifique. Ils avaient tout organisé avant notre arrivée. Ils ont reçu des demandes d’interviews de deux journaux locaux. Le conseiller municipal local est venu et a permis à l’une de leurs idées d’intégrer le processus de sélection pour une bourse de la communauté. Nous avons réalisé un second pilote, que nous sommes actuellement en train de terminer. Il a été plus complexe, mais en contrepartie, nous avons obtenu plus de matière pour alimenter le contenu du journal. L’objectif de ce projet et d’essayer de façonner le conseil en ligne destiné aux jeunes en les amenant à penser, concevoir et publier un journal qui réponde aux questions posées par le client. L’intérêt dans tout cela, sans trop rentrer dans les détails, réside dans le fait que nous transmettons tout au long du programme des compétences, en termes d’employabilité, qui vont permettre aux individus de gagner en assurance et développer leur relation-client, en d’autres termes, les compétences qui sont demandées partout. L’évaluation de notre numéro pilote, montre une augmentation de ce type de compétences. À mes…
What do new Europeans really want?
I was invited to speak at the New Europeans debate about what do new Europeans really want from the European elections in 2014. Also speaking were: Hope Not Hate European Citizens Abroad New Europeans National Union of Students Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex. This is what I shared: European Alternatives brings people together from different cultures & disciplines to help people imagine, enact and demand new ways of connecting across borders. In short, democracy & culture beyond the nation state. Because we believe you can only connect people across borders if you bring together different ways of thinking and doing. We don’t talk about international or supranational but transnational collaboration, because we believe that a purely top-down or bottom-up approach doesn’t work, it’s like having one of your eyes constantly blindfolded. We prefer a transversal approach. Power is Everywhere from Noel Hatch Before exploring what new Europeans really want from the European elections in 2014, let’s go back to first principles and ask what motivates people to vote in the first place. People will will vote when they believe the elections will make a difference on the issues they want their vote to affect. The problem is that firstly, most people currently feel that the political establishment aren’t aware of let alone understand and empathise with the issues they’re facing…and in some cases the ideas they’ve got to tackle them. They feel that politicians are too distant from their everyday lives…that they don’t experience what they go through on a day to day basis. However much MEPs try and connect with their constituents lived experience, the imagery of an MEP representing you in Brussels doesn’t dispel this perception! Secondly, people feel in some cases that even if politicians did understand the issues they faced, they don’t have the power anymore to tackle them, particularly in the face of globalisation. There is a feeling by some that Europe – whatever we mean by that – is best placed to tackle issues which are impacted by globalisation, but that it’s not doing so. People often feel that MEPs are in thrall to lobbies. Vested interests certainly do put pressure on the institutions, some even going to say there is a “hold up” of the EU. But this (unfortunately) is no different to the circling of the corridors of power by lobbies in our own national parliaments. On a more optimistic note, as the French philosopher Michel Foucault once said “Power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere”. What he meant by that, is that power doesn’t exist within individuals or even institutions – whether they be lobbies or MEPs – they exist in the relations between people. When people go to the polling station to vote, they go on their own to make their vote in the privacy…and isolation of the ballot box. This doesn’t create any sense of connection with other people around them, let alone other Europeans. Of course, I’m not proposing that we open up the privacy of the ballot box. But we need to think of the vote as only the “closing curtains” of the process to build power between people, in a particular at a transnational level. That’s why at European Alternatives we provide the spaces for people across borders to imagine, enact and demand new ways of building this transversal power – imagining it through our Citizens Manifesto which has been built together from discussions across over 30 cities and over 1000 people enacting it through our Transeuropa Festivals where creativity and activism come together to help people take part in collective experiences of tackling issues that cross borders demanding it through our European Initiative for Media Pluralism, which uses a new tool for building power transnationally to reclaim pluralism and freedom from the vested interests Get involved!
Que veulent vraiment les nouveaux européens ?
J’ai été invité à participer au débat de l’association New Europeans pour discuter de ce qu’attendent vraiment les nouveaux européens des élections européennes de 2014. Ont aussi participé : · L’organisation Hope Not Hate · L’organisation European Citizens Abroad · L’association New Europeans · Le syndicat britannique étudiant National Union of Students · L’institut européen du Sussex,Université du Sussex. Voici ce que j’y ai dit : Alternatives Européenne rassemble des personnes issues de cultures et de domaines de spécialité différents, dans le but d’aider les individus à imaginer, divulguer et réclamer de nouvelles façons de créer des liens malgré les frontières. En résumé, la démocratie et la culture au-delà de l’état nation. Parce que nous croyons, que le seul moyen de franchir les frontières pour connecter les gens est celui d’apporter de nouvelles manières de penser et de faire. Cette collaboration n’est ni internationale, ni supranationale, mais transnationale. Nous croyons qu’une approche purement de haut en bas ou de bas en haut ne fonctionne pas, c’est comme si l’on ne s’intéressait qu’à une partie du problème. Nous préférons une approche transversale. Power is Everywhere from Noel Hatch Avant de se pencher sur ce que les nouveaux européens attendent vraiment des élections européennes de 2014, demandons-nous dans un premier temps, ce qui pousse les individus à voter. Les gens votent lorsqu’ils ont la conviction que leur voix aura une influence sur les thèmes qui les préoccupent. Le problème réside d’abord, dans le fait que la plupart des citoyens ont l’impression que la classe politique, sans parler de compréhension ou d’empathie, n’a simplement pas connaissance des problèmes qu’ils rencontrent…et dans certains cas de leurs idées pour les résoudre. Pour eux, les politiciens sont trop éloignés de leur quotidien… ils ne sont pas confrontés aux mêmes réalités. Cependant, de nombreux députés essayent d’établir un lien avec leurs électeurs et de comprendre leurs expériences de vie. L’image d’un député nous représentant à Bruxelles, n’entrave en rien cette idée ! De plus, les citoyens ont l’impression dans certains cas, que même si les politiciens comprennent les problèmes auxquels ils sont confrontés, ils n’ont plus le pouvoir de les éradiquer, en particulier face à la mondialisation. Certains pensent que l Europe – quelque soit notre vision de celle-ci – est la mieux placée pour s’attaquer aux problèmes issus de la mondialistation, ce qui n’est pas le cas actuellement. Les citoyens britanniques ont souvent le sentiment que les députés sont au service des lobbies. Les institutions subissent certainement les pressions de ces derniers, certains iront même jusqu’à dire que l’UE est « prise en otage ». Ce qui ressemble (malheureusement) à la façon dont les lobbies influencent le pouvoir dans nos propres parlements nationaux. Sur une note plus optimiste, le philosophe français Michel Foucault a dit un jour : « le pouvoir est partout; ce n’est pas qu’il englobe tout, c’est qu’il vient de partout ». Ce qu’il veut dire par-là, c’est que le pouvoir n’existe pas entre les individus, ni même au sein des institutions – bien qu’il y ait des lobbies ou des députés – mais dans les relations entre les individus. Lorsque les citoyens se rendent voter, ils s’y rendent seuls et de manière anonyme…en passant par l’isoloir. Cela ne créé aucun sentiment de lien avec les autres personnes présentent, sans parler des autres Européens. Bien évidemment, je ne suis pas en train de suggérer que l’on remette en cause l’anonymat du bulletin de vote. Nous devons pourtant considérer le vote comme le “rideau de fin” du processus de construction d’un pouvoir entre les citoyens, notamment à l’échelle transnationale. C’est pourquoi chez Alternatives Européennes nous fournissons un espace dans lequel les individus pourront, au-delà des frontières, imaginer, divulguer et réclamer de nouvelles manières de construire ce pouvoir transversal : · En l’imaginant, à l’aide de notre Manifeste Citoyen, rédigé à partir de discussions qui se sont tenues dans plus de 30 villes et entre plus de 1000 personnes. · En le divulgant, par l’intermédiaire des Transeuropa Festivals au cours desquels la créativité et l’activisme se retrouvent main dans la main pour aider les citoyens à s’engager dans des expériences collectives pour surmonter ces problèmes qui traversent les frontières. · En le réclamant, au travers de notre initiative européenne pour le pluralisme des médias, qui utilise de nouveaux outils pour la construction d’un pouvoir transnational, dans le but de réclamer le pluralisme et la liberté vis-à-vis des intérêts « lobbyistiques ». Engagez-vous !
Building the freelancers’ movement across Europe
In our research on how young people cope with making a living, we created an imaginary character called the Lifestyle Hacker, which represented people who had gone through a period of unemployment, and had realised that the only viable option left was to create their own lifestyle, or in more positive terms turn their hobby into a job, like Consuela. Through these they make use of their skills to develop new projects and…make a living. They see their own assets as the best form of support, like Edita. Although many of these are unemployed or underworked, they make use of their networks to share assets and skills, like Edwin, often not bothering with formal support, because services such as the state find it difficult to recognise and value the work conditions of freelancers. This lack of understanding creates risks that their work is not recognised or even co-opted by others. In some cases, such as for freelancers working through digital marketplaces, they are both invisible and exploited. It’s important to fight for better conditions for independent and freelance workers. That’s why the campaign to build the European Freelancers’ Movement is so critical. I’ve donated, have you?
How would you spend your time?
We went out on the streets of London to interview people about how they spend their time when they’re out of work – when they can’t find a job or when they’ve been made redundant. Some captivating stories!
Campus di European Alternatives
Il Campus di European Alternatives ha riunito centinaia di attivisti provenienti da tutta Europa in un ambiente campus di tre giorni per la riflessione, l’apprendimento e la strategia, unendo idee, pratiche e proposte per costruire su lotte comuni per la democrazia e l’uguaglianza in Europa e oltre.
Citizens Pact & Transeuropa Caravans 2014
The Citizens Pact è uno sforzo dal basso verso l’alto per colmare il famigerato deficit democratico in Europa. Questo processo ha dato ai cittadini la possibilità di agire, di partecipare allo sviluppo di una sfera politica europea e di garantire che le elezioni del Parlamento europeo del 2014 siano veramente transeuropee, piuttosto che una somma di logiche nazionali.
Media Pluralism Campaign
Nel 2014 gestiamo un’Iniziativa dei cittadini europei (ICE) sulla libertà dei media, che raccoglie 200.000 firme in tutta l’UE per chiedere una migliore politica europea a tutela della libertà d’informazione.
Transnational Dialogues
Transnational Dialogues è una piattaforma cross-mediatica aperta e continuativa che gestisce e immagina progetti artistici e culturali con un focus sulle nuove geografie della globalizzazione e sull’emergere di un mondo artistico e intellettuale multipolare.
Ukraine: A struggle for the rights of all Europeans
European Alternatives condemns absolutely the violence being inflicted on protestors in Ukraine by the state authorities, which has led to at least two confirmed dead. Many Ukrainians have braved freezing temperatures to protest against a corrupt government that has shown repeatedly it has not got the best interests of its people at heart. The protests in Ukraine are about more than a will to join the European Union or to side with Russia in geopolitical terms. They are about universal values that Europe claims to represent and advocate: democracy, liberty of speech, the right to live in peace, anti-corruption. This is about Europe in its most noble sense of a cultural commitment to these values and not in the sense of a bordered territory. Unfortunately the actions of the European Union institutions which must defend and advance these values has been weak in its response to the violence, and is further undermined by tolerating situations of media repression, anti-democratic tendencies and abuse of fundamental rights inside the very borders of the EU. The European Union must show it is standing strongly with the protesters, calling explicitely for international sanctions against the assets of the nomenklatura. Ukrainians are reminding us what Europe stands for: we stand with them and all those engaged in similar struggles inside and outside the European Union.
Ukraine : Une lutte pour les droits de tous les Européens
Traduit par Karine R. Alternatives Européennes condamne totalement les violences infligées aux manifestants en Ukraine par les autorités, qui ont entraîné la mort d’au moins deux personnes. Un grand nombre d’Ukrainiens ont affronté des températures glaciales pour protester contre un gouvernement corrompu qui a montré à maintes reprises qu’au fond il ne servait pas au mieux les intérêts de son peuple. Ces protestations en Ukraine sont plus qu’un désir d’entrer dans l’Union Européenne ou que d’être du côté de la Russie en termes géopolitiques. Elles concernent les valeurs universelles que l’Europe prétend représenter et prôner : la démocratie, la liberté d’expression, le droit de vivre en paix, la lutte contre la corruption – Il s’agit de l’Europe au sens le plus noble de son engagement culturel à de telles valeurs et non dans le sens d’un territoire voisin. Malheureusement, les actions des institutions de l’Union Européenne qui doivent défendre et promouvoir ces valeurs ont été insuffisantes face à ces violences, et sont de plus, affaiblies du fait de tolérer des situations de répression des médias, des tendances anti-démocratiques et du malmenage des droits fondamentaux à l’intérieur même des frontières de l’UE. L’Union européenne doit montrer qu’elle se tient fermement aux côtés des contestataires, en faisant appel de manière explicite à des sanctions internationales contre les privilèges de la nomenklatura. Les Ukrainiens nous rappellent ce que l’Europe signifie : nous sommes à leurs côtés ainsi qu’avec tous ceux qui sont engagés dans des luttes similaires à l’intérieur et au-delà de l’Union Européenne.
To camp or not to camp
I’ve organised different types of events which bring people together to uncover issues, develop ideas and prototype solutions. With such exotic titles as Visual Camp, Creative Campaigns Days, Make Your Festival, Outcome Fest, Transeuropa Festival and Transformed by You. I’ve taken part in many more! They were all designed to achieve different purposes and were all bound by usual constraints of space, time & money. They’ve incubated new ways of involving people and helped rethink how we interact with issues and solutions altogether. I don’t want to use up this post to describe all the examples of where this events have produced social impact, but a project we’re just about to kick offwas born out of an innovation workshop we had at our festival. There is never a perfect way of helping people come together to make sense of the issues and develop solutions to them that they can take forward. Different event formats work better in different circumstances and what I’ve tried to do is either really focus on one of those outcomes – i.e. making sense of the issues (Visual Camp) – or hacking different event formats into one (i.e. Creative Campaigns Days). In thinking about an event I’m helping co-design, I thought I’d share my “thinking out load” on each of the event formats. It would be great to hear what other people’s experiences are! Unconferences Unconferences – of which the best I know are @ukgovcamp and @localgovcamp – are great at surfacing challenges and ideas that people in the room want to work on together, but they favour people who are confident enough to be in the spotlight to put forward their idea to people they don’t know. The following Storifys by @dosticen put thespotlight on this issue and how to tackle it head on. Because of the time taken for people to get under the skin of the challenge and the intensity of thinking on the spot, the ideas developed often ignore existing evidence / initiatives on the issue/s they are trying to tackle. It is also difficult to produce outputs that people not at the unconference can relate to and get involved in after the event. Visual Camp tackled this through the use of visualisizing, but it’s still difficult to pick up where someone else left off. They also create the space for people to build teams, as except the person putting forward the idea, everyone is coming with equal status, while people can move to other teams if they feel they aren’t helping or getting value from the group they are in and can contribute more to another group. What you can take from unconferences into hybrid formats: Methods that enable people to respect and value each other’s insights and experiences enough that they can all shape the understanding of the challenge, which can then be translated into a brief that sets out the issues / problems to be tackled and the assets that can be mobilised to develop the solution. Methods that play to different learning / communication styles in such a way that everyone feels comfortable and confident enough to contribute and influence the process and feel part of the team. Methods that get people to want to take forward shared understanding developed at an unconference and develop them into solutions Innovation camps Innovation camps – of which the best I know are @sensecamp and @g00dfornothing – set challenges in advance, which gives people the time to identify what’s already been tried to tackle the issue and the lessons learnt, avoiding people reinventing the wheel. There is a risk that by the innovation camp team describing the challenge, they don’t give the space for participants to contribute to what the challenge / issue actually is and therefore may feel less ownership over it. Innovation camps are very good at helping people develop solutions to challenges – with varying levels of support provided to do this – whether through the methods used (design process with service jams) and prompts / inspirations (walking tours, masterclasses, mentoring), as well as the incentives of prizes / further support. They will also set criteria to ensure that people develop solutions that produce specific outcomes (might be criteria specific to the challenge or criteria specific to the sustainability of the solution developed). What they have in common with unconferences, is that the innovation camp is the end of the process and they sometimes lack the incentive and support to help people want to and be able to take forward the outcomes of the event. However, Made in Lambeth has created regular meetups to tackle this. What you can take from innovation camps into hybrid formats: Methods that enable people to help shape challenge in advance – both online & face to face Methods that enable people to describe what support they’d like on the day and after the event Methods that enable teams to select what support they want on the day, but also to be challenged to think differently Methods where stakeholders set criteria for how solutions to challenges should be assessed Pow Wows / Visual Camp Due to the recognised importance of needing to bring people together to make sense of the challenge and build a shared understanding of the issue to be tackled, which can be taken forward to be developed into solutions to these, programmes have been developed that link the two. Pow Wows created by @geovation start with a challenge and then invite key stakeholders to bring their insights and experiences to flesh out the challenge into a brief that can be given to people to come up with ideas and develop solutions. These events will attract people that are more interested in getting to the bottom of the problem before developing ideas or even services. Many of these events focus very much on people analysing the issues, but less so on enable people to relate to the issues in an emotional way. But there are events which dofocus on empathy. What you can take from innovation camps into hybrid formats: Methods that bring together people to shape the challenge brief – through face to face and online interaction – as…
Camper ou ne pas camper
Traduit par Karine Ricou J’ai organisé différents types d’événements rassemblant les gens pour découvrir des problèmes, développer des idées et des prototypes de solutions. Avec des titres si exotiques comme Camp Visuel, Jours de Campagnes Créatifs, Fais Ton Festival, Festival de Résultat, Festival Transeuropa etTransformé par Toi. J’ai participé à beaucoup plus! Ils étaient tous destinés à réaliser différents buts et ils étaient tous liés par les contraintes habituelles d’espace, de temps et d’argent. Ils ont préparé de nouveaux moyens d’impliquer les gens et ils ont aidé à repenser la façon dont nous communiquons, à la fois sur les problèmes et sur les solutions. Je ne veux pas me servir de ce message pour décrire tous les exemples où ces événements ont produit un impact social, mais un projet que nous sommes sur le point de lancer est né d’un atelier d’innovations que nous avions à notre festival. Il n’y a jamais de façon parfaite d’aider les gens à se rassembler pour comprendre les problèmes et réfléchir aux solutions qu’ils peuvent mettre en œuvre. Différents formats d’événement fonctionnent mieux dans différentes circonstances et ce que j’ai essayé de faire n’est ni de vraiment me concentrer sur un de ces résultats – c’est-à-dire la compréhension des problèmes (Camp Visuel) – ni de réduire différents formats d’événement en un seul (les Jours de Campagnes Créatifs). En pensant à un événement j’aide à la co-création, j’ai pensé que je partagerais ma “charge de réflexion” à chacun de ces formats d’événement. Il serait génial d’entendre les expériences des autres personnes ! Non-conférences Les non conférences – dont les meilleures que je connaisse sont @ukgovcamp et@localgovcamp – sont formidables pour faire émerger des défis et des idées sur lesquels les gens présents dans la salle veulent travailler ensemble, cependant ils incitent les gens suffisamment confiants pour être sous le feu des projecteurs à proposer leur idée aux gens qu’ils ne connaissent pas. Le Storifys suivant de @dosticen met ce problème en avant ainsi que la façon d’y faire face. À cause du temps pris pour que les gens arrivent au cœur du défi et de l’intensité de la réflexion sur place, les idées développées ignorent souvent les signes existants – des initiatives sur le(s) problème(s) au(x)quel(s) ils essayent de s’attaquer. Il est également difficile de produire des résultats dont les gens qui ne sont pas à la non conférence puissent se sentir concernés et dans lesquels ils puissent s’impliquer après l’événement. Le Camp Visuel a abordé ceci à l’aide de la visualisation, mais il est toujours difficile de reprendre là où quelqu’un d’autre s’est arrêté. Ils créent aussi l’espace pour que les gens forment des équipes, puisque mise à part la personne avançant l’idée, tout le monde vient avec le même statut, tandis que les gens peuvent changer d’équipe s’ils estiment qu’ils n’aident pas leur groupe ou qu’ils n’y sont pas valorisés et qu’ils peuvent apporter d’avantage à un autre groupe. Ce que vous pouvez retirer des non-conférences dans des formats hybrides : Des méthodes qui permettent aux gens de respecter et d’estimer suffisamment les aperçus et les expériences de chacun qu’elles peuvent toutes promouvoir la compréhension du défi, ce qui peut alors être traduit dans un dossier qui expose les questions – les problèmes à aborder et les atouts à mobiliser pour élaborer la solution. Des méthodes qui se servent de différents modes d’apprentissage – de styles de communication tels que tout le monde se sentent à l’aise et assez confiants pour contribuer au processus et l’influencer ainsi que de se sentir intégré dans l’équipe. Des méthodes qui amènent les gens à vouloir faire avancer la compréhension commune présentée à une non-conférence et à les développer en solutions. Camps d’innovation Les camps d’innovation – dont les meilleurs que je connaisse sont @sensecamp et@g00dfornothing – fixent les défis à l’avance, ce qui donne aux gens le temps d’identifier ce qui a déjà été tenté pour affronter le problème et quelles en sont les leçons apprises, évitant ainsi aux gens de réinventer la roue. Il y a un risque qu’en décrivant le défi, l’équipe du camp d’innovation ne donne pas l’espace aux participants pour contribuer à ce que le défi – le problème est en réalité et donc qu’ils se sentent moins impliqués. Les camps d’innovation sont très bons pour aider les gens à élaborer des solutions aux défis – à l’aide de différents niveaux de soutien apportés dans ce but – que ce soit par les méthodes utilisées (le processus de conception avec les embouteillages de service) et les indications – les inspirations ( excursions à pied, ateliers de maitrise, mentorat), ou bien par la motivations des prix – un soutien supplémentaire. Ils établiront aussi des critères pour s’assurer que les gens développent des solutions qui produisent des résultats spécifiques (cela peut être des critères spécifiques au défi ou des critères spécifiques à la durabilité de la solution développée). Ce qu’ils ont en commun avec les non-conférences, est que le camp d’innovation est la fin du processus et qu’ils manquent parfois de motivation et de soutien pour aider les gens qui veulent et peuvent faire avancer les résultats de l’événement. Cependant, « Made in Lambeth » a créé des rassemblements réguliers pour y faire face. Ce que vous pouvez retirer des camps d’innovation dans des formats hybrides : Des méthodes qui permettent aux gens de les aider à concevoir le défi à l’avance – tant en ligne que face à face. Des méthodes qui permettent aux gens de décrire le type de soutien qu’ils souhaiteraient ce jour et après l’évènement. Des méthodes qui permettent aux équipes de choisir quel soutien ils veulent ce jour, mais aussi d’être mis au défi de penser différemment. Des méthodes où les parties prenantes établissent des critères sur la façon dont devraient être évaluées les solutions aux défis. Pow Wows / Camp Visuel En raison de l’importance reconnue du besoin de rassembler les gens pour saisir la signification du défi et construire une réflexion commune sur la question à aborder, qui peut être mise en avant pour être développée au travers de ses solutions, des programmes reliant les deux ont été développés. Pow Wows créés par…
From 99 balloons to colour coding the square
Through the Transeuropa Caravans, we will be uncovering issues that are unheard in the public sphere, groups that are being excluded from the political debate and techniques that can stimulate people to engage in issues that cross borders. Through connecting these initiatives through online and offline methods, we will open up a transnational perspective for them to take action and connect with other initiatives. As part of this, we will organise parties, which will take place to kick off the caravan tours and welcome them home. We will be inviting people from the initiatives the caravans will have visited to our parties.As ever with creative activities, you need a catchy name that creates a hook for people to come so in our recent co-creation workshop, we came up with the following catch phrases: New “babies” to the Transeuropa family: Transeuropa Camp, Transeuropa Fests & Transeuropa Parties Incubating the issues: Engage lab, Democracy labs & Democracy hubs Playing on words: YOUropa Talks, YOURopa Matters, ME(P)/WE and Manifestival Camping and shaking up change: Change Parties, Change Camp, Camp for Change, Empowerment camp and Shaking Europe We then looked at ideas for public intervention formats and artistic events to accompany the Election parties.99 Balloons: A new form of voting system How about setting up balloons filled with helium with 12 different colours of theManifesto themes? You could attach them to long string that can be adjusted in its length according to which theme a spectator feels strongly about and hence wants to have that balloon higher up (by one turn of a wheel or similar). Another idea could be to have balloons attached to a person (12 persons in total) balloons attached to their wrists, they act as “experts” on each them they have the coloured balloon for and can answer questions about the policy proposals. At the end, you could release them simultaneously. The downside to anything involving putting balloons into the air is that you’re creating plastic garbage. I wish we could: The European chain letter How about creating a teaser to welcome the caravans in each town by sharing a simple question on a handwritten piece of paper that citizens answer and then spread themselves by hand copying question and asking another stranger of answering it and spreading it him/herself and so on. On the sheet of paper the name of the website, would appear to link people to the website and /or incite them to post a picture of their message to the website via twitter or facebook? Questions could be: What do you like about your country and what to share with the rest of Europe? What is the struggle in your local community that you want to share with the rest of Europe? Share a photo of the best thing of your country you want to share with rest of Europe Share a photo of the best example of someone in your community / a symbol, etc. Hello Europe: I wish I could… Hello Europe: I care about… Hello Europe: you make me feel so …. Hello Europe: I wish you would… The aim would be to link offline to online participation and take part in the longest European chain letter. The website would give an example and have a dedicated space to explain the idea and process and when to start spreading it. There would also be a template on website for everyone to print out and start spreading the chain letter wherever they are. People would then upload a picture of their message to twitter and hashtag it. Colouring in the manifesto You could colour code local squares according to which theme you care most about of the manifesto. People would write down their name/contacts on the coloured piece of the square. Colours would be watercolours that wash off or you could roll out a huge canvas on floor if permission is not achieved. Hashtag the wall You could have a live twitter wall with projector on wall or and display issues & initiatives on the wall, or have a painting of square idea transferred to a projector on huge wall/ building. Alternatively, you could have a screen on the camper or use caravan as a screen, get local initiatives to provide material / infrastructure. Or you could project an SMS to a wall. SMSlingshot Worldtour from THE CONSTITUTE on Vimeo. SMSlingshot Worldtour from THE CONSTITUTE on Vimeo. The Holi Festival (of democracy) Playing on idea of the Holi Festival of colours in India and use colours for a mini festival event in local town. Throwing the colours of manifesto onto something, the caravans or even the members of the caravan? Get involved!
Taking ownership of leadership
As part of international #womensday we want to celebrate the impact young women have on helping other young people cope with making a living. That’s why we’re really chuffed to share with you the second part of our interview with Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin Co-Founder of @wearesnook and Director of @thisisthematter. You were talking about the different research techniques – many of which you use in your work with @wearesnook and I can see the benefits in how they can help young people find a voice. What I find particularly interesting is that it’s actually young people using these research techniques themselves to identify stories of other young people and techniques about how you produce a newspaper. Was it a surprise to experiment with those techniques? How did the young people build their confidence in taking ownership of producing a newspaper? How did that evolve? It’s tough! The first group were a little bit more difficult. In Scotland, we have a five stage framework of how close you are of going back into the job market. The group we were working with were 3.5 stages away. They were quite switched on. Some were already involved in other youth initiatives, so you had a couple of people who took the lead in how the group went forward. The second group didn’t really have any of that. They have no qualifications, have left school with pretty much nothing on the horizon. They took to the newspaper production quite easily. When you break it down, it’s about talking to other young people. They had their own focus groups in schools. They talked to professionals. What I always find with @thisisthematter is that even if you fully explain what’s happening across the programme, it’s quite emergent. What happened to the first group is that they would love to do it again because they know how to do it really well. One of the girls said “oh my god, we’ve created a newspaper!” In terms of research techniques, what we’re starting to see is we can have mixed groups of people of different abilities. In the groups that we form, that might be really useful. We’re looking at how we involve people online like developing a Matter journalism app. So if we have a question, we can open it up to a core group of young people and they can get content from other people in the area they are in. It’s not easy, it’s hard work. We’ve recognised that it’s not just designers that should be doing it. We should be working with youth workers and local councils, as there’s a lot of behavioural stuff that needs to be dealt with. Even after two pilots, we’re still figuring this out. It’s really interesting when you were comparing the two pilots in terms of the types of people that were involved. I imagine you need a certain level of confidence and empathy to do it. From our research, we found how important the network is to help people cope. It’s interesting how here, you have a group of emergent leaders who found it naturally easier to uncover stories and create a newspaper. Did they naturally have that leadership role in their social network or was it something that emerged through the pilot? One of them was a natural leader in the first pilot. A couple of the girls grew more confident to step up to her. She took over quite a bit. We were quite worried in the first session about whether anyone would get a say. One girl really stepped up even though when we first met her, she just looked at the floor. With the second group, we think we’ve got too big a group of girls. There are some who are really on it. What we find is they tend to develop a group dynamic. When you give people the opportunity, they will step up and take ownership. For the final launch event, Joanna, Darra and myself had designed tools to help them see what they they could say…and they’d done it all themselves already. That was a surprise about how much leadership they did take to get things organised. For me, it’s like walking into something that people are passionate about and you give them a guide and they run with it. It’s hard enough for people to look after themselves, but people have different capabilities in helping people with finding their way through life. I wonder how useful it would be to raise awareness to young people to celebrate their skills but also remind them of the responsibility they might have if they’re going into a particular role, like representing a particular neighbourhood or making sure they get different stories in. Do you think that those young people have a sense of that? I think this applies not just to young people but to the whole of society. Across all of the work we do, young people don’t have a sense of what’s possible. There needs to be a shift in the role of schools and councils to allow them to thrive. We did work in Muirhouse, we’re looking at the whole community to help them to take ownership – like setting up a mothers’ meeting group or a football club. Everyone just looks back at the council and say’s that’s their job. There needs to be a lot of work done. Then, asking what skills you’re good at, even people who’ve gone to university can’t talk about what their soft skills are. We’re missing the inspiration that you can make anything happen. When you come up against bureaucracy to do things differently. We want to tell them “you need to get your community to be a start-up community, look at what assets there are in your community, see who wants to give stuff”. When you talk to people, they say they want to use this empty building, but they can’t. So we need to try to break down the barriers to these issues.
Prendre les choses en main : un pari pour la jeunesse
Traduit par Jessica Tsala Dans le cadre de la journée internationale de la femme #womensday, nous voulons mettre en lumière, l’impact qu’ont les jeunes femmes qui aident leur génération à s’en sortir dans la vie. C’est pourquoi nous sommes très heureux de partager avec vous notre interview de Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin co-fondatrice de @wearesnook et directrice de @thisisthematter. Vous nous avez parlé des différentes techniques de recherche – de beaucoup de celles que vous utilisez dans le cadre de @wearesnook et je constate à quel point elles permettent aux jeunes de trouver leur voie. Ce qui me semble particulièrement intéressant, c’est que ce sont les jeunes eux-mêmes qui utilisent ces techniques pour recueillir les histoires de personnes dans leur situation et découvrir les techniques de conception d’un journal. Comment s’est passée la mise en application de ce type de techniques ? Comment ces jeunes ont-ils gagné l’assurance nécessaire pour prendre en main la production d’un journal ? Quel a été le cheminement ? C’est compliqué ! Le premier groupe a posé un peu plus de difficultés. En Écosse, cinq étapes définissent le processus de réinsertion sur le marché du travail. Nous travaillions avec un groupe qui se trouvait à 3,5 étapes du but. Ils étaient plutôt motivés. Certains d’entre eux étaient déjà engagés auprès d’initiatives en faveur de la jeunesse. On a ainsi vu deux personnes prendre les commandes concernant l’orientation que devait suivre le groupe. Ce n’était pas vraiment le cas du second groupe. Ils étaient sans diplômes et ils avaient quitté l’école sans trop de perspectives d’avenir. Ils ne se sentaient pas vraiment impliqués dans la création du journal. En d’autres termes, il s’agit simplement de discuter avec d’autres personnes de leur génération. Ils avaient leurs propres groupes de discussion dans des écoles. Ils ont rencontrés des professionnels. Ce que je remarque à chaque fois avec @thisisthematter, c’est que même lorsque nous expliquons en détail ce qui se passe au cours du programme, nous avons encore peu de recul. Le premier groupe adorerait recommencer l’expérience, parce qu’il s’en est très bien sorti. Une des participantes s’est écriée : « je n’en reviens pas, nous avons créé un journal ! » En ce qui concerne les techniques de recherche, nous nous apercevons qu’il est possible de former des groupes mixtes en termes de compétences. Dans un groupe tel que celui que nous avons constitué, cela peut s’avérer très utile. En développant une application Matter journalism, nous voulons réussir à mobiliser les gens en ligne. De cette façon, si vous avez une question, nous pouvons la soumettre à un groupe de jeunes individus, qui se charge d’obtenir une réponse en consultant d’autres personnes, en fonction de leur domaine de spécialité. Ce n’est pas simple, il y a beaucoup de travail à fournir. Nous avons réalisé qu’il ne s’agit pas que d’un boulot de designer. Nous faisons face à beaucoup de questions d’ordre comportemental, c’est pourquoi nous devrions travailler avec des éducateurs sociaux et les municipalités locales. Même après deux numéros pilotes, nous ne nous sommes toujours pas décidés. J’ai trouvé intéressant, le fait que vous ayez comparé les deux pilotes en fonction du profil des participants. J’imagine qu’il faut un certain degré d’assurance et d’empathie pour y parvenir. Nos recherches, nous ont permis de constater l’importance du réseau lorsqu’il s’agit d’aider des personnes à s’en sortir. Il est intéressant de remarquer, que vous êtes ici en présence d’un groupe où des leaders ont émergé et pour lesquels il est naturellement plus facile d’écrire des articles et de concevoir un journal. Avaient-ils naturellement des dispositions à exercer un rôle de leader dans leur réseau social ou les ont-ils développées à l’issue du pilote ? Est-ce quelque chose qui s’est réveillé pendant le pilote ? Au cours du premier pilote, l’une des participantes s’est naturellement imposée comme leader. Deux filles sont parvenues à gagner assez d’assurance pour lui tenir tête. Elle a pas mal résisté. Lors de la première session, nous étions un peu inquiets car nous ne savions pas si quelqu’un allez s’en mêler. Une des filles s’est vraiment imposée, alors que la première fois que nous l’avions rencontrée, elle s’était contentée de fixer le sol. En ce qui concerne le second groupe, je crois que nous avons sélectionné trop de filles. Certains participants se sentent vraiment impliqués. Nous avons pu observer qu’ils essayent de développer une dynamique de groupe. Si vous laissez une chance aux gens, ils pourront s’imposer et prendre les choses en main. Pour l’événement de lancement, Joanna, Darra et moi-même avons conçus des outils dans le but d’aider ces jeunes à s’exprimer…et ils y sont déjà parvenues tout seuls. Nous avons été surpris de constater à quel point ils avaient su prendre les rênes pour que tout soit organisé. Pour moi, c’est comme découvrir les passions qui animent ces personnes et leur donner les clés qui leur permettent de les développer. Il est assez difficile de s’occuper de soi-même, mais nous avons tous des capacités à aider les autres à trouver leur voie dans la vie. Je me demande quel serait l’impact, si nous faisions prendre conscience aux jeunes le fait qu’ils doivent mettre en valeur leurs compétences et si nous leur rappelions aussi le rôle qu’ils pourraient jouer s’ils avaient la responsabilité de représenter un quartier ou celles de s’assurer d’avoir assez d’histoires à publier. Pensez-vous que ces jeunes aient conscience de tout cela ? Je pense que cela ne s’applique pas seulement aux jeunes, mais à l’ensemble de la société. Pendant notre travail, nous rencontrons constamment des individus qui n’ont pas conscience de leurs capacités. Un changement doit être opéré dans le rôle de l’école et de la municipalité pour leur permettre de réussir. Nous avons travaillé à Muirhouse, nous nous sommes occupés de toute la communauté pour les aider à prendre les choses en main – comme organiser un groupe de parole destiné aux mères ou créer un club de football. La plupart des gens se retournent vers la municipalité en se disant que c’est leur boulot. Il y a beaucoup de travail à accomplir. Lorsque vous leur demandez…
Age gap, wage gap
Although earning a living didn’t come up as the most important aspiration that young people had to make a living, everyone needs money to pay the bills. It’s why this infographic by the UNDP is interesting as it shows the wage gap between men and women actually increase as they get older.
Écart d’âge, écart de salaire
Traduction : Aliénor Daumalin Bien que gagner leur vie ne semblent pas être la première chose à laquelle aspirent les jeunes, tout le monde a besoin d’argent pour payer ses factures. Les diagrammes de l’UNDP révèlent justement que l’écart de salaire entre hommes et femmes augmente avec l’âge.
What the Jarrow march can teach us about social innovation
First published in New Start Magazine. During the Great Depression, 200 marchers from a small northern town called Jarrow marched all the way to London in protest against unemployment in their community and for others in a similar situation across the UK. The marchers had no resources, but were offered support by the public on their journey. Wherever the marchers stopped for the night, local people gave them shelter and food. Almost 80 years later, we find ourselves in a similar economic situation. Like the Jarrow marchers, many young people also feel that their voices aren’t being heard and their needs aren’t being met, around 78% according to a recent poll. This isn’t just an issue for politicians, it’s an issue for charities and businesses too, who need to understand how to meet their customers’ needs. To address this issue, social entrepreneurs are using travel to uncover the needs and innovations that go under the radar. 1. Walk a mile in the shoes of the people you serve Social enterprises and charities use various methods to understand how their service users are experiencing the crisis. How about letting service users take the lead and show you how they live, not just through consultations or workshops, but by walking a mile in their shoes? Founded by an informal volunteer network, homeless guides at Unseen Tours take people through their experience of living on the streets, helping people rediscover the nooks and crannies of London through the eyes of those who know it best. Social Safari in Amsterdam combines a method used in developing countries with those used in hack days. People from across the world are given a challenge to go around the local neighbourhood to uncover the issues it faces and work to hack solutions to address them. 2. Discover how people from other backgrounds are solving problems The world of social entrepreneurship is peppered with travelling references from ‘camps’ to ’roundabouts’. When entrepreneurs go on accelerators, they describe ‘going on a journey’ with fellow innovators to discover and test the limits of both their ideas and their drive. What about if you went on an actual journey to discover social innovations being developed in environments as different as inner city neighbourhoods as isolated villages? Progetto Pionieri, Millennial Trains or Start Up Bus Europe all combine the spirit of adventure of Jack Kerouac and Steve Jobs, recruiting people who want to develop projects with the communities they meet and want to learn from those they’re travelling with. Spoken word artist Suli Breaks is going on a trip around the world in 80 days to meet people who are making change happen to challenge young people to follow their passion. 3. Help people tell their story in their own way At European Alternatives, we develop creative activities to help people imagine connect on issues across borders. People may have come to our Transeuropa Festivals taking place across Europe. They may have helped design scenarios for the future, played our urban games or even been a human book in our living libraries. This time, we want to come to them. About 30 young people will travel in caravans in six zones across Europe to uncover how people are coping with the crisis. Travelling through different environments – from coastal resorts to inner city neighbourhoods via mountain villages – our caravans want to discover how people are creating new ways of living. We will meet people who feel their needs aren’t being voiced in the public sphere and are using creative techniques to tackle social, economic and environmental issues. Working with filmmakers, designers, social reporters & community researchers, we will use a variety of methods to tell the stories of the people and initiatives we discover – from fly-on-the-wall documentaries to live illustrations via urban games. In the meantime, we want you to tell us what groups we should meet on our journey and how you’d like to get involved in putting the spotlight on the issues that aren’t being voiced. From the Jarrow March to Jack Kerouac, travelling has always surfaced voices that weren’t being heard and uncovered new ways of solving problems. It’s a method that’s always been used in developing countries, it’s an effective tool social enterprises & charities can use to better understand the people they serve.
Learning from the travelling man
We’re travelling across Europe to understand how people are coping with the crisis. Through our resident filmmakers, designers, social reporters & community researchers, we will use different methods to tell the story of the people and initiatives we discover – from fly on the wall documentaries to satirical cartoons. What can we learn from how people used to document their travels, far before the world of the internet, smart phones and geo-location? Micah Milner created this infographic to chart her father’s travels through Europe…which lasted almost half a year and passed through over 20 countries! by micahmilner. Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.
How to fix Europe
At our Transeuropa Forum unConference we organised, there were sessions from how Polish farmers stopped fracking to the fall of fortress Europe, from visualising emotions through objects to creating a viral social media video in 45 minutes. We also had a session where, building on our scenarios on how people will make a living in 2020, we invited participants to select a proposal from the Citizens Pact and describe how that proposal would change a day in the life of one of the characters using a mixture of materials from crayons, chalk, paint, magazine photos, card, clay and Lego. The aim of this workshop was to make proposals of the Citizens Pact come alive. By describing how they would change a person’s day, people can better tell the story of how the proposals would benefit citizens. Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually. Find out what each of the imaginary characters want from the Citizens Pact, as imagined by the people in the session: Lifestyle Hacker “Education on growing your own food, on seed banks…and involving invisible / disadvantaged people. That’s why I would support equal access to quality education regardless of socio-economic background and the introduction of an unconditional basic income at the European Level.” Invisible Citizen “I would need institutional protection against precarity. That’s why I support that internships in the EU should be paid and regulated so as not to be hidden labour. Comprehensive and transparent data on internships in the EU should be made available by all organisations hosting interns. I also support an EU unemployment insurance. The EU should ensure minimum unemployment and social benefits to all unemployed in the EU. Day in the Life of Lucas, a Lifestyle Hacker He wakes up at 8.30 and has a cup of coffee, enjoying it for the next half an hour. Then he checks his email and reads the news. Later on, he proceeds to teach himself programming, while interacting via social media. He does this because he needs to be updated on the latest news and wants to stay connected. He doesn’t feel stressed, he is quite relaxed, satisfied and also inspired. In the afternoon, he needs to go to the garden. He waters the plants and harvests food. He interacts with his friends in the community that he met while getting involved in gardening. He thinks that going back to nature is important is important. He criticises the waste of food and wants to make a contribution to a better and healthier world – at least in his own surroundings. He doesn’t feel stressed. He feels good that he can contribute to the community spirit. He feels relaxed and appreciates what nature gives back to him. In the evening, he sometimes needs to meet with people to network with them. He meets with them in bar and sometimes even online. He does this because he wants to take care of his network and enlarge it for possible future collaborations. He feel it’s important for him to do this. He feels good and likes that meetings happen casually. Day in the Life of Maria, an Invisible Citizen In the morning, she thinks of ideas to plan and structure her day. She doesn’t do anything, but sometimes does interact with friends, because she has no other ideas or opportunities. she feels bored and disillusioned. Day in the Life of Charlie, from the Zombie Generation He leaves with his friends. He gets stressed all the time, waiting for the bathroom, his food eaten by his flatmates and he works until the evening so he doesn’t have to do the shopping. He automates his routines. Even if someone invites him to some events, he doesn’t have time to participate, because he works all the time. Even if he focuses on work, he feels unhappy, because it’s not the job he likes and he feels insecure and afraid to lose his job. He feels as a part of the rat race, he doesn’t feel like himself anymore. He doesn’t get access to any human activity like going for a walk with his friends. He doesn’t even time to read the Citizens Pact! He comments “The Citizens Pact is an external solution to which I don’t have access”. Which imaginary character do you relate to? What proposal of the Citizens Pact would you want to campaign on?
Developing nomadic wellbeing
Our weekend on nomadism helped people come together who are choosing to live a nomadic lifestyle to identify what they have created to survive and thrive and how others could learn from these lifestyle hacks. We discovered infrastructure like the Hexayurt by @leashless or unMonastery by @benvickers_ that can help people develop their physical & social resilience. We uncovered behaviours from open source finance hacking by @suitpossum to lifestyle improvisation by @alexfradera helps people understand how you can remix cultures & methods from different walks of life to cope. You can see all the videos of the sessions. Add your comments or ideas to the project proposals or get in touch if you want to help us take this forward. #TTM9 :: Alex Fradera :: Lifestyle Improvising + Q&A from The Thought Menu on Vimeo.
Rethink, repurpose or reinvent?
In my last post, I described how we can move from social innovation to systemic innovation, being able to understand the system the issue you’re tackling sits within and how you want to affect change within it. But should we be even more ambitious and transform the dynamics of the system altogether? How about looking at “behavioural scripts” that we encounter in everyday life? Used as an effective way to build new language, social, and activity routines for adults and children with developmental disabilities, could they also be used to tackle systemic issues? If campaigners on disability rights could develop a social model that’s transformed the way we see the relationship between public services and its users, if fast food chains were able to change the way we consume food, if IKEA were able to change the way people sell products, what behavioural scripts would you create to change the way people see the issue you’re passionate about? Here are a few tips: 1. How can you work out what is the system/s the issue you’re trying to tackle is part of? Get together with people with different perspectives to visualise the issues. 2. What are the methods that can help you work out what shapes the system you’re working on? Use a model like @valuesandframes to discover what values shape the system Use a framework like Social Value Commissioning to develop a theory of change which maps out how you see change taking place. 3. What are the innovative methods that can help you bring your idea to life and evaluate its impact? Use a process like the Open Workshop to work out what methods can help you enact this change. 4. What is the infrastructure that can help you support & distribute your idea? Look at platforms that help mobilise resources like Civic Crowd and take part in discussions to help shape new infrastructure that could help reward effort within your venture like the Economy App by @mattjahu. 5. How can you collaborate with others involved in the system you’re working to change? Look at how the @unmonastery is helping build infrastructure with local communities or how the Lambeth Cooperative is using theory of change to understand where and how to incubate systemic innovation. 6. What are the practices you need to change within yourself or the group of people involved in developing your idea to model the changes you wish to see Consider the different aspects needed to redesign local systems, based on learning from @tessybritton at Social Spaces 7. How do you move from measuring social impact to that of social value? “Every social organisation has a social value story to tell, and it is those who do so with imagination, passion and creativity who will be able to articulate to funders, stakeholder and clients their story in the most compelling ways” argues @dompotter. Look at how the Compendium on the Civic Economy by @infostructure00 visualises the social impact of the stories it has featured, on the places & people the individual ventures interacted with, the challenges they pose on the wider system. That’s why we want the sessions you want to run to stoke people’s imagination, passion and creativity on how we can deliver social value on systemic issues!
Developing a theory of change
In my previous post, I described why #outcomefest is focusing on how we tackle systemic issues to achieve common outcomes. A different way of talking about outcomes is to think of impact and value, but what do these mean? The head honcho of the @hublaunchpad @dompotter describes the difference between social impact and social value best in this article for the @guardiansocent: “While social impact is…about…measuring direct cause-and-effect relationships between a specific set of activities and outcomes…social value is about…what difference has been made to society as a whole. Social value is about a systemic, network effect rather than the isolated impact on a defined set of individuals.” “Social impact is…concerned with providing a snapshot of a point in time and measuring what happened and to whom it happened. Social value is about context…providing a narrative for impact which allows us to see beyond distinct events to give us a richer, deeper understanding of not just what happened to whom, but also why it happened and the implications of this. As @tobyblume and @annarandle highlight in their Social Value Commissioning Framework for @collaborateins, it’s important to move beyond just asking people to define what they need, or even what they can bring to the table and to instead start a discussion on what people value. This is critical for people on both sides of the fence. For those working within public services, it’s about understanding how the Social Value Act can help rethink how they procure & commission services. It’s much more than that though, by starting by what people value and by what change you want to affect across a local area, you can better Visualise and anticipate the interdependencies between individual priorities through systems mapping When you look at the media, you get the feeling that decisions about services are based on a “chop or not” culture, with councils either caving into demands by those groups with the most electoral or economic power or salami slicing every service to avoid pleasing or angering anyone too much. How about working with the different stakeholders to map the systemic issues? Show and describe the journey that you see change taking place through theories of change How many times have you heard new narratives about how governments will enact change – from the “big society” in the UK to “doocracy” in the Netherlands. Councils too have their local flavours, often caricatured by the media, from Easy Jet to John Lewis. Often what happens is that there is a big conversation just after the launch with people getting on different sides of the fence to champion or criticise the slogan. On the institution’s side, there will be flagship initiatives that will aim to prove what the brave new world will look like. Then there will be a succession of blog posts, pamphlets and events using the slogan to try and interpret what the slogan means to their line of work. Of course, it’s easier to talk about the “big stories” like the flagship initiatives than the many “small stories” of people enacting the change. But if there is no theory of change which describes how you want the change to happen and how you will get there, the flagship initiatives rub up against the existing system, with all the effort dedicated to smoothing out the friction. How about working with communities to work out what change people value and how they want to affect it? We’ll be discussing this and more at #outcomefest. If you haven’t signed up to the event, do so now. Even better, suggest a session you’d like to run on the day!
Crossing borders, creating futures
The campaign aims at raising awareness of public authorities, schools and students in Eastern Austria on the issue of border controls and differentiated access to education for Hungarian pupils crossing the border to attend schools in the region. The campaign will mobilise students and teachers to lobby the regional government for equality of access to education and the discontinuation of borders controls. EVENTS
Agence A vous d’Agir / Bouge ton Europe: LE DEBAT
Quelle est l’Europe qu’imaginent les citoyens européens, et en particulier les jeunes ? Quelles alternatives européennes existent sur les thèmes qui importent aux citoyens, comme l’emploi ?
Who watches the watchdogs?
With our European Initiative for Media Pluralism we are asking the enforcement of clear rules and transparent criteria for appointment to the antitrust communications authorities. Now you can demand this too by signing the Initiative.
Transeuropa Caravans: The Other Europe is On the Road
We are delighted to announce the launch of a dedicated website for our flagship project Transeuropa Caravans, bringing 6 caravans to cross 18 countries to meet with social movements, organisations, and citizens ahead of the European Elections. Visit us, follows us, get in touch on www.citizenspact.eu Democracy in Europe is about more than choosing between one party and another on election day, and it is about more than complaining about the lack of vision of politicians. It is about the citizens of Europe voicing demands and suggestions for alternative policies on a continuous basis and enacting day after day the politics and society we want to live in. Throughout the continent many citizens are engaged in improving the world around them, and there is no shortage of proposals for progressive alternative European policies. If this ‘other’ Europe of the citizens is rarely audible in the European media or political discussion, it is firstly because of strong vested interests in keeping it silent, and secondly because it is scattered geographically, disparate citizens often not working together across national and other borders. Nationalist and reactionary movements are capitalising on this disunity and starting to tear into the social fabric of Europe, exploiting and exacerbating divisions. Since its creation 7 years ago, the civil society organisation European Alternatives has been trying to bring together the voices and practices calling and enacting a change in political direction. Since 3 years, European Alternatives – along with hundreds of partners – has been running consultations with citizens across the continent to collect proposals and ideas. The result of this process is the Citizens Manifesto for European Democracy, Solidarity and Equality. Now we are taking the manifesto across Europe, in advance of the European Parliament elections in 22 – 25th May, to discuss the proposals with more people and build a network of people and organisations who share the aims of the manifesto and its methodology. We will work in the run up to the elections and afterwards to build a European democracy starting with the citizens, and together change the political direction of Europe. You can follow our journey throughout Europe and read the full detailed manifesto proposals online here: www.citizenspact.eu.
Que feriez-vous avec l’espace?
traduit par Stéphane Prunet Navas Alternatives Européennes, Tate Britain, Millbank Estate TMOet la Faculté d’Art et de Design de Chelseaaménagent actuellement un Village Transeuropa qui ouvrira le 9 et 10 mai 2014 afin de célébrer la Journée de l’Europe d’une façon alternative et ludique. Nous recherchons une manière d’utiliser l’espace qui puisse vous plaire! Comme vous pouvez le constatez à partir de l’aperçu de ce week-end, afin de permettre aux participants d’avoir l’impression de voyager à travers différents environnements, l’espace sera conçu comme un village (mis au point parBorders to Cross) Des étals en cartons seront placés dans différents endroits de la pièce et chacun sera organisé selon un thème différent, parmi lesquels : ·Vidéos et bandes dessinées traitant des voix qui ne se sont pas faites entendre et des innovations inédites de Caravanes Transeuropa. ·Objets fabriqués que vous aimeriez exposer et qui symbolisent à la fois de nouvelles formes de participations, l’un des enjeux du Pacte Citoyen, ou encore à la découverte de ce qui demeure inexprimé ou non perçu. ·Activités que vous aimeriez favoriser / conserver concernant les innovations créatives et civiques (il peut s’agir d’un atelier ou bien d’une activité surprise à partir desquels les gens peuvent interagir) Envoyez-nous 100 mots concernant la manière dont vous aimeriez utiliser l’espace et si vous aimeriez exposer et/ou favoriser une activité, quelles sont les ressources que vous apporterez / dont vous aurez besoin et combien de temps durera l’activité. Pourquoi organisons-nous ce week-end? Nous voulons célébrer et relier les initiatives qui emploient des méthodes créatives afin de développer la citoyenneté civique et créative au sein des populations européennes etprésenter les enjeux dans le Pacte Citoyen, dans la perspective des élections européennes. Ceux qui iront au Village Transeuropa découvriront les innovations inédites et les voix qui ne sont pas encore faites entendre, découvertes par le biais de Caravanes Transeuropa, dont l’objectif est de comprendre comment les populations utilisent des méthodes créatives pour faire face à la crise. L’événement se fonde sur notre expérience en matière d’organisation des Festivals Transeuropaet de travaux avec nos associés afin de développer des concepts qui rassemblent des initiatives civiques, telles que Borders to Cross. Le week-end reflètera les principes en supervisant le processus de Caravans, en découvrant ce qui demeure inexprimé ou non perçu ainsi qu’en connectant les initiatives au-delà des frontières. Les gens apporteront ensuite leurs solutions à la “cour de récréation” – une toile blanche au milieu de l’espace – et feront des rapprochements entre les différents enjeux et solutions de façon créative. Qui y assistera? Bien que nos principaux auditoires seront des personnes qui ont développé ou sont intéressés de participer aux initiatives civiques et créatives et aux réseaux transnationaux culturels, nous inviterons également les personnes qui ont manifesté de l’intérêt afin de participer dans ces initiatives. À propos d’Alternatives Européennes Alternatives Européennes soutient les personnes dans l’utilisation de méthodes créatives afin d’imaginer différentes manières de vivre en Europe. Mené par 13 groupes locaux dans toute l’Europe, son principal projet inclue : Festivals Transeuropa, Dialogues Transnationaux, et le Pacte Citoyen. Les anciens fondateurs ont inclus la Fondation Culturelle Allianz, la Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Dynamo, la Fondation Erste, la Commission Européenne, la Fondation Joseph Rozntree, la Fondation Mercator et l’Open Society Foundation. À propos de Millbank Estate Millbank Estate TMOest une organisation de gestion immobilière communautaire leader au niveau national qui promeut le concept de TMO comme un modèle d’apprentissage, de citoyenneté et d’entrepreneuriat. En février 2014, avec le soutien de Tate Britain et Societal Enterprise MCW, elle a lancé le London TMO Forum@MILLBANK.Cet événement mensuel est soutenu par NFTMO, LTF, Coop-Housing et promeut le logement avant-gardiste ainsi que la réflexion et la pratique communautaires, également au niveau international.
Welcome to the Transeuropa Village
European Alternatives is working together to celebrate Europe Day in May 2014 at our “Transeuropa Village Weekend” Free lunch and refreshments provided. Discover the unseen innovations & unheard voices uncovered from our Transeuropa Caravans! We want to celebrate and connect initiatives that are using creative methods to develop civic entrepreneurship in communities across Europe andshowcase the issues in the Citizens Pact in light of the European elections. People coming to the Transeuropa Village will see how getting involved in the community can be creative & entrepreneurial. They will see how people across Europe aredeveloping new forms of creative civic citizenship. This event builds on our experience organizing Transeuropa Festivals and working with partners to develop concepts that bring together civic initiatives, such as Borders to Cross. It will in particular put into the spotlight our Transeuropa Caravans process, which aims to understand how communities are using creative methods to cope with the crisis. A group of 30 people will travel in caravans in six zones across the continent. Travelling through different environments – from the countryside to the city – our caravans want to discover how communities are imagining and enacting new ways of living. The weekend will reflect the principles guiding this project, discovering the unseen and the unheard as well as connecting initiatives across borders. Saturday & Sunday 17 & 18 May All day: Transeuropa Village To enable participants to feel like they’re travelling through different environments, the space will be designed like a village (successfully developed at Borders to Cross. 12.00-13.00: Curating recipes for community action We will also invite people to sample food from recipes we will collect on our caravan journey. Each menu will be curated based on a different theme, not based on the type of food or even village it’s from, but on the theme of the initiative who gifted the recipe.13.00-16:00: Discovering the unseen and unheard Cardboard stalls will be placed in different parts of the room and each one will be curated on a different theme, featuring: Videos & cartoons surfacing unheard voices & unseen innovations from Transeuropa Caravans on that issue Artefacts (and the artists) from our “Europe for all, by all” exhibition showing new forms of political participation At each stall, entrepreneurs from home & abroad, artists & performers & campaigners will use creative methods to get people to connect and create solutions based on the issues of the Citizens Pact. We will invite parliamentary candidates to take part and connect with participants in these activities (to be confirmed). A treasure hunt will also take place where people can discover “creative civic” within the nooks & crannies of the city. 16.00 – 18.00: Connecting initiatives across borders People will bring their solutions to the “playground” – a blank canvas in the middle of the space – and make connections between the different issues & solutions in creative ways. We will conclude the event showcasing the website where people will be able to map the unseen initiatives & add their own. Our funders This event is being funded by the European Parliament to raise awareness about creative ways of enacting citizenship across the continent. We have selected this weekend to put creative civic citizenship at the heart of the European debate. Our target audiences Although our main target audience will be people who have developed creative civic initiatives and transnational cultural networks, we will also invite people who have expressed an interest in getting involved in these initiatives. About European Alternatives European Alternatives helps people use creative methods to imagine different ways of living in Europe. Run by 13 local groups across Europe, its main projects include Transeuropa Festivals, Transnational Dialogues, and the Citizens Pact. Past funders have included Allianz Cultural Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Dynamo, Erste Foundation, European Commission, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Mercator Foundation and the Open Society Foundation.
Bienvenue au Transeuropa Village
Traduit par Jessica Tsala Alternatives Européennes participe à la célébration de la fête de l’Europe en mai 2014 lors de notre « Transeuropa Village Weekend ». Repas et boissons seront distribués gratuitement. Nos caravanes Transeuropa vous feront découvrir des innovations inédites et entendre les voix dont la parole n’est pas relayée habituellement. Nous souhaitons mettre à l’honneur et connecter entre-elles, des initiatives qui font appel à des méthodes créatives pour le développement de l’entrepreneuriat civique au sein des communautés d’Europe et qui présentent les problèmes soulevés par le Pacte Citoyen en vue des élections européennes. Les personnes qui se rendront au Village Transeuropa, découvriront que s’engager dans la communauté peut se révéler être une activité créative faisant appel à des compétences entrepreneuriales. Ils verront comment les citoyens européens how people across Europe are developpent de nouvelles formes de citoyenneté civique créative. Cet événement s’appuie sur notre expérience dans l’organisation des festivals Transeuropa, ainsi que sur notre travail de collaboration autour du développement de concepts, réunissant des initiatives civiques telles que Borders to Cross. Notre projet de caravanes Transeuropa sera particulièrement mis en lumière. Celui-ci a pour objectif de comprendre de quelle manière les différentes communautés utilisent des méthodes créatives pour faire face à la crise. Un groupe de 30 personnes voyagera en caravanes à travers six zones du continent. En traversant divers environnements– de la campagne à la ville – nos caravanes partiront à la découverte des communautés et de leur manière d’imaginer et de divulguer de nouveaux modes de vie. Le week-end sera l’occasion de mettre en relief les principes qui guident ce projet : la découverte de ce que l’on nous montre pas et de ce que l’on ne nous fait pas entendre habituellement ainsi que la mise en relation d’initiatives au-delà des frontières. Samedi 17 et dimanche 18 mai, toute la journée: Village Transeuropa Pour que les participants aient l’impression de voyager à travers différents environnements, l’espace sera aménagé comme un village (brillamment réalisé par Borders to Cross. 12h00-13h00: Préparation de recettes pour une action communautaire Nous inviterons également des personnes à goûter la nourriture préparée à partir de recettes collectées lors de notre voyage en caravane. Tous les menus seront imaginés de façon différente, non pas en fonction du type de nourriture ou du village d’où elle en est la spécialité, mais en fonction du thème de l’initiative qui aura inspiré la recette. 13h00-16h00: Découverte de ce que l’on ne voit pas et de ce que l’on n’entend pas Des stands en carton seront placés à différents endroits de la pièce. Ils seront tous aménagés selon un thème différents et comporteront : · Des vidéos et des films d’animations mettant en avant les voix et les innovations, que l’on n’entend pas et ne voient pas habituellementet qui ont été relayées par les caravanes Transeuropa. · Les artefacts (et les artistes) de notre exposition « Europe for all, by all » qui présente de nouvelles formes de participation politique. À chaque stand, les entrepreneurs locaux et étrangers, ainsi que les artistes et les militants feront appel à des méthodes créatives pour amener les personnes à se rassembler et à imaginer des solutions en se basant sur les questions traitées par le Pacte Citoyen. Les candidats aux élections législatives sont invités à participer aux activités et à rencontrer les participants (à confirmer). Une chasse au trésor sera également organisée, au cours de celle-ci les participants pourrontA treasure hunt will also take place where people pourront découvrir la “creativité civique” aux quatre coins de la ville. 16h00 – 18h00: Mise en relation d’initiatives au-delà des frontières Chacun pourra apporter ses solutions sur le « terrain de jeu » – une toile blanche au milieu de l’espace – et mettre en relation de façon créative les différents problèmes et solutions. Nous conclurons l’événement avec la présentation du site internet, à partir duquel le public pourront retrouver les initiatives et y ajouter les siennes. Nos sources de financement Cet événement est financé par le Parlement européen dans le but de sensibiliser les européens aux méthodes créatives de divulgation de la citoyenneté à travers le continent. Nous avons choisi ce weekend pour placer la citoyenneté civique créative au cœur du débat européen. Nos publics cibles Bien que notre principal public cible sera constitué de personnes ayant développé des initiatives civiques créatives et des réseaux culturels transnational, nous inviterons également ceux qui souhaitent s’engager dans ces initiatives. À propos d’Alternatives Européennes Alternatives Européennes est une organisation qui aide les citoyens, afin qu’ils utilisent des méthodes créatives pour imaginer de nouveaux modes de vie en Europe. Gérée par 13 groupes locaux à travers l’Europe, ses principaux projets incluent les Festivals Transeuropa, les Dialogues Transnational Dialogues et le Pacte Citoyen. Parmi les précédents donateurs, se trouvent la fondation Allianz Cultural, la fondation Calouste Gulbenkian, Dynamo, la fondation Erste, la Commission européenne, la fondation Joseph Rowntre, la fondation Mercator et la fondation Open Society.
La société n’est pas un ensemble homogène…
Traduit par Jessica Tsala Si les politiciens veulent réussir à comprendre les conditions de vie de la population, il leur faudra descendre dans la rue, non pas pour prétendre, mais bien pour rencontrer M. et Mme Tout-le-monde. En effet, les politiciens ont soit trop regardé “Mad Men“, soit ils pensent sincèrement, que la meilleure façon de gagner des voies consiste à croire que tout le monde veut posséder une petite citadine et résider à Swindon. M. et Mme Tout-le-monde n’existent pas et ne reflètent certainement pas la réalité sociale. Nous avons observé comment, l’attitude des jeunes à l’égard de la politique et de l’Europe, est influencée par leur situation professionnelle. Pour nos « citoyens invisibles », sans emploi et sans soutien de proches ou de leur famille. Ils se sentent accablés par leur situation professionnelle et donc exclus de la société, certains s’en veulent, alors que d’autres ont perdu espoir face au manque de compréhension que la société affiche à l’égard de leur situation. Pour notre « génération zombie », qui travaillera toute la journée en continue et qui n’aura donc pas de temps à consacrer aux amis ou à la famille. Beaucoup ont peur à l’idée de faire quelque chose pour changer leur situation, mais certains ont trouvé un moyen de la surmonter, en choisissant de l’ignorer. Avec tout ce surmenage, ils n’ont ni le temps, ni l’énergie à consacrer à d’autres activités, y compris la politique, ce qui leur vaut parfois d’être perçus comme apathiques. Ils ont l’impression que les politiciens ne comprennent pas leur situation et qu’ils sont indifférents à leur quotidien. Cela est dû au fait que les politiques se focalisent principalement sur le court terme, au lieu de s’intéresser aux questions systémiques auxquelles ils sont confrontés. Nos « optimistes militants » auront un emploi stable, ils auront acheté leur propre maison et le plus souvent ils seront mariés. Ils parviennent à vivre selon les exigences qu’on leur a inculquées – telle qu’une carrière stable, une maison, une vie de couple et des enfants. En voyant la menace de la précarité se rapprocher, ils essayent de mettre de l’argent de côté, pour assurer leur stabilité et par chance éviter que celle-ci ne les rattrapent. Leur niveau de satisfaction vis-à-vis de leur situation professionnelle a un impact sur d’autres aspects de leur vie – ils jouissent de ce que leur quartier, leur commune et les services publiques ont à leur offrir. Ils ont cependant l’impression que les politiciens n’en font pas assez. Ils ont conscience des problèmes sociaux et bien qu’ils sachent que l’Europe est tenue pour responsable dans beaucoup de domaines, ils reconnaissent qu’elle apporte un soutien à la jeunesse et c’est pourquoi ils pensent qu’elle doit rassembler autour d’une vision commune. Les « Hacker de notre mode de vie » seront pour la plupart sans emploi ou connaitront une situation professionnelle précaire, mais certains auront lancé leur propre affaire ou projet. Pour s’en sortir, ils sont passés par différentes étapes, en commençant dans un premier temps par faire le point sur leur situation afin d’apporter des solutions, comme une forme de résistance, tout en se libérant des pressions imposées par le rythme de vie professionnel classique. Pour eux, les autres générations ne comprennent pas leur situation. Ils essayent d’initier un maximum de changements positifs autour d’eux, en mettant sur pied des projets avec l’aide de leurs réseaux. Bien qu’ils aient le sentiment que la façon actuelle de faire de la politique ne reflète pas leur réalité, car elle protège notamment les intérêts des lobbies influents, leur situation professionnelle les a politisés, au point de vouloir rallier d’autres personnes à leur cause. « La vision, c’est l’art de voir ce qui est invisible pour les autres » Nous savons désormais, que les institutions doivent trouver un moyen de mieux comprendre les expériences de vie des personnes qu’elles représentent. C’est pourquoi nous avons développé le projet Transeuropa Caravans pour mettre en lumière et amplifier les voix et les problèmes qui peinent à se faire entendre, ainsi que les groupes et les solutions habituellement ignorés. Lors de leur voyage, nos caravanes traverserons différents milieux – du monde rural à la ville, en passant des « villes clones » aux villes fantômes, puis des stations balnéaires aux ghettos urbains– à la découverte des européens et de leur manière d’imaginer, de divulguer et de réclamer de nouveaux modes de vie. En allant à la rencontre de groupes et à l’aide de méthodes créatives, nous allons parler de problèmes qui n’arrivent pas aux oreilles de la sphère publique, de groupes exclus du débat politique et de techniques pouvant stimuler les citoyens à s’engager sur des questions transnationales. En mettant en relation ces initiatives via des méthodes en ligne et hors ligne, nous allons leur ouvrir une perspective transnationale pour qu’elle puisse passer à l’action et rentrer en contact avec d’autres projets. Engagez-vous !
How do we get back to the future?
We were at @futureday at Impact Hub Islington to explore how the future is transforming us. Future Day was organised in cities across the world “about what our cities, politics, technology, economics and our personal lives might look like in 2030 and beyond. In a world where politicians, activists and entrepreneurs often don’t have time to think beyond the issues of the day, Future Day asks us to imagine how today’s trends might translate to the future, and what new trends, challenges and solutions might emerge in their place, in an interactive series of brainstorming and group discussions. At Future Day, there are no experts. The focus is on exploration, creativity, and intellectual stimulation: to step outside the bounds of what you currently know, to think on what might be. The day will be fun and interactive, with a mix of scene-setting futurist videos, small-group brain storming and big group discussions, around a series of questions relating to activism, religion, energy, development and more.” At the Future Day in London, there were activists, fundraisers, journalists, researchers, teachers, entrepreneurs and artists from as diverse backgrounds as the Akasha Foundation, Global Poverty Project, Gates Foundation to Institute of Fiscal Studies to us…European Alternatives. Simon who co-organised the day with Rachel introduced the challenges that face us now that could shape the future of tomorrow. How will the impacts of climate change could disrupt not just the environment, but the world around us, from creating new forms of conflict and migration? How we will see increases in our population, in particularly in the proportion of older people? What will be the next frontier for civil rights? What will be the role of government, of the corporation…and of citizens themselves? Who’s going to be included in the society of 2040…and who’s going to be left out? If we look back 20 years, we had the first release of Back to the Future…which itself looked to see what the world would be like in…2015 (just a year away). Back then, we had films mocking the “greed is good” myth which defined Wall Street at the time, we had a war of words between Russia and the US, we had a nuclear catastrophe and Charlie Sheen was a star. So…some things don’t change that much in thirty years. But it was also a time when people were scared of going into London, let alone Dalston…and preferred to live in the burbs. Whereas these days, it’s young people who help define consumer trends because they have the highest propensity to spend on products…and have more time to spend shopping, will it be older people who are the “trend influencers”? If so, given how consumer trends influence social trends – just look at how we use technology affects how we behave – will the behaviours of older people determine how society acts? What will the happen to the very old people (85-100)? Will we see a return to multi-generational households like you see on the Indian sub-continent? On how people will be empowered in 2040, participants observed that it is crises that create vacuums in power which people and new groups can fill. We debated whether it’s more important to empower people to be leaders in society or in themselves. It was pointed out that power doesn’t exist within indidividuals, but it exists in relations – Foucault’s notion that “power is everywhere”, it’s an everyday phenomenon. This then means that if power doesn’t exist in individuals, then should we reframe human rights from its individualist frame to more relational human rights? When we talk about power, how resilient will people and communities be to the macro changes that occur – from the impacts of climate change to those of migration? This blog post lists the authors that might inspire you to think about the future – from Gilles Deleuze to Slavoj Zizek via Paul Gilder. And you can also read impressions of the day by @gretarossi13. With all this mind, how do we plan for the future coming down track?
Doit-on entreprendre un retour vers le futur ?
Traduit par Jessica TSALA Nous avons participé au @futureday qui a eu lieu à l’espace de coworking Impact Hub d’Islington pour comprendre comment le futur nous transforme. Future Day était organisé à travers plusieurs villes dans le monde “pour entrevoir ce à quoi pourraient ressembler nos villes, politiques, technologies, économies ainsi que nos vies personnelles en 2030 et au-delà. Dans un monde où politiciens, activistes et entrepreneurs sont souvent trop occupés par l’actualité pour se projeter dans l’avenir, Future Day nous invite à imaginer comment, les tendances d’aujourd’hui pourraient nous transporter vers le futur et quelles seront les nouveautés en matière de modes, défis et solutions qui pourraient les remplacer ? Tout cela au cours d’une succession interactive de brainstorming et de discussions de groupe. Au Future Day, il n’y a pas d’experts. L’accent est mis sur l’exploration, la créativité et la stimulation intellectuelle : pour voir au-delà des frontières de ce que l’on sait déjà et penser à ce que l’on pourrait être. La journée s’annonce animée et interactive, un mélange de projection de vidéos futuristes, de petits groupes de brainstorming et de grands groupes de discussion abordant une série de questions relatives, en autres, à l’activisme, la religion, l’énergie et au développement.” Au Future Day de Londres, il y avait des activistes, des collecteurs de fonds, des journalistes, des chercheurs, des professeurs, des entrepreneurs et des artistes issus de divers horizons tels que la fondation Akasha, l’organisation Global Poverty Project, la fondation Gates, l’Institut d’études fiscales et également… nous, Alternatives Européennes. Simon, qui a coorganisé la journée avec Rachel, a présenté parmi les défis d’aujourd’hui, ceux qui pourraient façonner le futur de demain. Comment le changement climatique qui a déjà un impact sur l’environnement, ne pourrait-il pas également déréglé le monde qui nous entoure, créant de nouvelles formes de conflits et de migrations ? De quelle manière va s’accroître notre population, en particulier en ce qui concerne la proportion de personnes âgées ? Quelles limites les droits civiques devront-ils franchir ? Quel rôle joueront les gouvernements, les entreprises…et les citoyens eux-mêmes ? Qui sera intégré dans la société de 2040… et qui sera laissé pour compte ? Si l’on regarde en arrière, il y a 20 ans sortait le premier Retour vers le futur… qui s’intéressait justement à quoi ressemblerait le monde en… 2015 (dans un an à peine). On pouvait voir alors des films se moquer du célèbre mythe “greed is good“, qui caractérisé Wall Street de cette époque, celle de la guerre des mots entre la Russie et les États-Unis, celle qui a assisté à une catastrophe nucléaire et celle où Charlie Sheen était une star. À l’évidence… certaines choses ne changent pas vraiment en trente ans. Il faut dire aussi, qu’en ce temps-là les gens avaient peur de se retrouver à Londres, livrés à eux-mêmes à Dalston. C’est pourquoi ils préféraient vivre dans la banlieue. Contrairement à cette époque, aujourd’hui c’est la jeune génération qui contribue à définir les tendances de consommation car c’est elle qui consomme le plus… et qui a le plus de temps à consacrer au shopping. Peut-être demain verrons-nous les seniors devenir les nouveaux « faiseurs de tendance » ? Si tel est le cas, étant donnée l’influence des tendances de consommation sur celles de la société – il suffit de regarder comment notre façon d’utiliser la technologie affecte notre manière de nous comporter- le comportement des plus âgés déterminera-t-il les actions de la société de demain ? Qu’arrivera-t-il aux individus très âgés (85-100) ? Assisterons-nous à un retour des foyers multigénérationnels tel qu’on peut le voir sur le sous-continent indien ? Concernant la manière dont les citoyens auront le pouvoir en 2040, les participants ont pu observer que c’est la crise qui crée des zones de vide dans le pouvoir,que les populations et de nouveaux groupes peuvent combler. Nous avons débattu pour essayer de savoir s’il était plus important de faire en sorte que les citoyens aient le pouvoir sur la société plutôt que sur eux-mêmes. Il a été remarqué que le pouvoir n’existe pas chez les individus, mais dans les relations – l’idée de Foucault selon laquelle “le pouvoir est partout”, peut s’observer au quotidien. Cela signifie alors, que si le pouvoir n’existe pas chez les individus, nous devrions peut-être redéfinir les droits humains et passer d’une vision individualiste à une approche plus relationnelle ? Lorsque nous parlons de pouvoir, dans quelle mesure les citoyens et les communautés se montreront réticents aux macros changements qui sont en train d’avoir lieu – aussi bien en termes d’impacts du changement climatique qu’en termes de migration ? Ce blog post référence les auteurs qui pourront inspirer votre vision du futur- de Gilles Deleuze, à Slavoj Zizek en passant par Gilder. Vous pouvez également lire impressions of the day de @gretarossi13. Reste à savoir comment allons-nous nous organiser pour préparer le futur qui est sur le point d’arriver ?
From entrepreneur to mentor
As part of international #womensday we want to celebrate the impact young women have on helping other young people cope with making a living. That’s why we’re really chuffed to share with you the third part of our interview with Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin Co-Founder of @wearesnook and Director of @thisisthematter. You were talking earlier about the fact that some people know what their skills are and are really articulate and others less so. Does that explain why you used start-up techniques? There is a lot of design thinking and entrepreneurial methodology in the programme. We focused on what skills we wanted to develop in each workshop. We thought that the best way was not to talk about develop entrepreneurial skills but getting your voice heard. We just did some feedback with young people and it depends who would engage with @thisisthematter, but they said they would want to know how to get stuff for their CV. We’re using a hybrid of different methodologies. What’s important is not just researching problems but helping young people identify opportunities. With the first pilot in Edinburgh, they had their own ideas they wanted to take forward – like with the community planning partnership. Because they had something to aim towards, they incubated a new start-up. It’s not an idea that will make money, but something they will run with and that’s good enough for us. There are a lot of outcomes that we didn’t perceive. It’s interesting how they’ve kept with the core values bit spun it out without realising. Finishing off with your own experience of trying to make a living, what was the motivation for you to start your business? It was kind of like a happy accident. I graduated and led the MyPolice idea which won the SI Camp competition and then it got funded and I met Lauren. I was about to do a Masters. At the same time, I was working in the public sector and getting really annoyed at everything that was going on. I realised that inside the system, I couldn’t effect any change, there was too much bureaucracy and not enough freedom to do anything remotely risky, innovative or unknown. @mypolice came up and Channel 4 funded it. They said “before we give you funding, you need a bank account”. We were like “we need to set up a business”. We sat down with @cassierobinson who said “you have got more in you than just one project”. It’s a mission around people-centred innovation, openness, collaboration and democracy. So @wearesnook started and it just kept going. We’ve now got eight members of staff and an office that you need to handle like a business. Now things are a lot more serious, you need to pay bills and people’s wages and we’ve become more competent. @redjotter and I both had a plan to become business owners at some point, but we didn’t think we’d do it so young. We started a business when we were 22. I had expected to move to London to get industry experience for 10-15 years. We just went with it and had consistent hope that everything would work out all right. I was reading an article yesterday about Generation Flux – this willingness to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty in the future and that is the start-up mentality. Teaching young people to deal with uncertainty – universities and councils are still not there yet. If you can get that mindset in your head, it helps you deal with this shift. It’s just about making it happen, everyday, as you go along. You’ve been successful over the last few years. What type of support would make it easier for you to do what you love doing, so you could focus on that really intrinsic mission you’ve got? Money! We’ve realised that there are a lot of challenges in the public sector that stifle innovation. We’ve really set up more of a prototyping way, we’re an incubator for start-ups. To be able to do that, to take time off to think about the future, that’s so hard at the start of a business. What we do is apply for funds that give us money to plug that gap. Many friends I know just can’t get funding though. What I find is that the business and entrepreneurial sector is still old school. They don’t quite understand the possibilities of technology and new ways of thinking. A lot of funding is going out for safe wins, like a mechanics business, family shop or print studio. I’ve got a friend who’s come up with a way to link up young people with manufacturers. She’s been turned down several times! It’s about getting a better understanding of new trends and ways of doing things that the business sector needs to better support start-ups and experimentation, research and development. Even paying someone’s rent would be good. When you get funding, you have to spend it on a website, you can’t spend it on yourself. If they just gave someone some rent and food money. That’s the big missing thing, you have to support the people that are going to make the enterprise happen and not expect them to do it for nothing. Sarah focuses on making social change happen by re-thinking public services from a human perspective. With a Masters of Design Innovation from Glasgow School of Art, Sarah is a social entrepreneur, unashamedly proving the value of design in central government and defining a meaningful role for designers in the public sector. Her work challenges the role design can play within the public sector, and as the winner of the first Scottish Social Innovation Camp, Sarah is ambitiously challenging the way governments operate and make policies through initiatives such as MyPolice. As a fellow of Google, Sarah has a flair for using technology as an enabler and thrives leading processes of change, putting design at the heart of organisations and complex systems. Prior to being the Director of @wearesnook, Sarah won £20,000 for a community in Glasgow by…
Du statut d’entrepreneur à celui de mentor
Traduit par Aurore Gautherin Dans le cadre de la #journéeinternationaledelafemme, nous avons souhaité rendre hommage à ces jeunes femmes qui donnent des conseils aux jeunes pour gagner leur vie. C’est la raison pour laquelle nous sommes très heureux à l’idée de partager avec vous la troisième partie de notre interview avec Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin, co-fondatrice de @wearesnooket responsable de @thisisthematter. Tout à l’heure vous évoquiez le fait que certaines personnes connaissent leurs compétences et savent les mettre en avant alors que d’autres moins. Est-ce la raison pour laquelle vous utilisez des techniques de création d’entreprise ? Il y a beaucoup de design thinking et de méthodologie entrepreneuriale dans le programme. Dans chaque atelier nous nous sommes concentrés sur les compétences que nous voulions développer. Selon nous, la meilleure façon de réussir ne réside pas dans le développement des compétences entrepreneuriales mais dans le fait d’exprimer son opinion. On a eu quelques échos de jeunes souhaitant s’engager dans@thisisthematteret il en est ressorti que tous veulaient des tuyaux pour rédiger leur CV. Nous mélangeons différents types de méthodologies. Le but de ce programme n’est pas de rechercher les problèmes mais d’aider les jeunes à identifier les opportunités. Le premier programme pilote à Edimbourg les a aidés à développer leurs propres idées – comme avec le partenariat de planification communautaire. Etant donné qu’ils avaient un objectif à atteindre, ils ont réfléchi à la création d’une nouvelle entreprise. Cette idée ne leur fera pas gagner d’argent, mais leur servira de bagage et c’est ce qui importe. Nous avons perçu très peu de résultats. C’est intéressant de voir comment ils ont gardé à l’esprit les valeurs fondamentales de notre programme sans même s’en rendre compte. Parlons une dernière de votre propre expérience professionnelle, qu’est-ce qui vous a donné envie de créer votre propre entreprise ? On va dire que c’est un heureux concours de circonstances. J’ai été diplômée et j’ai créé mon projet MyPolice qui a remporté le concours Social Innovation Camp (stage d’innovation sociale au Royaume-Uni) qui, par la suite, a été financé. Puis j’ai rencontré Lauren. J’étais sur le point d’entrer en Master. Au même moment, je travaillais dans le secteur public et je commençais à être vraiment agacée par tout ce qui se passait. J’ai compris que je ne pouvais effectuer aucun changement au sein du système car il y avait trop de paperasse et pas assez de libertés pour faire quelque chose d’un peu risqué, innovant ou inconnu. @mypolicea pris de l’ampleur et c’est Channel 4 qui l’a financé. Ils nous ont dit qu’avant de nous financer nous devions avoir un compte en banque. Alors on s’est dit qu’il fallait qu’on crée une entreprise. Nous avons discuté avec @cassierobinson qui nous a dit « vous, vous avez plus d’un projet en tête ». C’est une mission qui englobe des innovations centrées sur les personnes, l’ouverture d’esprit, la collaboration et la démocratie. C’est ainsi que le projet @wearesnooka démarré et qu’il a continué d’évoluer. Aujourd’hui huit personnes composent notre équipe et nous avons un service qu’il faut gérer comme une entreprise. Les choses sont beaucoup plus sérieuses, il faut payer les factures et les salaires ; nous sommes devenus plus compétents. @redjotter et moi avions pour projet de devenir chefs d’entreprise un jour, mais nous ne pensions pas que l’opportunité se présenterait si tôt. Nous avons lancé notre entreprise alors que nous n’avions que 22 ans. J’avais prévu de partir à Londres entre 10 et 15 ans pour acquérir de l’expérience dans le secteur de l’industrie. Finalement, nous nous sommes lancés avec l’espoir que tout se passe pour le mieux. Hier je lisais un article sur la Generation Flux – la volonté de faire face à l’ambiguïté et à l’imprévisibilité du futur. C’est cette volonté qui doit alimenter la mentalité de création d’entreprise. Les universités et les conseils ont encore du mal à enseigner aux jeunes comment gérer l’imprévisibilité. Si vous arrivez à vous mettre dans cette optique, cela vous aidera à appréhender ce changement. Tous les jours, il faut se donner les moyens d’y arriver. Vous vous en êtes très bien sortie ces dernières années. Quel genre de soutien vous permettrez de faire plus facilement ce que vous aimez afin de vous concentrer sur cette mission qui est intrinsèquement la vôtre ? L’argent ! Nous avons pris conscience qu’il existe de nombreux défis dans le secteur public qui freinent l’innovation. Nous avons plutôt créé un genre de prototype, nous sommes les incubateurs des start-ups. Avoir l’opportunité de prendre du temps libre pour penser à l’avenir est difficile lorsque l’on crée son entreprise. Nous demandons donc des financements pour nous aider pendant cette période de réflexion. Malheureusement, j’ai beaucoup d’amis qui n’ont pas trouvé de financements. Je me suis rendue compte que les entreprises et le secteur entrepreneurial étaient encore de la vieille école. Ils ont du mal à comprendre toutes les possibilités qu’offrent la technologie et les nouvelles façons de penser. Beaucoup de financements sont réservés aux valeurs sûres telles que les activités mécaniques, magasins familiaux ou studios d’impression. J’ai une amie qui a proposé un moyen d’associer les jeunes aux industriels. Elle a essuyé plusieurs refus ! Le secteur des entreprises a besoin de mieux comprendre les nouvelles tendances et les nouveaux savoir-faire pour pouvoir aider les start-ups et les expérimentations, la recherche et développement. Même payer le loyer de quelqu’un serait bien. Quand vous obtenez des financements, vous investissez dans la création d’un site internet et non dans vos besoins personnels. S’ils pouvaient donner de l’argent à quelqu’un seulement pour qu’il puisse payer son loyer et sa nourriture. C’est vraiment ce qu’il manque, il faut aider les personnes qui participent à la création de l’entreprise et ne pas s’attendre à ce qu’elles le fassent pour rien. Sarah met tout en œuvre pour qu’un changement social s’opère en reconsidérant les services publics d’un point de vue plus humain. Avec un master en Innovation et Conception obtenu à la Glasgow School of Art, Sarah est une entrepreneure sociale qui démontre ouvertement l’importance de la conception dans le gouvernement central et qui définit un rôle important pour les créateurs au…
Neknominate your minimum wage
We’ve been looking at how young people cope with making a living. After a long hard day at work, many people like relaxing with a cold (or if you in England…warm) beer. But if you’re only earning the minimum wage, how many beers does it buy you around Europe? You could have over thirty beers a day in generous Belgium, while in thrify Romania, you could only have six. We’re not here to campaign against reducing the price of beer, but to increase the minimum wage. …and we’re not encourage anyone in Belgium to be drinking thirty beers a day…as good as the beer is that in that country!
Neknominez votre salaire minimum
Traduction : Aliénor Daumalin Nous avons étudié la manière dont les jeunes tentaient de gagner leur vie. Après une dure journée de travail, beaucoup de gens aiment se détendre avec une bière bien fraîche (ou tiède si vous êtes en Angleterre…). Mais si vous ne gagnez qu’un salaire minimum, combien de bières pouvez-vous vous payer à travers l’Europe ? Vous pourriez prendre plus de trente bières par jour grâce à la généreuse Belgique mais seulement six avec la Roumanie économe. Nous ne faisons pas campagne pour réduire le prix de la bière mais pour augmenter le salaire minimum… et nous ne poussons personne en Belgique à boire trente bières par jour… aussi bonne soit la bière dans votre pays !
This time we’re coming to you!
At European Alternatives, we develop creative activities to help people imagine, enact and demand new ways of living. You may have been to our Transeuropa Festivals taking place in different cities across Europe. You may have gone for a transnational walk, played our urban games or even been a human book in our living libraries. You may have taken part in research to help design scenarios of the future or supported our citizens‘ initiatives. This time, we’re coming to you. What do we want to discover? We want to uncover the unheard voices, the unmet needs and theundiscovered assets of communities across Europe. We want to understand how people are coping with the crisis. To do this, a group of 30 people will travel in caravans in six zones across the continent. This is no Grand Tour. There will be no valets nor overnight stays in embassies. This won’t be a “hippie trail“ or a “pilgrimage“ either. We’re not looking for the new Goa or Mecca. But like Dean, Sal & Marylou from “On the Road“, we will be travelling to make sense of a world that we’ve yet to discover and many ignore. We will learn from nomads, the original transnational tribes! They travelled to find what they needed to make a living and to find meaning, whether that’s pastures to grow food or places to rest. Nomads also brought in new influences from the places they passed through. Through travelling through different environments – from the countryside to the city, from clone towns to ghost towns, from coastal resorts to inner city ghettos – our caravans want to discover how you are imagining, enacting & demanding new ways of living. Who do we want to meet? We want to meet people who feel they are voiceless in the public sphere, ranging from those without formal rights to those who feel discriminated against. We want to meet people involved in campaigning & innovating – from community activists to civic entrepreneurs. What are we going to achieve? Through meeting groups using creative methods, we will be uncovering issues that are unheard in the public sphere, groups that are being excluded from the political debate and techniques that can stimulate people to engage in issues that cross borders. Through connecting these initiatives through online and offline methods, we will open up a transnational perspective for them to take action and connect with other initiatives. How are we going to do it? We’ve been developing ways to navigate the world differently, from a storytelling bus to a caravan of the commons so that people can see the environments change before their eyes as they discover the hidden stories of the neighbourhoods they pass through. This time, there will be six groups of young people travelling in caravans across Europe at the same time…between 26 April and 4 May. Through travelling across the different nooks and crannies of Europe, we will stop in neighbourhoods to meet people and groups. What activities are we going to organise? We will organise creative activities with the people we meet, using a mixture of techniques they have developed and those we have. These will include: public space interventions that involve people in creative ways (i.e. flashmob) activities in the caravan so we can share our experience with others cultural activities to immerse ourselves in the communities we visit (i.e. social safari) activities on a Citizens Pact topic, or even a new issue put forward (i.e. showcase) high profile events to connect the groups we meet to decision makers & NGOs Through our resident filmmakers, designers, social reporters & community researchers, we will use different methods to tell the story of the people and initiatives we discover – from fly on the wall documentaries to satirical cartoons via social safaris. How can you be involved? Through our website, you will be able to view a map of struggles across Europe, including videos, cartoons & blogs about the groups we meet and their stories. You will be able to track where each caravan is and interact with the caravanners online. You will also be able to share blogs & videos of groups you want to showcase. We will also have space for people to join us in the caravan throughout the trip to contribute in different ways to the experience! Tell us what groups you think we should meet who are using creative methods to tackle social and economic issues and you’d like to be involved!
All doled up
We get treated like kids with pocket money wages and pay the poverty premium for it. We’re cheaper to pay and easier to fire. We’ve gone from low pay to no pay. Who are we? We’re the generation that thought we had it all until the crisis showed us our dreams were built on a house of cards. Nothing to show for and confused about our future. From teens into NEETS. From generation Y to generation why. And now we’re all in this mess together. If we haven’t been made redundant ourselves, then we all know someone who has. We’ve now probably got a greater chance of becoming unemployed than getting swine flu. First we saw the figures on the news, then we read the stories of young people on the dole in the papers and now we hear the rumours of colleagues and friends getting the sack. Don’t look down at all the youngsters who are queuing up for the sales to get glammed up for the weekend, next week they’ll be queuing up for the dole. Instead, look deep into our eyes and you’ll see we’re all doled up with the shame and the scars. We pay for not getting fair pay We may be “an army of youngsters with nothing to do and nothing to lose” , but we are all skilled up. When we know that youth unemployment costs us £100 million a month, we know it’s time to stop the unemployed becoming permanently unemployable. This fails to address the precariousness of jobs targeted at young people and it exacerbates the exploitation faced by young people in internships or work experience who are asked to work above and beyond what’s legally required of them in return for being paid under the legal minimum wage. When people argue that not being paid the minimum wage isn’t important when you consider the invaluable work experience you get when you carry out an apprenticeship or internship, they ignore that young people still have to pay the same levels of rent as anyone else and often have to pay back student debt loans too. Like other low earners, we’re forced to pay more for most things, from food to utilities – the so called “Poverty Premium” (@savethechildren). It’s not only discriminatory that the national minimum wage is lower for people under 22, there are even calls that it should be frozen full stop for young people. Government policies across Europe fail to address the discrimination faced by young people in government schemes where the employer isn’t bound to offer the training or benefits it offers its staff and not bound to offer the opportunity for turning temporary contracts into permanent employment. That’s why we should call for all young people on government supported schemes to be granted the same benefits – such as training and childcare – as those in the same workplace as them. And no political party is contesting the conventional wisdom that it’s acceptable for young recruits to be recruited because they’re cheaper to pay and easier to fire. That’s why we should call for all young people on government supported schemes to be granted the same working rights as those in the same workplace as them. Shock and awe We’re not the first generation that has faced shocks or setbacks. In many ways we have been taught we live in a “no risk” society. It’s maybe why we find it more difficult to cope with these shocks and bounce back. As @rowennadavis states, “Being hit so hard at the first hurdle, some may be tempted to quite the game together”. Grant Aherne despairs “There’s nothing going on. We go and try to find work but there isn’t anything around and that’s very frustrating. When we go to college they just get you to fill in forms but it doesn’t come to anything.” What does it say about our society when career advisors tell us “You don’t get jobs by complaining, whining, going on marches or signing petitions. You get jobs by working your ass off”? That’s we need a focus on support which is both practical – such as fairer wages to pay back our debt and cover our rent – and psychological – like more time to build our skills and our relationships with others. Rabbit in the headlights or leaders in the spotlight? But maybe being in this mess together could be a way of building those relationships. We’re one million unemployed, but are we one million strong? Our generation are more rabbit in the headlights than leaders in the spotlight. 20% youth unemployment and no movement, no struggle; how bad does it have to get? Are we really in it together? We should all be concerned about each others’ welfare – that many of our peers are out of work. Yet by targeting the poorest, the government ends up creating a sense of “them” and “us” which you don’t get with services that benefit everyone. Would so many people have tweet #welovethenhs if they had felt the stigma people feel when claiming benefits? Across Europe, policies to unemployment and wider welfare reform confuses a “carrot and sticks” approach to reciprocity. It makes the assumption that those out of work don’t have anything to contribute and therefore are in need of skills to get back into work. It also presumes that by stigmatising them, they will be more likely to take up benefits and comply with its conditions. So much for creating the good society. The value of out of work benefits relative to average earnings has halved since Thatcher got into power. In fact, if you’re out of work, all you get is £9 per day which would mean you were getting under a quarter of what the public think ought to be “a basic but acceptable standard of living”. As Natasha Cordey says, “After I’ve bought my food, gas, water, electricity, television there’s nothing. I can’t get a job in town because I couldn’t afford the bus…
Food for thought
“I think about different aisles, there could be an anxiety aisle, a boredom aisle, a sadness aisle, a despair aisle, an ennui isle, an anger isle…really the reasons we all eat…most of the time”. Video by @food_democracy As Europeans feel a mixture of apathy, anger and despair at the crisis, “could food could be at the heart of linking up people from different cultures and cities in Europe? such as learning how to understand migrant’s experiences through making food and sharing stories” “The food we eat tells us so more about us than we think. But what does it tell us about where we live?” From “tempting your tastebuds” to “thee ABC to good tapas” food is perhaps the first experience you’ll have of “micro-making” as a child – making a lake and mountain out of gravy and mash, or making “eggy soldiers” out of egg and toast. As Toby Blume says “If the ultimate act of love is to nurture another human being, then how can providing nutritious and delicious food be anything other than a hugely caring and generous deed?”.
Scenarios for a collaborative economy
One of the personas based on our research that we created – Lifestyle Hackers “see their own assets as the best form of support. Although many of these are unemployed or underworked, they make use of their networks to share assets and skills, often not bothering with formal support.” If this group of young people doesn’t bother with formal support, will it not self exclude itself and by becoming silent about how institutions can provide social welfare, will its needs not become silenced as a result on other issues? Lifestyle hackers develop their own projects, which are often pioneering in meeting needs not understood let alone met by the state, what we could call social innovations…or even social enterprise? Isn’t there a risk that those with the greatest power, be it industries, sectors or organisations, will co-opt the new business models being developed. We’re already seeing this, where firms are co-opting crowd sourced ideas or rebranding tax obligations into support for social enterprises. As @mbauwens argues, we as citizens are creating 100% of Facebook’s “use value” and they are extracting 100% of the “exchange value” from us: Will people developing innovative business models collaboratively, transparently and most importantly unpaid become disillusioned with institutional initiatives to engage and involve them, and will either accept nondisclosure agreements to survive? Or will they look to develop their business models through looking at each resources of their networks?
Plusieurs scénarios possibles pour atteindre une économie collaborative
traduit par Stéphane Prunet Navas L’une des personnalités sur laquelle nous avons basé la recherche que nous avons mis en place – Les pirates informatiques qui consacrent leur vie à ce domaine « considèrent leurs propres ressources comme étant la meilleure forme d’assistance pour les utilisateurs. Bien que beaucoup d’entre eux soient chômeurs ou sous-employés, ils profitent de l’utilisation de leurs réseaux pour partager leurs ressources et leurs compétences, sans se soucier la plupart du temps de fournir une assistance officielle. » Si ce groupe de jeunes ne se soucie pas de mettre en place une assistance officielle, est-ce que cela ne l’auto-exclura pas lui-même? Et en se taisant sur le fait que les institutions peuvent fournir une protection sociale, leurs besoins ne seront-ils par réduits au silence à la suite d’autres questions? Les pirates informatiques qui consacrent leur vie à ce domaine développent leurs propres projets, lesquels sont souvent pionniers en matière d’intérêts généraux qui demeurent incompris et de plus forte façon par l’État, ce que nous pourrions appeler innovations sociales… ou encore entreprise sociale? N’y a t-il pas là un risque que ceux qui possèdent une plus grande puissance, qu’il s’agisse d’industries, de secteurs ou d’organisations, assimilent les nouveaux modèles d’activité qui sont actuellement élaborés? Nous sommes déjà témoins de ce phénomène, notamment lorsque les entreprises assimilent les idées provenant de la foule ou lorsque’elles convertissent les obligations fiscales en aide pour les entreprises sociales. Comme @mbauwens l’a affirmé, en tant que citoyens nous créons actuellement 100% de la “valeur d’usage” de Facebook pendant qu’eux extraient 100% de la “valeur d’échange” que nous produisons : Les hommes développeront-ils des modèles d’entreprises innovants par le biais de la collaboration, de manière transparente et surtout est-ce que les personnes non-rémunérées et désillusionnées par les initiatives institutionnelles pourront s’associer et participer à leurs côtés, et accepteront-elles les accords de non divulgation pour survivre? Ou chercheront-elles à développer leurs modèles d’entreprise en examinant chacune des ressources de leurs réseaux?
How do we organise digital labour?
On the one hand, we’ve seen digital tools being co-opted by protest movements across the world, on the other hand, we’ve seen economists talk about how these tools are going to transform the way we work. We rarely talk about the people who make the digital wheels go round – not the Zuckerbergs or Bezoses, but the people being paid to fulfill micro-tasks on Mechanical Turk, that @trebors, speaking at re:publica 2013 calls “digital sweatshops“. Do watch his powerful talk, but if you don’t have time, here are some selected quotes: “They live in the hope that something will turn out better one day, and if they don’t they’ve already got used to the precariousness of their own work life”. Indeed, when we asked young people across Europe what their aspirations were for 2014, learning and applying their skills came really high up on their list, as did helping people, even higher than earning mone. How do we square that with the tempation of unpaid internships and cloud work? “Employers have been become linguistic spinmeisters inventing new words like task rabbits or cloud workers, just to make sure they’re not thought of as employers, so they can make people think this is not work, but a game.” There are new roles with equally crazy titles like corporate disorganiser or hackschool counsellor which enable young people to be in control of creating purpose for what they produce. As Edwin Mingard argued in our recent interview with him “If you own that decision over merging work and social life, that can be an incredibly empowering thing. But if you start to rely on the same structures for your friendship as the structures you need to get paid, you’re really in the **** in a way that you’re not if you can assert some ownership over that.” “There are platforms you can use where somebody else is paying for it. Someone once said “If you’re not paying for it, you’re probably the product”. If you own that kind of stuff, you can shape how it gets used and I think that’s the same in the offline world that if you’re reliant on someone for everything, then you’re losing control of a very important part of yourself as a person. @trebors reminds us that “if you are a cloud worker, you will still feel hungry come lunchtime and your eyes will still feel strained and your back might hurt.” “For millions of people, digital environments have become their daily grind and yet are invisible to us. We don’t see these workers, they don’t see each other, they don’t see their employer…The problem with digital labour…is that you don’t see the slaves and you don’t see the masters..we need to give a face of these work practices”. Like traditional night workers, these are also the invisible citizens in the 24 hour city, but they’re not cleaning the streets or running petrol stations, they’re behind luminous screens getting paid less than a euro an hour to complete an online task for the digital platforms you use everyday. Our Citizens Manifesto calls for internships in the EU to be paid and regulated so as not to be hidden labour. It also calls for a @basicincomeu. What other actions are needed? The imminent release of the documentary of Cesar Chavez, the man who originally coined “yes we can” and more importantly was able to successfully organise migrant farm workers in California, with the ability of the web to be able to connect and amplify reach, isn’t it time for organise to fight for the rights of digital workers too?
From systemic issues to systemic innovation
In my last post, I looked at how we can understand what people value and what change they want to affect. If we can pretend to create social value that can have a systemic effect, then we also need to move beyond just understanding the causes of an issue – whether it be homelessness, elderly care or loneliness – to be able to make sense of the system/s the issue is part of. To tackle the issues caused by the system requires us to move from social innovation to systemic innovation If we use the Six Steps to Significant Change model by @forumforthefuture, we can social innovation often focuses on tackling needs and creating pioneering practices to meet these. With support, it can even be sustained and scaled. But when we discover or even experience a problem or a need, we don’t instinctively think to diagnose the overall system in which that problem resides. In @forumforthefuture #bigshift report, @SDStephDraper provides a checklist to kickstart how we might do this: When we organised Visual Camp, we brought together designers, policy makers and practitioners to be able to paint a picture of systemic issues, from economic growth to personal data. These helped engage different perspectives to understand systemic issues and identify connections between the different parts of them. With Making a Living, we reframed the issue from youth unemployment to “how do young people cope with making a living” so that the research could make sense of the complexity of the different variables which young people have to navigate – not just whether they have a job or not, but how their expectations and attitudes to work interact with their ability to cope psychologically and practically with making a living. Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually. As @annabirney describes in the discussion series on this subject, “systemic innovation means completely redesigning the way a system works (for example, the health service), and achieving innovation across every part of it”. One of the tips from @nesta_uk on how to achieve systems innovation is that “having a great product is no guarantee of success, unless you can assemble around it the complementary services, software, support, infrastructure and channels that allow consumers to use it easily and effectively”. The best example they give of this is the “electric car” which is cheaper to run than traditional cars and better for the environment, but when you factor in the cost to buy and maintain, the lack of infrastructure & business model for the installation & purchasing of the batteries needed to power them, its value proposition suddenly fades away. Rather than developing solutions to unmet needs, should we also be looking at what are the components that are missing in a system (like in the labour or housing market) that we could develop…and how we can better connect up the missing links? We’ll be discussing this and more at #outcomefest. If you haven’t signed up to the event, do so now. Even better, suggest a session you’d like to run on the day!
Imagine! Demand! Enact! A Publication for an Alternative Europe
by Luigi Galimberti From 4th to 27th October 2013 TRANSEUROPA Festival had been taking place simultaneously in 14 cities across Europe: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Bologna, Bratislava, Cluj-Napoca, London, Lublin, Paris, Prague, Sofia, Warsaw, and Brussels. Around 90 events, including art performances, film screenings, concerts, workshops, debates, lectures, urban walks, and bike tours, had been run by the staff and the volunteers of European Alternatives, in cooperation with more than a hundred associations, cultural foundations, governmental institutions and informal youth groups from all over Europe. TRANSEUROPA Festival’s catalogue, inspired by the slogan “Imagine, Demand, Enact!”, attempts at communicating the values, the activities and the achievements of TRANSEUROPA Festival 2013. Furthermore, it brings together a series of reflections on the current status of Europe, giving space to a plurality of voices, characterized by the most diverse backgrounds, opinions and geographical provenance. Among the many contributions, we can mention here only a few. Firstly, musician and dancer Hamza Zeytinoğlu has interviewed Erdem Gündüz, better known as “The Standing Man of Taksim Square”, who tells about his experience of artistic resistance during the Turkish uprisings of Spring 2013. Then, artist and professor Efva Lilja writes about “The Politics of Art” and why Europe needs artists for a change. On the other side, European Alternatives’ Elena Dalibot gives a full account of the process that led to the elaboration of the Citizens Manifesto, which has been one of the focuses of the final Transeuropa Forum in Berlin. Furthermore, Professor Engin Isin starts from the tragedy of Lampedusa of 3rd October 2013, when more than 300 African migrants died off the Italian coasts, and goes on with describing and promoting a new and more meaningful concept of European citizenship. But much more can be found in the five sections of the publication, which are: “Creative Resistance“, “Democracy, Transparency, Participation“, “Building Transeuropean Narratives“, “Crossing Frontiers” and “Lifestyle Hackers“. As an afterword of the publication – but as a foreword to future editions of TRANSEUROPA Festival – the highlights of the past editions of the Festival are also reported on, from Zygmunt Bauman’s opening speech at the then London Festival of Europe in 2007 to Ma Yongfeng artistic intervention at Bologna’s Piazza Verdi in 2012. Enjoy! TRANSEUROPA Festival Publication (2014), eds. Ségolène Pruvot, Lucile Gemaehling and Luigi Galimberti, London: European Alternatives, pp. 56+viii. Designed by Noémi Zajzon, London. Contributions by Ségolène Pruvot, Mariya Ivancheva, Erdem Gündüz, Elena Dalibot, Dagna Dąbrowiecka, Efva Lilja, Lucile Gemähling, Anna Lodeserto, Engin Isin, Noel Hatch and Chiara Camponeschi. The publication will be distributed in printed format at selected European Alternatives’ events; it is freely available for download or consultation on ISSUU.
Martin Schulz receives our Citizens Manifesto
Our Transeuropa Caravans meet Martin Schulz in Poland and hand him our Citizens Manifesto!
Martin Schulz riceve il nostro Citizens Manifesto
Le nostre Transeuropa Caravans incontrano Martin Schulz in Polonia e consegnano li nostro Manifesto Cittadino al candidato alla presidenza della Commissione europea
L’europa deviante: rischi e pericoli dell’ignorarlo
Data la mancanza di una direzione politica forte e determinata, l’Unione europea (UE) sta attraversando un processo di divergenza strutturale, caratterizzato da lavoro, crescita, produttività, concorrenza e traiettorie fiscali devianti rispetto al progetto originario. Non si tratta di una ripresa ma di un infelice ristagno senza occupazione. Ignoratelo a vostro rischio e pericolo.
Transeuropa Caravans: La carovana del sud
Attraversando Italia, Slovenia e Croazia fra lotta alle mafie e migrazioni, al via l’ultima delle Transeuropa caravans
Accordo USA-UE: privacy e libertà digitali a rischio?
Il nuovo trattato commerciale fra UE e Stati Uniti rischia veramente di mettere il bavaglio alle libertà digitali?
Europe is diverging: ignore it at your peril
In the absence of common political direction, the EU is undergoing a process of structural divergence. Ignore it at your peril.
Let’s party: Getta via l’austerity!
Vi invitiamo all festa di chiusura a Roma delle Transeuropa Caravans! Giovedì 8 maggio al Fanfulla al Pigneto
EA at Berlin History Campus
European Alternatives is delighted to be part of the History Campus Berlin marking the remembrance of the First World War
Launch Manifesto Shaping Europe through Culture
Investing in art, culture and heritage contribute to a sustainable, entrepreneurial and democratic Europe. For the European Parliament elections, European Alternatives, together with the European Cultural Foundation, Kunsten ’92 and other Dutch cultural organisations, presents the manifesto “Voor Europa, Door Cultuur.” We are asking the future Dutch Euro parliamentarians to contribute to a Europe where culture is at its heart. The manifesto has three main themes that are essential for culture to flourish so that all of Europe can flourish. Develop Talent While youth unemployment is rising many young creatives leave Europe for China or Brazil where they have more opportunities. On the other hand it is difficult for artists from outside the EU to get a permit to work here. Bureaucracy should be diminished so that it easier for artists, cultural professionals and museum collections to move around. We should further strengthen the Creative Europe program by adding better education and opportunities for talented people. Places of experiment should get better connected to renowned institutes that are competitive on an international level. Creative industry and entrepreneurship Despite scientific evidence that the creative industry contributes to economic growth and employment, this is not acknowledged in policy. The European Commission and Parliament should encourage regions and member states to implement the recommendations of these studies. Intellectual property should be better protected. Additionally we should invest in researching new business models. Culture should be part of foreign policy to enforce our presence internationally, as a way of “soft power.” Democracy Democracy and freedom of expression are fundamental values within the European Union. While there is a democratic deficit on national and European levels, artist are initiating community-building projects that experiment with participation and inclusion. The EU should include artists more in policy making and reinventing the decision making process. Also our demand for a new directive to protect media pluralism is in this manifesto. Investments in the digital agenda and open data strengthen our open democracies. European Alternatives is partner of the We are more campaign . As part of this campaign the Dutch partners present this manifesto to urge Dutch MEPs to press for a strong policy on culture. Related events The Manifesto was presented at the festival for European pop music Eurosonic Noorderslag on Thursday January 16. The manifesto is available here in English Debate on May 15 in The Hague, in collaboration with Prodemos. One page advert on May 9 in the national newspapers ‘NRC Handelsblad and NRC Next
Entretien avec Igor Štiks
Traduit par Stéphane Prunet Navas Entretien réalisé par Thomas Giourgas Igor Štiks est écrivain, activiste et chercheur à l’Université d’Édimbourg où il oeuvre pour la citoyenneté, le dissentiment et la créativité. Originaire de Sarajevo et actuellement installé à Édimbourg, Igor a également vécu au Zagreb, à Paris, à Chicago et à Belgrade. Ses articles et ses commentaires paraissent souvent dans les journaux The Guardian et Open Democracy. Aux côtés de Srecko Horvat, il a été le co-organisateur du Festival Subversive au Zagreb, l’un des rassemblements les plus importants d’Europe. Avec Horvat, il a édité son prochain recueil « Bienvenue dans le désert du post-socialisme : politique radicale au lendemain de la dissolution de la Yougoslavie (Verso, 2014) ». Il est aussi l’auteur de deux romans : Un château à Romagne et La chaise d’Elijah, lesquels ont remporté de nombreux prix et ont été traduits dans une douzaine de langues européennes. Nous avons discuté avec Igor au sujet des nouveaux mouvements progressistes en Europe et dans les Balkans, des influences mutuelles d’activisme, de littérature et de travaux universitaires. 1. Est-ce que votre activisme a une influence sur votre travail de recherche universitaire et si oui, de quelle manière ? Il y a une interconnexion en ce qui concerne ce que je fais, entre mon intérêt théorique, mon travail de recherche universitaire et mon activisme. L’activisme, c’est quelque chose qui peut être perçu comme un engagement social qui, en même temps, se trouve être votre terrain de travail. C’est l’endroit où vous rencontrez des gens, où vous écoutez les idées de chacun et où vous vivez des expériences qui influenceront vos réflexions théoriques ou vos conclusions. Par exemple, j’oeuvre pour la citoyenneté. Vous pouvez bien sûr aborder le thème depuis une dimension purement juridique. Où alors, vous pouvez essayer d’examiner les effets de l’inclusion et de l’exclusion au sein d’une société déterminée. Cependant, si vous souhaitez explorer la dimension active de la citoyenneté ou de la participation des citoyens, vous devez alors vous rendre sur le terrain et vous mêler à ces citoyens actifs et activistes. Et je suis certain que vous serez tous d’accord si je dis que la citoyenneté active ne devrait pas être réduite au vote. Et ce que j’appelle citoyenneté activiste (pour reprendre le terme utilisé par Engin Isin), c’est le terrain où nous allons au-delà de ce qui est légalement prescrit et défini comme espaces pour les citoyens actifs. C’est l’endroit où nous ouvrons de nouveaux espaces. Parfois, nous allons à l’encontre de la légalité, de la loi ou des règles en vigueur, mais nous le faisons au nom de la légitimité. En ouvrant ces nouveaux espaces, nous ouvrons également un espace pour de nouvelles expériences démocratiques, et pour l’émergence d’un nouveau sujet politique. Il y a peu de chance que nous puissions créer des sujets politiques réellement nouveaux – cela dépend toujours des changements sociaux qui existent déjà – dans la limite de ce qui est réglementé, prescrit et légal. Cependant, il y a un toujours un risque lorsqu’on défi la loi, et il existe de nombreux mauvais exemples d’y parvenir. Parfois les gens disent : “Les représentants d’extrême-droite ne vont-ils pas eux aussi à l’encontre de la loi comme vous le faites ?”. Cependant, ici je ferais une énorme distinction entre ce que nous faisons et ce que les extrémistes de droite ont l’habitude de faire : les extrémistes de droite n’ouvrent jamais de nouveaux espaces pour tous. Ils excluent – l’exclusion étant leur moment constitutif -, ils s’organisent de manière hiérarchique car l’ouverture et l’horizontalité détruiraient leur objectif de ne représenter qu’un groupe. En faisant cela, ils ne contribuent pas à l’émancipation qui doit être universelle, et je crois que le moment émancipateur est indispensable pour la définition de citoyenneté activiste et progressive. 2. Ce point a un lien direct avec ce que vous avez déclaré dans le passé : “nous devons écouter les revendications de la rue”. Mais quel est le principe selon lequel l’activisme de gauche et l’activisme de gauche extralégal acquièrent de la légitimité ? Le premier constitue certainement une démocratie authentique. Si nous admettons que la vrai démocratie n’existe que lorsque nous sommes réellement responsables, alors nous pourrions probablement nous aussi être d’accord sur le fait que ce que nous avons aujourd’hui, une démocratie électorale et libérale, n’est pas une démocratie réelle. Et c’est un processus qui est en cours. Et nous nous engageons dans ce processus désirant accepter les risques de ce dernier, mais nous sommes également déterminés à ce que la démocratie ne cesse d’exister. Elle a toujours tendance à se démocratiser davantage. Voilà quel est le véritable programme gauchiste. D’autre part, on trouve l’égalité sociale. Il est impossible de mettre en place une démocratie réelle sans égalité de conditions socioéconomiques de tous les participants à la démocratie. C’est donc ce qui rend le programme gauchiste et la gauche différents de tous les autres programmes idéologiques tel que le libéralisme. Le Libéralisme Contemporain aborde l’égalité en matière de procédure et de juridiction et ne s’attaque pas aux inégalités socioéconomiques, qui déstabilisent l’égalité en matière de procédure et de juridiction. Et, bien évidemment, sans parler du fait que plus vous vous dirigez vers la droite, moins il y aura de démocratie et d’égalité. – Par conséquent, est-ce bien une approche égalitaire que vous appuyez ? Oui, sans aucun doute. Il s’agit de l’égalité de participation et de l’égalité de condition socioéconomique. 3. En Grèce, de nos jours, parallèlement à la montée en puissance de l’Aube dorée, il y a comme un parfum de racisme et de xénophobie dans l’air. Quel est le rôle des écrivains et de la littérature dans ce contexte, et pensez-vous que la littérature puisse avoir une contribution curative ? À vrai dire, vous me posez là une question qui porte sur ma troisième activité, celle d’écrivain. Les écrivains et leurs oeuvres de fiction peuvent-ils donc nous aider à mieux comprendre la situation ? C’est l’éternelle question qui tourne autour du rôle des écrivains…
Interview with Igor Štiks
Interview by Thomas Giourgas Igor Štiks is a writer, activist and researcher at the University of Edinburgh where he works on citizenship, dissent and creativity. Originally from Sarajevo and presently settled in Edinburgh, Igor also lived in Zagreb, Paris, Chicago and Belgrade. His articles and comments often appear in The Guardian and Open Democracy. Together with Srecko Horvat, he was co-organiser of the Subversive Festival in Zagreb, one of the major activists’ gatherings in Europe. With Horvat he edited the forthcoming collection Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics after Yugoslavia (Verso, 2014). He is also the author of two novels, A Castle in Romagna and Elijah’s Chair which have won numerous awards and have been translated into a dozen European languages. We talked with Igor about new progressive movements in Europe and the Balkans as well as about mutual influences of activism, literature and academic work. 1. Does your activism influence your academic work and in which way? There is an interconnection in what I do between my theoretical interest, my academic work and my activism. Activism is something that could be seen as a social engagement that is at the same time your fieldwork. This is where you meet people, you listen to different ideas and where you experience things that will influence your theoretical thinking or your conclusions. For example, I work on citizenship. Of course you can approach it from a purely legal dimension. Or, you can try to examine the effects of inclusion and exclusion in a certain society. But, if you want to explore the active dimension of citizenship, citizens’ participation then you have to go to the field, you have to go among these active and activist citizens. And I’m sure you would all agree that active citizenship should not be reduced to voting. And certainly, something that I call by activist citizenship (to borrow from Engin Isin) is this field where we go beyond what is legally prescribed and defined as spaces for active citizens. This is where we open new spaces. Sometimes we go against legality, or against laws and rules in practice, but we do it in the name of legitimacy, and by opening these new spaces we are opening also a space for new democratic experiences and also for the emergence of a new political subject. There is little chance we can create truly new political subjects—that always correspond to already existing social changes—within the limits of what is regulated, prescribed and legalized. However, there is always a risk when challenging the law and there are many bad examples of doing this. Sometimes people will say: ‘Are not the extreme right-wingers also going against the law as you do?’ However, here I would make a huge distinction between what we do and what right-wing extremists do: Right-wing extremists never open up spaces for everybody. They always exclude—the exclusion being their constitutive moment–, they organize hierarchically because openness and horizontality would defeat their purpose of representing only one group, and certainly what they do is thus not contributing to emancipation that must be universal. And I think that the emancipatory moment is crucial for the definition of progressive activist citizenship. 2. This point is very relevant to what you’ve stated in the past: ‘’we have to listen to what the street has to say’’. But, what’s the principle on which leftist activism and extra-legal leftist activism gains political legitimacy? One is certainly genuine democracy. If we agree that true democracy is where people actually are in charge, then, we would probably also agree that what we have today, liberal electoral democracy, is not a real democracy. So what the left-wing alternative proposes is the ‘democratization of democracy’. And this is an ongoing process. And we engage in this process willing to accept the risks of this process but also absolutely determined that democracy never ends. It always gets to be democratized more. This is the true leftist agenda. On the other hand, there is social equality. We cannot have true democracy without equality of socioeconomic conditions of all participating in democracy. So, this is what makes leftist agenda and the left different from all other ideological programmes such as liberalism. Contemporary Liberalism deals with procedural and legal equality and does not tackle socioeconomic inequalities, which in turn undermine both procedural and legal equality. And, of course, not to mention that the more you move towards the right wing the less democracy and equality you get. -Therefore, is it an egalitarian approach that you endorse? Yes, definitely. It is about equality in participation and about equality in socioeconomic condition. 3. In Greece, nowadays, along with the rise of Golden Dawn, there is an air of racism and xenophobia. What is the role of writers and literature in this context and do you believe that literature can have a curative contribution? Well, now you are questioning me on my third activity, that of a writer. So, can writers with their fictional works help us understand better the situation? That’s an old question about the role of writers as activists and their active participation in society. I come from a part of the Balkans where we experienced all the bad consequences of nationalism which are almost always coupled with conservativism and right wing policies. Now, many writers that have declared themselves as “fathers of the nation” are responsible for immense tragedies that happened in former Yugoslavia. I would be suspicious of writers who claim to be the voice of the people. Luckily we do not live in 19th century where they are going to express the “interests” of their “people” and to create a nation. We should always be suspicious of everybody who has these grandiose claims to define the “soul” of the nation, or all these obscure notions for which people are often ready to die. However, we should engage in critical questioning why this is happening and why these people have a voice and why it is important. Why nationalism now,…
Le elezioni e tutto ciò che segue
Il prossimo Parlamento Europeo deve diventare il perno di una nuova struttura democratica per l’Europa.
The elections and everything after
The new European parliament must become the lynchpin of a new democratic structure for Europe.
Les élections et tout ce qui suit
Niccolo Milanese Traduit par Karine Ricou Il ne fait aucun doute que le Parlement européen joue un rôle important et unique dans le système de démocratie européenne. L’argument stipulant que le Parlement n’est pas pertinent n’est plus crédible : depuis l’adoption du Traité de Lisbonne, le Parlement détient la codécision, avec le Conseil européen, sur la plupart des domaines d’élaboration de politiques européenne. De plus, dans certains domaines , le Parlement a joué un rôle unique dans la défense des droits des citoyens , là où aucun autre parlement dans le monde ne l’a fait : en ajoutant des clauses sur les droits fondamentaux, dans l’accord SWIFT avec les États-Unis, sur le partage des informations bancaires, puis en rejetant le Traité ACAC sur les droits de propriété intellectuelle, le Parlement a pris, dans sa dernière législature, des mesures qu’aucun Parlement national ne voulait prendre et qui a eu des conséquences mondiales. Dans d’autres domaines sous sa responsabilité, le dernier Parlement a été amèrement décevant : en acceptant un budget européen mal structuré par exemple, réduit pour la première fois dans l’histoire européenne, le Parlement a totalement échoué dans l’utilisation de son pouvoir à résister aux intérêts nationaux rivaux du Conseil pour le bénéfice du bien commun européen. Là encore, le Parlement n’a pas été non pertinent, il a simplement échoué dans l’utilisation de son pouvoir et une majorité différente pourra agir différemment à l’avenir. Au-delà de la question de bien exercer ou pas ses pouvoirs formels existants, le Parlement sortant a échoué dans la protection de la démocratie au sein de l’Union européenne. Dans ce contexte de plus grande crise économique et sociale faisant face à l’Europe ces 60 dernières années, le Conseil européen – et plus particulièrement les responsables les plus puissants de gouvernement à ce Conseil – a pu dominer à la fois le programme public et législatif d’une façon qui a non seulement ébranlé le principe constitutionnel stipulant que la Commission devrait avoir le monopole sur l’initiative législative comme sur la garantie de l’intérêt commun européen, mais qui a mené à la réapparition de l’idée de concurrence entre les nations dans l’opinion publique européenne, et qui a mené à de mauvaises décisions politiques qui ont miné la confiance publique dans la politique et envers les politiciens en général. Urgence Institutionnalisée : la nécessité d’un nouvel accord constitutionnel en commençant par le Parlement En luttant contre la crise économique, les institutions européennes ont créé une structure qui est maintenant fortement antidémocratique, dans laquelle des décisions cruciales, concernant l’avenir économique des pays, sont prises en dehors de toute visibilité publique, et dans laquelle l’austérité et la tutelle des pays en déficit économique sont presque intégrées dans un système qui n’a aucun accord commun sur les budgets pour l’investissement ou les transferts fiscaux : une part de responsabilité d’une telle situation doit être attribuée au Parlement qui serait l’endroit naturel pour qu’une telle délibération ait lieu. C’est en ayant ceci à l’esprit qu’il n’est pas peu raisonnable pour quelques commentateurs de se plaindre du fait que dans ce contexte de « révolution venant d’en haut » le Parlement européen peut prétendre être l’institution élue de façon démocratique dans les structures européennes, mais en réalité il a agi comme une sorte de ‘ halo démocratique ‘ pour un système aux tendances profondément antidémocratiques. L’exigence d’un nouvel accord constitutionnel, qui met la démocratie au cœur de la prise de décisions européenne, doit être un impératif du nouveau Parlement pour rétablir sa crédibilité. Les parlementaires européens peuvent rejeter la faute sur une Commission européenne fragile, mais le Parlement a aussi comme responsabilité de demander des comptes à la Commission, et il a, en effet, approuvé la nomination des Commissaires après les audiences d’examen. Cette fois-ci nous pouvons espérer que les relations entre le Parlement, la Commission et le Conseil seront légèrement différentes si un des “Spitzenkandidats” présentés par les groupements politiques pour la présidence de la Commission est nommé – mais après tout, les différents partis politiques auraient pu proposer des candidats comme à ces dernières élections s’ils avaient voulu, c’est juste que les Socialistes ont décidé de ne pas le faire pour respecter un accord avec le PPE stipulant que Martin Schulz deviendrait le Président du Parlement et que les Verts se sont présentés avec une liste ‘non à Barroso’ qui était vouée à l’échec en l’absence d’ autres candidats déclarés. Nous pouvons espérer et exiger que la publicité autour de la procédure évite cette fois les accords secrets qui saperont d’avantage la confiance publique envers les institutions. La crise de confiance : l’Europe devrait être au premier rang du rétablissement de la confiance dans la politique La question de la confiance envers les institutions est cruciale dans la conjecture historique actuelle et la façon dont elle est traitée par les leaders politiques façonnera l’époque à venir en Europe soit dans un sens démocratique soit dans un sens totalitaire. Les sondages d’Eurobaromètre publiés en avril 2013 montrent que la confiance envers les institutions européennes a chuté à un niveau historiquement bas : baisse de 57 % en 2007 à 31 % aujourd’hui. Ce qui attire systématiquement moins l’attention est que la confiance envers les gouvernements nationaux et les Parlements a systématiquement été plus basse que la confiance envers les institutions de l’Union européenne durant la dernière décennie et que maintenant 25 % font confiance aux Parlements nationaux, de 23 % aux gouvernements nationaux. Le taux de participation aux élections européennes de cette semaine sera sans doute historiquement bas, mais la tendance est la même aux élections nationales. Ce ne sont pas de nouvelles histoires sur les institutions européennes, mais une étape dans l’histoire de la démocratie en Europe d’une façon générale. Les statistiques peuvent même être lues de façon à suggérer que les institutions européennes sont mieux placées que les institutions nationales pour commencer à répondre à cette crise. Il vaut mieux être prudent avec les statistiques sur la confiance envers les institutions. Le fait que les citoyens européens pourraient être critiques et méfiants envers…
Alternatives Européennes au “History Campus” de Berlin
Traduit par Anna Grousson Alternatives Européennes est heureuse de participer au « History Campus » de Berlin, organisé par l’Agence fédérale allemande pour l’éducation civique (BPB), avec laquelle notre organisation a déjà collaboré à de nombreuses reprises. Alternatives Européennes tiendra un stand sur le Campus pour présenter notamment l’organisation et son domaine d’action. Pour en savoir plus sur le « History Campus » de Berlin « La Première Guerre mondiale, qu’est-ce que cela représente pour moi ? » Peut-être vous poserez-vous cette question plus souvent en 2014, année du centenaire du début de la « Grande Guerre », ainsi surnommée dans de nombreux pays européens. Des musées organiseront des expositions temporaires ; des chaînes de télévision diffuseront des documentaires et films ; d’innombrables blogs et tweets apparaîtront sur Internet ; des scientifiques et autres spécialistes feront des recherches, publieront et échangeront autour de cette thématique. Et vous, que ferez-vous ? Qu’attendre du « History Campus »? Quelques 500 jeunes venus de toute l’Europe, intéressés par le sujet, se réuniront du 7 au 11 mai 2014 au Théâtre Maxim Gorki, situé dans le centre-ville de Berlin. Lors de cette manifestation, vous découvrirez la relation entre l’année 1914 et l’année 2014 et l’impact que la mémoire de la Première Guerre mondiale peut avoir sur chacun d’entre nous cent ans après. Que représente en fait le mot « mémoire » et que signifie-t-il pour chacun d’entre nous et pour l’Europe entière ? Qu’est-ce encore que la paix ? D’où vient-elle ? Comment la maintenir ? N’hésitez pas à venir participer, poser vos questions et trouver des réponses avec d’autres jeunes citoyens européens ! Lors des ateliers organisés dans le cadre de cet événement, vous aurez l’occasion d’explorer et d’échanger sur le sujet, de tourner des films et de travailler la bande-son, d’interpréter des rôles et de jouer devant un public, de rédiger et de présenter des scénarios, et beaucoup plus encore. Aux ateliers s’ajoutent un large éventail d’activités qui attireront votre attention sur des faits peu connus liés à l’histoire ou à l’actualité. Ceci inclut notamment un programme culturel varié comprenant des spectacles, des concerts, des expositions, des représentations théâtrales et des lectures, une découverte à thème de la ville de Berlin, etc. Tout ceci se déroulera dans une ambiance conviviale, propice aux échanges entre jeunes européens aux idées intéressantes !
Come to your senses
How do we experience a space like a market? The market is part of our everyday reality, but how often do we reflect on what we think, feel, do, say, see, hear, eat, drink or buy here? What does this space really mean to us? Working with local groups and market traders, we quickly realised that we should make it playful to make it social and encourage movement around the market. So we came up with the concept of a treasure hunt. The treasure hunt uses a mission-based approach where people could pick and mix different activities from the prize-based “spot the smile” to “pick me up” tasks to the more ethnographic forms of participation from “I wish this was” to “the future I choose” – more on those later. We wanted a way to encourage for people to record their experiences, stories and emotions about the treasure hunt to connect up to our vision of visualising transnationalism. So we invited our good friends Mindful Maps and Auralab to facilitate an experiment which you can see much more of here. Emily & Laura used tags to colour code emotions helping engage the public even more. Joining up the dots, in Cluj and Prague, workshops looked at how we perceive the role of emotion and motion in public space. Barcelona, Berlin and London city groups visualised the student protests to rethink the university as part of the “commons”, foreshadowing the use of public spaces by the current “indignados” and ideas on how to reinvent the university like @univproject. We also invited people to visualise transnational fluxes through the lens of gender in Bologna and Cluj, of multisexuality in Lublin and of new media in Amsterdam. In Cardiff and Sofia, we focused on storytelling as network, creating a collective story using text messaging in the former and exploring the narratives which the city weaved into its fabric through a poetic treasure hunt for the latter. We feel what we see From the social market to emotional mapping via the treasure hunt, we didn’t just want people to immerse themselves in creative activity, but involve designers and visual illustrators too to make sense of the feelings the participants were experiencing through our festival. What “open air data” could you collect? How do you capture how people feel about your activities?
Revenez à la raison
Comment ressentons-nous un espace tel qu’un marché ? Les marchés font partie de notre réalité quotidienne, mais combien de fois réfléchissons-nous à ce que nous pensons, faisons, disons, voyons, entendons, mangeons, buvons ou achetons là ? Qu’est-ce que cet espace signifie vraiment pour nous ? En travaillant avec des groupes locaux et des marchands, nous nous sommes rapidement aperçus que nous devrions rendre le marché ludique afin de le rendre plus social et encourager le mouvement autour de celui-ci. C’est pourquoi nous en sommes venus à l’idée d’une chasse au trésor. La chasse au trésor utilise une approche basée sur des missions où les personnes peuvent choisir et combiner des activités différentes depuis des tâches avec récompenses telles que « détecte le sourire » et « ramasse-moi » jusqu’aux formes plus ethnographiques de participation telles que « j’aimerais que ce sois » et « le futur que je choisis » – vous en saurez plus à ce sujet plus tard. Nous voulions un moyen d’encourager les gens à noter leurs expériences, leurs histoires et leurs émotions concernant la chasse au trésor afin de pouvoir se brancher à notre vision de la visualisation du transnationalisme. C’est pourquoi nous avons invité nos amis Mindful Maps et Auralab afin de faciliter une expérience sur laquelle vous pouvez en apprendre plus ici. Emily et Laura ont utilisé des étiquettes pour créer un code couleur des émotions afin d’aider encore plus le public. En reliant les points, les ateliers à Cluj et à Pragueont étudié la façon dont nous percevons le rôle des émotions et des mouvements dans les espaces publiques. Les groupes situés à Barcelone, à Berlin et à Londres ont visualisé les protestations étudiantes afin de repenser l’université comme appartenant au « peuple », présageant l’utilisation des espaces publiques par les « indignados » du moment, et les idées sur la façon de réinventer l’université tel que @univproject. Nous avons aussi invité les gens à visualiser les flux transnationaux à travers la lentille des sexes à Bologne et à Cluj, de la multisexualité à Lublin, et des nouveaux medias à Amsterdam. A Cardiff et à Sofia, nous nous sommes concentrés sur la narration en tant que réseau, créant ainsi une histoire collective en utilisant les SMS à Cardiff et en explorant les narrations que la ville tissait dans sa toile à travers une une chasse au trésor poétique à Sofia. Nous ressentons ce que nous voyons. Du marché social à la cartographie émotionnelle grâce à la chasse au trésor, nous ne voulions pas seulement que les gens s’immergent dans une activité créatrice, mais associer aussi des designers et des illustrateurs afin de comprendre les sentiments que les participants ont ressenti lors de notre festival. Quelles “données à ciel ouvert” pourriez-vous collecter ? Comment capturez-vous ce que les gens pensent de vos activités ?
Mapping how solidarity travels
In my last post, I asked whether “behind the faces of the Europeans above, we should also look at their motivations for becoming social entrepreneurs and their behaviours as they go about doing business…and how these are affected by different factors (not only those experienced by the Coop)”. Because we shouldn’t expect only people involved in structures like cooperatives or social enterprises to be “cooperative” or “social”.That’s like saying we should only learn at school or be friendly with friends. Despite the black swans and incentivises pushing people to always be better than their colleagues, like the Call Centre below, there have always been networks of solidarity in the workplace from the match strike ladies tocreative communities in the workplace. Yet organisations either feel threatened by these behaviours or take them for granted (calculate how much unpaid time you give to your organisation). Some organisations have a deeply embedded culture where their employees want to help each other like @ideo. That’s why @harvardhbs went and mapped the “networks of help” in that organisation. Their CEO @tceb62 argues that they do this because “the more complex the problem (that their organisation is asked to tackle), the more help you need”. In other organisations, they figured out that “workers with the most connections often shared, which with an engineer named Harry…because he was particularly skilled…at asking good questions”. Who do you turn to when you are stuck with a problem? What is it about them that bring you to ask them for help? What could you learn from them in how you could help others? How could you apply this to your organisation? 1. Print out a high level structure chart of the departments in your organisation 2. Put a big black circle on the department where you are 3. Think of who are the three people you would ask first for help: Orange: If you were stuck with how to carry out a task Green: If you needed advice to help you make a decision Purple: If you were confused what your employer had asked you to do Red: If you needed someone to help you resolve a conflict Blue: If you were feeling down 4. Put a dot with the colour identified in the respective departments where those people work 5. Draw a line between yourself and each of them 6. Think how important that help is to you Draw a thin line if that person was away but you could solve the issue yourself Draw a thick line if that person was away and you couldn’t solve the issue yourself, but it wouldn’t affect your work Draw a very big line if that person was away and you couldn’t solve the issue yourself and this affected your work, stressed you out and was noticed by others 7. Ask each of those people you’ve identified to do the exercise themselves (using the paper you’ve just used). …You could also do this exercise if you were looking at how well people’s networks help them cope with making a living!
Making is connecting
Think back to when our prehistoric ancestors were trying to tackle two pretty systemic issues – how to avoid starving and freezing to death. All they knew was how to find more & bigger plants to eat and more & bigger caves to hide in. While they were desperately trying different ways to provision themselves, they came across a method that created heat to warm themselves up and make particular types of food digestible. It’s what we now know as…fire..They then realised they could use fire to improve tools to hunt and fix things…and the rest is history. But they would never have been able to find out how to make fire if they hadn’t started by rubbing two pieces of wood together to create friction. Returning to the 21st century, making has been given a new lease of life from “stitch and bitch parties” to “maker faires“. Through making, you’re connecting, whether it’s rubbing wood together to make fire or putting different components together to develop an app. As @davidgauntlett argues “making things shows us that we are powerful, creative agents – people who can really do things, things that other people can see, learn from, and enjoy. Making things is about transforming materials into something new, but it is also about transforming one’s own sense of self.” As @stanforddschool states “if a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand pictures. It’s a great way to have a different kind of conversation and break a big issue into smaller problems & opportunities“. Making outcomes So when thinking about a session that you’d like to run at #outcomefest, if you don’t feel like facilitating a discussion, here are some other ways that you can “make” outcomes happen. 1. If you like to be more visual, then you may want to sketch out the issues, like this systems map about personal data ownership & privacy 2. If you like to work with your hands, you may want to make a physical mockup of the issue, like this representation of a user journey from the Service Design Summer School by @commonground 3. If you like using technology, you may want to write some code to develop a solution to the issue, like this hack by @stef 4. If you like designing, you may want to design the layout and wireframes of a solution to the issue, like this prototype by @thesunshinebank
Putting a face on Europe’s social economy
People naturally look for characters they can identify with. They have the power to personalize the story and deepen our connection with a particular issue. We know that identifying different types of unmet needs and capabilities can make use of customer segmentation techniques. But how about combining the data to reveal new needs & patterns, could these help create personas or characters people could relate to? Our research created characters that help people put themselves in the shoes of the different situations that young Europeans face when trying to make a living. A report has just come out on the state of social economy across Europe. What’s fascinating is how the visualisation below helps bring to life the situation that social entrepreneurs face across each country. Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually. However, if we go deeper into the study, it argues that the social economy acts as a “buffer against the crisis”, based on the following assumptions, that the social economy: “is difficult to relocate because groups of people are anchored in places and more resistant in view of its financial reserves, which they cannot be distributed to the shareholders” What are the lessons the social economy should then learn from the Co-op Bank going into crisis and a member of Spain’s Mondragon co-op facing bankruptcy? “because of its particular rules (non-profit, allocation of surpluses, double nature) the social economy cannot be bought out because there is no market for its shares” Given that three quarters of the banking division of the Coop Group was bought out, does this mean there should be stricter rules to ensure social economies cannot be bought out, or greater power to their stakeholders to be able to hold them to account on how well they uphold their mission? From what I’ve seen of the growth of the social economy and even greater growth in the interest in using the term is that it has created a certain degree of complacency about how “social” actors of the social economy are. The article by the Secret Social Entrepeneur echoes this. We could also ask the cooperative movement about how “cooperative” its members are. By their very nature, the social economy depend on human behaviours and in particular their goodwill. Of course, humans are social animals, but their actions are influenced by a range of habits, attention & decisions, summarised by the RSA Social Brain Centre which affect our ability to be social and collaborative. Perhaps behind the faces of the Europeans above, we should also look at their motivations for becoming social entrepreneurs and their behaviours as they go about doing business…and how these are affected by different factors (not only those experienced by the Coop)
Transnational Dialogues launches in China!
We are organising a caravan with artists, curators, and cultural operators in China. Here is the program!
Surprise for Martin Schulz – Transeuropa Caravans
Transnational Dialogues lancia in Cina
Nel 2014 European Alternatives organizza Transnational Dialogues, un programma di scambio tra giovani artisti e rappresentanti dal mondo della cultura in Europa, Cina e Brasile. La prima attività si è svolta in Brasile lo scorso febbraio con dieci giorni di semirai, visite, workshop, eventi e attività culturali. Addesso siamo lanciando la seconda Carovana, in Cina. Visiteremmo, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, e Chongqing, e incontreremmo un varietà di organizzazioni, spazi sia formali che informali, artisti e ricercatori. Scopri piu sulla pagina Facebook e sul sito del progetto che a breve presenteranno i contentuti di multimedia prodottu duranti il viaggio. Programma: Seconda Carovana Cina Pechino (30/05–05/06/2014) Pechino – 30.05 Venerdi 10:00 Simposio “Occhio collettivo. Soggettività del gruppo e la sua estetica alla luce di differenze culturali” al Museo CAFA. 16:00-20:00 Incontro introduttivo a ZaJia Lab. I coordinatori introdurrano il programma della Carovana e i partecianti presenteranno loro stessi e i loro lavoro con presentazione di 5 minuti ciascuna. Sera cena – Opitati ad Transnational Dialogues Beijing – 31.05 Domenica 9:30-11:30 Visita al nuovo spazio indipendente Flickingforehead nella zona Hutong vicino a Gulou. Lo spazio e gestitio da CC, ex-membro dello HomeShop 14:00-17:30 Incontro al Comune di Caoba a Caochangdi con un gruppo di artisti, registi, curatori e lavoratori del mondo della cutlura per discutere l’arte e la cultura nella Cina contemporanea. Tra i pertecipanti ci sranno: He Chengyao, Chen Jing, Wang Jun, Megumi Shimizu, Qiao Xing Yue, Li Jie, Zhang Haitao, Lin Jingjing, Zhu Yu Sera Cena a Fodder Factory, Caochangdi Pechino – 01.06 Domenica 10:00 Visita alla Galleria Intelligentsia nella zona di Beixinqiao hutong. Incontro con i registi, architetti Cruz e Nathalie Frankowsky. Pomeriggio Visit alle zone di 798 e Caochangdi, gallerie commerciali e musei. Esibizioni e spazi da vedere: “Hans Van Dijk: 5000 Nomi” a UCCA (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art), “The World of Infinite Life” di Zeng Yang allo Space Station, “Of Disturbance” di James Richards allo Magician Space ,“Beginning of the world”di Kader Attia alla Galleria Continua, “Apollo Bangs Dionysus”di Qiu Xiaofei allo Pace Gallery , Long March in 798; “Orbit of Rock” di Zhang Ding alla Galleria di ShangArt,Three Shadows Photography Art Centre e“Das Kind Muss Raus” di nd Tobias Rehberger a Galerie Urs Meile in Caochangdi. 17:00-19:00 Proiezione di una selezione di video artistici curati da Video Bureau, il primo archivio di video-arte Cinese. Pechino – 02.06 Lunedi 9:30-12:30 Incontro al’ Instituto di Provocazione. Introduzione a IFP dal direttore Max Gerthel e incontro con gli artisti in residenza. Prioezione del film “Sayizheng Project” su interventi nello spazio pubblico di Tianji Zhao, seguito da una discussione. Pomeriggio Libero 21:00 Presentazione del “Programma di Sensibilit’ Sociale” di Alessandro Rolandi a ZaJia Lab. Pechino – 03.06 Martedi 10:00-12:00 Visita a Arrow Factory e incontro con uno dei fondatori Wang Wei. Arrow Factory è una dei piu recenti e piu importanti spazi indipendenti a Pechino creato da Rania Ho e Wang Wei Dalle 15:00 in poi Incontro a Action Space, Heiqiao Village, con un gruppo di artisti, curatori e intelletuali per discutere la tema del’arte e della cultura in Cina contemporanea. Tra i partecipanti ci saranno: Yu Bogong, Guazi Liu, Cai Dongong, Li Zhefeng, Wu Xiaojun (tbc). Mr Qianlong, fondatore di Action Space, organizzerà una guida dei sutdi artistici a Heiqiao. Seguito da cena e festa a Heiqiao Pechino – 04.06 Mercoledi 9:30-12:00 Visita a Lijuan Independent Art School. Incontro e discussione con artista Deng Dafei sul educazione artistica e prassi sociale in Cina. Seguito da pranzo 14:00-15:30 Proiezione del documentario dal “The Memory Project” e Q&A con il regista a ZaJia Lab 16:00-18:00 Incontro con Feng Hao e Li Qing, fodatori di Miji lab con Yan Jun, a ZaJia Lab. Introduzione e discussione sulla musica sperimentale e il sound-art di Pechino. Seguito da cena Sera Proiezioni di “Bumming a Pechino”, il primo documentario in Cina, di Wu Wenguang a ZaJia Lab. Q&A con il regista Chongqing – 05.06 Thursday – 09.06 Sunday Arrivo a Congqing – Qui il Programma Link Utili Seconda Carovana Cinese I partecipanti I coordinatori
No More of the Same
The results of the European elections send at least one clear message concerning Europe: things cannot continue as they have been and cannot continue as they are.
Global players : programme “résidence d’art AE” à Chongqing
We are happy to present an art residency in China organised as part of our project Transnational Dialogues
Global Players: EA art residency in Chongqing
We are happy to present an art residency in China organised as part of our project Transnational Dialogues
Le message est clair : la politique européenne doit changer
Les résultats des élections européennes nous ont envoyé au moins un message clair sur l’Europe : les choses ne peuvent pas continuer ainsi. De nombreux facteurs font que les débats sur les élections européennes demeurent en partie otages de la situation politique nationale, cependant les résultats élevés de l’extrême-droite dans les pays comme la France, le Royaume-Uni, la Grèce ou le Danemark, ceux des partis de gauche en Italie, en Grèce ou en Espagne, ainsi que le fort taux d’abstention partout en Europe, nous envoient des message bien européens. Ces messages convergent pour exiger le changement et le passage d’une Europe de l’austérité et de la politique ‘bricolée’ à huis clos, qui échappe au contrôle démocratique des citoyens et rend difficile la compréhension des décisions prises et de leurs conséquences. Le danger est que les dirigeants européens réunis au sein du Conseil choisissent de fermer les yeux et d’ignorer ces messages, se réconfortant avec le fait que les partis centristes soient restés majoritaires au Parlement européen et en Europe, et espérant que dans les élections nationales les électeurs continuent à choisir la stabilité et non les extrêmes. Cet aveuglement volontaire serait la stratégie la plus risquée, d’une arrogance qui continuera de révulser un nombre croissant d’électeurs, et le signe d’une élite qui n’a aucune considération des conséquences de leurs décisions sur la population à travers le continent. Certains des partis qui ont remporté les élections sont xénophobes et rétrogrades mais cela ne signifie pas que tous ceux qui ont voté pour eux le sont aussi: nombre de leurs électeurs sont tellement frustrés par la situation politique et sociale dans laquelle ils doivent vivre qu’ils choisissent de voter pour ceux qui semblent être en mesure de perturber le statu quo. Le week-end dernier, alors que les titres des journaux étaient dominés par la montée de l’extrême-droite, a aussi été marqué par deux attaques antisémites, l’une mortelle à Bruxelles, et une autre peu après près de Paris. La concomitance de ces deux attaques avec les élections n’est pas anodine et contribue à accroître la sensation de peur qui peut avoir le double effet d’étendre la menace envers les minorités et de contribuer à renforcer le message de l’extrême-droite. Ces événements devraient plutôt être entendus comme une sonnette d’alarme par les dirigeants politiques et par les citoyens : continuer avec la même vieille politique laisse la voie libre à ceux qui promeuvent la haine et ressuscitent les fantômes terrifiants du passé européen. Face à ces peurs, ce dont nous avons besoin sont des initiatives politiques et citoyennes qui proposent une vision positive et convaincante d’un destin européen partagé et qui démontrent – dans la vie quotidienne des citoyens et dans les institutions politiques qui structurent la société – que la solidarité, la liberté, la démocratie et l’égalité doivent devenir la véritable signification de l’Europe, en opposition à l’austérité, la peur ou la division. Le nouveau Parlement européen doit prendre l’initiative de demander un nouvel accord constitutionnel qui garantisse le fonctionnement démocratique de l’Union, et qui rende possible pour l’Union non pas d’imposer l’austérité mais d’investir, de garantir un niveau satisfaisant de protection sociale et de mettre en place une politique économique et sociale cohérente ainsi qu’une politique économique de la collaboration et non de la concurrence sur l’ensemble du continent. Le Parlement européen doit devenir un espace qui permette de reconstruire la confiance des citoyens dans la politique, en les impliquant directement dans les processus qui décident de leur avenir. Il est peu probable que les citoyens fassent confiance aux dirigeants politiques pour prendre ces initiatives seuls, c’est pourquoi les élus doivent faire preuve d’humilité et mettre en place en dehors des périodes électorales d’autres occasions de participation pour les citoyens. Le risque en cas inverse serait que leur mandat démocratique perde toute légitimité. Le premier test est à venir : le Parlement arrivera-t-il à faire choisir son candidat à la présidence de la Commission au Conseil européen ou reculera-t-il encore une fois sans parvenir à être le promoteur des principes d’une véritable démocratie européenne, et se faisant la proie d’offres d’arrière-boutique et de manipulations par les gouvernements nationaux? Il est difficile de dire si les partis politiques et élus sont en capacité de faire à cette lourde responsabilité. Les citoyens préoccupés par leur futur et celui de l’Europe doivent faire pression sur les représentants élus dans les cinq prochaines années, et doivent en même temps construire une Europe véritablement alternative, du bas vers le haut. Les événements du week-end dernier nous démontrent que nous devons continuer à travailler sans relâche. Alternatives européennes
Global Players: Residenza Artistica di EA a Chongqing
Come parte del progetto Transnational Dialogues, il quale promuove lo scambio tra giovani innovatori culturali dalla Cina, Europa e Brasile, siamo felici di annunciare una residenza artistica organizzata a Chongqing, Cina per il mese di giugno.
Non piu come prima
I risultati delle elezioni Europee mandano almeno un messaggio chiaro : in Europa le cose non possono andare avanti come sono andate fino ad ora, e non possono continuare come sono.
Transnational Dialogues: Programma di Chengdu e Chongqing
Nel 2014 European Alternatives organizza Transnational Dialogues, un programma di scambio tra giovani artisti e rappresentanti dal mondo della cultura in Europa, Cina e Brasile.
Les droits des migrants en Europe
Traduit par Guillaume Feuillette Le 17 octobre dernier s’est tenue au Parlement européen une conférence internationale intitulée « La banalisation de la rétention administrative des migrants et la libre circulation des citoyens : Place aux alternatives ». Organisée par Alternatives Européennes et la campagne italienne LasciateCIEntrare, elle a abordé le thème de la violation des droits de l’homme et les alternatives aux rétentions administratives. Elle a permis de réunir les représentants des gouvernements nationaux, le Parlement européen et des membres de la société civile pour trouver des moyens d’empêcher la détention des migrants, des demandeurs d’asile et des réfugiés au niveau européen. La conférence a étudié des objectifs à long terme, tels que des recommandations pour un rôle plus accru des institutions dans la pérennisation et la protection de la libre circulation des citoyens, y compris les ressortissants des pays tiers, ainsi que des pressions en faveur de l’adoption de législations européennes dans ce domaine, en établissant des standards précis de liberté de résidence des personnes et de libre circulation. La conférence d’octobre dernier au Parlement européen était une réponse à une demande d’audit soumise par la coalition de la Commission européenne sur la transposition de la Directive sur le retour (2008/115/EC) dans les États membres. La conférence a accueilli la ministre italienne de l’intégration, Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, les membres du Parlement européen Silvia Costa (S&D), Marie-Christine Vergiat (Gauche Unitaire Européenne et Gauche Verte Nordique), Hélène Flautre (Ls Verts/ALE), ainsi que des activistes et des universitaires de venus toute l’Europe. Ils ont émis des recommandations pour un changement radical dans les politiques migratoires européennes, qui causent systématiquement des tragédies comme celle de Lampedusa, largement reprises par les médias. Organisée dans un contexte particulièrement sensible, la conférence a mis en avant des alternatives à la banalisation des rétentions administratives des migrants et aux obstacles de la libre circulation des citoyens. Ces 5 dernières années, Alternatives européennes a oeuvré activement pour la défense des droits des migrants, pour la libre circulation des citoyens et contre les politiques de rétention, à travers la campagne Open Access Now, lancée en 2011 avec Migreurop et LasciateCIEntrare et d’autres associations. Ces deux campagnes réclament un accès des journalistes aux centres de détention des migrants et aux organisations de la société civile. Elles luttent également contre la suspension et les restrictions des droits civils européens de base, comme le droit à une information indépendante et libre. Alternatives Européennes a ainsi largement contribué à un changement de politique raisonné afin de mieux s’occuper de de l’ensemble des zones de migration avec les institutions européennes, ainsi que la mise en place de son programme à court terme intitulé : « Une nouvelle politique migratoire pour l’Europe ». Alternatives Européennes et ses partenaires ont également mené d’autres projets relatifs aux droits des migrants, comme les 3 ans d’études qui ont mené à la publication du Manifeste Citoyen, des campagnes de plaidoyer en faveur de la révision de la Directive sur le retour. Alternatives Européennes a joué un rôle de premier plan dans le groupe de travail sur l’Alliance pour l’année européenne des citoyens, notamment sur le thème la citoyenneté européenne et ouverte. Cela a fait suite à un processus d’investigation et de consultation visant à identifier les domaines de politique clés où les sollicitations européennes peuvent être soutenues, tout en construisant une collaboration plus forte entre les acteurs européens clés. Désormais, Alternatives européennes et les autres organisations de la campagne « Open Access Now » participent activement au processus soutenu par Melting Pot Europe et d’autres organisations depuis la tragédie de Lampedusa, aboutissant au développement d’une proposition plus compréhensive : « La Charte de Lampedusa » adoptée le 2 février 2014 et la quête pour une légitimité démocratique des politiques migratoires de l’UE. Anna Lodeserto Vous pourrez télécharger l’intégralité du catalogue sur : Festival TRANSEUROPA 2013.
I sopravvisuti del mar mediterraneo a Bruxelles
Le persone sopravissute “al viaggio per la vita” hanno deciso di raggiungere Bruxelles (Belgio), proprio mentre si riunisce il Consiglio Europeo il prossimo 26 e 27 giugno a Bruxelles per discutere di asilo e immigrazione.
Cittadinanza europea e politiche migratorie nel nuovo parlamento: uno sguardo dall’Est
Il prossimo 17 e 18 giugno EA sarà in Romania per prendere parte attiva ai lavori conclusivi del progetto di cittadinanza attiva e rafforzamento della società civile verso una maggiore integrazione europea nei paesi di recente accesso “Joint Citizen Action for a Stronger, Citizen-Friendly Union”
Lancements de Dialogues Transnationaux en Chine !
Traduit par Stéphane Prunet Navas Alternatives Européennes organise l’événement Dialogues Transnationaux en 2014, un programme d’échanges entre de jeunes artistes et des spécialistes de la culture en Europe, au Brésil, et en Chine. La première activité s’est déroulée au Brésil en février dernier, durant dix jours chargés de séminaires, visites, ateliers, événements et activités culturelles. Nous envoyons actuellement notre deuxième caravane, en direction de la Chine. Nous visiterons Guangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, et Chongqing, et nous ferons la connaissance d’un large réseau d’organisations, d’espaces formels et non-formels, ainsi que d’artistes à titre individuel et de chercheurs. Vous trouverez de plus amples informations sur la page facebook consacrée à ce sujet, et sur le site web qui inclura prochainement les contenus multimédias qui émaneront de ce voyage. Et voici la première partie du programme d’activités! La seconde partie sera prochainement publiée. Programme : Deuxième Caravane à Beijing, Chine (30/05–05/06/2014) Beijing – 30.05 Vendredi 10:00 Participation au symposium “Subjectivité de groupe et son esthétique dans le contexte des différences culturelles” au CAFA Museum. 16:00-20:00 Réunion d’introduction au ZaJia Lab. Les coordinateurs présenteront le programme « Caravan ». Les participants devront se présenter eux-mêmes et faire une présentation de leur travail d’une durée de 5 minutes. Soirée Dîner dans les alentours – Invitation de la part de Dialogues Transnationaux Beijing – 31.05 Samedi 9:30-11:30 Visite de Flickingforehead, un espace indépendant très récent dans la zone des hutongs près de Gulou. L’espace est encadré par CC, un ancien membre de HomeShop. 14:00-17:30 Rencontre avec un groupe d’artistes, cinéastes, conservateurs de musées et opérateurs culturels dans la Commune de Caoba à Caochangdi, afin de débattre sur l’art et la culture au sein de la Chine contemporaine. Parmi les participants figurent : He Chengyao, Chen Jing, Wang Jun, Megumi Shimizu, Qiao Wing Yue, Li Jie, Zhang Haitao, Lin Jingjing, Zhu Yu. Soirée Dîner à la Fodder Factory, à Caochandgi Beijing – 01.06 Dimanche 10:00 Visite de la Gallerie Intelligentsa située dans la zone du hutong de Beixingiao. Rencontre avec les directeurs et architectes Cruz et Nathalie Frankowsky. Après-midi Visite du quartier 798 ainsi que celui de Caochangdi : galeries d’art privées et musées. Expositions ou lieux à visiter : “Hans Van Dijk: 5000 Names” à UCCA (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art), “The World of Infinite Life” de Zeng Yang à Space Station, “Of Disturbance” de James Richards à Magician Space,, “Beginning of the world” de Kader Attia à Galleria Continua,“Apollo Bangs Dionysus” de Qiu Xiaofei au Pace Gallery, Long March in 798; “Orbit of Rock” de Zhang Ding à ShangArt Gallery, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre et Tobias Rehberger’s “Das Kind Muss Raus” à la Galerie Urs Meile à Caochangdi. 17:00-19:00 Projection d’une sélection d’oeuvres cinématographiques organisée par Video Bureau, les premières archives d’art cinématographique chinois, à Caochangdi. Beijing – 02.06 Lundi 9:30-12:30 Réunion à l’Institut pour la Provocation. Présentation de l’IFP par le directeur, Max Gerthel, et rencontre avec les artistes résidents. Visionnement d’un film dans le cadre du “Projet Sayizheng” qui traite des interventions dans l’espace public et qui est réalisé par Tianji Zhao, puis temps de débat. Suivi du déjeuner. Après-midi libre. 21:00 Présentation du “Programme de Sensibilité Sociale” par Alessandro Rolando au ZaJia Lab. Beijing – 03.06 Mardi 10:00-12:00 Visite de l’Arrow Factory et rencontre avec Wang Wei, l’un des fondateurs. L’Arrow Factory est l’un des premiers espaces indépendants ainsi que le plus important à Beijing. Il a été conçu par Rania Ho et Wang Wei. À partir de 15:00 Rencontre avec un groupe d’artistes, conservateurs de musées, et intellectuels locaux de Action Space, à Heigiao Village, afin d’organiser un débat sur le thème de l’art et de la culture dans la Chine contemporaine. Parmi les participants figurent : Yu Bogong, Guazi Liu, Cai Dongong, Li Zhefeng, Wu Xiaojun (à confirmer). M. Qianlong, fondateur d’Action Space, organisera une visite des ateliers des artistes de Heigiao. Suivie du dîner et d’une soirée à Heigiao. Beijing – 04.06 Mercredi 9:30-12:00 Visite de l’École d’Art Indépendante de Lijuan. Rencontre et débat avec l’artiste Deng Dafei sur le thème de l’éducation artistique et des pratiques sociales en Chine. Suivis du déjeuner. 14:00-15:30 Projection d’un documentaire réalisé par “The Memory Project” et session de questions-réponses au ZaJia Lab, avec la présence du réalisateur. 16:00-18:00 Rencontre avec Feng Hao et Li Qing, fondateurs du Miji lab aux côtés de Yan Jun. Présentation et débat sur la musique expérimentale et la scène musicale-artistique de Beijing. Suivis du dîner. Soirée Projection de “Bumming in Beijing” au ZaJua Lab, l’un des plus anciens documentaires en Chine, réalisé par Wu Wenguang. Session de questions-réponses avec la présence du directeur (à confirmer). Chongqing – 05.06 Jeudi – 09.06 Dimanche Arrivée à Chongqing – Programme à suivre très bientôt! Chongqing – 05.06 Jeudi Début d’après-midi Arrivée à Chongqing 15:00 – 18:00 Visite des installations du Projet « Copper Cash Factory ». Rencontre avec le directeur artistique Yang Shu, le commissaire d’exposition Ni Kun, le coordinateur local Chen Yizhong, et l’artiste Qian Lili. Présentation du projet et débat. 18:30 Apéritif et conversation sur le thème suivant : Congqing et Sichuan, entre art et politique. Entretien avec les artistes et commissaires d’exposition Yang Shu et Ni Kun. 20:00 Dîner dans le quartier artistique de Huangjueping – Invitation de la part d’Organhaus Chongqing – 06.06 Vendredi 10:00 Réunions informelles pour la production collective, la recherche individuelle et l’échange artistique à Organhaus. 13:00 Déjeuner 14:00-17:30 Visite du quartier artistique de Huangjueping et visite d’ateliers dans la communauté artistique de WangJiang. Artistes : Baolei & XiaoYang, Wang Haichuan, Yang Shu, Dong Xun, Qian Lili et Liu Weiwei, Yu Guo, ShanYang. Discussions informelles avec les artistes. 18:30 Dîner – Invitation de la part d’Organhaus 19:58 Train à destination de Chengdu Chengdu – 07.06 Samedi 10:00-12:00 Visite des institutions d’art locales : L-Art Gallery and MOCA, le musée d’art contemporain de Chengdu, dans le Tianfu Software Park. 13:30-14:30 Visite du « Chinese Art Treasury ». 14:30-18:00 Symposium “Pratiques de Conservation et Pratiques Artistiques dans les Villes en Développement de Chine,…
Seminario tematico “Immigrazione, Asilo, Cittadinanza” a conclusione del progetto “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa”
Sin dal 2012, European Alternatives partecipa al percorso di avvicinamento della società civile italiana alla preparazione del semestre di Presidenza del Consiglio dell’Unione europea (seconda metà del 2014), nel quadro del “trio” Italia-Lettonia-Lussemburgo. Tale percorso si è sviluppato nell’ambito del progetto denominato “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa” promosso dal Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo (CIME) in accordo con il Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Dipartimento Politiche Europee – Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, la Fondazione CARIPLO e in collaborazione con vari Centri studi e di ricerca in politica internazionale, organizzazioni sindacali, imprenditoriali e rappresentative delle autonomie locali, oltre alle principali piattaforme delle associazioni attive nel terzo settore, tra le quali European Alternatives – Alternative Europee. Quest’ultimo seminario si terrà alla Camera dei Deputati nella sua sede di Palazzo Marini e sarà dedicato ai temi dell’Immigrazione, asilo e cittadinanza, un fronte sul quale siamo da sempre impegnati tanto come network quanto attraverso le attività dei nostri membri in tutta Europa e le campagne specifiche coordinate a livello locale e transnazionale (tra cui “Open Access Now”, “LasciateCIEntrare” e il futuro sviluppo europeo de “L’Italia sono anch’Io” previsto per la seconda metà del 2014) secondo il programma che trovate QUI nel quale è incluso un nostro contributo insieme agli interventi di Pier Virgilio Dastoli (Presidente del Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo), Diego Loveri (Presidente di “Unità Democratica dei Giudici di Pace”), Marco Del Panta (Direttore centrale per le politiche migratorie e i visti presso il Ministero degli Affari Esteri), Stefania Dall’Oglio (Segretario Generale del Comitato Interministeriale per i Diritti Umani e Membro dell’Ufficio Legislativo presso il Ministero dell’Interno), Cesare Pinelli (Professore ordinario di Istituzioni di Diritto Pubblico presso l’Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”), Giandonato Caggiano (Professore ordinario di Diritto dell’Unione Europea presso l’Università degli Studi “Roma Tre”), Marco Borraccetti (Ricercatore di Diritto dell’Unione europea presso l’Università degli Studi di Bologna) e dell’Onorevole Khalid Chaouki (Commissione Affari Esteri e Comunitari). In parallelo, European Alternatives – Alternative Europee, data la specificità dei temi di lavoro dell’organizzazione,ha prontamente risposto all’invito della Commissione europea di proclamare il 2013 “Anno europeo dei cittadini” per sottolineare il 20esimo anniversario dell’introduzione della cittadinanza dell’Unione europea nel trattato di Maastricht. Sempre a partire dal 2012 abbiamo, infatti, iniziato a lavorare con le organizzazioni partner europee e con quelli attivi in Italia in particolare, partecipando poi dal mese di gennaio 2013 ai tre gruppi di lavoro dell’Alleanza europea per “l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013” (EYCA 2013, The European Year of Citizens Alliance) con propri rappresentanti così come al percorso dell’Alleanza italiana per “l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013” (EYCA Italia) coordinato sempre dal Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo (CIME) insieme all’Associazione delle Agenzie della Democrazia Locale (ALDA) e al Forum Nazionale del Terzo Settore. Poggiando sull’esperienza e le conoscenze dei suoi membri che continuamente operano perché la cittadinanza diventi una dimensione permanente e trasversale del processo decisionale, dell’attuazione e della valutazione delle politiche pubbliche europee, l’Alleanza italiana per “l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013” si riunisce periodicamente – anche dopo la conclusione formale della prima parte di questo percorso a Vilnius, Lituania, il 13 dicembre 2013 – con lo scopo di elaborare e avanzare proposte concrete volte a collocare la cittadinanza europea al centro dell’agenda politica dell’Unione Europea.Tale impegno da parte di tutte le organizzazioni coinvolte in questo percorso dal 2012 a oggi sarà confermato anche in occasione dell’evento pubblico finale che si terrà, invece, presso il CNEL il prossimo lunedì 24 febbraio, in orario pomeridiano, alla presenza del Ministro degli Affari Esteri Emma Bonino.Per la partecipazione al seminario tematico “Immigrazione, Asilo, Cittadinanza” in programma il prossimo mercoledì 12 febbraio dalle ore 17:00 alle ore 19:30 presso la Camera dei Deputati (Sala Mercede, via della Mercede 55, Roma) è necessario richiedere l’accredito entro lunedì 10 febbraio 2014 scrivendo al seguente indirizzo di posta elettronica: segreteria@movimentoeuropeo.it Per ulteriori informazioni e aggiornamenti su queste tematiche e sui percorsi “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa” e “Alleanza italiana per l’Anno europeo dei cittadini 2013 – EYCA Italia” potete invece scrivere a: a.lodeserto@euroalter.com oppure a: rome@euroalter.com Potete scaricare QUI il resoconto del seminario.
Séminaire thématique “Immigration, asile, citoyenneté” au terme du projet “Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa”
Depuis 2012, Alternatives Européennes participe au programme de rapprochement de la société civile italienne à la préparation du semestre de Présidence du Conseil de l’Union européenne (seconde moitié de l’année 2014), dans le cadre du « trio » Italie-Lettonie-Luxembourg. Ce parcours s’est développé dans le cadre du projet « Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa », promu par le Conseil italien du mouvement européen (CIME) en accord avec le Ministère des Affaires étrangères, le Département des politiques européennes – Présidence du Conseil des ministres, la fondation CARIPLO et en collaboration avec divers centres d’étude et de recherche en politique internationale, des organisations syndicales, entrepreneuriales et représentant les autorités locales, en plus des plateformes principales des associations actives dans le secteur tertiaire, dont Alternatives Européennes. Le séminaire en question se tiendra à la Chambre des députés, siégeant au Palazzo Marini, et sera consacré aux thèmes de l’immigration, l’asile et la citoyenneté, un front sur lequel nous nous sommes toujours engagés tant comme réseau que par l’activité de nos membre en Europe et les campagnes spécifiques coordonnées au niveau local et transnational (dont « Open Access Now », « LasciateCIEntrare », et le développement futur européen de « l’Italia sono anch’Io », prévu pour la seconde moitié de 2014). Le programme, que vous trouverez ICI, inclus notre contribution ainsi que les interventions de Pier Virgilio Dastoli (Président du Conseil italien du mouvement européen), Diego Loveri (Président de « Unità Democratica dei Giudici di Pace »), Marco Del Panta (Directeur central pour les politiques migratoires et visas au Ministère des Affaires étrangères), Stefania Dall’Oglio (Secrétaire général du Comité interministériel pour les droits humains et membre du bureau législatif au Ministère de l’Intérieur), Cesare Pinelli (Professeur d’Institutions de droit public à l’Université La Sapienza de Rome), Giandonato Caggiano (Professeur de droit de l’Union européenne à l’Université « Roma Tre »), Marco Borraccetti (Chercheur en droit de l’Union européenne à l’Université de Bologne) et du Ministre Khalid Chaouki (Commission des Affaires étrangères et Communautaires). En parallèle, étant donné la spécificité des domaines de travail de l’organisation, Alternatives Européennes a immédiatement répondu à l’invitation de la Commission européenne à proclamer l’année 2013 comme « L’année européenne des citoyens » afin de souligner le vingtième anniversaire de l’introduction de la citoyenneté de l’Union européenne dans le traité de Maastricht. Depuis 2012 toujours, nous avons commencé à travailler avec les organisations européennes partenaires et en particulier avec celles actives en Italie. Nous avons ensuite participé, depuis janvier 2013, à trois groupes de travail de l’Alliance européenne pour « L’année européenne des citoyens 2013 » (EYCA 2013, The European Year of Citizens Alliance) avec nos propres représentants, comme nous l’avions précédemment fait lors du parcours de l’Alliance italienne pour « L’année européenne des citoyens 2013 »(EYCA Italia), à nouveau coordonné par le Conseil italien du mouvement européen(CIME) avec l’Association des agences de la démocratie locale(ALDA) ainsi que le Forum national du secteur tertiaire. En s’appuyant sur l’expérience et les connaissances de ses membres qui œuvrent sans relâche pour que la citoyenneté devienne une dimension permanente et transversale du processus décisionnel, de la réalisation et de l’évaluation des politiques publiques européennes, l’Alliance italienne pour « L’année européenne des citoyens 2013 » se réunit périodiquement – également après la conclusion à Vilnius, le 13 décembre 2013, de la première partie de ce parcours- dans le but d’élaborer et d’avancer des propositions concrètes visant à placer la citoyenneté européenne au centre de l’agenda politique de l’Union européenne. L’engagement de toutes les organisations impliquées dans ce parcours de 2012 à aujourd’hui sera également confirmé à l’occasion de l’événement public de clôture qui se tiendra au CNEL le lundi 24 février, dans l’après-midi, en présence de la Ministre des Affaires étrangères, Emma Bonino. Pour participer au séminaire thématique « Immigration, asile, citoyenneté » prévu mercredi 12 février de 17h30 à 19h30 à la Chambre des Députés (Salle Mercede, via della Mercede 55, Rome) une demande d’accréditation doit être déposée avant le 10 février 2014 en envoyant un e-mail à l’adresse suivante : segreteria@movimentoeuropeo.itPour de plus amples informations et mises à jour sur ces thèmes et sur les parcours « Officina 2014 – L’Italia in Europa » et « Alliance italienne pour l’année européenne des citoyens 2013 – EYCA Italie » vous pouvez envoyer un e-mail à a.lodeserto@euroalter.comou rome@euroalter.com. .
Conférence ESCAPES “Transits, barrières, libertés: chercher refuge en Méditerranée et en Europe”
Traduit par Capucine Sergent EA participera à la première conférence officielle ESCAPES “Transits, barrières, libertés: chercher refuge en Méditerranée et en Europe” qui aura lieu à l’Université de Milan les 10 et 11 avril 2014. ESCAPES est un groupe de recherche basé à l’Université de Milan dont le but est d’enquêter sur les différent aspects de la migration, en prêtant une attention particulière aux expériences de ceux qui sont généralement classés dans la catégorie de la migration forcée : demandeurs d’asile, réfugiés et bénéficiaires de la protection subsidiaire, personnes déplacées à l’intérieur de leur propre pays, apatrides et autres personnes obligées de fuir ou de quitter leur pays ou le lieu de leur résidence habituel. Cet événement de deux jours démarrera par plusieurs réunions internationales, à commencer par une réunion de lancement dédiée à la Syrie et à la crise des réfugiés avec la participation des orateurs suivants: Guita Hourani (Université Notre Dame Lebanon), Madeline Garlick (Chef d’Unité – Soutien Politique et Juridique au bureau Européen UNHCR) et Roger Zetter (Centre d’Études sur les Réfugiés, Université d’Oxford). S’enchaînera alors une table ronde sur le système d’asile en Italieprésenté par Daniela Di Capua (Directrice de SPRAR et Chef du Pouvoir Délégué pour le Fond des Réfugiés Européens, Service Central du Système de Protection pour les Demandeurs d’Asile et les Réfugiés), Laura Cantarini (UNHCR, Commission Territoriale de Trapani), Roberto Guaglianone (Coordination Régional pour le Droit d’Asile en Lombardie) et Paola Ottaviano (Borderline Sicile). Le deuxième jour démarrera avec une séance plénière de Nando Sigona (Université de Birmingham) et Enrica Rigo (Université de Roma Tre), afin de discuter de l’exile et sa quête d’appartenance sous le tire de “La politique de la voix” et se terminera par 7 groupes différents (certains se dérouleront en même temps) dont plus de trente articles soumis par des spécialistes de différentes disciplines et acceptés en réponse à l’appel à communicationpublié en janvier 2014, y compris Anna Lodeserto, qui présentera à la conférence sa nouvelle œuvre “Murs et Limites de l’Europe: les défis et les limites de la liberté de mouvement” en tant que deuxième séance “Institutions des Frontières”. Un programme détaillé de la conférence est disponible ICI. La participation à la conférence est gratuite cependant l’enregistrementest obligatoire avant le 4 avril2014. Vous pouvez vous enregistrer en remplissant le formulaire disponible au lien suivant: http://users2.unimi.it/escapes/transiti-barriere-liberta/iscrizioni/ Page « événement » sur Facebook: “Transiti, barriere, libertà: cercare rifugio nel Mediterraneo e in Europa
Les limites des politiques migratoires de l’Union européenne et la défense des droits des migrants en Grèce
traduit par Guillaume Feuillette Demain, le 20 mars, nous participerons à un débat public intitulé « Politique migratoire de l’Union européenne : le recul des droits des migrants en Grèce ? », afin de discuter des politiques migratoires de l’UE et de déterminer quel est l’impact de l’augmentation de la sécurité aux frontières sur les droits de l’homme des migrants, en particulier en Grèce. Cet événement est soutenu par nos amis et partenaires sur plusieurs initiatives de la PICUM (Plateforme pour la coopération internationale sur les sans-papiers) organisation non gouvernementale (ONG) dont le but est de promouvoir le respect des droits de l’homme des migrants sans-papiers en établissant un lien direct au niveau local, où l’expérience des migrants sans-papiers est la plus visible, avec l’Europe, où les politiques les concernant sont mises en oeuvre. Les eurodéputés Nikos Chrysogelos (Groupe des Verts/Alliance libre européenne), Maria Eleni Koppa et Kriton Arsenis (Alliance progressiste des socialistes & démocrates), accueilleront l’événement au Parlement européen à Bruxelles, organisé par la PICUM en collaboration avecAmnesty International, le Conseil européen pour les réfugiés et les exilés (ECRE), le Réseau européen des femmes migrantes (REFM), le Réseau européen anti-pauvreté (EAPN)et Médecins du Monde (MdM), qui prennent part au projet: « Développer une action de l’UE contre les crimes et la violence à l’encontre des migrants en Grèce », financé par l’Open Society Foundationset la Commission européenne via le fond PROGRESS. Cette initiative est également soutenue par Aitima, le Forum grec des migrants, Asante, le Forum grec des réfugiés, ARSIS, Génération 2.0 REDet Syn-eiremos. L’objectif du débat est d’élaborer des recommandations et une stratégie cohérente pour améliorer les conditions de vie et de travail des migrants en travaillant sur les besoins d’intégration spécifiques et le cas de la Grèce. Un premier groupe, qui se concentrera sur la sécurité aux frontières et les droits fondamentaux, sera composé d’orateurs de la Commission européenne, de la Direction générale des Affaires intérieures, du bureau du Commissaire aux droits de l’homme du Conseil de l’Europe ainsi que d’organisations grecques. Un second groupe, composé de représentants de Médecins du monde Grèce, Human Rights Watch et de l’Agence des droits fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne, proposera des recommandations pour agir contre les violences à caractère racial et xénophobe, les crimes de haine, les techniques d’arrestation et de détection. Tous les participants sont invités à proposer des mesures concrètes que pourront prendre les membres du Parlement européen et d’autres institutions de l’UE afin d’améliorer la situation et le traitement des migrants en Grèce. Basées sur des travaux déterminants développés ces dernières années par des institutions clés des droits de l’homme, comme l’Agence des droits fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne (FRA)et le Conseil de l’Europe, les recommandations élaborées à partir de ce débat s’adresseront aux membres du Parlement européen mais également à la Commission européenne, d’autres institutions de l’UE et le Conseil européen, responsable du développement du successeur au Programme de Stockholm dans les domaines de la Justice et des Affaires intérieures, qui arrive à son terme en 2014. La défense des droits des migrants en Grèce est devenue particulièrement importante suite à la tragédie du 20 janvier 2014, lors du naufrage d’un bateau avec à son bord 28 migrants d’Afghanistan et de Syrie non loin de l’île orientale grecque de Farmakonisi, près de l’archipel du Dodécanèse dans la mer Égée, alors qu’il était remorqué par un navire des garde-côtes grecs. Plusieurs organisations internationales, comme ECRE et Pro Asyl, UNHCR et des témoins ont immédiatement signalé que les migrants tentant de passer la frontière entre l’UE et la Turquie sont systématiquement repoussés des eaux territoriales grecques ; des îles grecques ainsi que des territoires. Cette « tragédie de Farmakonisi » pourrait être un autre « renvoi » délibéré comme ceux auxquels s’adonnent régulièrement les autorités pour tenir à distance les embarcations de migrants. De telles tactiques sont en effet monnaie courante le long des frontières européennes, renforçant ainsi la « Forteresse Europe ». En décembre 2013, Amnesty International signalait que les autorités frontalières européennes et grecques empêchaient de manière systématique et brutale les personnes fuyant le conflit syrien d’entrer en Europe, en les laissant en pleine mer et en danger, en les prenant d’assaut et en détruisant ou en confisquant leurs effets personnels. Alternatives Européennes est et a toujours été pleinement engagée dans la défense des droits des migrants, et condamne dans le même temps toute forme de politique de renvoi, et autre opération similaire. Dans le passé, nous avons déjà eu l’occasion de participer à des initiatives spécifiques contre ces politiques telle que la campagne « Plus de renvois ! »lancée par ZaLab et Amnesty International en 2012. Le programme définitif du débat « Politique migratoire de l’Union européenne : le recul des droits des migrants en Grèce ? » organisé par le Parlement européen se trouve ICI. À l’issue du débat, les participants seront invités à prendre part à une action publique qui aura lieu à 13h à l’extérieur du Conseil (rond-point Schuman, près du parc Cinquantenaire), organisée par Amnesty International. Cette action sera un rappel de la dangereuse réalité vécue par bon nombre de personnes le long des côtes européennes. L’événement sera retransmis en direct par le Parlement européen. Vous pouvez suivre le débat sur Twitter : #MigrantsinGreece
Conférence international sur l’immigration au sein de l’Union européenne
TTraduit par Jessica Tsala Cette semaine, nous allons participer à la conférence internationale sur l’immigration du CDCDI, intitulée « Rethinking EU Immigration: legal developments, management and practices » Celle-ci est soutenue par le centre de recherche et d’information sur l’intégration des immigrés (Centru de Documentare și Cercetare în Domeniul Integrării Imigranților, CDCDI) et organisée par l’association roumaine pour la promotion de la santé (Asociaţia Română pentru Promovarea Sănătăţii, ARPS) en association avec SOROS Foundation Romania et se tiendra les 13 et 14 mars 2014 à Bucarest, Roumanie. L’intégration des immigrés représente-t-elle un défi majeur pour les états de l’UE ? Comment les gouvernements devraient-ils aborder les tendances migratoires européennes ? Voici les principales questions qui seront traitées par des spécialistes, des intervenants et des représentants d’ONG tout au long de la rencontre. Les acteurs politiques, les universitaires, les chercheurs et les décideurs portent un grand intérêt à l’immigration et à l’intégration. L’augmentation des migrations à destination et à l’intérieur d’une Union européenne déjà diversifiées, crée un besoin urgent de comprendre et d’expliquer le processus d’immigration, afin d’identifier les politiques d’intégration les plus appropriées. À la fois considérée comme un défi et comme une opportunité, l’immigration ne peut être gérée de manière efficace sans mesures d’intégration cohérentes. La crise économique et l’intérêt porté à l’état-nation de ces 5 dernières années ont poussé les gouvernements à revoir leurs politiques d’immigration, en réponse aux pressions publiques. Le cadre européen légal en matière de migration et d’asile a connu quelques changements importants au cours de l’année 2013. Dans quelle mesure, ces changements pourront améliorer les conditions de vie des immigrés et des populations locales des états membre ? Quels sont les risques, au niveau national, liés à la transposition de ladirective sur les procédures d’asile remaniée, tout en prenant en compte l’interminable conflit syrien ? La conférence a pour but d’examiner les implications politiques, économiques, légales et sociales dans l’EU, ainsi que le potentiel de développement de la migration pour les états membres et les régions, comme un tout. Au programme de la conférence, une trentaine d’intervenants est prévue. Ils font partie de différentes ONG et organisations de la société civile, ainsi que d’universités ou institutions telles que le Migration Policy Group, l’ université de Leyde, le Centre international pour le développement des politiques migratoires (ICMPD), l’université d’Amsterdam, l’université de l’Essex, le Centre de recherche sur la migration de l’université Varsovie, l’agence des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés (UNHCR), l’ONG britannique Migrants’ Rights Network, et l’Université de Genève, pour discuter des thèmes suivants : · Le transnationalisme, l’identité européenne et l’intégration en Europe; · Les modules de l‘intégration européenne; · Les défis de l’évaluation du degré d’intégration des immigrants; · Les recherches participatives sur la migration; · Les perspectives légales de l’immigration en Europe · Les centres de recherche sur la migration et leur rôle dans la gestion des flux migratoires; · Migration et développement. Début 2014, un appel à résumés a été lancé sur des thématiques qui abordent de suivant une approche interdisciplinaire les questions de dynamiques migratoires et de politiques d’intégration, ainsi que sur les contributions dans le domaine des actions de recherche, de l’analyse politique, mais aussi en termes de bonnes pratiques dans la gestion de la migration. Anna Lodeserto participera à la conférence pour présenter l’article avec lequel elle a été selectionnée : « Walls and Borders Ruling Europe in Times of Free Movement of Citizens(Une Europe dirigée par des murs et des frontières, à l’époque de la libre-circulation des citoyens) », celui-ci s’intéresse aux modèles de gouvernance reposant sur la libre-circulation à l’intérieur de l’UE, tout en suivant les dernières retouches apportées aux restrictions s’appliquant aux travailleurs bulgares et roumains, au 1er janvier 2014, dans le cadre des traités d’adhésion. Ce travail de recherche dresse aussi le tableau de la véritable situation socio-économique des migrants roumains et celui de l’approche « sécuritaire » qui est en train d’émerger en Bulgarie avec ce projet du gouvernement, de construction d’une barrière de barbelés le long des frontières avec turques. Ce qui conduit à réfléchir sur les questions liées à la consolidation de la « forteresse Europe » en temps de crise. Pour lire l’article dans son intégralité, cliquez ici :: “Walls and Borders Ruling Europe in Times of Free Movement of Citizens” Pour en savoir plus sur la conférence, vous pouvez écrire à conference@cdcdi.ro
From Spiders to Starfish: Hacking the Transnational
Spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider.
De quelle façon la politique fait participer les électeurs pour les élections européennes ?
Traduit par Capucine Sergent Nous devons tout d’abord comprendre la complexité et la diversité des situations et des besoins auxquels font face les différents types d’électeurs européens. Bien évidemment, les situations sont différentes en fonction de chaque nationalité. Jusqu’à récemment, il existait des restrictions pour les Roumains et les Bulgares qui n’avaient pas d’incidence sur les autres citoyens européens. Seulement pour la majorité des citoyens européens, la différence de leurs besoins et aspirations sera due à leur situation particulière, et non à leur nationalité. Un propriétaire italien d’une agence de recrutement qui fait payer les gens pour le privilège d’un stage non rémunéré connaîtra une existence au Royaume-Uni différente de celle des Italiens qui ont dû payer pour ce stage ! Souvent, les hommes politiques ont ciblé les électeurs européens sur la base de leur nationalité, que ce soit de manière positive ou négative. Puisque l’on parle des « Polonais qui travaillent dur », ils jouent le même jeu que ceux qui mentionnent les « Roumains fainéants ». Un article récent soulignait que “Le Royaume-Uni pouvait être pénalisé financièrement si des Roumains ou Bulgares sous-payés chassaient les Polonais qui ont des salaires plus élevés, ces derniers payant plus d’impôts“. Les partis politiques ont besoin de refléter la société dans laquelle ils vivent, mais ils doivent avant tout la comprendre. Voilà pourquoi nous avons travaillé avec des groupes venant de toute l’Europe, des grandes villes aux petits villages afin de mettre en lumière les enjeux qui sont importants pour eux localement et de les confronter à des problématiques sur des thème similaires que d’autres communautés considèrent importants… et de développer des idées qui pourraient fonctionner pour des gens aux besoins similaires. Nous avons ensuite collaboré avec des gens qui comprennent la loi européenne afin de faire des propositions qui pourraient fonctionner à un niveau européen. Nous développerons des campagnes sur ces propositions, par l’utilisation d’outils comme l’ICE, que nous faisons avec l’initiative sur les médias. “Il n’existe pas de société…” Afin que les hommes politiques essaient de comprendre comment les gens vivent, ils doivent venir dans les rues et ne pas tenter de s’adresser à Monsieur et Madame tout le monde. En effet, soit les hommes politiques ont trop regardé “Mad Men“, soit ils croient réellement que le meilleur moyen de gagner des votes est de croire que tout le monde veut être propriétaire d’une petite voiture trois portes et vivre à Swindon. Monsieur et Madame tout le monde n’existe pas, et cela ne reflète certainement pas la société. Nous avons étudié comment les situations des jeunes travailleurs affectent leur attitude vis-à-vis de la politique et de l’Europe. Du côté des “citoyens invisibles” qui sont au chômage et ne peuvent compter sur aucune aide de leurs amis ou famille. Ils se sentent accablés par leur situation de travail et en conséquent, se sentent exclus de la société. Certains s’en veulent et d’autres sont désillusionnés par le manque de compréhension de la société sur leur situation. Concernant la ” génération zombie “, qui va travailler toute la journée et n’a donc pas de temps d’être auprès de ses amis ou de sa famille. Un grand nombre est effrayé à l’idée de quoi faire pour changer leur situation, mais certains essaient tout en ignorant comment faire pour s’en sortir. Puisqu’ils sont tellement surchargés de travail, ils n’ont plus de temps ou d’énergie à consacrer à d’autres domaines de leur vie, y compris la politique, au point qu’ils semblent être apathiques. Ils pensent que les hommes politiques ne comprennent pas leur situation et sont indifférents à ce qui se passe autour d’eux, puisque la politique est uniquement centrée sur des enjeux sur le court terme et non sur les problèmes systémiques qu’ils vivent. Les “militants optimistes” ont un boulot stable et ont acheté leur propre maison et la plupart du temps, sont mariés. Ils essaient de satisfaire les attentes définies par leur éducation – comme obtenir une carrière stable, une maison, un couple et des enfants. Ils entrevoient la menace de la précarité qui se rapproche et économisent pour garantir leur stabilité et ainsi l’éviter. La satisfaction de la situation de leur travail se répercute sur d’autres domaines – profitant de ce que leur voisinage, ville et les services publics peuvent leur offrir. Ils pensent cependant que les hommes politiques en font suffisamment. Ils sont conscients des problèmes sociaux et bien qu’ils sachent que l’on rend l’Europe responsable de nombreuses choses, ils reconnaissent qu’elle apporte du soutien pour la jeune génération ; voilà pourquoi ils pensent qu’il faut s’unir autour de la même vision. Ceux ayant adopté le “mode de vie hacker” seront soit au chômage ou ne travailleront pas assez, bien que certains ont crée leur propre entreprise ou projet. Ils sont passés par différentes étapes pour faire face, au départ en se livrant à une réflexion critique sur leur situation puis en cherchant un moyen pour résister et être indépendant des pressions imposées par les modes de travail traditionnel. Ils se sentent incompris par les autres générations. Ils tentent de se montrer positifs pour changer leur environnement autant que possible grâce à l’élaboration de projets en passant par les réseaux. Même s’ils pensent que la façon actuelle de faire de la politique n’est plus pertinente pour eux, en particulier car cela protège les intérêts personnels, leur situation de travail les a politisés, jusqu’au point où ils encouragent les autres à se tenir au courant des problèmes et d’agir en conséquent. “La vision est l’art de voir ce qui est invisible aux autres” Nous savons donc que les institutions ont besoin de trouver des moyens de mieux comprendre le quotidien des gens qu’ils représentent. Voilà pourquoi nous avons développé « Caravanes Transeuropa » pour découvrir et amplifier ces voix non entendues et ces problèmes, et mettre en évidence les groupes invisibles et des solutions. En voyageant à travers des environnements différents – de la campagne à la ville, des villes clones aux villes fantômes, des stations balnéaires aux ghettos des centres-villes – nos caravanes veulent découvrir comment vous imaginez, décrétaient et exigeaient de nouvelles façons de vivre. Par le biais des groupes de rencontre qui utilisent des méthodes…
Telling stories about work and life
Living Library in Amsterdam: ‘I can tell you the story about how I make a living, and what I think about the concept of work’ the living book said, ‘Just pick a chapter’.
European Alternatives e la campagna Open Access Now a “No Border Fest”
EA parteciperà alla sesta edizione del “No Border Fest” che si terrà a Roma da venerdì 27 fino a domenica 29 giugno.
An Open Letter to Members of European Parliament
From today you, as a new representative of the European people, have the opportunity to turn a new page, make daring political choices and propose institutional changes that will bring the EU closer to its citizens.
EA à la journée euro-méditerranéenne sur les retours volontaires
Cette journée est organisée pour permettre aux participants d’engager des discussions et d’exprimer leurs opinions au sujet des pratiques de retour volontaire et des enjeux politiques, humanitaires et sociaux que soulèvent sa mise en pratique ainsi que les questionnements qui émergent de l’implication des associations dans ces politiques.
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Ouvertures de postes à AE
Traduit par Capucine Sergent Stage de chef de projet, basé à Berlin En travaillant dans le cadre de notre zone de travail sur la citoyenneté et la démocratie, vous aiderez à organiser un groupe d’activistes transeuropéens et une conférence publique fin octobre 2014 à Berlin. Il s’intègre dans le projet à l’échelle européenne, le Pacte des Citoyens, impliquant les organisations, les activistes et les groupes de citoyens dans 14 pays différents. Les tâches principales comportent le soutien du chef de projet dans les domaines suivants: l’organisation d’événements et de la logistique du groupe, la gestion du budget, la logistique, l’administration, rester en contact avec les partenaires et les intervenants, la presse et activité de communication. Voir le lien ici. Concepteur graphique, basé à Berlin – Expression d’intérêt Alternatives Européennes cherche un concepteur graphique ou une agence de design, idéalement basée à Berlin, pour aider au développement de son identité et ses outils de communication. Nous invitons les personnes intéressées ou les organisations à proposer leur portfolio pour être révisé. Les candidats présélectionnés seront contactés et invités à nous faire parvenir un devis. Voir le lien ici. Bénévoles en traduction et stages – Collaboration à distance Nous ne pourrions pas publier des contenus en anglais, italien, français (ainsi que d’autres langues) disponibles en ligne et sous format imprimé sans le travail dur de nos bénévoles transnationaux. Si vous pensez pouvoir nous aider à traduire et à transmettre le message au-delà des barrières linguistiques, ou si vous préférez effectuer un stage de traduction à nos côtés, il s’agit là de votre section ! Voir le lien ici. Stage d’administration – basé à Rome Alternatives Européennes propose un stage payé dans l’administration au bureau basé à Rome. Le stage permettra à un jeune diplômé de débuter une carrière dans l’administration, la gestion de projet de l’UE, la finance et la comptabilité. Voir le lien ici.
A call for the renewal of European democracy
Anti-democratic forces are gaining ground at many levels of European society. Now is the time for Europe to renew democracy and introduce participation, Niccolo Milanese and Peter Oomsels write.
Internship in Project Management
We have an opening in our Berlin office for the position of Project Management Assistant (Trainee).
Call for Graphic Designer
European Alternatives is looking for expressions of interest from graphic designers or a design agencies, ideally based in Berlin, to help with developing its corporate identity and communication tools.
Cerchiamo un grafico
Grafico/a, con sede a Berlino – Avviso per la raccolta di manifestazioni d’interesse European Alternatives è alla cerca di un grafico o di un’agenzia grafica, preferibilmente con sede a Berlino, per sviluppare la corporate identity e strumenti di comunicazione per l’organizzazione. I candidati selezionati saranno contattati per l’invio di un preventivo. Compiti e Responsabilità – aggiornare la corporate identity di European Alternatives (in base al logo attuale e identità di alcuni progetti); -layout delle pubblicazioni per produrre una identità per tutte le pubblicazioni EA (sia online che offline); – design di materiali di comunicazione (poster, biglietti, adesivi, flyer, etc.) su richiesta – lavoro nell’ambito web-design (potrebbe essere richiesto ad hoc). Competenze Richieste: – esperienza nell’ambito del design e nel lavoro con ONG / associazioni artistiche; -ottima conoscenza della lingua inglese; – capacità di lavorare in un ambiente flessibile e di attenersi a strette scadenze; – conoscenza di HTML, wordpress, django CMS costituisce un vantaggio – attenzione ai dettagli; – predisposizione al lavoro in un’ambiente multiculturale con agilità ed essere un self-starter. Scadenza: 1 agosto. Si accettano candidature solo in lingua inglese. Scrivete a info@euroalter.com con ‘Graphic Designer application’ come soggetto dell’email.
Diventa Traduttore per EA
Se tu sei interessato/a ad aiutarci a tradurre e a diffondere il messaggio oltre le barriere linguistice, o se sei interessato/a a svolgere uno stage con noi, questa è l’opportunità per te!
Internship for Administrative Assistant
European Alternatives offers a paid internship in Administration in its Rome office. The internship would benefit a young graduate looking to start a career in administration, EU project management, finance and book-keeping.
Offerta di stage retribuito in Amministrazione progetti
Alternative Europee offre un tirocinio remunerato in Amministrazione per l’ufficio di Roma, perfetto per giovani neo-laureati intenzionati ad intraprendere una carriera in amministrazione, management dei progetti europei, gestione finanziaria e contabilità.
EA joins #FreeMediaRace
The European Initiative for Media Pluralism is now entering its final month, and to up the stakes EA has entered the #FreeMediaRace
Una richiesta da rinnovamento della democrazia europea
In una prospettiva globale, la democrazia ha rappresentato il progetto politico di maggiore successo del XX secolo. Oggi, solo all’inizio del XXI secolo, il suo successo sembra andare scemando.
EA Partecipa a Immagini e Parole Migranti
EA Partecipa a Immagini e Parole Migranti, 23 Luglio, Isola Tiberina, Roma
Terragiusta. Campaign against the exploitation of migrant workers in agriculture
The Italian agricultural sector depends heavily on the presence of migrant workers, most of whom are exploited.
Open Letter to the people of Belgrade
The current proposal to revamp Belgrade’s waterfront, with a huge architectural project called ‘Belgrade on the water’, has international scholars and experts on urban development and planning concerned.
Sabir Maydan- The first Forum of Mediterranean Citizenship
A “square” open to public debate about democracy, citizenship and the future of the Mediterranean. “SABIRMaydan” forum wants to be a place of analysis, exchange and the shaping of a Mediterranean citizenship, toward a common destiny among the peoples of two shores.
Sabir Maydan: le premier forum de la citoyenneté méditerranéenne
Une “place” ouverte au débat public, pour discuter de démocratie, citoyenneté et avenir de la Méditerranée. Le forum “SABIRMaydan” veut donc être un espace d’analyse, échange et construction d’une citoyenneté méditerranéenne pour un destin commun entre les peuples des deux rives, et il souhaite devenir un rendez-vous annuel pour la citoyenneté active trans-méditerranénne.
Sabir Maydan: il primo forum della cittadinanza mediterranea
Una “piazza” aperta al dibattito pubblico, per discutere di democrazia, cittadinanza e futuro del Mediterraneo. Il forum SABIRMaydan vuole dunque essere un luogo di espressione, di confronto e di costruzione della cittadinanza mediterranea per un destino comune tra i popoli delle due rive, e vuole diventare un appuntamento annuale per la cittadinanza attiva trans-mediterranea.
Terragiusta. Campagna contro lo sfruttamento dei lavoratori migranti nell’agricoltura
Articolo di Giulia Bari, Medici per i Diritti Umani (MEDU) Traduzione di Roberto Carloni Il settore agricolo italiano dipende fortemente dalla presenza di lavoratori migranti, la maggior parte dei quali, in particolare nel Sud Italia, viene sfruttata. Guadagnano tra i 25 e i 30 euro al giorno, spesso non hanno un contratto di lavoro e, in molti casi, un “caporale” funge da intermediario con l’impresa. Inoltre, la maggior parte vive in baraccopoli, cascine abbandonate o tende, in cui le condizioni igieniche e di vita sono pessime. Il progetto Terragiusta, gestito da MEDU, intende intervenire con una clinica mobile nelle zone isolate lontane dai centri urbani e caratterizzate da una forte emarginazione. Lo scopo è quello di fornire sia assistenza medica che consulenze socio-legali e sanitarie ai lavoratori migranti. Inoltre, verrà svolta un’indagine al fine di valutare le loro condizioni di vita dal punto di vista sanitario, lavorativo e abitativo. Il primo intervento a medio termine è stato effettuato in Calabria (Piana di Gioia Tauro), dall’8 febbraio all’8 Aprile 2014, a causa delle allarmanti condizioni lavorative e di vita dei migranti durante il periodo invernale. Nell’arco di due mesi, il team di medici ha fornito sia consulenze socio-legali e sanitarie che assistenza medica a 260 migranti. La maggior parte dei pazienti erano giovani (l’80% aveva meno di 35 anni) e provenivano per lo più dal Burkina Faso, dal Mali, dal Ghana, dalla Costa d’Avorio e dal Senegal. Inoltre, nel 70% dei casi, i migranti possedevano un regolare permesso di soggiorno e quasi la metà (45%) aveva diritto allo status di protezione internazionale o “umanitaria”. Il 95% ha vissuto in Italia per più di due anni e il 68% possiede una conoscenza sufficiente o buona della lingua italiana. L’89% non ha lavorato con un contratto in regola e il 64% ha percepito, in media, una paga pari o inferiore ai 25 € al giorno. Quasi la metà dei migranti (46%) non lavorava per più di tre giorni a settimana, facendo turni di sette o otto ore. Tuttavia, un individuo su quattro ha dichiarato di aver lavorato nove o dieci ore al giorno. Un terzo dei pazienti che sono stati esaminati dai medici di MEDU consumava solo due pasti al giorno, mentre la maggior parte delle malattie diagnosticate all’interno di una popolazione giovane e sostanzialmente in buona salute è dovuta alle pessime condizioni abitative, igienico-sanitarie e lavorative. Tutti i migranti intervistati possedevano dei guanti da utilizzare come dispositivo di sicurezza sul posto di lavoro, mentre solo il 29% aveva scarpe adeguate. Nel 97% dei casi, i dipendenti hanno dovuto acquistare il proprio abbigliamento di sicurezza, poiché non era stato fornito loro dall’impresa. Il secondo intervento a medio termine è stato effettuato in Campania (Piana del Sele), dal 24 aprile al 24 giugno 2014. Nell’arco di dei due mesi, MEDU ha intervistato 177 lavoratori migranti, di cui 133 hanno beneficiato del servizio di assistenza medica e delle consulenze fornite dalla clinica mobile dell’associazione. Dei 177 individui intervistati, l’85% sono uomini di età media compresa tra i 35 e i 36 anni, provenienti principalmente dal Marocco (85%), dall’Algeria (6,2%) e dalla Romania (5,7%). Come nel caso di Piana di Gioia Tauro, il 70% dei migranti è in possesso di un regolare permesso di soggiorno. Tuttavia, se gli stranieri impiegati nel settore agricolo in Calabria erano per la maggior parte rifugiati o beneficiari di protezione internazionale, nella Piana del Sele oltre l’80% dei migranti ha un visto lavorativo. Inoltre, è spesso vittima di raggiri al momento di rinnovare il permesso di soggiorno e il contratto di assunzione, il quale viene svuotato del suo valore poiché i datori di lavoro dichiarano meno della metà delle ore svolte dai dipendenti. Leggi le relazioni Reception of seasonal workers. Rosarno and the Gioia Tauro Plateau (Piana di Gioia Tauro) are left alone Piana del Sele – Eboli: lo sfruttamento dei braccianti immigrati (e non solo) nella “California d’Italia” Guarda i video Rosarno e la Piana di Gioia Tauro sono rimasti soli LA STORIA DI MOHAMMED LE DONNE DELLA PIANA Per ulteriori informazioni: www.mediciperidirittiumani.org
Des araignées aux étoiles de mer : piratage transnational
Traduit par Karine Ricou Les araignées et les étoiles de mer se ressemblent peut-être, mais les étoiles de mer ont une qualité miraculeuse. Coupez la patte d’une araignée, et vous vous retrouvez avec une créature à sept pattes ; coupez sa tête et vous avez une araignée morte. Coupez le bras d’une étoile de mer et il en poussera un nouveau. Mais ce n’est pas tout, le bras sectionné peut devenir un corps entièrement nouveau. Les étoiles de mer peuvent réaliser cet exploit car, contrairement aux araignées, elles sont décentralisées ; tous les principaux organes sont reproduits sur chaque bras. Vous ne pensez peut-être pas aux araignées, encore moins aux étoiles de mer lorsqu’il s’agit de réfléchir à la façon dont les gens peuvent s’organiser, au-delà des frontières, pour que se produise le changement. Mais pensez à ce qu’il arriverait à une organisation hiérarchique si ses dirigeants étaient incapables d’agir et à ce qu’il arriverait à un réseau horizontal… vous voyez l’idée. Il y a un nombre croissant de réseaux de type étoile de mer qui travaillent au-delà des frontières pour mobiliser l’énergie des gens afin de stimuler de nouvelles formes de culture civique créative. Gangsters, Sandboxers, Cityminers et Edgeryders – qui sont ces tribus transnationales qui se rassemblent pour changer le monde qui les entoure ? Comment comblons-nous ces initiatives avec des institutions comme les gouvernements, les organismes de bienfaisance et… l’UE ? Nous nous lancerons dans ce travail au cours de l’été, mais en attendant, nous sommes ravis de soutenir le SenseCamp à Londres le 28 juin, où des esprits créatifs et novateurs de toute l’Europe se réuniront pour partager les leçons de première ligne et développer des solutions radicales aux questions ardues. En dehors d’être appelés « Gangsters » et « Sense Makers » (Faiseurs de sens), nous aimons la façon dont ils s’aident, non seulement dans leurs propres villes, mais aussi sur tout le continent. De Holdups à SenseCamps, MakeSense partage notre amour pour l’utilisation de méthodes créatives afin de rassembler les gens pour introduire de nouvelles façons de faire face aux questions sociales difficiles que nous rencontrons…ne nous croyez pas sur parole, découvrez la vidéo ci-dessous et venez au SenseCamp SenseCamp UK 2013 from MakeSense on Vimeo.
Ungheria, stop alla democrazia. L’Europa agisca adesso
Il primo ministro ungherese Viktor Orban promette di trasformare il Paese in uno “stato illiberale”. L’Europa non può permettere che accada
Hungarian despotism: Europe must act
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has openly vowed to turn the country into an ‘illiberal state’. Europe cannot let this happen.
AE rejoint la #FreeMediaRace
Traduit par Julien Tissot L’initiative européenne pour le pluralisme des médias entre dans son dernier mois, Alternatives Européennes a décidé de relever un défi en participant à la compétition #FreeMediaRace. La compétition donne aux individus et aux organisations qui concourent un outil qui leur permettra de collecter des signatures. Ceux qui récoltent le plus grand nombre de signatures remporteront un prix ainsi qu’un voyage à Bruxelles pour effectuer une présentation devant le parlement européen. Pour plus d’information sur ce concours rendez-vous sur www.freemediarace.eu L’objectif : Nous devons protéger la liberté de la presse et la diversité des médias tout à travers l’Europe ! Pour cela nous souhaitons collecter 1 million de signatures pour demander à la Commission européenne qu’elle élabore une directive qui protège ces droits élémentaires. La compétition : Avec la compétition #FreeMediaRace nous vous donnons un outil pour récolter des signatures en votre faveur, ou en faveur de votre organisation. Ceux qui auront accumulé le plus de signatures seront invités à une présentation au Parlement européen de Bruxelles. Aidez Alternatives Européennes ! Tout ce que vous devez faire c’est signer pour aider AE à se rapprocher du #1 ! ( Une fois que vous aurez signé pourquoi ne pas encourager vos amis à faire de même ? )
Terragiusta : une campagne contre l’exploitation des travailleurs immigrés dans l’agriculture
Article par Giulia Bari, membre de MEDU : médecin pour la défense des droits de l’homme Traduit par Julien Tissot Le secteur agricole italien dépend fortement de la présence de travailleurs immigrés. La plupart d’entre eux, en particulier au sud de l’Italie, est exploitée : ils gagnent entre 25 et 30 euros par jour, n’ont souvent pas de contrat de travail et, très souvent, un “caporale” sert d’intermédiaire entre eux et l’employeur. La plupart d’entre eux vit également dans des bidonvilles, des vieilles maisons abandonnées ou dans des tentes, ils font face à des conditions de vie et à une hygiène critiques. Le projet Terragiusta, dirigé par MEDU, a pour intention d’intervenir avec une clinique mobile dans les zones isolées, loin des centres urbains, et caractérisées par une forte marginalisation, dans le but d’apporter une aide médicale pour les soins courants, des conseils socio légaux, ainsi qu’une assistance sanitaire aux travailleurs immigrés et à leur faire témoigner, à travers un questionnaire, de leurs conditions de vie (santé, travail, hébergement). La première intervention de ce type a eu lieu en Calabre (à Piana di Gioia Tauro) du 8 février au 8 avril 2014, suite aux conditions de vie et de travail alarmantes d’ouvriers agricoles durant l’hiver. En l’espace de deux mois, l’équipe a apporté des conseils socio légaux, une assistance médicale et prodigué des soins médicaux en faveur de 260 immigrés. La majorité des patients étaient jeunes, 80% d’entre eux avaient moins de 35 ans, ils venaient surtout du Burkina Faso, du Mali, du Ghana, de Côte d’Ivoire et du Sénégal. En plus de cela dans 70% des cas, les patients possédaient un titre de séjour en règle et presque la moitié d’entre eux (45%) avaient le statut de protection internationale ou “humanitaire”. 95% d’entre eux vivaient en Italie depuis plus de deux ans, parmi ceux-ci 68% maîtrisent bien l’italien. 89% ne travaillaient pas grâce à un véritable contrat de travail, et 64% d’entre eux touchaient moins de 25€ par jour travaillé. Presque la moitié des immigrés (46%) ne travaillaient pas plus de trois jours par semaine, pendant une période de sept ou huit heures, même si un travailleur sur quatre a déclaré travailler neuf ou dix heures par jour. Un tiers des immigrés qui ont été examinés par les médecins de MEDU, consomment seulement deux repas par jour, alors que la majorité, alors que la plupart des maladies, au cœur de cette population globalement jeune et en bonne, sont dues au manque d’hygiène et de propreté ainsi qu’aux conditions de travail difficiles. Tous les immigrés interrogés ont déclaré avoir des gants par mesure de sécurité lorsqu’ils travaillent, mais seulement 29% d’entre eux possèdent des chaussures de travail adaptées. Dans 97% des cas les travailleurs ont dû acheter leur propre équipement de sécurité parce que l’employeur ne leur fournissait pas. La seconde intervention s’est déroulée à Campania (Piana del Sele) du 24 avril au 24 juin 2014. Sur une période de deux mois le MEDU a interrogé 177 travailleurs immigrés, parmi eux 133 avaient bénéficié du service d’assistance médicale et de conseil proposé par la clinique ambulante de l’association. Sur les 177 personnes interrogées, 85% sont des hommes, la moyenne d’âge se situe entre 35 et 36, les nationalités les plus représentées sont celles-ci : Marocains (85%), Algérien (6,2%), Roumains (5,7%). Comme cela a été rapporté à Piana di Gioia Tauro, c’est une population qui a un titre de séjour valide dans plus de 70% des cas. En revanche, si les employés étrangers travaillant dans le secteur de l’agriculture en Calabre étaient essentiellement des réfugiés ou des bénéficiaires de la protection internationale, à Piana del Sele plus de 80% des immigrés ont un titre de séjour pour motif d’emploi et ils sont souvent victimes d’arnaques leur du renouvellement de leur titre de séjour et de leur contrat de travail qui sont vidés de leur valeur car souvent l’employeur déclare moins de la moitié des heures vraiment effectuées par cette main d’œuvre étrangère. Lisez les rapports Reception of seasonal workers. Rosarno and the Gioia Tauro Plateau (Piana di Gioia Tauro) are left alone Piana del Sele – Eboli: lo sfruttamento dei braccianti immigrati (e non solo) nella “California d’Italia” Regardez les vidéos Rosarno e la Piana di Gioia Tauro sono rimasti soli LA STORIA DI MOHAMMED LE DONNE DELLA PIANA Pour plus d’informations www.mediciperidirittiumani.org
Comment les “big data” peuvent-elles nous aider à mieux comprendre l’économie civique
Traduit par Guillaume Feuillette Du peer to peer aux campagnes hyperlocales, il n’a jamais été aussi simple pour les personnes qui le veulent de faire campagne contre des problèmes importants ou réunir des ressources pour apporter des services répondant à des besoins importants, à travers les réseaux sociaux et le financement participatif. Mais la plupart d’entre elles échappent à l’attention des responsables politiques qui cherchent à comprendre l’impact de l’économie civique. À travers notre étude sur la manière dont les jeunes Européens gagnent leur vie, nous avons identifié un nouveau groupe de jeunes qui modifient leur mode de vie, appelés les Lifestyle Hackers, créant peu à peu de nouvelles formes d’économie civique en toute discrétion. Récemment, lors de notre Festival Transeuropa, nous avons réuni ces lifestyle hackers et ces néo-nomades afin de réfléchir à des solutions pour mieux explorer ces nouveaux modes de vie. Cette rencontre a abouti entre autres au développement d’un projet visant à mieux comprendre leur impact social et savoir comment ces groupes se connectent entre eux afin de développer de nouvelles idées pour construire notre société. Nous sommes heureux de vous annoncer que NESTA nous a apporté le financement nécessaire au lancement de ce projet, qui débutera en avril 2014 jusqu’en mars 2015 ! Accompagnés d’autres organisations, comme Demos, la Royal Society of Arts, NCVO (le Conseil National des Organisations Volontaires) et l’Université de Cardiff, nous allons développer de nouvelles approches quant à l’utilisation de méthodes guidées par les données pour comprendre l’économie sociale. Nous utiliserons les big data et les analyses des réseaux sociaux pour identifier l’emplacement, le niveau et le type de participation de ces groupes. L’observation des relations entre des groupes thématiquement liés et isolés nous permettra d’identifier les acteurs clés qui peuvent aider à créer des liens entre les groupes existants et les nouveaux. En observant l’impact social et les réseaux sociaux au cœur de chaque projet et organisation, ces dernières seront aptes à mieux comprendre les moyens de mieux soutenir et encourager leurs membres. Le site internet interactif que nous créerons permettra aux législateurs et aux commissaires / investisseurs de les identifier thématiquement ou géographiquement. Forts de notre expérience, nous allons développer des méthodes de recherche pour localiser des groupes isolés de l’économie sociale, ce qui comprend la création de nouvelles méthodes innovantes pour recueillir des données, le développement de différentes méthodes pour localiser les groupes isolés et pour illustrer les conclusions et les tendances qui se dessinent. Ci-dessous se trouve un aperçu de notre travail à ce jour dans ce domaine. Développer différentes méthodes pour localiser les groupes isolés 30 jeunes ont appris comment identifier, travailler et se documenter sur l’impact social des groupes isolés en Europe à travers notre projet des Caravanes Transeuropa. Nous avons identifié 40 initiatives civiques destinées au service public, au marché et aux collectivités locales et nous en évaluerons l’impact social. Nous avons cherché comment les jeunes gagnent leur vie, en enquêtant auprès de centaines de personnes à travers l’Europe, suivi d’entretiens approfondis. Nous avons également travaillé avec une centaine de groupes isolés dans plus de 30 villes européennes pour identifier certains problèmes et mettre en œuvre des propositions présentes dans notre Pacte Citoyen. Créer de nouvelles méthodes innovantes pour recueillir des données sur l’économie civique Nous avons développé une méthode à travers un circuit permettant de découvrir des groupes qui usent de méthodes inhabituelles pour répondre à leurs besoins, et ce en collaboration avec des chercheurs sociaux, des artistes, des conteurs et des entrepreneurs civiques. Nous avons utilisé l’analyse de réseaux sociaux pour identifier les groupes avec lesquels collaborer. Visualiser les résultats pour illustrer les conclusions et les tendances Nous avons développé des scénarios et des infographies à partir des données du projet Making a Living afin de créer des défis aux participants pour les faire coopérer à l’élaboration d’activités pour notre Festival Transeuropa. Nous avons formé des jeunes afin qu’ils évaluent les politiques grâce à notre projet d’agence de notation participative Agence À vous d’Agir (AAA). Les méthodes que nous mettrons au point seront utilisées en grande partie pour la localisation de groupes isolés en Europe, à partir de notre projet des Caravanes Transeuropa afin de nous aider à développer les Festivals Transeuropa dans 13 villes européennes. Nous partagerons ces méthodes avec nos partenaires afin de les aider à identifier des groupes isolés dans leurs domaines respectifs.
Un appel pour le renouveau de la démocratie européenne
Article publié à l’origine sur Euractiv Traduit par Capucine Sergent Article de Niccolo Milanese (co-président d’Alternatives Européenes) et Peter Oomsels (vice-président de JEF Europe). Tous deux siègent au comité directeur Europe+. D’une perspective mondiale, la démocratie a été le projet politique au plus grand succès du 20ème siècle. Aujourd’hui, alors que nous sommes encore au début du 21ème siècle, son succès parait décroître. Les citoyens perdent la foi en ce qu’on leur a dit être la « démocratie », c’est-à-dire le meilleur mécanisme possible pour parvenir à des décisions collectives qui sont le plus avantageux pour la majorité des individus. Ces dernières années, la « démocratie » s’est vue associée à des décisions myopes qui créent des accumulations des dettes nationales, des dysfonctionnements politiques et accroit l’inégalité dans nos sociétés. Dans l’Union Européenne spécialement, la crise financière et ses conséquences ont été combattues par la technocratie au lieu de la véritable démocratie européenne, renforçant l’idée selon laquelle la démocratie est lente, inefficace et non adaptée pour régler les défis sociétaux urgents et sévères. De plus, certains des représentants des institutions démocrates les plus appréciés paraissent dépassés dans le contexte de la mondialisation, dans lequel la démocratie est de plus en plus défiée par d’autres modèles décisionnels, et la révolution digitale, qui est reflétée dans les initiatives de pair à pair et les mouvements pour changer la question de démocratie comme système exclusivement basé sur la représentation « garantie » par les partis politiques. La démocratie se retrouve sous grande pression, au-delà mais surtout entre les frontières de l’Union Européennes. Afin de revigorer la flamme de la démocratie, il faut impérativement actualiser et améliorer la démocratie en Europe. En effet, au-delà des solutions technocratiques à court terme, une démocratie européenne améliorée est le seul futur durable pour un continent en paix et solidaire. Ce parlement doit renouveler la démocratie européenne Les élections parlementaires européennes récentes ont révélé un désire fort pour le changement parmi la population européenne et un malaise concernant le futur de l’Europe. Nous pensons que cet appel au changement doit être répondu résolument par les forces pro-européennes en faveur de davantage de démocratie en Europe, sinon les forces anti-européennes et les antidémocrates paraîtront fournir plus de réponses immédiates aux frustrations des individus. Le parlement européen nouvellement élu a la responsabilité de diriger cette volonté de renouveau démocratique et de donner suite aux préoccupations concernant le déficit démocratique de l’Union Européenne. Le Parlement européen est la seule institution européenne directement élue et est au cœur de la prise de décisions, gagnant de nouveaux pouvoirs avec chaque révision de traité. Nous sommes particulièrement heureux de constater que le Parlement a encore gagné en influence grâce au processus de nomination du président de la Commission, marquant une avancée importance en transparence et en participation démocratique comparé au passé. Instaurer une plus grande confiance dans l’Union Européenne nécessite d’aller encore plus loin, autorisant en particulier des engagement plus fréquents et directs dans les décisions de la part des citoyens et de la société civile organisée. Les éléments de la démocratie participative sont un complément nécessaire à la démocratie représentative de l’Europe contemporaine, et c’est la manière pour que les institutions européennes soient plus proches des gens. Le Parlement doit prendre les devants pour mettre pleinement en œuvre les mesures de l’article 11 du Traité de Lisbonne sur le dialogue civil. Certains aspects, comme l’initiative citoyenne européenne, sont déjà en place mais ont fortement besoin d’être améliorés; d’autres aspects concernant un dialogue régulier avec la société civile organisée sur tous les domaines politiques sont encore très peu développés. Au-delà de ça, les recommandations de l’alliance de société civile pour l’année européenne des citoyens pour promouvoir une Europe informée, active, organisée et ouverte, et des institutions réactives devraient être des éléments importants du mode de fonctionnement et à l’ordre du jour du Parlement. Une convention démocratique, transparente, inclusive et participative En fin de compte nous pensons que le Parlement européen devrait engager une procédure de changement de traité et appeler une nouvelle Convention pour mettre les bases d’une Europe démocratique, solidaire et avec un accès égalitaire aux droits fondamentaux pour tous. Nous considérons cette démarche comme la meilleure façon de récupérer un publique sceptique à la cause européenne et marquer une rupture nette avec ces dernières années au cours desquelles – à tort ou à raison – pour beaucoup de gens l’ « Europe » a été associée à l’austérité, la perte des droits démocratiques, la diminution du niveau de vie et un effondrement de la cohésion sociale. Le Parlement européen devrait insister pour qu’une nouvelle Convention soit révisée et que les traités soient démocratiques, transparents, inclusifs, participatifs et s’assure de l’engagement proche de la société civile à travers l’Europe. Ce processus de révision de traité devrait être un modèle pour les institutions européennes sur la façon d’être relié aux citoyens sur une base continue, et non un espace fait de compromis qui ébranle la confiance dans les institutions et le projet européen. Une alliance de société civile pour le renouveau de la démocratie européenne La coalition Europe+ de plus de 40 organisations de société civile a été formée pour exiger et accompagner un processus de renouveau démocratique dans l’Union Européenne. Nous pensons que plus de démocratie en Europe requiert plus d’intégration européenne, et que la promesse de recouvrer une souveraineté grâce à des solutions nationales est une chimère. Nous pensons que les pro-européens à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur des institutions doivent travailler ensemble pour proposer des changements importants d’attitude, de façon de travailler, de communiquer et prendre des décisions, afin de démontre de manière visible que les citoyens et leurs intérêts sont au cœur du projet européen. Aujourd’hui, les partis néo-nazis et fascistes défient la visibilité de la démocratie européenne au Parlement européen, et des forces antidémocrates gagnent du terrain sur plusieurs niveaux de la société européenne. Le besoin de renouveler la démocratie dans l’Union Européenne est urgent. Si les pro-européens échouent à établir le programme du renouveau démocratique de l’Union Européenne, il se peut que l’Europe commence à perdre son rôle en…
Despotisme hongrois : l’Europe doit agir
Par Lorenzo Marsili, directeur d’Alternatives Européennes. Cet article a initialement été publié sur OpenDemocracy. Traduit par William Foster A la une de Newsweek: “Le Mussolini hongrois fait serment de transformer l’Etat Membre de l’UE en Etat Autoritaire”. Le Premier Ministre hongrois Viktor Orban est enfin sorti de l’ombre: lors d’un rassemblement de sympathisants il a admis avoir pour but de convertir le pays en état autoritaire. Il a remarqué que les démocraties libérales occidentales ne peuvent pas assurer leur compétitivité globale, citant la Chine, la Russie et la Turquie comme l’exemple à suivre. Ces déclarations inquiétantes sont malheureusement étayées par des faits. Elles suivent des années de législation de plus en plus restrictive, lesquelles ont remis en cause l’indépendance du système judicaire, des médias, de la société civile et ont consolidé le pouvoir de Fidesz, le parti en place. En Avril 2011, une réforme de la Constitution a réduit au silence la Cour Constitutionnelle en permettant au Gouvernement de légiférer comme bon lui semble. La même année une réforme draconienne des médias a mis sous tutelle de l’Etat les supports privés et publics de diffusion de l’information, en facilitant la manipulation de la diffusion publique, la censure directe, la fermeture des médias de l’opposition et en tentant de pousser à la faillite la chaîne de TV internationale RLT à cause de ses critiques à l’égard du régime. De ce fait la peur a de nouveau sa place au sein de la société hongroise. Les membres de la famille et les amis de l’opposition sont devenus inemployables, un certain nombre d’ONG recevant de l’aide étrangère ont été mises sur liste noire, et les donateurs internationaux tels que le Fonds d’Assistance Civile Norvégienne ont été menacés de suspension de leur permis d’activité. Les institutions internationales se font de plus en plus entendre sur le sujet. Le Conseil de l’Europe a écrit au Premier Ministre hongrois pour exprimer sa préoccupation au sujet de l’audit des ONG. L’OSCE, après avoir condamné la réforme des médias, a publié un rapport démontrant un “biais important” des médias envers le parti au pouvoir. Neelie Kroes, la vice-présidente de la Commission Européenne, a dénoncé les tentatives d’acculer à la faillite les médias de l’opposition: “RTL est une des rares chaînes en Hongrie qui ne fasse pas la promotion de Fidesz; il semblerait que leur but soit simplement de les expulser de la Hongrie”. Elle y voit “des pratiques contraires aux valeurs de l’UE” qui risquent de dériver vers “une période différente, plus sombre de l’histoire hongroise”. Ces déclarations doivent être suivies par des actes concrets. L’UE possède les outils pour agir et démontrer que la suspension de la démocratie est intolérable. L’Article 7 du Traité de l’Union Européenne établit un mécanisme de prévention pour faire face aux risques de violation des valeurs communes de l’Union par un Pays Membre, ainsi qu’un mécanisme de pénalité en cas de violation. Ces pénalités comprennent la suspension du droit de vote au sein du Conseil Européen, le gel des Fonds structurels d’aide à l’Etat et au pire des cas, l’expulsion de l’Union. La procédure de l’Article 7 devrait être mise en place tout de suite. Sachant que la Hongrie dépend fortement des Fonds structurels de l’UE avec 97% de ses projets d’investissements nécessitant l’appui de l’UE, la simple menace de suspension enverrait un message clair à Viktor Orban. Cela montrerait aux citoyens hongrois, effrayés par le régime autoritaire, qu’ils ne sont pas livrés à eux-mêmes. Cela enverrait aussi un message aux voisins de l’Europe -que ce soit Erdogan en Turquie ou le gouvernement de l’Azerbaïdjan- que le bloc ne tolère pas l’érosion de ses normes démocratiques. Afin d’éviter qu’une situation comme celle de la Hongrie ne se reproduise, l’Europe doit aussi agir pour la mise en place de garanties accrues pour la protection des droits fondamentaux, notamment en protégeant la liberté des médias et leur pluralisme. Presque 200 000 personnes ont déjà signé une Initiative Citoyenne Européenne réclamant une directive de l’UE afin de protéger l’indépendance de la presse d’un bout à l’autre du continent. Cette réclamation devrait être assumée par la Commission Européenne et un projet de législation devrait être immédiatement produit. L’Europe est le berceau de la démocratie. C’est au tour des institutions européennes de démontrer que le continent est prêt à tout pour la protéger.
EIMP: Thank-you to all supporters
Since Aug 19, 2013 we have mobilised European citizen’s in defense of their fundamental right to free and pluralistic information. Our aim was, and will remain, to make sure that requests for help will be heard in the institutions in Brussels, and that violations of press freedom in EU member states will not remain unnoticed!
#FixEurope Autumn Campus
We invite citizens, civil society activists, members of movements, organisations and networks from across Europe to the #FixEurope Autumn Campus in Berlin. This is a call for action, for advancing the agenda of transnational activism for democracy in Europe, for building common platforms, for reinforcing the strengths of our networks and sharing skills and knowledge.
Affittiamo stanza in nostro ufficio di Roma
Siete alla ricerca di una o due stanze al centro di Roma da condividere con una realtà dinamica e internazionale? Stiamo cercando co-inquilini!
European Media Initiative closes with 200,000 Signatures for press freedom
Signature collection for the European Citizen’s Initiative for Media Pluralism has closed with an important result that testified the success of the initiative. The campaign, coordinated throughout Europe by European Alternatives and Alliance International de Journalists, collected 204,812 signatures across the European Union. The campaign requested that the European Commission adopts measures of support to effectively defend media pluralism against concentration of ownership, the independence of monitoring organisms and the adoption of a European directive on anti-trust and conflict of interest. The collection of signatures began at the end of August 2013, the first signatory being Martin Schulz. In Bulgaria, a country that symbolises the deterioration of press freedom and an area where the campaign was focused, signature collection for the Media Initiative surpassed the quorum set by the European Commission for the country. Italy is the country which collected most signatures above all, surpassing the 25,000 mark. “We started a good fight” declared Lorenzo Marsili, director of European Alternatives and spokesperson of European Alternatives. “We tackled a theme which many wanted gone from the political agenda, we activated organisations, citizens and particularly youth in all of Europe and created continuing awareness campaigns online. We are very satisfied with our work.” He adds, “Thanks to these actions, we have signs of overture from the European Commission.. From today we are continuing with our commitment to stop the erosion of one of the pillars of European democracy, and bring the fight to the new Parliament and the new Juncker Commission.” The Campaign: Country by Country (sneak peak) We are busy working on an end-of-campaign book bringing together the best of one year of fighting for better media across Europe! Here is a first taster of what we’ve been up to. BULGARIA In Bulgaria the overlap between economic, political and media power was the main focus of the campaign. And Dylian Peevski. Of course. A lot of Peevski. CYPRUS In Cyprus our campaigners have been active at events and on the streets to collect heaps and heaps of paper signatures. ENGLAND In England we campaigned against monopolisation and culture of mutual interest between the press, senior politicians and police in the UK – See more here: the culture of mutual interests between the press and senior politicians, and for fair and balanced representations in the media. GERMANY In Germany we called for solidarity, and printed multiple issues of the ‘Freie Medien Kurier’, a special newspaper spread at demonstrations in support of press freedom in Bulgaria and Hungary. HUNGARY In Hungary, a country where press freedom is under continued pressure, we received great creative output from a poetry slam: Sajtószabadság slam! THE NETHERLANDS We were invited to the International Day for Press Freedom on May 3rd, and a debate organised by ProDemos. To raise attention we started a signature selfie campaign. ITALY In Italy, besides many other campaigns, we made a bit of fun of Berlusconi’s conviction and social service: #Affidateloanoi! Let him work for us! SLOVENIA In Ljubljana the citizen’s initiative was really about citizens as our campaigners picked up a camera and asked people on the street what they think about press freedom. More here. To everyone who gave us your support, Thank You!
L’INIZIATIVA EUROPEA PER IL PLURALISMO DEI MEDIA CHIUDE CON 200.000 FIRME PER LA LIBERTA’ DI STAMPA
La raccolta di firme per l’Iniziativa Europa per il Pluralismo dei Media ha chiuso con un importante risultato che dimostra il successo dell’iniziativa. La campagna, coordinata in tutta Europa da European Alternatives e Alliance International de Journalists, ha raccolto 204,812 firme in tutta l’Unione Europea. La campagna ha richiesto alla Commissione Europea l’adozione di misure di sostegno per tutelare in maniera efficace il pluralismo dei media contro la concentrazione della proprietà, l’indipendenza degli organismi di controllo e l’adozione di una direttiva europea su anti-trust e conflitto d’interesse. La raccolta di firme, è iniziata alla fine dell’agosto 2013 con Martin Shulz come primo firmatario. In Bulgaria, Paese che rappresenta il deterioramento della libertà di stampa e l’area dove la campagna è stata incentrata, la raccolta delle firme per la Media Initiative ha superato il quorum stabilito dalla Commissione Europea. L’Italia è il Paese che ha raccolto il maggior numero di firme, superando l’obiettivo di 25.000. “Abbiamo iniziato una battaglia giusta” ha dichiarato Lorenzo Marsili, direttore e portavoce di European Alternatives. “Abbiamo affrontato un tema che molti volevano sparisse dall’agenda politica, abbiamo attivato organizzazioni, cittadini e in particolare giovani in tutta Europa e creato campagne continue di sensibilizzazione online. Siamo molto soddisfatti del nostro lavoro”. Ha aggiunto “Grazie a queste azioni, abbiamo segnali di aperturada parte della Commissione Europea. Da oggi continuiamo con il nostro impegno per fermare l’erosione di uno dei pilastri della democrazia europea, portando questa battaglia nel nuovo Parlamento enella nuova Commissione Juncker. La campagna: Da paese a paese (un piccolo sguardo) Siamo impegnati a lavorare su un libro di fine campagna riunendo il meglio di un anno di lotta per media migliori in tutta Europa! Ecco un primo assaggio di dove siamo arrivati. GERMANIA In Germania abbiamo richiamato l’attenzione sulla solidarietà e abbiamo pubblicato diverse edizioni del “”un giornale specifico distribuito durante le manifestazioni in supporto alla libertà di stampa in Bulgaria e Ungheria. UNGHERIA In Ungheria, un paese dove la libertà di stampa è continuamente sotto pressione, abbiamo ottenuto un ottimo risultato grazie ad un poetry slam: Sajtószabadság slam! OLANDA Siamo stati invitati alla Giornata Internazionale per la Libertà di Stampa il 3 Maggio, e a un dibattito organizzato da ProDemos. Per aumentare l’attenzione abbiamo iniziato una campagna di firme selfie. ITALIA In Italia, oltre a molte altre campagne, ci siamo divertiti un po’ con la condanna e i servizi sociali di Berlusconi: #Affidateloanoi! Let him work for us! SLOVENIA A Lubiana, l’iniziativa del Cittadino era realmente sui cittadini, visto che i nostri attivisti hanno preso una videocamera e hanno chiesto alle persone per strada cosa pensassero sulla libertà di stampa. A chi ci ha dato il suo supporto, Grazie! Traduzione Sandra Uselli
FixEurope Speakers
The #FixEurope Campus and Conference will host many speakers and trainers from throughout Europe. This page will be updated constantly in the lead-up to the campus.
European Education, Culture, Youth and Citizenship should not be put in Orban’s hands
We oppose the nomination of a representative of Orban’s authoritarian regime as Commissioner for Citizenship, Culture, Education and Youth
Europe+ Statement on Hungarian Commissioner nomination
The authoritarian drift of an EU Member State indicated through the clear and repeated threats made against the Hungarian democratic system can no longer be ignored.
Open letter to Jean-Claude Juncker
This letter is regarding the designation of Mr. Tibor Navracsics as Commissioner for for Education, Youth, Culture and Citizenship
Lettre ouverte à Jean-Claude Juncker
Concernant la désignation de M Tibor Navracsics en qualité de Commissaire européen pour l’Education, la Jeunesse, la Culture et la Citoyenneté.
Educazione, cultura, politiche giovanili e di cittadinanza non dovrebbero essere messi nelle mani di Orban
Siamo contrari alla nominazione di un rappresentante del regime autoritario di Orban per il ruolo di Commissario per l’Educazione, la Cultura, le Politiche Giovanili e di Cittadinanza.
Dichiarazione sulla nomina del Commissario Ungherese: Europe+
La deriva autoritaria di uno Stato Membro dell’Unione Europea indicata dai chiari e ripetuti attacchi contro il sistema democratico ungherese non può essere più ignorata.
Lettera aperta a Jean-Claude juncker
In relazione alla nomina di Tibor Navracsics come Commissario per Educazione, Cultura, Politiche Giovanili e di Cittadinanza.
Campus Speakers & Trainers
Diana Arce is the Director and Co-Founder of Artists Without a Cause (AWAC), a non-profit developing collaborations between political, social and culturally engaged artists and the organizations and activists fighting for the same issues. This past Summer, AWAC developed and produced a program of artist led sessions on Storytelling and data for Open Knowledge Festival, bringing together 10 international artists of various mediums with data activists from all over the world. As an artist, Diana creates works about multicultural representations, non-partisan political and social critique. Her project, Politaoke , a participatory political speech karaoke bar where audiences can respeak real contemporary political speeches, has toured across the US, Canada, Germany and Israel and is currently being turned into a toolkit for organizations and activists to use. Raffaella Bolini is 54 years old. She has been and still is activist in international social movements and democratic civil society networks since the beginning of the ’80s and disarmament, European Nuclear Disarmament, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, Time for Peace in Middle East, Italian Consortium of Solidarity during the Balkan’s wars, anti-racist movement, altermondialistic movement, European and World Social Forum. Since 1991 she works full time in Arci, an Italian association formed by 5000 self-organized communitarian centers all over Italy, promoting active citizenship for cultural, social and democratic rights. She is member of the WSF International Council, Vice-president of European Civic Forum, member of Solidar board, member of Executive Committee of Euromed Human Right Network. In the last European elections, she has been candidate for the “L’Altra Europa con Tsipras”. Faith Bosworth is an independent facilitator specialising in workshops, events and educational programs for activists on campaigning. She is a member of the Peng! Collective in Berlin and is currently working on two security projects for marginalised communities with the Tactical Technology Collective. Martha Bouziouri is active in the fields of anthropological research, theatre and (cross)-cultural management. In the research field, she is currently completing her PhD thesis in Social Anthropology under the subject “Transnational artists in theatre: artistic expression and anthropological intervention”, investigating issues of artistic creativity, identity & representation within the socio-political contexts of privileged mobility/forced migration. As a professional actress, she has participated in various independent theatre productions negotiating the notions of identity, exile & violence. Since 2008, she is the co-founder and artistic director of plays2place, where she’s involved in the research, artistic direction and implementation of cross-cultural and community-based projects concerning applied models for civic transformation, raising awareness and social integration. She is also a member of Cultural Innovators Network and Tandem – Cultural Managers Exchange Program. Beppe Caccia (Parma, Italy, 1968), graduated in Philosophy (University of Padua), Ph.D. in European and Euro-American Political Studies (University of Turin), scholar in History of Political Thought, works for several international research institutions; from 1997 to 2014 was councillor and from 2001 to 2005 deputy mayor for Social affairs in the City of Venice; member of political-cultural Association “in comune” (Venice); is active in Italian and European social movements, like Blockupy international coalition; member of the Editorial Board of Global Project; participates in Euro Made independent research network; collaborates also with “il manifesto” daily newspaper. Teresa Conrad manages the Curriculum at LEAD, a Berlin-based non-profit with the mission to increase leadership capacities across the world, holding the conviction that the more of good leadership there is the better the world can be. She got her own leadership education mostly from working as teaching assistant with Professors Ronald Heifetz and Hugh O’Doherty during her Graduate Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. Before she gained professional experience as strategy consultant for public sector institutions, for charity foundations, and private sector organisations in the realm of Shared Value creation. Catherine Fieschi is the director of Counterpoint, a research consultancy that provides governments, NGOs and corporate actors with strategic advice on how cultural and social dynamics affect politics, policy-making and markets. Prior to directing Counterpoint, Catherine led the London-based think tank Demos (2005-2008) and was Director of the Centre for European Governance at the University of Nottingham (2001-2004). She holds a PhD in Comparative Politics from McGill University. Catherine is the author of In the Shadow of Democracy (2008) and of numerous pamphlets and articles on extremism, populism, and identity politics and their impact on policy and business. She has advised governments and businesses around the world and serves regularly on government task-forces. Catherine is a Senior Associate in the Department of Government at LSE, she was previously a Senior Member of St Antony’s College, Oxford. She is a regular contributor to press, radio and television debates. Ádám Foldes joined Transparency International in September 2012 after working for more than three years with Transparency International Hungary. Prior, he conducted researches, advocacy and policy development to promote and defend the right of access to information, specialised in issues relating to the protection of personal data and state secrecy. He also worked for Access Info Europe (Madrid, Spain) and led the Freedom of Information and Personal Data Protection Program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. He holds a J.D. and a Master’s degree in Sociology from Eötvös Loránd University (University ELTE), Budapest, and studied sociology and law at the Humboldt University in Berlin on a Copernicus Scholarship. Corinna Genschel is working for the Left Party (Die Linke) in parliament as a liaison between the party and social movements. As such she is active in the Blockupy coalition – especially right now in the Blockupy International coordinating structure. Alice Audrey Grindhammer is a “Garbologist” by training. During the last four years she worked at ALBA Group in various positions from assistant to the CEO to business development in the Middle East and North Africa. During this time she learned the recycling business inside out, implementing solutions big and small, e.g. disposing hazardous waste from ISAF bases in Afghanistan in accordance with the Basel convention. Together with her friend and business partner Hannes,she started WASTELAND PROJECTS in spring 2014. Alice’s goal is to put the Global Waste Crisis onto the agenda(s) and to develop and implement…
3 questions to… Andy Williamson
Andy Williamson is an internationally recognised expert in digital democracy, innovation and transforming engagement. An experienced facilitator, consultant, researcher and commentator focussing on digital, society and policy, Andy has a passion for finding innovative ways to make democracy work better for all of us.
Victory! European Parliament blocks Tibor Navracsics
Success of our campaign to show the Hungarian foreign minister is unfit to become EU Commissioner for Citizenship, Culture, Education and Youth!
Vittoria! Il Parlamento europeo blocca Tibor Navracsics
Successo della nostra campagna per dimostrare che il ministro del despotico governo ungherese non può diventare Commissario alla cittadinanza, cultura, educazione e gioventù
Who are we, the citizens?
Article by Saskia Sassen. Today citizenship is in crisis, but we can and must find yet another version of the meaning of citizenship from throughout its long history and our present conditions.
Dare un volto ad una economia sociale europea
Traduzione Daniele Foderà La gente in maniera naturale cerca personaggi con i quali potersi identificare. Essi hanno il potere di personalizzare la storia e approfondire il nostro legame con un tema particolare. Sappiamo che per identificare differenti tipi di esigenze e capacità insoddisfatte, possiamo ricorrere a tecniche di segmentazione della clientela. Ma, combinando i dati per rivelare nuove esigenze e modelli, come potrebbero quest’ultimi favorire la creazione di persone o personaggi con i quali la gente potrebbe trovare un legame? La nostra ricerca ha creato personaggi che aiutano le persone ad immaginarsi nelle variegate situazioni che i giovani europei devono affrontare quando cercano di guadagnarsi da vivere. E’ appena uscito un rapporto sullo stato dell’economia sociale in Europa. Quel che c’è di interessante è come la visualizzazione qui sotto aiuti a portare alla luce la situazione che gli imprenditori sociali affrontano in ogni Paese. Trova altre infografiche come questa nella più grande information design community del web – Visualizza. Tuttavia, se andiamo più a fondo nello studio, esso sostiene che l’economia sociale agisce come un “tampone contro la crisi” e che sulla base delle seguenti ipotesi, l’economia sociale sia: “difficile da riallocare perché i gruppi di persone sono ancorati ai luoghi e sono più rigidi alla luce delle loro riserve finanziarie, che non possono essere distribuite agli azionisti” Qual è la lezione che l’economia sociale dovrebbe allora imparare dalla Coop Bank entrata in crisi e dalla cooperazione spagnola Mondragon sull’orlo della bancarotta? “a causa delle sue regole particolari (non-profit, assegnazione delle eccedenze, doppia natura) l’economia sociale non può essere acquisita perché non esiste un mercato per le sue azioni.” Dato che tre quarti della divisione bancaria del Coop Group sono stati acquisiti, questo significa che dovrebbero esserci regole più severe per garantire che le economie sociali non possano essere acquisite? o significa dare maggior potere agli azionisti affinché siano in grado di obbligarle a rendicontare su come sostengono la loro mission? Da quello che ho riscontrato sulla crescita dell’economia sociale e su una crescita ancora maggiore dell’interesse verso l’utilizzo del termine si è creato un certo grado di autocompiacimento su quanto siano “sociali” gli attori dell’economia sociale. L’articolo del Secret Social Entrepeneur gli fa eco. Potremmo anche chiedere al movimento cooperativo quanto “cooperativi” siano i suoi membri. Per loro natura, le economie sociali dipendono dai comportamenti e in particolare dalla buona volontà degli uomini. Certo, gli uomini sono animali sociali, ma le loro azioni sono influenzate da una serie di abitudini, attenzioni e decisioni che, sintetizzate dall’RSA Social Brain Centre, determinano la nostra abilità ad essere sociali e collaborativi. Forse dietro le facce degli europei di cui sopra, dovremmo anche interessarci alle loro motivazioni per diventare imprenditori sociali e ai loro comportamenti riguardo al fare affari… e come questi sono influenzati da diversi fattori (non solo quelli sperimentati dalla Coop).
L’éducation, la culture et la citoyenneté doivent être hors de la portée d’Orban
Traduit par Aurore Gautherin Alternatives Européennes soutient la pétition lancée par un militant hongrois sur Change.org qui demande au Parlement européen de rétoquer Tibor Navracsis. Cliquez ici pour signer ! Après que le gouvernement hongrois a perquisitionné les bureaux de deux ONG militant pour la démocratie au sein de pays, le président de la commission européenne a annoncé que l’actuel premier ministre hongrois, Tibor Navracsis, devrait assumer les fonctions de commissaire à l’Education, la Culture et la Citoyenneté. En Hongrie, le gouvernement Orban a non seulement tenté de restreindre la liberté de la presse mais aussi, perquisitionner les bureaux des ONG financés par des pays étrangers et intimider les minorités. En d’autres termes, l’activité du gouvernement va à l’encontre des valeurs fondamentales de l’Union européenne. Auparavant, nous avions déjà déclaré vouloir que l’Europe condamne le despotisme hongrois. Si aujourd’hui le portefeuille de l’Education, la Culture et la Citoyenneté est confié à un membre du gouvernement Orban, le despotisme sera banalisé et la Commission ne sera plus en mesure de prendre quelque décision que ce soit. La société civile et les citoyens de l’Europe entière ont tout à fait le droit d’être choqués et inquiets de voir que les programmes et actions — qui concernent les valeurs fondamentales — émanant de la Commission européenne soient confiés au représentant d’un gouvernement dont les actions vont à l’encontre de la démocratie, la liberté d’expression, les droits fondamentaux et la diversité. Le Parlement européen, le Conseil de l’Europe, les Nations Unies, le gouvernement norvégien, les ONG internationales telles qu’Alternatives Européennes, Amnesty, Transparency International, Greenpeace et CIVICUS ainsi que des milliers de citoyens vivant en Hongrie ont tiré la sonnette d’alarme pour dénoncer les actions du gouvernement Orban. D’autres tels que la commissaire sortante, Neelie Kroes, ont aussi montré leur inquiétude. L’Europe doit rester fidèle aux valeurs qu’elle défend. Or, si le fait de confier au candidat hongrois la responsabilité du portefeuille de l’Education, la Culture et la Citoyenneté est un stratagème mis en place par Jean-Claude Juncker afin d’attribuer aux pays européens les dossiers dont les domaines concernés sont vraisemblablement sensibles intramuros, il y a fort à parier que cette stratégie tournera mal ; la présence hongroise à la Commission pourrait bloquer toute action européenne tentant de mettre fin au despotisme régnant dans le pays. Le Parlement européen auditionnera les commissaires nominés et votera ensuite pour l’ensemble de la Commission. Il doit à tout prix rétoquer Tibor Navracsis. Le Parlement doit exiger que le commissaire hongrois ne soit pas lié au gouvernement Orban, ou alors en ce qui concerne Navracsis, de changer le portefeuille qui lui sera attribué.
L’Italie et les Nouveaux Italiens: Interview avec l’écrivain émigré Kossi Komla-Ebri
Médecin italien et auteur, Kossi Amékowoyoa Komla-Ebri est né au Togo (Tsévié) le 10 Janvier 1954, avec plusieurs publications sur l’immigration en Italie à son actif. Son travail et son engagement dans la promotion des échanges interculturels entre l’Italie et le Togo ainsi que le continent Africain ont été reconnus maintes fois. Interview par Maëva Kokodoko Traduit par William Foster Maëva Kokodoko: Vous êtes arrivé en Italie en 1974. Était-il plus facile d’y parvenir à cette époque qu’il ne l’est aujourd’hui? Dr. Kossi Komla-Ebri: A l’époque il s’agissait plutôt d’une immigration intellectuelle, ce qui explique le fait que les réactions n’étaient pas agressives comme le sont celles aujourd’hui. A mon arrivée à Bologne, je me souviens de l’aversion que les gens avaient pour les Grecs. Personne ne voulait louer leur maison aux jeunes fuyant la dictature militaire en Grèce. Le niveau de préjuges à leur égard était tel que beaucoup pensaient que le pays ne serait jamais admis au sein de la Communauté Européenne. Les attitudes envers nous étaient assez différentes: les gens étaient curieux. Beaucoup d’Africains se rendaient à Rome pour étudier ou faire leur pèlerinage; c’était donc une immigration d’une autre nature, et de toute façon nous n’étions pas beaucoup. Ces facteurs (immigration intellectuelle et nombres limités) suscitèrent de la curiosité et de l’intérêt. Il n’y avait pas d’agressivité. M.K.: Vous avez beaucoup circulé en Europe. Comparé à d’autres pays, pensez-vous que l’Italie est en retard en termes d’intégration? Que signifie intégration? S’agit-il d’assimilation, multiculturalisme, inter-culturalisme, ou quelque chose d’autre? K.K.E.: L’Italie est en retard pour la simple raison qu’elle n’a pas eu d’expérience coloniale après la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, à la différence de la Grande-Bretagne et la France qui, du fait de ces expériences coloniales, développèrent toutes deux une relation plus proche avec les populations issues de cultures différentes. Ce n’est que récemment que l’Italie, laquelle était essentiellement une nation d’émigrés, est devenue une terre d’immigration. Il y a 25 ans, ce furent les Italiens qui émigraient vers des pays tels les USA, la Belgique et la France… Bien que l’immigration en Italie soit devenue un phénomène structurel et non d’urgence comme on semble croire aujourd’hui, cela reste un phénomène assez nouveau en Italie. Le problème est dû au fait que l’Italie n’a toujours pas décidé quel chemin suivre vers l’intégration. En ce qui concerne l’intégration, j’aime jouer avec la phonétique du mot “intégration”. Je pense que l’intégration est constituée d’une interaction entre nos identités différentes, de ce fait il est donc question de faire interagir nos différentes cultures. Pour vous donner une idée, il ne s’agit pas d’un immeuble à propos duquel je peux dire “l’Italie est un immeuble multiculturel – mettons les Africains au premier étage, les Asiatiques au deuxième…” Ceci est la meilleure solution pour obtenir un immeuble très ghettoïsé. Ou alors partant du fait que nous sommes tous dans le même immeuble dont je suis le propriétaire, vous devez oublier vos identités et devenir comme moi. Ceci serait un immeuble d’assimilation. Il y a une troisième approche qui est, à mon avis, la solution: nous sortons tous de l’immeuble et nous rejoignons sur la place où nous développons des relations d’égal à égal en essayant de faire interagir nos cultures différentes. L’interaction est le facteur le plus important, ce qui autorise et encourage le phénomène d’inclusion culturelle et sociale. M.K.: La proposition de loi Granata/Sarubbi favorise la normalisation de la citoyenneté par droit de sol et modifierait donc la loi de 1992, devenue obsolète. Pensez-vous que ceci marquerait un tournant décisif? Les Italiens sont-ils prêts à reconnaitre cette nouvelle Italie? K.K.E.: Les Italiens ne seront jamais vraiment prêts, mais cela reste la meilleure façon d’agir. Il y a beaucoup trop d’Italiens titulaires d’autorisations de séjour. Ils sont de facto italiens car ils ont été élevés dans la culture italienne et n’ont souvent pas d’autre base culturelle. Ils sont nés ici ou sont venus dans le cadre du regroupement familial, et ont été nourris par le loup de la culture Italienne. Ainsi, nous devons considérer deux éléments: d’un point de vue purement théorique il faut se demander si l’on peut vraiment parler d’Italien per se. Qu’est-ce donc l’identité italienne? Il est en fait plus facile de trouver une identité calabraise, apulienne ou génoise qu’il n’est de trouver une identité italienne. Il faut identifier exactement ce qui constitue l’identité italienne, les raisons qui font qu’une personne soit italienne. Est-ce la connaissance de la langue? Est-ce le fait d’être né sur le territoire italien? Si tel est le cas, la loi va dans la bonne direction. Une reconnaissance formelle des droits des immigrants, surtout l’accès à la citoyenneté. Jusqu’à présent, on s’est contenté de leur demander de respecter leurs devoirs, tandis que les droits ont sans cesse été bafoués. Le fait même que les Italiens continuent de nous appeler extra-communitari indique que notre droit d’accès à la citoyenneté n’est pas reconnu. Cela fait 37 ans que je vis ici, pourquoi se fait-il que lorsque je sors dans la rue, un garçon de quatorze ans me qualifie toujours de extra-comunitari? Parce que l’idée qu’il a d’une personne extra-communautaire est une caricature. Beaucoup de gens me disent: “mais Kossi ce n’est qu’une définition, les Suisses sont aussi extra-communautaires.” Néanmoins, l’imaginaire italien moyen ne fonctionne pas de cette façon. Si je demande à un Italien dans la rue sa définition d’extra-communautaire il n’inclura jamais les Suisses ou les Américains. Par exemple, un présentateur radio qui parlait de l’affaire Strauss-Kahn aux USA a fait référence à la femme de chambre comme étant extra-communautaire, malgré le fait que tous les individus impliqués soient extra-communautaires! En ce sens, l’Italie a encore beaucoup de chemin à parcourir. Cette loi est essentielle car elle changera le statut politique des immigrants dans ce pays. Ce vote est primordial pour amorcer un changement en Italie. M.K.: Les Italiens de deuxième génération sont Italiens, ou Italo-Togolais, Italo-Sénégalais, Italo-Somaliens… Ces différences devraient-elles être réduites, ou préservées dans le but d’améliorer l’intégration et la cohésion? K.K.E.: Hypothétiquement parlant, et en gardant…
The hidden face of immigration detention camps
Open Access Now is organising this year again a period of mobilisation in Europe and beyond, which will start on October 15th at the European Parliament, during a meeting with the members of the campaign and MEPs, under the patronage of Marie-Christine Vergiat MEP (GUE/NGL, France).
La face cachée des camps d’étranger-e-s
Open Access Now organise une nouvelle période de mobilisation en Europe et au-delà qui débutera le 15 octobre au Parlement européen lors d’une rencontre avec les membres de la campagne et des parlementaires, sous le patronage de la députée européenne Marie-Christine Vergiat (GUE/NGL, France).
La faccia nascosta dei campi per stranieri-e
Open Access Now organizza anche quest’anno un periodo di mobilitazione in Europa e al di là che inizierà il 15 ottobre al Parlamento europeo in occasione di un incontro con i membri della campagna ed alcuni parlamentari europei, con il patronicinio di Marie-Christine Vergiat.
‘Mos Maiorum’: an unacceptable blitzkrieg on migrants
The EU is acting as if it were at war with migrants, especially those who are fleeing real wars elsewhere. We cannot allow the member states to pull us into such an ignoble and inhumane war by stealth
Blockupy as an unexpected space for transnational European organising
The blockade of the ECB in 2012 and 2013 started as a German initiative but has triggered an international movement responding to a Europe in crisis.
The ‘New Turkey’
Looking at the first 50 days of the so-called New Turkey, since the August 10 Presidential elections, one cannot observe anything new, except for a few new methods in violation of rights and liberties.
At the Margins: Europe and Migration
There are those who die trying to reach our borders, escaping from poverty, famine, violence, dictatorships, wars, persecution, in search of a dignified life. There are those who are detained, who experience human rights abuses while being detained or while waiting for their legal status to be determined. There are those who make it, who are inside the borders and in transit, from their point of arrival, trying to reach their final destination. Those who have reached their final destination, having overcome the dangerous journey and all it comes with, have only just begun, because a residency permit does not necessarily mean a home, employment, nor becoming part of the local community. The journey of a migrant is a long, lonely and dangerous one, and their stories often go untold, their struggles often unnoticed because detention centres, reception facilities, even housing, are mostly strategically located on the outskirts of urban areas. Out of sight, out of mind. The Transeuropa Caravans went directly to these locations, met with migrants who came to Europe through various means and for different reasons, and spoke to the admirable, dedicated individuals fighting for them, working to help them make sense of the system and find a dignified life. This is their story. Read here.
From Puerta del Sol in Madrid to Pungești in Romania and from the Icelandic constitutional assembly to mass protests in Athens, people in Europe have been going out on the streets, occupying squares, organising, resisting and creating around one common idea(l): democracy. Many (if not all) of the initiatives that the six Transeuropa Caravans met on their roads were all about reclaiming citizens’ power to shape their cities, environment, societies and lives. How can we indeed speak about democracy when power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of institutions unaccountable to citizens, such as the European Central Bank, behind austerity policies affecting millions in Europe, or in corporations powerful enough to impose what is in their interest, in disregard of democratic decisions? Unlike these top-down power relations, many initiatives and struggles start from the local level, experiment with new forms of decisionmaking processes, are horizontal, inclusive and self-organised. From resistance against undemocratic powers to organisational experiments, they put in practice real democracy in Europe. Read HERE.
Lettera aperta al popolo di belgrado
Il progetto Belgrade on the Water è un’iniziativa per permettere questo collegamento, e applaudiamo questo desiderio. Abbiamo visto e studiato i piani, però, e vorremmo comunicare alcune gravi preoccupazioni in merito alla proposta attuale.
Participants arrive to #FixEurope Campus
In spite of the strikes of the German airlines we managed to bring most of the #FixEuropean-activists without bigger struggles to the beautiful castle of Wartin.
Fixing Europe: A Starting Point
So, if you want to fix Europe, where do you start? Do we need to change the institutions, or our thinking? Can we be pragmatic about it and fix it ‘on-the-fly’ or should we develop elaborate alternatives?
#Critical Minds at work
From adaptive leadership to subversion, from TTIP to a crash course on EU politics, participants to the #FixEurope Campus had a lot of food for thought on their first day at the campus.
Europe + Position sur la nomination du Commissaire hongrois
Chers Membres du Parlement européen, Au cours des quelques derniers mois, nous avons été témoins d’une très sérieuse escalade des attaques en Hongrie à l’égard des valeurs fondamentales européennes de démocratie et de respect des droits humains. Cela va de tentatives restreignant la liberté des médias jusqu’aux menaces directes contre des organisations de la société civile, comme l’ont récemment montré les descentes de police ordonnées par le gouvernement contre deux ONG. Depuis la réélection de Viktor Orbán en tant que Premier ministre de la Hongrie en avril dernier, plusieurs organisations de la société civile recevant un financement externe, ont été persécutées et accusées par le gouvernement de détournement de fonds et d’activités financières illégales visant à soutenir l’opposition politique. Cette situation a atteint son apogée le 8 Septembre, lorsque des fonctionnaires de police hongrois ont attaqué les bureaux de Ökotárs et DemNet, deux ONGs en charge de la distribution des subventions norvégiennes (subventions de l’EEA) dans le pays. Cela crée une troublante analogie avec la Fédération de Russie, où les organisations de la société civile qui reçoivent des fonds de l’étranger sont tenues de s’inscrire comme «agents étrangers». La dérive autoritaire d’un État membre de l’UE affichée par des menaces claires et répétées contre le système démocratique hongrois ne peut plus être longtemps ignorée. Ceci est d’autant plus important que la dernière semaine, le futur président de la Commission européenne, M. Junker, a désigné en tant que commissaire européen à l’éducation, la culture, la jeunesse et la citoyenneté le ministre hongrois des Affaires étrangères et du Commerce en exercice, M. Navracsics. Si c’est approuvée par le Parlement européen en Octobre, le portefeuille de M. Navracsics comprendrait l’engagement des organisations de la société civile européennes dans le but de générer la participation civique et le dialogue civil, en faveur de la promotion de certaines des valeurs fondatrices du système démocratique européen: la citoyenneté et le sentiment d’appartenance. Quelque soit le futur commissaire européen hongrois, nous l’exhortons à agir comme un véritable gardien/défenseur des valeurs européennes, Ces dernières ayant été approuvées par la Hongrie lors de son adhésion à l’UE en 2004, afin de travailler pour une Europe plus inclusive, plurielle et sociale. Dans cet esprit, nous demandons aux membres du Parlement européen de prendre des mesures rapides et nécessaires pour remédier à cette situation inquiétante et inacceptable. Cordialement, Traduction par Melanie Boulland
3 Domande a … Andy Williamson
Andy Williamson parlerà al FixEurope Campus a Berlino (dal 21 al 24 Ottobre). E’ un esperto in democrazia digitale, innovazione e impegno (civico) in trasformazione riconosciuto a livello internazionale. Un facilitarore esperto, consulente, ricercatore e commentatore che focalizza la sua attenzione sul digitale, la società e la politica, Andy ha una passione per i metodi innovativi messi al servizio di una democrazia che lavori meglio per tutti noi. È il fondatore di Democratise ed è tra l’altro Presidente di Do it UK e direttore della Democratic Society. Traduzione di Brunella Nobile Che cosa intendi con democrazia “personale”? La democrazia e l’autorità tradizionale, gerarchica, basata sul potere sta morendo. I vecchi sistemi sono arroganti, basati sul controllo e non più appropriati. Questi sistemi non sono più adatti allo scopo. tuttavia, non è semplice cambiarli a causa del potere distribuito nel sistema corrente. Laddove la società rimane stratificata, il potere rimane nelle mani di pochi e la democrazia è focalizzata sul “fare per” invece che sul “fare con”. E’ più paternalismo che collaborazione. L’uso errato del potere erode la legittimità democratica in sé e con un risvolto ironico, l’allontanamento creato dà ancora più potere a chi già lo detiene. Il potere distribuito, ben usato, si trova al cuore dell’opportunità. Parliamo di allontanamento civico ma questo è allontanamento dalle strutture formali del governo e della politica, non dall’azione civica, dalla protesta o dal volontariato di quartiere. Democrazia “personale” significa far muovere i nostri sistemi democratici verso un modello che valorizza un più ampio contributo da un più ampio numero di persone e che si presta alla collaborazione e alla co-creatività. Questo percorso viene accelerato dai nuovi media digitali e sociali, che portano le persone a discutere di più, rendono più facile essere connessi, condividere e aggregare conoscenza. In sostanza, infine, la democrazia personale è un cambiamento culturale supportato da nuovi modi di pensare alle relazioni di potere. È la portata umana del cambiamento nelle nostre relazioni culturali e sociali e i cambiamenti nelle relazioni di potere che accelereranno, interromperanno e incorporeranno la trasformazione rendendola duratura. Che ostacoli si incontrano per essere cittadini attivi? E come possono essere superati? Dal punto di vista tecnico, l’ostacolo più grande (quando lo chiediamo) sembra essere il “tempo”. Ad ogni modo non possiamo prendere del tutto sul serio questo assunto. Troviamo sempre il tempo se siamo abbastanza motivati. Ciò che realmente ci manca è la motivazione a partecipare nell’ambito della democrazia tradizionale. Sebbene alcuni paesi sbandierino orgogliosamente una affluenza alle urne e fiducia maggiore di altri, questo non rappresenta un indice di cittadinanza attiva: è come dormire in piedi tra la folla, seguendo i dinosauri verso la cometa. 1 Proprio in Europa abbiamo visto i votanti guardare con interesse proprio a quei partiti che combattevano le strutture democratiche tradizionali sia a destra che a sinistra. Non puoi costringere la gente ad impegnarsi attivamente secondo le tue regole, soprattutto se non crede più in te e si sente distante dal processo. Non è colpa solo dei cittadini ma anche di governi sempre più tecnocratici e remoti e dell’emergere di una élite politica che sembra autorigenerarsi. Le persone si sono allontanate da questi sistemi fuori dal mondo, ma non dalle cose a cui tengono, lo fanno solo in un modo che il sistema non riconosce e non rispetta. Se la società è cambiata allora dobbiamo chiederci che cosa possiamo fare per indirizzare questo cambiamento del potere, farlo crescere e maturare verso una nuova forma di democrazia, una forma attiva e basata sulla deliberazione, l’inclusione e la co-creazione. A un livello molto pratico, dobbiamo considerare modi nuovi per incentivare l’impegno, che vadano dall’apprezzare genuinamente le persone che donano il loro tempo ed energie e rendendo chiaro che cosa rappresenta per i partecipanti ad esempio attraverso l’adozione di alcuni principi delle teorie di gioco che possono fornire incentivi diretti, premi e anche gare tra i partecipanti. Dobbiamo costruire processi collaborativi in cui le persone non solo portano a termine un compito o partecipano a un incontro, ma co – progettano il processo stesso. Attraverso tutto il percorso i governi collaborano con i cittadini. Il processo è trasparente e aperto, i risultati sono chiari e le azioni giustificate dal processo. Qual’ la questione europea più importante in questo momento? La democrazia moderna è complessa e complicata, luoghi differenti portano sfide, problemi e soluzioni differenti, la democrazia è al suo interno costruita culturalmente intorno a dove viviamo e riflette le norme, le aspettative ed i nostri più ampi interessi sociali. Tuttavia è da notare che, almeno in Europa, condividiamo molti interessi e sfide, la fiducia precipita, la percentuale di affluenza alle urne sta crollando e, come abbiamo visto nelle elezioni del Parlamento Europeo del 2014, c’è una disconnessione sempre maggiore tra la politica tradizionale e la democrazia basata su questioni concrete. Se vogliamo trasformare questa situazione, costruire la partecipazione democratica e ristabilire la fiducia dobbiamo rendere la democrazia attraente per le persone, per tutti noi. Per fare ciò abbiamo bisogno di nuovi modi di lavorare, nuove competenze, e volontà di lasciar andare il controllo. Dobbiamo accettare che la democrazia non può essere una “taglia unica” e che nessuno ha tutte le risposte. Nuove soluzioni devono scaturire dalla collettività e noi dobbiamo: riconsiderare la nostra relazione tra persone e luoghi sfidare l’elitarismo della democrazia comprendere il processo e interfacciarci con i risultati dell’impegno e costruire spazi per leadership coraggiose
3 Questions to Miguelángel Verde
Miguelángel is co-founder of the Berlin Forum on Global Politics, a non-profit which edited The Transatlantic Colossus, an international study on the free trade agreement currently being negotiated between the EU and US (TAFTA|TTIP).
Mos Maiorum: un’inaccettabile blitzkrieg agli immigrati
L’Unione Europea si sta comportando come se avesse dichiarato guerra ai migranti, specialmente a coloro che stanno scappando da guerre vere. Non possiamo permettere agli stati membri, o alle loro forze di polizia, di introdurci di nascosto in questa guerra ignobile, inumana e che sostanzialmente non può essere vinta.
Chi siamo noi, i cittadini?
Traduzione di Roberto Carloni Articolo di Saskia Sassen, Columbia University www.saskiasassen.com Ritengo che la cittadinanza sia come un accordo incompiutamente razionalizzato stipulato tra i soggetti giuridici e lo Stato. È nell’incompletezza della cittadinanza che risiede la sua possibilità di avere una vita lunga e mutevole. Esiste un ampio margine di manovra che permette di creare e ricreare la definizione di “cittadino”, anche per coloro “che non ne fanno parte”, siano essi stranieri provenienti da fuori o stranieri residenti in un dato paese. Al giorno d’oggi, il concetto di cittadinanza è in crisi. Tuttavia, possiamo e dobbiamo attribuirgli un nuovo significato attingendo dal suo lungo passato e tenendo conto delle condizioni attuali. Si tratta di un compito arduo, poiché stiamo assistendo a massicce ristrutturazioni che vanno ben al di là delle esclusioni sociali e che spesso sfociano in espulsioni drastiche: o si è dentro o si è fuori. Chi sta ottenendo nuovi diritti nel mondo di oggi? Nel corso degli ultimi trent’anni, sono state per lo più le multinazionali. Inoltre, le nuove élite globali non devono nemmeno essere cittadini formali per andare dove vogliono e ottenere ciò che desiderano. Tuttavia noi, cittadini normali, abbiamo perso diritti, con rare eccezioni parziali. D’altra parte, nonostante molti immigrati sianocittadini provenienti da un determinato paese (circa il 3% sono apolidi), vengono trattati come se fossero una comunità di alieni senza diritti. Inoltre, numerosi migranti vengono espulsi dai loro paesi d’origine, in particolare a causa del land grabbing perpetrato da imprese statunitensi, europee e asiatiche, proprio quei paesi nelle cui grinfie finiscono spesso i migranti. In sintesi, c’è molto lavoro da fare. Infattiogni giorno vengono avviate nuove iniziative: sappiamo che dovremo lottare per rendere il mondo un posto migliore.Guardando alla storia dell’Occidente, spesso è stato grazie agli outsiders se siamo riusciti a estendere i nostri diritti. È stato merito loro se l’istituzione della cittadinanza è stata sottoposta a nuovi tipi di rivendicazione in diverse epoche e differenti zone geografiche – dai proletari dell’Inghilterra dei XIX secolo che richiedevano il diritto di cittadinanza, alla comunità LGBT che nel 2000 lottano per ottenere gli stessi diritti degli altri cittadini. Le donne, le minoranze, i richiedenti asilo e i migranti hanno contribuito ad estendere i diritti di tutti i cittadini su traiettorie multi-generazionali. L’operato degli impotenti ha delle tempistiche molto più lente rispetto a quello dei potenti, i quali possono afferrare e distruggere rapidamente ciò che vogliono. Eppure, le richieste di estendere l’inclusione da parte degli “outsider” rafforzano l’istituzione della cittadinanza quando vengono ascoltate. Sebbene sia raro che essi ottengano nuovi poteri nel corso di tale processo, la loro impotenza ha acquisito una dimensione più complessa, poiché hanno contribuito a fare la storia e la politica. Oggi il significato stesso di “stato nazionale” e “appartenenza nazionale” sta diventando instabile. Entrambe le realtà neutralizzano il concetto di “nazionalità” o lo trasformano in una passione viscerale “pre-politica” (uso questo termine perché la politica è volta a superare e a mediare le pulsioni viscerali). I confini tradizionali del moderno sistema interstatale sono diventati e continuano a essere un elemento critico e distintivo per l’appartenenza nazionale, nonché un fattore chiave per il dibattito sulla migrazione, all’interno del quale non viene affrontato in maniera esauriente il tema dei confini interstatali tradizionali, con tutte le sue varianti a livello pratico e formale. Al contrario, sta diventando sempre più un mero elemento inserito nel più ampio contesto operativo della mobilità umana, il quale ha iniziato ad acquisire importanza a partire dagli anni ’80 ed è caratterizzato da una crescente divergenza tra migranti poveri e di alto livello. Un elemento innovativo è costituito dalla proliferazione dei visti speciali che consentono alle imprese di assumere un determinato tipo di lavoratore migrante, i cosiddetti “professionisti stranieri”. Questi permessi hanno creato nuovi ostacoli per la maggior parte dei migranti. Il negoziato GATS – Modalità 4 concede ai lavoratori, quando vengo assunti da un’azienda straniera, la trasferibilità di alcuni diritti formali che vengono riconosciuti in tutti i paesi firmatari. Ciò contribuisce a creare un soggetto privilegiato con diritti portatili. Dovremmo ispirarci a tale processo, in quanto si tratta di una possibilità che non viene presa in considerazione nella maggior parte dei dibattiti sulla migrazione. Il punto di partenza dovrebbe essere che la maggior parte dei migranti è costituita da cittadini di un determinato paese, un fatto dimenticato nel linguaggio dell’illegalità. Non esiste un essere umano “illegale”. Pertanto, la sfida consiste nel rendere trasferibili alcuni dei diritti fondamentali, come accade nel caso dei professionisti. Al giorno d’oggi, la cittadinanza o l’appartenenza formale a uno Stato ha poco significato per la classe mobile degli ultra-ricchi, poiché non ne ha bisogno per ottenere l’accesso a territori nazionali esteri. Lo stesso vale anche per la classe stanziale dei nullatenenti, per la quale la cittadinanza sta cominciando a valere sempre meno: conferisce pochi diritti e rappresenta a malapena una piattaforma per far valere le proprie richieste. Il fatto che la xenofobia coesista con la denazionalizzazione parziale dell’appartenenza politica nel caso dei cittadini più ricchi è indicativo della qualità arbitraria delle nostre politiche? Dovremmo cercare di definire questa arbitrarietà in quanto è fonte di informazioni preziose. In passato, le ragioni e le origini della migrazione erano differenti da quelle odierne. Tuttavia, è un dato di fatto che tutti i principali paesi europei sono stati oggetto di flussi migratori nel corso dei secoli. La demografia storica dimostra che la maggior parte degli Stati nazionali europei ha “integrato” stranieri alla popolazione autoctona. Possiamo dunque imparare qualcosa da queste storie di micro-integrazione che spesso convivono con episodi di violenza xenofoba? L’odio e gli attacchi nei confronti degli immigrati si sono verificati in ciascuna delle principali fasi di immigrazione in tutti i paesi dell’Europa occidentale (Sassen 1999). In seguito a un’attenta indagine, nessun paese che riceve forza lavoro esce con la fedina penale pulita. I lavoratori francesi hanno ucciso i loro colleghi italiani nelle miniere di sale nel 1800 e si sono rifiutati di collaborare con i lavoratori tedeschi e belgi assunti per realizzare il piano di ricostruzione di Parigi creato da Haussmann.…
Il Video del #FixEurope Campus
70 attivisti di tutta europa si sono uniti in un Campus di tre giorni, in cui hanno riflettuto e unito le idee, pratiche e proposte per costruire ulteriormente le lotte comuni per la democrazia e uguaglianza in europa e oltre.
Will we now #FixEurope?
Europe needs to be fixed, but there is no consensus on how to do so. A consensus would not do justice to the great variety of ideas and alternatives and the depth and honesty with which they were discussed at the Campus.
3 questions to Rafaella Bolini
Raffaella has been an activist in international social movements since the ’80s including European Nuclear Disarmament, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, Time for Peace in Middle East, Italian Consortium of Solidarity during the Balkan’s wars, anti-racist movement, altermondialistic movement, European and World Social Forum.
#FixEurope Campus Video
70 activists from throughout Europe joined in a three-day campus environment for reflection, learning and strategising, uniting ideas, practices, and proposals to build on common struggles for democracy and equality in Europe and beyond.
Trois questions a … Andy Williamson
Andy Williamson est reconnu à l’échelle internationale en tant qu’expert en démocratie numérique, en innovation et en variations de l’engagement.
Intervista a Igor Štiks
Igor Stiks è scrittore, attivista e ricercatore presso l’Università di Edimburgo dove si occupa di temi quali la cittadinanza, il dissenso e la creatività.
#FixEurope Conference
#FixEurope Conference: Strategies for Political and Social Renewal w/ Saskia Sassen, Ulrike Guérot, Hauke Brunkhorst, Igor Štiks, Beppe Caccia and Catherine Fieschi. Berlin, Oct. 25th
Orbán’s trick
After mass protests against the internet tax in Hungary, PM Orbán’s comments on the issue were interpreted by international media as a retreat and victory for democracy. They were wrong.
#FixEurope: Adesso sistemeremo l’Europa?
E’ un tale sollievo(!) che non abbiamo raggiunto un largo consenso su come sistemare l’Europa #FixEurope. Un sollievo, perché un consenso non avrebbe dato giustizia alla grande varietà di idee e alternative giunte al tavolo e la profondità e l’onestà con le quali esse siano state discusse.
Lo scherzetto di Orban
Dopo le proteste di massa in Ungheria per la internet tax, la reazione al riguardo, del Primo Ministro e stata interpretata come una ritrattazione, una vittoria per i manifestanti e la democrazia. Avevano torto.
Public and Collective Making
Laura Sobral’s decision to make a regular, performative occupation of the Largo da Batata, in São Paulo. Article originally published in the Transnational Dialogues 2014 Journal.
Il fare pubblico e collettivo
L’occupazione performativa di Largo da Batata, a San Paolo, di Laura Sobral — uno spazio che non è niente può essere tutto.
Citoyens, qui sommes-nous?
Saskia Sassen pour European Alternatives.
3 domande a … Raffaella Bolini
Raffaella è stata attiva nel settore della società civile in Italia e in Europa, portando avanti battaglie importanti come quella dei beni comuni, dei diritti dei migranti etc.
LA ‘NUOVA TURCHIA’
Prima delle elezioni presidenziali del 10 agosto, Erdoğan aveva promesso di creare “la nuova Turchia”. Se analizziamo i 50 giorni successivi alla nascita della cosiddetta ‘Nuova Turchia’, non notiamo nessun cambiamento, ad eccezione di nuovi modi di violare i diritti e la libertà dei cittadini.
Transnational Dialogues Journal 2014
Transnational Dialogues Journal 2014 is a journal in English, Chinese and Portuguese that presents articles from philosophers, curators, policy makers and artists.
We Need Hybrid Spaces to Build Alternatives
Beppe Caccia: We need to build hybrid spaces within which to reverse the unequal balance in social powers. 2015 presents us with two opportunities to put exactly this into practice.
Our support for a strong Intergroup on Anti-racism in the European Parliament
As a transnational organisation which is part of a wider coalition supporting the re-establishment of a strong Intergroup on Anti-racism and Diversity (ARDI) for the 8th European Parliament legislature, we attach great importance to mainstreaming racial equality in the policy and legislative work of EU bodies, as well as to enhancing the participation of civil society as a whole in decision-making processes to combat discrimination in all its various forms (racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Roma, homophobia, transphobia, …) and to guarantee the right of everyone. Keenly aware of the rising dangers of populism and right-wing extremism and in order to be more effective on these relevant issues for the integrity of the European project, we joined more than 100 European, national and local NGOs in launching a call for the re-establishment of a strong intergroup on anti-racism and diversity in the European Parliament. It is therefore essential to ensure that the European Parliament’s commitment to tackle racial discrimination and racist violence is high on the agenda, and that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) establish a strong intergroup on anti-racism in the European Parliament to advance a comprehensive anti-racist agenda and to jointly react to manifestations of racism and hate. The progression of far-right parties or parties propagating xenophobic and racist ideas is threatening the core European values of human rights and equality. The most extensive support for the re-establishment of an intergroup is needed more than ever as the European Parliament’s political groups will vote for their priority list of Intergroups on 26 November 2014. We believe that it is vital that those MEPs who are committed to equality, do actively and consistently drive European policies grounded in the values of solidarity, equality, diversity and well-being for all while also enhancing their capacity to react in a concerted manner. This is why over the past two months we strongly encouraged newly-elected and re-elected MEPs to support the Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup re-establishment as well as to show their commitment to join it, once re-established. Intergroups are known as “unofficial groupings” which bring together MEPs from different political groups who wish to work on a common subject. They tend to be formed at the beginning of each parliamentary term to promote informal exchanges of views between MEPs and civil society. They are an increasing important platform for consultation between Members of Parliament and various interest groups, notably civil society organisations and social movements. They offer a “way in” for civil society into policy-making mechanisms also serving as crucial fora where MEPs can gather information on the rising developments on the issues of common concern and coordinate political campaigns. During its 7th Legislature, the European Parliament hosted 27 formally registered Intergroups. The largest of all these was the one on LGBT Rights, which gathered 174 elected Members of the European Parliament from 25 Member States belonging to 6 political groups. The functioning of the LGBT Intergroup over the last 5 years evidenced how an intergroup can be a powerful ally for civil society campaigns and initiatives, amplifying their voice, reach, and impact, while providing a forum for MEPs to be made aware of and make alliances on a common issue, leading to more outspoken and confident representatives. The setting up of an Intergroup is, in this sense, a “service of general interest” at disposal to all civil society organisations and coalitions fighting for better EU policies. The Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup was set up for the first time in 2004 to enhance collaboration between MEPs, political groups and other relevant stakeholders, such as NGOs, trade unions and European institutions, on issues related to racism and equality. During the 2009-2014 term, the intergroup had 64 members from 6 different political groups and organised a number of high-level debates, especially on hate crime. MEPs can still submit support for the ARDI intergroup confirmation and re-establishment by kindly writing to Ms. Cécile Kashetu Kyenge MEP at: kashetu.kyenge@europarl.europa.eu
Hungary: a shrinking civic space – a dilemma for Europe?
The recent developments which have been reported in Hungary risk violating basic human rights such as right to liberty, freedom of association, freedom of expression and information as well as freedom of the press and wider media, and are becoming increasingly alarming.
The Balkan Forum: Situations, Struggles, Strategies
Bringing together progressive leftist forces from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania (for the first time since the collapse of state socialist regimes and Yugoslavia) to discuss and imagine a common future for their region.
Il nostro supporto per un forte Intergruppo sull’Anti-razzismo e la Diversità al Parlamento Europeo
Attribuiamo la massima importanza alle iniziative volte a inserire il tema dell’uguaglianza razziale in tutti i livelli dell’attività legislativa e di indirizzo politico politica dell’Unione europea, così come a quelle volte a rafforzare la partecipazione della società civile nel suo insieme nei processi decisionali.
Notre soutien à un Intergroupe Antiracisme et Diversité » fort au sein du Parlement européen
En tant qu’organisation transnationale membre de la coalition pour la création d’un Intergroupe Antiracisme et Diversité (ARDI) pour la 8e législature du Parlement européen, nous attachons une grande importance à l’intégration de l’égalité dans les politiques et le travail législatif de l’Union européenne, à l’amélioration de la participation de la société civile dans son ensemble dans les processus de prise de décisions pour lutter contre la discrimination sous toutes ses différentes formes (racisme, xénophobie, antisémitisme, islamophobie, anti-Rom, homophobie, transphobie, … ) et à la garantie du droit de chacun à l’égalité devant la loi, sans distinction de couleur, d’origine nationale ou ethnique. Face aux dangers du populisme et de l’extrême droite pour l’intégrité du projet européen, nous avons décidé d’unir nos efforts et de rejoindre l’appel lancé par plus de 100 organisations européennes, nationales et locales, pour la re-création d’un intergroupe Anti-racisme et Diversité au sein du Parlement européen. Les groupes politiques voteront le 26 novembre prochain pour leur liste finale de priorités concernant les intergroupes. Il est dès lors plus que jamais essentiel de s’assurer de leur engagement à réagir de manière concertée dans la lutte contre la discrimination raciale et la violence raciste, et à conduire des politiques européennes fondées sur des valeurs de solidarité, égalité, diversité et bien-être pour tous. Groupements non officiels réunissant des député(e)s de différents groupes politiques qui souhaitent travailler sur un dossier commun, les intergroupes sont devenus une importante plate-forme de concertation entre les membres du Parlement et divers groupes d’intérêts, organisations de la société civile et mouvements sociaux. Ils représentent pour ces derniers une “voie d’accès” aux mécanismes d’élaboration des politiques européennes, et sont, pour les eurodéputés, un forum leur permettant de recueillir des informations précieuses concernant les derniers développements des questions d’intérêt commun qu’ils ont à traiter et de coordonner des campagnes politiques. Au cours de sa 7ème législature, le Parlement européen a officiellement accueilli 27 intergroupes. Le plus important d’entre eux était celui sur les droits des LGBT, qui a réuni 174 membres élus du Parlement européen, de 25 États membres et appartenant à six groupes politiques. Le fonctionnement de cet intergroupe lors des cinq dernières années, témoigne de la manière dont un intergroupe peut devenir un puissant allié pour les campagnes et les initiatives de la société civile, pour amplifier leur voix, leur portée et leur impact, tout en fournissant les informations et alliances nécessaires aux députés pour porter de manière plus forte et confiante leurs combats politiques. La mise en place d’un intergroupe est, en ce sens, un “service d’intérêt général” à la disposition de toutes les organisations et coalitions de la société civile qui luttent pour améliorer les politiques européennes. En tant que député(e)s, vous pouvez toujours soumettre votre soutien pour la constitution de l’intergroupe Antiracisme et Diversité en écrivant à Mme la députée européenne Cécile Kashetu Kyenge, à l’adresse suivante: kashetu.kyenge@europarl.europa.eu
A parable of Maps and Europe’s future
Jorge Louis Borges – the most European of writers in all but place of birth – tells the story of an Empire in which the people were so fond of cartography that they created a life-sized map of the Empire.
When in Rome – Transnational Dialogues 2014
Rachel Marsden’s Words: a comprehensive overview of the closing event of Transnational Dialogues 2014 held at the MAXXI, Rome.
#starbucketchallenge
Free Tania Bruguera
Artist, campaigner and member of European Alternatives’ advisory board, Tania Bruguera appears to have been arrested on the 30th December 2014 in Cuba for organizing an art performance on Revolution Square in Havana, which would be an open mic on the future of the country.
Ulrich Beck: The necessity of a cosmopolitan outlook
Ulrich Beck died on the 1st January 2015. As a tribute to his cosmopolitan thinking and utopianism for Europe, we here republish an interview he gave to European Alternatives in 2010, which seems all the more pertinent today with the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany, an the ongoing evolutions of the euro-crisis.
Siamo con Charlie per la liberta’ di informazione e di convivenza pacifica
European Alternatives condanna il vile attentato a Charlie Hebdo ed è vicina a tutti giornalisti che con il proprio lavoro difendono la libertà di tutti. Siamo infatti convinti che libertà di stampa e libertà di informazione siano indissolubili e rappresentino, insieme, un pilastro della democrazia. Il successo della nostra recente Campagna per il Pluralismo dei Media conferma l’urgenza di un tema che molti volevano sparisse dall’agenda politica e che adesso torna alla ribalta nel più feroce dei modi. Allo stesso tempo, il nostro impegno contro ogni forma di razzismo e xenofobia ricorda quanto sarebbe grave confondere episodi di estremismo come quello che ha colpito Parigi con l’idea di pacifica coesistenza che caratterizza la presenza di più culture nel mondo. Per questo, per dimostrare la nostra solidarietà con le vittime, la nostra determinazione in difesa della libertà di espressione e la nostra fiducia in una società multietnica, invitiamo tutti alla fiaccolata che abbiamo organizzato insieme alla Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana (Fnsi), l’Ordine nazionale dei giornalisti, l’Ordine dei giornalisti del Lazio, l’Associazione Stampa Romana, Se Non Ora Quando, Articolo 21, Acli, Arci, Libera informazione, Ossigeno e altri. L’appuntamento è per stasera, giovedì 8 gennaio alle ore 18, a Roma in piazza Farnese, davanti alla sede dell’Ambasciata di Francia.
European Alternatives a Human Factor
Abbiamo partecipato a Human Factor, l’iniziativa lanciata da SEL a Milano lo scorso fine settimana insistendo sul fatto che, adesso come non mai, l’agire dei partiti debba intrecciarsi con la dimensione sociale della politica ed avere un respiro transnazionale.
Citi-rights Europe is up and running!
We are happy to inform you that our new Transeuropean project – Citi-rights Europe, funded by the European Commission, DG Justice – has started its activities. European Alternatives will be working with 11 partners from all over the continent to raise awareness on the incompleteness of EU citizenship and mobilise towards the advancement of EU citizens’ rights. Europe is changing: with this project we want Europe to change in the direction of expanding citizens’ rights.
PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH CIVIL SOCIETY EUROPE – THE EUROPEAN COORDINATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS
A launching press conference will take place on 3 February from 13:30 to 14:00 in the European Parliament press conference room (PHS 0A50), Brussels, in the presence of Sylvie Guillaume MEP, European Parliament Vice-President responsible for Citizenship. Established on 16 December 2014 in Rome, Civil Society Europe is a permanent coordination of organised civil society at EU level. Civil Society Europe brings together European networks of associations and NGOs that share a common vision for Europe, and will work towards regenerating the European project around the shared values of equality, solidarity, inclusiveness and democracy. Civil society organisations and movements are the materialisation of citizens’ aspirations for change including in the content of the European policies that do not meet expectations and needs in terms of social justice and universal access to fundamental rights. From this perspective, Civil Society Europe hopes to be influential in shaping the agenda on issues of common interest for citizens and organisations, to nurture a vibrant European democracy grounded on civic participation, and to ensure that people’s aspirations guided by the values we share are heard and responded to. Within this mandate, Civil Society Europe will intervene in the revision process of the inter-institutional cooperation on better law-making for the full implementation of Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty on civil dialogue with representative associations and civil society. Read the Civil Society Europe Manifesto Press enquiries Alexandrina NAJMOWICZ +33 180 05 19 12 // anajmowicz@civic-forum.eu
Solidarity – even at times of crisis? Favourable conditions and practical models for Europe
European Alternatives takes part in a University of Siegen coordinated research project worth 2.5 million Euros analysing the impact of the crisis on transnational solidarity and proposing new solutions.
Let’s talk about utopia
[vimeo height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://vimeo.com/118991871[/vimeo] What is utopia? What does it mean to change utopia now? Is the role of the artist to destroy the current failing utopias or is the it to create new utopias. Which is the difference in the creation and perception of utopia between China and Europe? How one could read the current situation in Hong Kong from a cultural and artistic perspective? What about the future? Those are the questions that are addressed by Chinese curator Hou Hanru in a dialogue with Luigi Galimberti, coordinator of Transnational Dialogues. The interview was held on 15 November 2014. Started in 2011 by European Alternatives, Transnational Dialogues is an open and on-going cross-media platform managing and imagining artistic and cultural projects with a focus on the new geographies of globalisation and the emergence of a multi-polar artistic and intellectual world.
Cambia la Grecia Cambia l’Europa
Con piacere diffondiamo questo appello a partecipare ad una manifestazione nazionale sabato 14 febbraio a Roma
Not in our name: The Mediterranean kills over EU disagreement
We call on all European leaders meeting in Brussels to raise as matter of urgency the necessity of a joint European mission to avoid the perpetuation of such horror.
Mapping below the radar activists
Today in London, European Alternatives Trustee Noel Hatch and researcher Maria Botello presented the findings of a year-long research project to map how below the radar organisations utilise crowdfunding platforms. Botello and Hatch’s research is part of a larger Nesta commissioned publication entitled ‘Data for good: How big and open data can be used for the common good’ that examines how data-driven methods inform activism and civic engagement. Read more about the publication release event.
Tania Bruguera speaks out
Tania Bruguera, artist and member of the European Alternatives’ Advisory Board, spoke to the media about her detention by Cuban authorities following organisation of a performance in Havana. Recently we published an article on the arrest of Tania Bruguera the Cuban artist and campaigner. She organised an art performance on Havanna’s Revolutionary Square but was arrested shortly before and did not get to attend her own performance. Tania was released 72 hours after her arrest, but authorities have since confiscated her passport and charged her with inciting public disorder, resisting police and attempting to commit a crime. In VICE News, Bruguera speaks for the first time about her political art and censorship in Cuba. You can read the article here.
Greece: It’s the politics, stupid
The Greek debt debate is about more than Greek debt. If it were just about Greek debt, it would have been largely solved already: debt of the Greek state is only 3 per cent of Eurozone GDP, and almost everyone agrees that some sort of further restructuring is necessary to avoid a default, which would be a bad outcome for all Europeans. There is also widespread agreement that crippling Greek recovery with a punitive debt repayment schedule will end up being economically self-defeating, while prolonging a serious humanitarian crisis and posing an existential threat to the Eurozone. The reaction of many political leaders to the rise of parties calling for a rethinking of Europe’s economic policies seems to be a desire to stamp them out to prove that “there is no alternative”. The firmness of public refusal of Syriza’s demands seems to be designed to show other movements, such as Podemos or Sinn Fein, that popular insurrection will not change decisions in the Eurozone. It is no coincidence that countries such as Spain or Portugal appear as firm as Germany or the Netherlands towards Greek demands. But the economic policies imposed on Greece are not in the interests of the larger part of the European population at all, and they are ultimately disastrous for everyone asides from a few investors. The Greek people who voted against them have given a wake up call to the European population about this, and so deserve our support. The idea that Germany and other surplus countries have lent money to countries currently in deficit, which should now pay it back, is only one part of the story. In reality, it was banks that were able to capture a large amount of the surplus value produced by workers from the 1990s onwards due to wage moderation, and lent this money abroad, thereby creating speculative bubbles. The bailouts in reaction to the banking crisis from 2008 onwards served to turn this private debt into public debt, saving primarily German and French banks with European public money. These bailouts also had the effect of turning what was a matter of private debt into ‘national’ debts, thereby creating the impression of ‘national’ competition. Now it is misguided both for “creditor” and “debtor” countries to claim they have a responsibility only to their own taxpayers, and it is also misguided for the whole debate to be characterized as one country against another: in reality there are winners and losers inside and between each country, and a truly European perspective is necessary to deal with the situation justly. A discussion which is profoundly political is being dressed up as an economic and technical discussion. All the while, Greeks and others across Europe are being held hostage to lack of political courage and vision by austerity policies designed at best to minimize risks to creditors, and not with the wellbeing or future of citizens in mind. This strategy of defending the status-quo shows leaders are not looking to the European future. Instead of thwarting popular attempts to influence economic decision-making, Europe’s leaders should be opening a serious debate on economic and political integration of the Eurozone and the European Union more generally, and showing a direction towards integration. Delaying this political discussion until economically more favourable times – as seems to be the strategy of several European leaders – is likely to have the self-defeating effect of preventing good economic decisions being taken at all, while persevering human misery and mutual distrust in Europe.
Blockupy transnational actions confirmed
On March 18th 2015 in Frankfurt movements from across Europe will meet to call for an alternative economic policy for the continent. The emergence of transnational movements is an important development in the construction of a united political space in Europe. On March 18th 2015, in Frankfurt, movements from across the continent will meet under the “Blockupy” banner to call for an alternative economic and financial policy for the EU. At the heart of the demonstrations this year will be the request for a radical response to address the humanitarian crisis in Greece and the failure of austerity policies. Blockupy asks to end the neoliberal policies demanded by the Troika and calls for international solidarity with the Greek people. Find out more about the call and Blockupy’s demands here.
Appello di Blockupy: È giunto il momento di agire
Appello transanzionale per una mobilitazione a Francoforte il 18 marzo per una nuova politica economica
A tennis court oath for Europe
This article is originally published on openDemocracy Europe has historically been a beacon of political experimentation. Has it now become structurally unfit for change? European modernity has been defined by the struggle of competing economic and political models, both within and between countries. The victory of an openly anti-austerity party in Greece, elected with a clear mandate to change the status quo, risks bringing home Europe’s new structural incapacity for change. The recent negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup resulted in an agreement to extend the country’s bailout program by four months, with minimal concessions to the new social course demanded by the Greek government and no compromise on debt restructuring. Many within Syriza’s left, from Stathis Kouvelakis to Costas Lapavitsas, have seized on the uncompromising attitude of European partners to question the government’s policy of changing Europe from within, arguing that only an exit from the euro and a default on national debt can ultimately allow Greece to live up to the alternative economic course it promised voters. At the Syriza Central Committee meeting on the last week of February the Left Platform faction was narrowly defeated by 55% against 45% on these proposals. In Spain, Podemos is struggling to strike a difficult balance between demands to regain national sovereignty from “austerity Europe” and a more conciliatory rhetoric on the possibility of transforming the EU. It is no coincidence that intellectuals such as Toni Negri are joining calls for Podemos to stick to a radical-but-European course of action. Agreed, Europe will not be changed in a day. Sandro Mezzadra and Etienne Balibar do well to emphasise the necessary longue durée of a political shift in the European Union, claiming that Syiza has “won time” and that this time needs to be employed to engineer a “constituent rupture” with the current course of Europe’s history. But how long is too long for distressed citizens to continue believing in the possibility of European change? And above all: is there at least something correct in the critique that the current EU institutional set-up makes it structurally unfit for change? No change in policies without change in institutions Germany’s long-term vision seems to be that of an export-driven Europe where human capital, wage moderation and efficient institutions offset the competitive advantages of emerging countries. But there is widespread agreement that the type of brutal deleveraging policy imposed on peripheral countries is no economically sound way of getting there. A competitive economy – as Germany teaches – is based on investment in education and research, on innovative labour relations, on ecological and energy transformation, on good governance and legality. Not on impoverishment and pauperization. So why is Europe’s most successful economy insisting on the most unsuccessful economic policies for the rest? From a risk-aversion perspective, it is at least understandable that in a monetary confederation without economic or political union there is little willingness to mutualise risk with countries that still remain “semi-sovereign”. The European Council is marked by informal reform promises between nations, with a decision-making structure primarily based on mutual trust between heads of state and where the only binding mechanism comes from agreed fiscal targets and implied financial threats. It is unsurprising that deficit and debt targets have become such a fetish in the European Union. And not because of the moralistic German wordplay between “debt” and “sin” – Schuld – but because of the perception that they represent the only “constitutional” weapon in the feeble Confederation of semi-sovereign states. The statement of Yanis Varoufakis upon leaving his first Eurogroup meeting is telling of this attitude: “One of the great ironies of the Eurogroup is that there is no macroeconomic discussion. It’s all rules-based”. The new European Commission may have introduced a modicum of political discretionality through its emphasis on “flexibility”, but this amounts to little more than a game of plus or minus a few decimal percentage points in these same fiscal targets. In this much, the hard-liners of Syriza have a point: it is difficult to imagine a situation where a relative change in the balance of powers within the current institutional framework – say, following the election of a second anti-austerity party in another country –leads to any significant change in EU policies without a change in decision-making structures. The more realistic outcomes are either a very moderate adjustment or a paralysis of decision-making through a collapse of mutual trust. Without a transformation of the European Union, or at least of the Eurozone, in a democratic political union of federated states sharing fiscal, economic, and social policy, we will continue lacking any “space” where a political struggle may be fought with the possibility of substantive change in policy orientation. And at some point, the “national option” of EU exit and deft default – be it through right-wing extremism or left-wing “socialism in one country” – will begin sounding appealing to most, and with reason. As Thomas Piketty stresses in his interview with Pablo Iglesias, we need to move beyond the collective hypnosis that European treaties cannot be modified. In principle there is a peculiar alignment of interests for institutional change. It is not just in the interest of the left, or of the most indebted countries, to democratise economic decision-making and open the door to common European economic and social policies. It is equally in the interest of the most economically successful sectors, which are jeopardizing their welfare by locking-in a system of governance that perpetuates bad decision-making for most. A Tennis Court Oath for Europe On 20 June 1789, in France, members of the Third Estate left the Estates-Generals, renamed themselves the National Assembly, and famously swore on a tennis court “not to separate until the constitution of the kingdom is established”. The Tennis Court Oath marked a pivotal change in the political dynamics of the French Revolution. No longer was the request for better policies, but instead for an overhaul of the very system of government of the country, seen to be unable to respond to…
Un serment du Jeu de Paume pour l’Europe
Cet article a été publié sur OpenDemocracy L’Europe a historiquement toujours été le phare de l’expérimentation politique. Est-elle désormais devenue structurellement incapable de se reformer? La modernité européenne a toujours été définie par la concurrence entre un modèle économique et un modèle politique tant au sein des pays européens qu’entre eux. La victoire d’un parti ouvertemenet anti-austérité en Grèce, élu avec l’objectif clair de renverser le status quo risque d’illustrer le fait que l’Europe est devenue incapable de tout changement structurel. Les négociations entre la Grèce et l’Eurogroupe ont permis d’allonger le programme de renflouement de quatre mois en faisant des concessions sociales minimales au gouvernement grec qui les réclamait. Aucun compromis sur une restructuration de la dette n’a été atteint. Nombreux sont les membres de Syriza, de Stathis Kouvelakis à Costas Lapavitsas, à s’être servis de l’anti-compromission des partenaires européens sur tout changement structurel en Europe pour mettre en avant la sortie de l’euro et un défaut de paiement de la dette nationale comme seule possibilité pour la Grèce de fournir l’alternative économique promise à ses électeurs. Lors d’un rendez-vous du comité entral de Syriza la dernière semaine de février, le groupe Plateforme de Gauche a été battu de justesse avec 45% des votes contre 55%. En Espagne, Podemos se bat pour atteindre un équilibre entre ses demandes pour regagner sa souveraineté contre « l’Europe austérité » et une rhétorique plus conciliatoire sur les possibilités de transformer l’UE. Il n’est dès lors pas étonnant que des intellectuels tels que Toni Negri appellent Podemos à s’en tenir à une ligne radicale mais européenne. Nous sommes d’accord, l’Europe ne changera pas en un jour. Sandro Mezzadra et Etienne Balibar ont raison de mettre en avant la nécessité d’avoir un changement politique de longue durée dans l’Union européenne, mettant en avant que Syriza « a gagné du temps » et que ce temps doit maintenant être utilisé pour créer une « rupture constituante » avec le cours actuel de l’histoire européenne. Mais combien de temps les citoyens angoissés continueront de croire en la possibilité d’un changement en Europe ? Et surtout, y’a-t-il seulement un point correct dans le fait de critiquer que l’organisation institutionnelle de l’UE la rend incapable de tout changement structurel ? Pas de changement politique sans changement des institutions La vision à long-terme de l’Allemagne semble être celle d’une Europe exportatrice dans laquelle le capital humain, la modération des salaires et des institutions efficaces compensent les avantages compétitifs des pays émergents. Mais nombreux sont eux qui s’accordent sur le fait que cette politique brutale de désendettement imposée aux pays périphériques n’est pas une solution économique sensée. Une économie compétitive, comme nous l’enseigne l’Allemagne, est basée sur un investissement dans l’éducation et la recherche, sur des relations de travail innovantes, sur une transformation écologique et énergétique, sur une bonne gouvernance et des principes de légalité. Non sur l’appauvrissement et la paupérisation. Pourquoi donc la première économie d’Europe insiste sur l’utilisation des politiques économiques les moins favorables pour le reste ? D’un point de vue de gestion des risques, il est compréhensible que dans une confédération monétaire sans union politique ou économique il y ait peu d’envie de mutualiser le risque que des pays puissent rester « semi-souverains ». Le Conseil Européen est marqué par les réformes informelles promises entre les nations, où la structure décisionnelle est principalement basée sur l’accord mutuel entre les chefs d’états et où le seul mécanisme contraignant provient des objectifs fiscaux communs et des amendes financières que leur non-respect entraîne. Il n’est pas surprenant que le déficit et l’objectif de la dette soient devenus des fétiches dans l’Union européenne. Non pas seulement en raison du jeu de mots allemand moral entre « dette » et « péché » – Schuld –mais en raison de la perception qu’ils représentent la seule arme « constitutionnelle » dans une Confédération faible d’Etats semi-souverains. La déclaration de Yanis Varoufakis à la sortie de sa première réunion de l’Eurogroupe en dit long sur cette attitude : « L’une des grandes ironies de l’Eurogroupe est que l’on n’y discute aucunement de macroéconomique. Tout est basé sur les règles. » La nouvelle Commission Européenne a peut-être introduit un minimum de pouvoir politique par son insistance sur la « flexibilité » mais celle-ci ne s’éloigne pas d’un jeu de quelques dixièmes de points de pourcentage sur ces objectifs fiscaux. Dans ce cas, les partisans purs et durs de Syriza ont un argument : il est difficile d’imaginer une situation dans laquelle un changement relatif de l’équilibre des pouvoirs au sein du cadre institutionnel actuel – disons l’élection d’un deuxième parti-austérité dans un autre pays – apporterait tout changement significatif dans les politiques de l’UE sans changement dans sa structure décisionnelle. Les résultats les plus réalistes sont soit un ajustement très modéré, soit la paralysie du système décisionnel après l’effondrement de l’accord commun. Sans la transformation de l’Union européenne ou au moins de l’Eurozone en une union politique démocratique d’états fédéraux qui partagent une politique fiscale, sociale et économique commune, nous continuerons à manquer « d’espace » dans lequel une vision politique peut être débattue avec la pollisibilité d’un changement substantiel dans l’orientation de la politique. Et nous atteindrons un moment où « l’option nationale » d’une sortie de l’UE et d’un défaut de la dette – que ce soit par l’extrême-droite ou par le « socialisme en un pays » de gauche – commencera à plaire de plus en plus, et ce avec raison. Comme le souligne Thomas Piketty dans son entretien avec Pablo Iglesias, nous devons dépasser l’hypnose collective de l’impossible modification des traités. Il existe en principe un alignement singulier de nos intérêts pour un changement institutionnel. Ce n’est pas juste dans l’intérêt de la gauche ou des pays les plus endettés de démocratiser le processus décisionnel économique et d’ouvrir la porte à des politiques sociales et économiques européennes communes. Il est également dans l’intérêt des secteurs économiques les plus porteurs qui mettent en danger leur développement qui verrouille un système de gouvernance qui perpétue la plupart du temps un mauvais système décisionnel. Un Jeu de Paume pour l’Europe Le 20 juin 1789, en France, des membres du Tiers-Etat quittèrent les Etats Généraux, se…
Un giuramento della Pallacorda per l’Europa
L’Europa è stata storicamente un crogiolo di sperimentazione politica. E’ ora diventata strutturalmente incapace di cambiare?
European Alternatives: rooted cosmopolitanism and the distance of Europe
There are many good reasons to criticize the current European Union. I don’t need to list them here. One persistent complaint about the very possibility of a European Union is that it is too distant from ‘everyday life’. This kind of complaint is different to disagreement with current policies of the Union, and also goes beyond noticing a ‘democratic deficit’: it suggests that the European Union could never be something that people identify with, or that people find representative or responsive, because it is somehow necessarily too distant. Decisions are made ‘in Brussels’, which is not the real Brussels, but some place infinitely further away than Belgium. This kind of complaint is very similar to a complaint that is often made to the philosophical idea of cosmopolitanism: ‘a citizen of the world is a citizen of no (particular) place at all’, runs the criticism, ‘and so cannot feel a strong enough community bond to act politically’. What is more, this ‘cosmopolitan’ outlook tends to be identified with a metropolitan, jet-setting, highly individualistic elite ‘class’, themselves distant from the everyday concerns of everyday people, allergic to notions of loyalty, authority, belonging, family and all similar things. Perhaps such people are behind the machinations of the European Union… if only we could find and catch them. Sometimes this cosmopolitan outlook of a liberal class, and its supposed dominance in mainstream party politics, is identified as a cause for the disenchantment and alienation which leads people to vote for populist and right wing parties like UKIP or support movements like PEGIDA. (link http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/03/its-the-failure-of-modern-liberalism-that-has-propelled-ukips-rise/) No doubt some such rootless people exist. But what is striking to me is that in contemporary Europe, people I’ve come in contact with who are concerned about the world (is anyone seriously not interested at all in the future of the planet and what happens in other parts of the world?) also tend to be highly concerned with their immediate surroundings, with the place they are in, and people they are in contact with. Their concern with the ’world’ or the planet is not a concern with an abstract entity, but with something concrete they can act on starting where they are, which has a past which existed before them, and (we all hope) a future that will exist after them. Such people are not by any means allergic to loyalty, or the authority of what is right, or notions of belonging, even if they might critically question each invocation of these values and understand that communities ‘they’ belong to might not trump all others. Those who have been involved in European Alternatives tend to be curious, interested in what is happening around them, and motivated to do something about it. They are not all or even in majority from a metropolitan or wealthy background, even if there is a strong majority who are highly educated. This latter can, I think, be easily explained: a prerequisite for the kind of outlook I am describing is a strong self-reflexivity; the ability to critically question and understand the possibility of different points of view and interests. This ability is promoted by good formal education, but formal education is by no means the only way to develop it. The activities of European Alternatives have always been trans-local as they attempt to be transnational. Our hypothesis is that every place has connections and relations with other places beyond and outside of it. These connections and relations are decreasingly ‘national’ in scope, and cross all kinds of borders. Our everyday realities are increasingly connected and affected by what is going on elsewhere, through the economy, through media and communications, through climate change, through the increased movement of people. This is what we have tried to show with our Transeuropa Festival, or our Transeuropa Caravans. That our local lives are being increasingly affected by what is happening elsewhere, outside of our immediate view or possibility to intervene, could legitimately be a reason to be fearful. Such a phenomenon risks taking both control and certainty away from us. It risks creating ‘distance’. But these risks only come to bear by our failure to create political, social and cultural connections and institutions which allow us to impact and decide on our futures. Perhaps at some point in European history national institutions were appropriate for this: for making visible the relevant factors affecting our lives, and for allowing effective political intervention where this is possible. Now they are inadequate, and everyone feels it, even those (especially those) wishing for the ‘return’ of the strong nation-state. European Alternatives can be understood as enacting one variant has been called a ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’: not unconcerned with where we are, where we’ve come from and the people who are immediately around us, but also understanding firstly that these personal histories do not always have a priority, and secondly that ‘where we are’, and ‘who we’re with’ have increasingly trans-border answers which tend to be ignored or made invisible by mainstream political and media institutions. What does this tell us about the European Union and the far-away Brussels? Well, that a certain set of European institutions would actually be very well placed to restore democratic agency to people in a world becoming more interconnected, but this democratic agency is not to be recovered at an abstract or general level, but in specific localized situations, where a transnational political agency is actually required because the nature of the local problem requires it. Identifying these specific situations, and explaining how the EU can address them in terms that refer to the local situation is the main challenge for the EU. It goes beyond a communication problem, to requiring flexible and adaptable policy-making, rather than ‘one size fits all’ or centralized planning, which nevertheless has European dimension. To achieve both of these things, more citizen participation and co-design of policies seems to be the most promising way: the only way to get the high sensitiveness to local specificities, enough involvement of citizens to make the policies…
Citizens Rights
Il progetto Citi-Rights esamina come, quando e dove le persone nell’UE possono proteggere i diritti individualmente e collettivamente e, dove sono limitate dall’esercizio dei loro diritti, come la collaborazione transnazionale può immaginare e costruire un futuro in cui i diritti siano attivamente protetti.
Talk Real
Talk Real è un talk-show politico online che discute le questioni politiche, sociali e culturali più urgenti per l’Europa.
European Citizen’s Initiative on media freedom at EU Parliament
In 2014 European Alternatives ran a European Citizens’ Initiative on media freedom, collecting 200,000 signatures across the EU, demanding better European policy to protect the freedom of information. We have mobilised thousands of activists, NGOs and citizens’ movements from across Europe in a common transnational campaign. The campaign led to the establishment of the European Media Initiative, an international NGO based in Brussels and continuing the work of our campaign. On March 31st we are organising a policy seminar in the European Parliament to urge MEPs to push for the full implementation of the Media Pluralism Monitor, a monitoring tool that would empower European institutions to issue warnings on those countries where media freedom is most at risk. The event is hosted by Claude Moraes, Chair of the Civil Liberties Committee, and Silvia Costa, Chair of the Education Committee.
Heretical Europe: Jan Patočka as symbol of dissident contingency
This article was originally published on openDemocracy. Post-Europe, for Patočka, must be acutely aware of its own contingency even when it proclaims (above all when it proclaims) the sanctity of universal principles. The term ‘euro-skepticism’, as it is usually deployed, creates a kind of idiocy in public debate by assimilating many diverse positions. We can sketch at least three possible positions (all of which would require further clarification). One thing would be to be opposed to the European Union in principle – opposed to the very possibility of a Union between European peoples or countries. Nationalists we can assume would fall into this category, although there are nuances here (one could be nationalist and in favour of the United Nations, but not the European Union, for example, or opposed to all kinds of internationalism). Another thing would be criticism of the current European Union and its policies, which we can assume is a very widely held view at the moment, but does not equate to denying the possibility of the EU as such – indeed, criticism of this kind could be taken to be an affirmation of the possibility and desirability of an alternative European Union. A third thing again would be to adopt a skeptical approach in general to all politics, following diverse philosophical, religious and scientific traditions which all assert the importance of doubt and questioning in our search for truth or justice. What is more, there is a further distinction between Europe and the European Union which gets lost both in public debate and in the European Union’s own narrative for ideological reasons. The European Union is a unique and difficult to define political institution (an ‘unidentified political object’ as former President Jose Barroso described it). Europe, on the other hand, is a mythical figure, a geographical signifier with no clear boundaries, perhaps a ‘civilisation’, a subject of history and an object of political, philosophical, ethical and poetic reflection and imagination for thousands of years. The European Union often talks about itself as ‘Europe’ (something highly frustrating to all those people who consider themselves European but not yet part of the European Union, but also for all those who want to maintain some autonomy for the rich intellectual European tradition). But it is one thing to be critical or skeptical of the European Union as a political institution; quite another thing to be critical of Europe as a civilization, historical figure or even literary motif. As is often the case in confused public debate, which smacks of ideological mystification, the distinction is currently exploited best by right-wing populists. The UKIP MEP Roger Helmer is very proud of his car-bumper sticker reading ‘Love Europe, hate the EU’ (no doubt benefiting from the lack of border controls in mainland Europe as he drives around showing it off). Patočka shines a light Amidst all this confusion and obfuscation, the person and symbol of Jan Patočka stands for me as a lightening rod. Heretical and skeptical in the best theological, philosophical and political senses, dying under political repression, Socrates-like for challenging the state’s claims to absolute truth and organizing resistance against it, Patočka’s thought and biography are sufficiently charged and grounded in European history and reflection to light up the insufficiency of our current European debate, and to provide some terms which can help us. Patočka’s historiography of Europe-after-Europe, or Post-Europe, allows us to take a stance that is at once highly critical of Europe’s bloody and murderous history, and acknowledges that the consequences of history bestow upon us a particular responsibility as Europeans who inherit this past. This is all the more so when we have in many ways benefited from the violence that was inflicted on others. We can think that the European Union or some version of it is the most responsible political mechanism for addressing this conflicted and contradictory history, a history which goes well beyond questions of war and peace to include colonialism, the destructiveness of European technological and economic progress, and deep anti-human components of European thought. Patočka’s thought helps us to see the European Union as a potential consequence of European history, without identifying Europe and the European Union, nor seeing the EU as the ultimate point in a historical teleology of progress or reconciliation. The EU – like any political construct – is fully open for political critique and contestation in Patočka’s thought, and it is justified not in terms of political progress, but rather in terms of ethical responsibility. During these hard times for pro-Europeans, when the inadequacies of the Union and indeed the disastrous consequences of its current policies both outside and inside its borders seem all too apparent, Patočka’s position is sufficiently complex to acknowledge the ethical and moral contradictions of politics, whilst also asserting that it is our duty to keep on travelling towards a European ideal we know we can never totally reach. Even more important, Patočka’s anti-totalitarianism, expressed politically in his insistence on human rights and democracy through the Charter 77 movement, and profoundly in his philosophical writing, belies all those who claim to have, or call for, ‘final’ answers to political problems. Patočka’s insistence on human rights – often seen to be in some kind of tension with his ‘asubjective’ phenomenological approach – is at once an insistence on human contingency and radical liberty. The Charter states “The idea of human rights is nothing other than the conviction that even states, even society as a whole, are subject to the sovereignty of moral sentiment: that they recognize something unconditional that is higher than they are, something that is binding even on them, sacred, inviolable.” Patočka relates this absolute character of human rights to the Greek idea of ‘care for the soul’, and his point seems to be that human rights are prior to our existence in the world and protect the humanity of human kind: they are the guarantee of the very possibility of our caring for our souls, because they guarantee the possibility of self-expression, the right to assembly, the right to…
Europe hérétique : Jan Patočka, symbole de la contingence dissidente
Cet article a été publié sur openDemocracy. D’après Patočka, la Post-Europe doit être pleinement consciente de sa propre contingence même, et surtout, lorsqu’elle proclame l’inviolabilitédes principes universels. Le terme « euroscepticisme », au sens courant, génère une sorte de stupidité dans le débat public car il englobe de nombreuses opinions différentes. On peut distinguer au moins trois positions, qui mériteraient toutes d’être développées. La première serait l’opposition au concept d’Union Européenne, c’est-à-dire à la possibilité même d’une Union entre les peuples ou les pays européens. On peut présumer que les nationalistes font partie de cette catégorie, bien qu’il y ait des divergences puisque l’on peut être nationaliste en faveur des Nations Unies mais contre l’Union Européenne ou bien opposé à toute forme d’internationalisme. La seconde position serait la critique à l’égard de l’Union Européenne et de ses politiques actuelles, une position que l’on peut supposer répandue à l’heure actuelle mais qui n’équivaut pas à nier la possibilité de l’UE en tant que telle. En effet, ce genre de critique peut être considérée comme une affirmation qu’une Union Européenne alternative est possible et souhaitable. La dernière serait le scepticisme en général face à la politique, selon diverses traditions philosophiques, religieuses et scientifiques qui revendiquent l’importance du doute et du questionnement dans notre quête de vérité ou de justice. La distinction entre Europe et Union Européenne est elle aussi perdue de vue dans le débat public ainsi que dans le récit fait de l’Union Européenne pour des raisons idéologiques. L’Union Européenne est une institution politique unique et difficile à définir, un objet politique non identifié comme l’a désignée le précédent Président Jose Barroso. L’Europe, d’un autre côté, est une figure mythique, un signifiant géographique aux frontières floues, peut-être une « civilisation », un sujet d’histoire et un sujet d’imagination et de réflexion politique, philosophique, éthique et poétique depuis des milliers d’années. L’Union Européenne se désigne souvent comme l’« Europe », ce qui frustre grandement tous ceux qui se considèrent européens mais qui ne font pas encore partie de l’Union Européenne mais aussi ceux qui souhaitent maintenir une certaine autonomie de la riche tradition intellectuelle européenne. C’est une chose d’être critique ou sceptique à l’égard de l’Union Européenne en tant qu’institution politique mais c’en est bien une autre de critiquer l’Europe en tant que civilisation, figure historique ou même motif de littérature. Comme souvent dans les débats publics confus, dont émane une mystification idéologique, cette distinction est actuellement surtout exploitée par les populistes de droite. Roger Helmer, député européen du parti UKIP est très fier d’afficher sur son pare-chocs l’autocollant « Love Europe, hate the EU » (J’aime l’Europe, je déteste l’UE)… qu’il exhibe certainement à travers l’Europe tout en profitant de l’absence de contrôle aux frontières. Patočka nous éclaire Au cœur de cette confusion et de cette obscurité, Jan Patočka, sa personne et son symbole, est pour moi comme un flambeau. Hérétique et sceptique, au meilleur sens théologique, philosophique et politique du terme, mort de la répression politique, comparable à Socrate pour avoir mis en question et résisté à l’autoproclamation de l’état comme détenteur de la vérité absolue, la pensée et la biographie de Patočka sont suffisamment chargées de et ancrées dans l’histoire et la réflexion européennes pour mettre en lumière la faiblesse du débat européen actuel et nous fournir des pistes pour avancer. L’historiographie de Patočka sur l’Europe après l’Europe, ou la Post-Europe, nous permet d’adopter une position hautement critique de l’histoire sanglante et meurtrière de notre continent et reconnaît en même temps que les conséquences de l’histoire nous investissent d’une responsabilité particulière en tant qu’Européens qui héritons de ce passé. C’est d’autant plus vrai que nous avons bénéficié de nombreuses façons de la violence infligée aux autres. Il est possible que l’Union Européenne ou une variante soit le mécanisme politique le plus responsable pour démêler cette histoire conflictuelle et contradictoire, une histoire qui va bien plus loin que les questions de guerre et de paix pour englober le colonialisme, le caractère destructeur du progrès technologie et économique européen et les composantes profondément anti-humaines de la pensée européenne. La pensée de Patočka nous aide à percevoir l’Union Européenne comme une conséquence potentielle de l’histoire européenne, sans l’identifier à l’Europe, ni voir l’UE comme le point final d’une téléologie historique du progrès ou de la réconciliation. L’UE, comme toute construction politique, est tout à fait ouverte à la critique politique et à la contestation d’après Patočka, non pas au nom du progrès politique, mais de la responsabilité éthique. En ces temps difficiles pour les pro-européens, où l’inadéquation de l’Union et les conséquences désastreuses de ses politiques actuelles à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de ses frontières sont indéniables, la position de Patočka est suffisamment élaborée pour reconnaître les contradictions éthiques et morales de la politique tout en affirmant qu’il est de notre devoir de continuer à chercher un idéal européen que l’on ne pourra jamais vraiment atteindre. Plus important encore, l’antitotalitarisme de Patočka, exprimé politiquement par son insistance sur les droits de l’Homme et la démocratie dans le mouvement de la Charte 77 et amplement développé dans ses écrits philosophiques, s’oppose à tous ceux qui prétendent avoir ou rechercher la réponse « ultime » aux problèmes politiques. Lorsque Patočka insiste sur les droits de l’Homme, ce qui paraît souvent en contradiction avec son approche phénoménologique « asubjective », il insiste à la fois sur la contingence de l’homme et la liberté radicale. La Charte indique que « le concept des droits de l’Homme n’est rien de plus que la conviction que les états, et même la société dans son ensemble, sont soumis à la souveraineté du sentiment moral, qu’ils reconnaissent quelque chose d’inconditionnel, supérieur, sacré et inviolable auquel même eux sont soumis ». Patočka associe le caractère absolu des droits de l’Homme à la notion grecque du « soin de l’âme » et il semble soutenir que les droits de l’Homme sont antérieurs à notre existence sur la terre et qu’ils protègent l’humanité de l’espèce humaine. Ils garantissent la possibilité même du soin de l’âme car ils garantissent la possibilité d’auto-expression, du droit de rassemblement et de la liberté de…
Europa eretica: Jan Patočka come simbolo di contingenza dissidente
La post-Europa deve essere, stando a Patočka, fortemente consapevole della propria contingenza anche nel momento in cui proclama (soprattutto quando proclama) la santità dei principi universali. Il termine “euro-scetticismo”, nell’accezione con la quale viene solitamente usato, crea una sorta di idiozia nel dibattito pubblico in quanto catalizzatore di varie posizioni diverse tra di loro. Possiamo accennare almeno a tre connotazioni possibili (ognuna delle quali richiederebbe ulteriori chiarimenti). Una di queste sarebbe l’essere contrari all’Unione Europea per principio – opposti alla stessa possibilità che vi possa essere un’Unione tra popoli o nazioni Europei. Possiamo assumere che i nazionalisti ricadano in questa categoria, anche se vi sono delle possibili sfumature (uno potrebbe essere nazionalista ed a favore delle Nazioni Unite, ma non, per esempio, dell’Unione Europea, oppure potrebbe essere contrario ad ogni forma di internazionalismo). Un’altra sarebbe connotata dall’essere critici verso l’attuale Unione Europe e le sue politiche – posizione, possiamo assumere, molto diffusa al momento ma che non equivale al negare la possibilità dell’UE in quanto tale; tale criticismo potrebbe, al contrario, essere interpretato come affermazione della possibilità e desiderabilità di un’Unione Europea alternativa. Una terza connotazione ancora sarebbe quella di generalizzare l’approccio scettico alla politica in toto, rifacendosi a varie tradizioni filosofiche, religiose e scientifiche che ribadiscono l’importanza del dubbio e dell’interrogarsi durante la ricerca della verità o della giustizia. Vi e’ inoltre un’ulteriore distinzione tra Europa ed Unione Europea che viene meno sia nel dibattito pubblico che nella narrativa della stessa UE – per ragioni ideologiche. L’Unione Europea e’ un’istituzione politica unica nel suo genere e difficile da definire (“un oggetto politico non identificato”, come l’ex-presidente Jose Barroso l’ha descritta). L’Europa, d’altro canto, e’ una figura mitica, un significante geografico dai confini non chiari, forse una ‘civilizzazione’, per migliaia di anni un soggetto di storia ed un oggetto di riflessione ed immaginazione politica, etica e poetica. L’Unione Europea spesso parla di se stessa in termini di ‘Europa’ (qualcosa di estremamente frustante per tutti coloro che si considerano europei ma che non sono ancora parte dell’Unione Europea, ma anche per coloro che vogliono mantenere una certa autonomia per la ricca tradizione intellettuale europea). Una cosa e’ l’essere critici o scettici verso l’Unione Europea come istituzione politica; un po’ diverso e’ invece l’essere critici dell’Europa come civilizzazione, rappresentazione storica o persino tema letterario. Come spesso capita nei dibattiti pubblici non molto chiari che si alimentano di mistificazione ideologica, la distinzione e’ al momento sfruttata alla meglio dai populisti di estrema destra. Roger Helmer, europarlamentare del partito UKIP, e’ molto fiero dell’adesivo che porta il paraurti della sua macchina – riportante “Ama l’Europa, odia l’UE” (mentre guida, senz’altro traendo beneficio dalla mancanza di controlli di frontiera nell’entroterra dell’Europa, mostrandolo fieramente). Patočka fa luce sulla situazione In mezzo a tutta questa confusione ed offuscamento, la persona ed il segno di Jan Patočka e’ per me simbolo di chiarezza. Eretico e scettico al massimo dal punto di vista teologico, filosofico e politico, morto per mano della repressione politica, socratico per aver osato sfidare la pretesa dello stato sulla verità assoluta ed aver organizzato una resistenza contro quest’ultima, il pensiero e la biografia di Patočka sono sufficientemente pregni di e fondati sulla storia e la riflessione Europea da poter illuminare l’inadeguatezza del nostro attuale dibattito sull’Europa e da fornirci delle definizioni che possono aiutarci. La storiografia di Patočka dell’Europa-dopo-l’Europa, o della Post-Europa, ci permette di prendere una posizione che e’ assolutamente critica della storia Europea, cruenta ed assassina, e che ammette che le conseguenze della storia ci attribuiscano una particolare responsabilità in quanto Europei e quindi eredi del passato. Ancor di più nei casi in cui abbiamo, in molteplici modi, tratto beneficio dalla violenza inflitta su altri. Possiamo pensare che l’Unione Europea o una sua qualche variante possa essere il meccanismo politico più appropriato per affrontare questa storia fatta di conflitti e di contraddizioni, una storia che va ben al di la’ delle questioni di guerra e di pace includendo il colonialismo, la capacita’ distruttiva del progresso tecnologico ed economico europeo e le componenti profondamente inumane del pensiero europeo. Il pensiero di Patočka ci aiuta a guardare all’Unione Europea come ad una potenziale conseguenza della storia europea, senza far coincidere quest’ultima con l’Europa e senza concepirla come il punto di arrivo di una storia teleologica del progresso e della riconciliazione. Nel pensiero di Patočka l’UE – al pari di ogni altra costruzione politica – e’ ampiamente aperta verso ogni critica o contestazione di tipo politico e la sua esistenza e’ giustificata non in termini di progresso politico bensì di responsabilità etica. Durante questi tempi difficili per gli europeisti, quando le inadeguatezze dell’Unione e le disastrose conseguenze delle sue politiche attuali – dentro e al di fuori dei suoi confini – risultano così evidenti, la posizione di Patočka e’ sufficientemente complessa da riconoscere le contraddizioni etiche e morali della sfera politica, affermando al contempo stesso che e’ nostro dovere continuare a tentare di raggiungere un ideale europeo che pur sappiamo irraggiungibile nella sua forma più completa. Ancor più importante, l’opposizione di Patočka nei confronti del totalitarismo, espressa politicamente attraverso il movimento “Capitolo 77”, che poneva l’accento sull’importanza dei diritti umani e della democrazia, ed ancor più profondamente nei suoi scritti filosofici, smentisce tutti coloro che sostengono di avere, o richiedono, risposte “definitive” ai problemi politici. La sua insistenza sui diritti umani – spesso vista in contraddizione con il suo approccio fenomenologico “a-soggettivo” – e’ al contempo stesso un’insistenza sulla contingenza dell’essere umano e sulla libertà radicale. Il Capitolo afferma che “L’idea di diritti umani non e’ altro che la convinzione che persino gli stati, persino la società nel suo complesso, sono soggetti alla sovranità del sentimento morale: essi riconoscono l’esistenza di qualcosa di incondizionato che e’ al di sopra di essi stessi, qualcosa verso il quale essi stessi hanno degli obblighi, qualcosa di sacro ed inviolabile.” Patočka riconduce questo tratto assoluto dei diritti umani al concetto greco di “cura dell’anima” e si potrebbe dire che secondo il filosofo i diritti umani precedono la nostra esistenza terrena e servono a proteggere l’umanità che risiede in ogni essere umano: essi…
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What We Share: A Commons- Intergroup takes off in the EU Parliament
Guest contributor Sophie Bloemen of the Commons Network writes about the recently launched European Parliament Commons Intergroup. European Alternatives is a longstanding supporter of the commons having worked toward a European Charter of the Commons, convened a large scale forum on the subject in Rome and produced the documentary “COMMON STRUGGLES. A journey with European movements for the commons.” The Commons; we hear this term more and more in a wide variety of contexts. Across Europe it is often used in the context of participatory initiatives: co-ops providing care for elderly in the neighbourhood, Greeks cooking for their crisis struck neighbours in social solidarity initiatives, or collaborative production endeavours such as Wikipedia made possible by new technology. Most often though, the term is heard in the context of the Internet. Users intuitively recognize this digital environment as a commons. Meanwhile, creative commons licenses on cultural works will reach over one billion in 2015. But also in discussions on climate change, on common ownership of water and in discussions on social justice, people have started appealing more to the concepts of ‘the common good,’ ‘commons’ or ‘public goods’ – all in parallel to the use of human rights. Surely the human rights discourse remains the most powerful social justice language we have, importantly enshrined in international conventions. With the concepts of the commons and common goods also gaining political traction our emancipatory spectrum is now being broadened. Tellingly, this discourse has now also reached Brussels. Landed in real politics It’s news that makes itself heard: The new European Parliament will see a Commons Intergroup among its 28 intergroups. The Parliament’s main political factions decided on the list of intergroups in December. In order to form an intergroup there need to be three supporting political groups at least, which can be quite a challenge as each political group can only join a limited number of intergroups. Even though the intergroups have no legislative power, it can be valuable having such a representation in the European Parliament. At the minimum, it is a multiparty forum where one can exchange views and propose ideas on particular subjects in an informal way. Those who choose to work with such an intergroup, its Members of Parliament, and civil society or lobbyists, share the notion that a certain topic is important and can focus on how to get things done. Now there will also be a Commons Intergroup. This particular group will allow for discussions on policy from a shared perspective: the idea that ‘ the commons’ – is an important and helpful way of framing the important themes of present times. As there can only be so many Intergroups, inevitably the group is the result of a political compromise. It has been formed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the Greens, the left group GUE, the large Social Democrat party (S&D) and the group EFDD which now includes Beppe Grillo with his Cinque Stelle party. The movement on water as a commons has been instrumental for the mobilization of the intergroup. Is the commons movement becoming a political force? The commons intergroup ended up joining the already existing one on Public Services and in the process of political shuffling, the name ended up shifting to common goods. So officially referred to as ‘intergroup on commons goods’, it is part of the ‘European Parliamentary intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services.’ Practically the group will operate in two subgroups. The president of the sub group on the commons is MEP Marisa Matias from GUE. The intergroup can be understood as confirmation of the aspirations and discourse of the commons becoming a political force. In a way, the bottom-up movement is given a certain political legitimacy by the intergroup. Nevertheless, the question arises: How can an intergroup with such a broad scope as commons or common goods be useful? Aren’t the daily activities of the European Parliament in the end about concrete policies, amendments to policy proposals and votes? Fundamental Change in Sight We have to take a step back and ask: What are commons? What are common goods? There are distinct definitions: On the one hand, an operational notion would define commons as shared resources, governed by a certain community. On the other hand, a moral notion would say commons or common goods refer to goods that benefit society as a whole, and are fundamental to people’s lives, regardless of how they are governed. These could be many things. Politically it will be more about claiming certain matters as commons or common goods, for example natural resources, health services or useful knowledge. Tackling core areas of our co-existence from a perspective of the commons is of great significance. It’s important because eventually this will lead to a move towards the sustainable management- and equitable sharing of resources. Another aspect that makes this approach appealing is that the commons movement takes a community and ecological systems perspective. This philosophy moves away from a purely individual rights-, market- and private property based worldview. No need to elaborate that for many this worldview is at the root of the current economic and environmental crises. Commons thinking expresses a strong denial of the idea that society is and should be composed of atomized individuals living as consumers. Instead the commons discourse points to the possibility that people can live their lives as citizens, deeply embedded in social relationships. Moreover, that citizens’ active participation is important in realizing wellbeing and a well-functioning society. No Charter yet Hence, for politics and policy, what the commons or common goods are is not established and remains dynamic. This makes it all pretty exciting. Like we have a charter of human rights, we might have a modern charter of the commons some day. To illustrate what working from a commons perspective might look like in practice we can consider the EU’s policies on knowledge management. Its fair to say these policies are currently far removed from a commons approach: the EU puts great emphasis…
Call for Application
European Alternatives is organizing a transnational activist training programme for the defence and extension of fundamental and citizenship rights, being carried out across six cities in Europe from summer 2015 to spring 2016. The trainings are part of our Citizenrights Project and cover different topics, ranging from influencing EU policy to campaigning for privacy rights. Here you can apply for two trainings until April 24.
Changing Europe from within?
We are organising an international seminar in Rome to reflect on political strategies for Europe
Cambiare l’Europa: incontro internazionale a Roma
Organizziamo un evento internazionale a Roma il 10/11 aprile per ragionare su nuove forme della politica tra conflitti e governo
Report: changing Europe from within, Rome 10/11 april
On the weekend of April 10/11 we organised an international seminar in Rome in partnership with EuroNomade and Esc. Here you can find a brief report, pictures, and the video-stream from the day. We put two questions on the table: The traditional horizontal approach of grassroots mobilisations is increasingly merged with a drive to compete for vertical political power, as evidenced by the experiences of Syriza and Podemos. What are the key elements of these new social formations? The negotiations over the restructuring of Greek debt have highlighted all the political limitations of current EU structures. Can Europe change from within? Or has the EU become structurally unfit for change? The event saw a wide participation from activists, organisations, social movements, political parties and trade unions. Several international participants, including representatives of Podemos, Syriza, and Blockupy, guaranteed a genuinely transnational debate. The experience of Podemos, as told by member of the national committee Rita Maestre, immediately brought to the fore the necessity of crafting a language capable of addressing a wider social block than that of organised social forces. Often, as EA board member Catherine Fieschi put it, the political story we tell is not accessible to people. Collective actions and experiences sometimes create new languages. As Raul Sanchez from the Fundacion de los Comunes stressed, the 15M mobilisations in Spain created a new political scenario influencing the media and creating a new language that in turn created new political identities. Questions immediately followed: How can a social majority be created in other European countries? How do we address the different temporalities that different countries find themselves in? Can we go beyond the classical tools of the demonstration, and work towards the creation of a Syriza in other countries? The debate then connected to the second question of the seminar. Even assuming success in changing the relative balance of forces in Europe, how can European policies be changed? Loukia Kotronaki of Dyktio placed the emphasis on the current negotiations between Greece and the Institutions. She argued that this process should be democratized, that a European coalition against austerity and debt should be set up, and that a European alliance, including Syriza and Podemos, should lead that coalition. The sense of urgency was shared by many, with the current EU-Greece negotiations seen as a make it or break it moment. The debate turned to the effectiveness of political action. Sandro Mezzadra argued that the negotiations over Greece highlight the limits that the structure of the European Union places on political action, limits that Syriza is facing now, and argued that a new constitutive process for Europe needs to start. EA advisory board member, Engin Isin stressed that the EU is not designed primarily to be a democratic space, and pointed to the importance of other institutions which act in the European arena, including the Council of Europe and the European Courts. Can the institutions of the EU be changed then? Piervirgilio Dastoli stressed that Europe has already changed during the crisis: the change is going on continuously, the question is to influence the change in the right direction. He also agreed with the suggestion that the European Union itself may not be the best institution to push for positive change, and maybe the Euro-Med is a more fertile institutional setting now. A continual stress was placed during the debate to avoid conflating Europe and the European Union. Indeed, there was large consensus that the dimension of the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and even looking to Europe’s relationships with South America should be looked at. Pursuing current negotiations for a debt-resolution mechanism at the UN level, currently led by Argentina and blocked by some of the largest European countries, was mentioned as a possible avenue for action.
The Great European Disaster Movie: A Conversation
What if Europe succumbs to the worst instincts of the xenophobia and Euroscepticism that are sweeping across the continent? This anxiety lies at the heart of Annalisa Piras‘ latest film, The Great European Disaster Movie. She shows the viewer a worst-case-scenario of a collapsed European Project. Piras was kind enough to answer some of our questions about the film, its controversy and her hopes for an alternative Europe. As a filmmaker, you’re no stranger to controversy. How was the response to The Great European Disaster Movie different to the response to Girlfriend in a Coma? So far it has been remarkably similar, even if of course the subject of the two films are very different, and TGEDM has just come out so we are at the very beginning of the journey. What has been similar is the contrast between the reluctance of the establishment in engaging with the provocative thesis of the films and the enthusiasm of younger viewers, especially students, to jump on the opportunity to debate big themes which affect our daily life and our future. The premiere of Girlfriend in a Coma in Italy was stopped by the authorities, and in Britain the BBC had a very hard time putting the film on its schedule. Film documentaries have the potential to communicate complex issues in a way that engage not only our brain but our heart, and younger generations seem to be much more able to understand the value of this form of art in fostering understanding and civic participation. Writing for the Guardian, you suggested that Britain may be incapable of a constructive debate on Europe. Have you seen exceptions to this in the wake of your film? There have been exceptions but unfortunately amongst the already “converted”, i.e. the many Britons who are already engaged in some forms of commitment to the European project. Our hope is that our film could become an attempt to bring the EU debate to a wider audience, convincing those who understand the importance of a more informed conversation on Europe to do more to bring in people who at present think that it is not relevant to them. In this sense we are very happy that many young people have decide to take on our invite to host a special screening of the film with a debate all across Europe for Europe Day on May the 9th. The idea is that afterwards we could all join in the conversation across Europe, simultaneously in a sort of cross national community moment about our shared future. The electoral success of Euro-sceptic and anti-immigrant parties has emboldened similar movements in other countries and influenced the focus of mainstream political parties. To what extent do you think that parties like Syriza and Podemos may themselves change the course of Europe with their thus far successful anti-austerity political platform? The political landscape in Europe is changing very rapidly and the rise of the so-called “insurgent” parties is inevitably bound to change the course of Europe. There are great differences of course amongst them, even if all of them seem to be a bottom up response to a very wide and deep discontent with many things, but especially where Europe is at the moment. At best they might bring about a more responsible answer from European leaders, both at a national and at a EU level. At worst, and this is the fear that inspired our film, they might, possibly, even involuntarily, accelerate a demise of the EU which cannot survive unless it is solidly supported by the European people. If at least half of the British population are in favour of EU membership, is the media responsible for distorting the debate and is the media guilty of scaremongering about the EU? And if so, is producing a film called The Great European Disaster Movie an ironic response? Indeed there is irony in the film, but not everybody got it. The idea was to provoke a reflection on the lack of awareness of what could be the worst case scenario if we keep on the current path. While we witness anti-EU parties talk constantly, and in my view irresponsibly, about leaving the EU, it is very rare to hear in the mainstream media voices who explain clearly what we could lose and what the unintended consequences of the implosion of the EU could look like. The British media certainly have a responsibility in this, but the main responsibility lies squarely with national politicians who for far too long have played a double game: supporting the EU in Brussels and then opportunistically blaming it for all the evils in the world at home. They have neglected public opinion on the EU for decades and, especially in Britain, it is very difficult now to reverse the mainly negative image propagated by certain media, especially those owned by tycoons who might have a vested interest in undermining the European project. What can Europeans both in and out of the halls of power do to help avert the Great European Disaster? It’s incredibly urgent, in my view, to mobilise public opinion in a cross-national debate about the EU. We need and want to face the many pressing global challenges that are mounting. Almost all of them require a strong, unified response at a European level. From global warming to nuclear proliferation, the crisis of the European welfare system, the change of the economic model, lack of research and innovation, Islamic radicalisation, mass migration and the aging of the population: effective solutions are linked to more European cooperation, not less. We need to step up the awareness of what is at stake and create a critical mass amongst European citizens to demand action from our leaders. For too long, and certainly since the beginning of the Euro crisis, EU leaders have done too little too late. It is now obvious that it is unlikely they will take the initiative. On the whole, they think that Europe is not a vote winner issue.…
Finland’s Election
“Better know your neighbour” is the motto of our newly started election series. This Sunday, European Alternatives Berlin invited Finns and non-Finns alike to watch the elections of our neighbour in the North together. What are the main parties and their agenda? Which topics are important? And how will the election influence EU politics in the future? These questions were answered by the Finnish audience and provided interesting background information for the upcoming election results. According to the first projections, the Finns decided to vote the current Prime Minister Alexander Stubb out of office and instead support the Millionaire and former telecom executive Juha Sipila, who promised a wage freeze and spending cuts to push Finland’s competitiveness. Yet, he will probably need a coalition partner. The True Finns, who ran an anti-immigration and anti- Greek bailout campaign, won 39 seats of the 200-seats parliament and are hence likely to be part of a coalition. At the end of the evening, the crowd could test their knowledge on Finland and Finnish politics during a pub quiz. Would you know if its true that Prime Minister Stubb said “Money should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize”? The next country to vote is the UK and we want to celebrate this historic election (#withorwithoutuk) with a great program for the evening of the 7th of May at re:publica. You don’t need a re:publica ticket to join the party!
We Need a Humanitarian Corridor
The European Council meets Thursday, April 23 to discuss what immediate actions member states and EU institutions will take to address the ongoing hecatomb in the Mediterranean. This humanitarian crisis will not be addressed by waging war on migrants. Further militarisation of Europe’s borders, including the sea beyond its borders, and sinking boats used to transport migrants from Libya to Southern Europe is a monstrous proposition. It means nothing short of leaving up to a million human beings – who are seeking refuge from war and have an international legal right to do so – stuck in a country torn by civil war, and facing a wall protected by gunboats. Asides from its moral bankruptcy, the policy is also likely to be highly ineffective: the EU cannot sink every boat that could be used for carrying migrants, and demand will continue to be enormous from people with no alternatives but to attempt to flee across the sea. The ongoing deaths in the Mediterranean sea are crises for which Europe has a strong responsibility. The implosion of Syria owes much to the failed Western policies that have ravaged war and misery on the Middle East. So does the rise of ISIS-inspired conflict in Africa. The civil war in Libya has been ushered in by reckless British and French adventurism, and further military intervention in the country is now being discussed as a way of stemming migration flows. We must resist the militarisation of migration. The European Union was built to prevent war, at a time when millions of Europeans had been displaced by it. It is time for the European Union to regain its moral leadership and live up to its responsibility. It is time for the European Union to open a humanitarian corridor and offer protection on its territory to migrants escaping war. It must do this in a way that does not conflate migrant safety with border security. This may mean resettling a number of refugees which may run to a million. But while the member states of the European Union exclaim shock, they do less than many developing countries. Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have taken in 2.2 million refugees from the Syrian crisis. Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya have absorbed half a million South Sudanese refugees. The European Union – one of the richest parts of the world with a population of 500 million, or twice all the countries above put together – has received 216,300 asylum applications in 2014. It is time for Europe to face reality, and to restore its dignity and its humanity.
L’Europa apra un canale umanitario
Il Consiglio europeo si incontra giovedì 23 aprile per discutere quali azioni immediate stati membri e Unione europea devono intraprendere per fare fronte alla continua ecatombe nel Mediterraneo. Una cosa deve essere chiara: non si può affrontare questa crisi umanitaria dichiarando guerra ai migranti. Continuare a militarizzare le frontiere europee e affondare le navi usate per trasportare i migranti dalla Libia all’Europa del sud è una proposta mostruosa. Non significa altro che bloccare in Libia – nel mezzo di una conflitto e dinnanzi a un muro d’acqua presidiato da navi da guerra europee – centinaia di migliaia di esseri umani in fuga dalla guerra, e con un diritto internazionale a cercare rifugio. Le continue morti nel Mediterraneo sono una crisi per la quale l’Europa ha una forte responsabilità. L’implosione della Siria deve molto alle politiche fallimentari dell’occidente che hanno portato guerra e miseria nel Medio Oriente. Lo stesso vale per la crescita dei conflitti religiosi in diverse parti d’Africa. La guerra civile in Libia è stata scatenata dall’avventurismo britannico e francese, ed ora un altro intervento militare nel Paese viene discusso per fermare i flussi migratori. Bisogna contrastare la militarizzazione della migrazione. L’Unione europea è stata costruita per prevenire la guerra, in un momento storico in cui erano gli europei stessi a cercare rifugio. E’ il momento per l’Unione europea di essere all’altezza delle proprie responsabilità. E’ il momento per l’Unione europea di aprire un corridoio umanitario e offrire protezione sul suo territorio a quanti fuggono dalla guerra. Questo potrebbe significare accogliere un numero di rifugiati che potrebbe arrivare al milione. Ma mentre gli stati europei gridano all’emergenza, in tanti Paesi in via di sviluppo i numeri sono ben altri. Libano, Giordania e Turchia hanno accolto 2.2 milioni di rifugiati in fuga dalla Siria. Uganda, Etiopia, Sudan e Kenya hanno ricevuto mezzo milione di rifugiati dal Sud-Sudan. L’Unione europea – una delle aree più ricche del mondo con una popolazione pari a 500 milioni, o due volte tutte i Paesi di cui sopra messi assieme – ha ricevuto 216.300 richieste di asilo nel 2014. E’ il momento per l’Europa di guardare in faccia la realtà e di recuperare dignità e umanità. Prima che sia troppo tardi per restare umani.
Communication internship in Rome
European Alternatives is seeking a communications intern for our Rome office. We believe internships need to be an instructive and remunerated first step into the world of work. European Alternatives takes pride in offering a positive learning environment for all interns and volunteers and supports the European Charter on Quality Internships. This internship call takes place within the context of the Youth Guarantee / Garanzia Giovani offered by the region Lazio, Italy. Skills and qualifications Fluent in Italian and English (additional languages beneficial) Knowledge of and passion for European politics and culture Excellent writing skills Recent bachelors or masters degree in a relevant field Knowledge of social media platforms Eligibility for the Garanzia Giovani (information: http://www.regione.lazio.it/garanziagiovani/) Main tasks Working under our Head of Communication, you will help with implementing our communication strategy in Italian on social media and on our website, learning the basics for transnational multimedia communication Working under our Head of Administration, you will help with office logistics and administration of some of our EU programs, learning the basics for European project management. Remuneration and term Reimbursement of €600/month net Maximum 6 months term To apply, email rsvp@euroalter.com by 12th of May with: your CV, a motivation letter and your availability. Please include ‘Rome internship application’ in the title of the email. Due to the amount of applications we receive, we regret we can only contact those selected for an interview. For those who have submitted to the open call and indicated an interest in the Rome office, your application will be included in the selection process. EA is certified by B!ngo for offering Quality Internships! EA has be granted the B!ngo certificate and B-Star Label by the Brussels interns’ organisation B!ngo, for the quality of our internships (Quality Early Job Experience). Find our more about their criteria here.
Offerta di stage in comunicazione
Volete fare un’esperienza internazionale con European Alternatives? Cerchiamo uno stagista per il nostro ufficio di Roma. Crediamo gli stage debbano essere delle esperienze istruttive e remunerate, e rappresentare il primo passo nel mondo del lavoro per chi ha recentemente chiuso il percorso di studi. European Alternatives è orgogliosa di offrire un ambiente di apprendimento positivo per i suoi stagisti e volontari: sosteniamo la Carta europea per gli stage di qualità e siamo certificati dall’organizzazione di stagisti B!ngo per offrire stage di qualità Lo stage viene offerto nel contesto della Garanzia Giovani della regione Lazio. Qualifiche richieste Ottima padronanza dell’inglese (lingua di lavoro nell’organizzazione) Passione per la politica europea Ottime capacità di scrittura in italiano Laurea ottenuta recentemente Requisiti per beneficiare della Garanzia Giovani: http://www.regione.lazio.it/garanziagiovani/ Compiti principali Lavorando con la nostra Head of Communication (di base nell’ufficio di Berlino), aiuterai nell’implementazione delle nostre campagne di comunicazione su sito e social media, imparando le basi di una comunicazione multi-canale e transnazionale; Lavorando con la nostra Head of Administration (in sede nell’ufficio di Roma), aiuterai con la logistica dell’ufficio e l’amministrazione di alcuni dei nostri progetti europei, imparando le basi della rendicontazione di progetti europei. Remunerazione e durata Rimborso di €600/mese netto Massimo 6 mesi Per fare domanda, manda una email in inglese entro il 12 maggio a rsvp@euroalter.com con: il tuo CV, una lettera motivazionale e la tua disponibilità. Specificare “Rome internship application” nel soggetto della email. EA is certified by B!ngo for offering Quality Internships! EA has be granted the B!ngo certificate and B-Star Label by the Brussels interns’ organisation B!ngo, for the quality of our internships (Quality Early Job Experience). Find our more about their criteria here.
Deaths in the Mediterranean: the European Council’s dishonour
European Alternatives is proud to be a signatory to the European Association for the defense of Human Rights (AEDH) response to the positions adopted by the European Council: Deaths in the Mediterranean: the European Council’s dishonour 23 April 2015 was a terrible day: the European Council, that was at last to “take action” as regards a “tragic” situation in the Mediterranean, merely attempted to shelter the European Union and its Member States from migrants by toughening border protection. The European Union Heads of Government, who met with great ado, had but one message for those thousands of human beings – men, women and children – who risk death and often find it, attempting to reach a place to rebuild their lives. That message was: “Security!” They did not seek to put an end to the race to the bottom between Member States to take as few migrants as possible after rejecting all the others. As for the word “welcome”, it does not form part of the vocabulary of the Heads of Government Combating emigration with the support of third countries, deportation, refoulement and detention in specialised centres and criminalization of entry are just part of what survivors experience when they have finished counting their dead. In taking these shameful measures, the European Council turns its back on its responsibility, adding its own dishonour to the ranks of the dead. The associations and organizations across Europe that defend the rights of all to live somewhere in safety cannot accept such a position, and in the coming weeks will decide how to oppose this deadly policy. Signatories : Action Luxembourg Ouvert et Solidaire – Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (ALOS – LDH) Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA) Association de Soutien aux Travailleurs Immigrés – Luxembourg (ASTI) Associazione Di Promozione Sociale (ARCI) Borderline Europe Centre de Recherche et d’Information pour le développement (CRID) Centre National de Coopération au Développement – CNCD-11.11.11 asbl La Cimade – service oecuménique d’entraide CIRÉ – Coordination et initiatives pour réfugiés et étrangers Coordination Nationale d’Action pour la Paix et la Démocratie (CNAPD) Emmaüs Europe Emmaüs International Enda Europe European Alternatives European Association for the Defence of Human Rights (AEDH) European Federation of National Organisations Working with Homeless People (FEANTASA) Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) Fédération des Associations de Solidarité avec Tou-te-s les Immigré-e-s (FASTI) FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) FNARS – Agir pour la solidarité Fondation France-Libertés Forum des Organisations de Solidarité Internationale issues des Migrations (FORIM) France Amérique Latine (FAL) Groupe d’Information et de Soutien des Immigré.e.s – France (GISTI) Ihmisoikeusliitto – The Finnish League for Human Rights (FLHR) Initiatives Pour un Autre Monde (IPAM) Institut de Drets Humans de Catalunya (IDHC) Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte (ILMR) KISA – Action for Equality, Support, Antiracism Le Monde selon les femmes asbl Le Syndicat de la magistrature – France Lega Italiana Dei Diritti Dell’ Uomo (LIDU) Liga Portuguesa dos Direitos Humanos – civitas (LPDH) Liga Voor de Rechten van de Mens (LVRM) Ligue des droits de l’Homme – Belgique (LDH) Ligue des droits de l’Homme – France (LDH) Malta Association of Human Rights (MAHR) Médecins du Monde (MdM) Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano – Mexico Montgolfière, Association d’aide aux demandeurs d’asile Migreurop Plate-forme Migrants et Citoyenneté européenne (PMC) Syndicat des avocats de France (SAF) The Organisation for Universal Citizenship (The O.U.C) From http://www.aedh.eu/Deaths-in-the-Mediterranean-the.html
Migrants en Méditerranée, appel conjoint d’organisations à travers l’UE au Conseil européen
En ce mauvais jour du 23 avril 2015, le Conseil européen qui devait enfin « agir » sur une situation « dramatique » en Méditerranée, s’est contenté de tenter de mettre l’Union européenne et ses États membres à l’abri des migrants en renforçant la protection de ses frontières. À ces milliers d’êtres humains, femmes, hommes et enfants qui risquent la mort, et souvent la trouvent, en tentant de rejoindre des lieux pour se reconstruire et vivre, les chefs de gouvernement européens, réunis à grand bruit, n’ont eu qu’un seul message à leur envoyer : « Sécurité ! ». Ils n’ont pas cherché à sortir d’une concurrence entre les États membres, essayant chacun de prendre le moins possible des migrants après avoir rejeté tous les autres. Quant au mot « accueil », il ne fait pas partie du vocabulaire des chefs de gouvernement. Lutte contre l’émigration avec l’appui des pays tiers, reconduite à la frontière, refoulement, rétention dans les centres spécialisés, pénalisation de l’entrée… Voilà ce que vont connaître les survivants quand elles et ils auront fini de compter leurs morts. Le Conseil européen en prenant ces mesures honteuses considère que sa responsabilité n’est pas engagée. Il ajoute ainsi aux morts son propre déshonneur. Les associations et organisations qui à travers l’Europe défendent les droits de toute personne à vivre quelque part en sûreté, ne peuvent l’accepter et décideront dans les semaines à venir des moyens pour s’opposer à cette politique mortifère. Signatories : Action Luxembourg Ouvert et Solidaire – Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (ALOS – LDH) Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA) Association de Soutien aux Travailleurs Immigrés – Luxembourg (ASTI) Associazione Di Promozione Sociale (ARCI) Borderline Europe Centre de Recherche et d’Information pour le développement (CRID) Centre National de Coopération au Développement – CNCD-11.11.11 asbl La Cimade – service oecuménique d’entraide CIRÉ – Coordination et initiatives pour réfugiés et étrangers Coordination Nationale d’Action pour la Paix et la Démocratie (CNAPD) Emmaüs Europe Emmaüs International Enda Europe European Alternatives European Association for the Defence of Human Rights (AEDH) European Federation of National Organisations Working with Homeless People (FEANTASA) Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) Fédération des Associations de Solidarité avec Tou-te-s les Immigré-e-s (FASTI) FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) FNARS – Agir pour la solidarité Fondation France-Libertés Forum des Organisations de Solidarité Internationale issues des Migrations (FORIM) France Amérique Latine (FAL) Groupe d’Information et de Soutien des Immigré.e.s – France (GISTI) Ihmisoikeusliitto – The Finnish League for Human Rights (FLHR) Initiatives Pour un Autre Monde (IPAM) Institut de Drets Humans de Catalunya (IDHC) Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte (ILMR) KISA – Action for Equality, Support, Antiracism Le Monde selon les femmes asbl Le Syndicat de la magistrature – France Lega Italiana Dei Diritti Dell’ Uomo (LIDU) Liga Portuguesa dos Direitos Humanos – civitas (LPDH) Liga Voor de Rechten van de Mens (LVRM) Ligue des droits de l’Homme – Belgique (LDH) Ligue des droits de l’Homme – France (LDH) Malta Association of Human Rights (MAHR) Médecins du Monde (MdM) Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano – Mexico Montgolfière, Association d’aide aux demandeurs d’asile Migreurop Plate-forme Migrants et Citoyenneté européenne (PMC) Syndicat des avocats de France (SAF) The Organisation for Universal Citizenship (The O.U.C)
Spanish gag law is against European values and basic democratic rights
Read the statement in Spanish. The Spanish government has passed a law reclassifying peaceful protest as a “threat to public security” and introducing hefty fines up to €600,000 for those joining demonstrations near sensitive targets – including government buildings. The “unauthorised” use of images of security forces will also draw a €30,000 fine, in a clear attempt to intimidate journalists and citizens who document police abuses. You can even be prosecuted for a tweet – if it contains a hashtag publicising an unauthorised political event. The law is due to come into force in July. The measure is clearly aimed at the resurgence in civic participation and protest that followed the 15M Movement in Spain and that represents the main force behind the rise of Podemos. Maina Kiai, United Nations special rapporteur for the rights to freedom of assembly and association, has asked the Spanish government to reject the measure, arguing that “the rights to peaceful protest and to collectively express an opinion are fundamental to the existence of a free and democratic society.” Criminalising peaceful protest, intimidating journalists, and attacking the electoral base of a political competitor are actions that Spaniards have left behind together with the Franco regime. Mariano Rajoy has no right to drag Spain backwards. European Alternatives strongly condemns the actions of the Spanish government, and calls upon the European Commission to raise the violation of basic democratic rights with the Spanish authorities as a matter of urgency. Spain is not the only country clamping down on free assembly and expression at the moment. The European Commission should create a monitoring mechanism for threats to fundamental rights and civic space and have quick legal mechanisms for preventing member states undermining European values. La Ley Mordaza en España contradice los valores europeos y los derechos democráticos básicos El gobierno español ha aprobado una ley que clasifica la protesta pacífica como una “amenaza para la seguridad pública” e introduce multas de hasta € 600.000 € para aquellas personas que participen en manifestaciones cerca de lugares de alta sensibilidad – incluyendo edificios del gobierno. Las fotografías “no autorizadas” de las fuerzas de seguridad también podrían significar multas de € 30.000, en un claro intento de intimidar a periodistas y ciudadanos que documentan abusos policiales. Se puede incluso ser procesado por un tweet si éste contiene un hashtag publicitando un evento político no autorizado. La ley entrará en vigor en julio. La medida es una evidente respuesta al resurgimiento de la participación cívica y de la protesta a partir del Movimiento 15M en España, que además es el principal motor del ascenso de Podemos. Maina Kiai, Relatora de las Naciones Unidas para los derechos a la libertad de reunión y asociación, ha pedido al Gobierno español que detenga dicha medida, argumentando que “el derecho a la protesta pacífica y a expresar colectivamente una opinión son fundamentales para la existencia de una sociedad libre y democrática”. La criminalización de la protesta pacífica, intimidar a los periodistas, así como erosionar la base electoral de un competidor político son legados de un pasado que los españoles decidieron dejar atrás con el fin del régimen franquista. Mariano Rajoy no tiene derecho a obligar a España a retroceder en la historia. Alternativas Europeas condena enérgicamente las acciones del gobierno español, y pide a la Comisión Europea que aborde esta violación de los derechos democráticos básicos con carácter de urgencia. Actualmente, España no es el único país imponiendo medidas drásticas contra la libertad de reunión y de expresión. La Comisión Europea debería por lo tanto crear un mecanismo de seguimiento de amenazas a los derechos fundamentales y los espacios cívicos, así como contar con mecanismos legales rápidos para prevenir que los Estados Miembros socaven los valores europeos.
European Alternatives elected to steering committee of Civil Society Europe
Civil Society Europe is the European Coordination of Civil Society Organisations. The initiative was launched in Rome in December 2014 as a response to the lack of genuine civil dialogue at EU level (as enshrined in Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty) and the success of the European Year of Citizens 2013. Civil Society Europe aims to facilitate horizontal exchanges between civil society and decision makers in Europe, shape the European agenda on issues of common interest, and to campaign for a Europe based on solidarity, equality and democratic participation, a Europe which provides access to economic, social, cultural and civic rights for all. The manifesto of Civil Society Europe can be read here : http://www.civic-forum.fr/site/images/stories/pdf/building_civil_society_europe.pdf Joining Niccolo on the Steering Committee are Paul Smits, AEGEE-Europe; Luca Bergamo, Culture Action Europe (CAE); Assya Kavrakova, European Citizen Action Service (ECAS); Jean-Marc Roirant, European Civic Forum (ECF); Katja Tuokko, European Movement International (EMI); Gabriella Civico, European Volunteer Centre (CEV); Conny Reuter, SOLIDAR, and Oonagh Aitken, Volonteurope. Along with CIVICUS and European Civic Forum, European Alternatives is also leading the working group of Civil Society Europe on Fundamental Rights and Shrinking Civic Space in Europe. This working group will produce reports, policy proposals, events, trainings and advocacy to advance rights for citizens and defend civic space for freedom of speech, assembly and organisation.
London event: Solidarity starts with us
On the evening of Saturday, April 25 over 30 people including activists, journalists and academics convened for a workshop to discuss what it means for Londoners to identify and engage with our European neighbours, as well as those beyond. Participants were given cards and asked to imagine individually and then collectively what the UK and London would be like if the UK left the EU. Pauline de Zeeuw led us through the exercise, which is being developed into a bigger project to engage Londoners in imagining the city if the UK leaves the EU and how this will impact the city and their lives. EA Trustee Board member, Noel Hatch; Indra Adnan of Soft Power Network and Floris de Witte of the LSE then led an interactive discussion on London and the EU. Key points discussed included: the need to broaden the pro-EU arguments beyond the purely economic and to recognise that London would not be the microcosm of the world it is without freedom of movement and migration in both colonial and post-colonial times. The evening was capped off with live political comedy by Tiernan Douieb, Ahir Shah, Chris Coltrane and MC-ed by Sarah Campbell.
Finding Europe (and us) at re:publica 2015
Europe’s biggest conference on the internet and society, re:publica, takes place in Berlin this week. This year’s theme is ‘Finding Europe,’ and who better to take on this challenge than the European Alternatives Community? Jackson Oldfield from the Berlin office and Laura Frühmann and Andrea van der Grinten from the EA Amsterdam group will present a game filled hour on May, 7 at 3 p.m. The session will focus on two separate initiatives to use games to find and understand Europe. It’ll also be an opportunity to learn more about our Citizen Rights work. We are also hosting a UK election party on May 7. Join us for comedy and drinks as we ponder Europe’s future #withorwithoutuk. To while away the hours as we wait for results, there’ll be comedy and a quiz. If you know your stuff, you could win a case of beer, which if you don’t feel like lugging home we’re sure attendees can help you with. No re:publica ticket needed to attend. Please tweet us hello and must-see events at @EuroAlter. #rp15
Europe: A New Version is Available
European Alternatives supports the following petition, do you? Europe: A New Version is Available We are outraged. We see Europe falling apart in front of our very eyes. The politicians of yesterday are sacrificing the principles of equality and dignity on the altar of cheap populism. Europe is in dire need of radical change in a broad range of areas including social, financial and energy policies. But because of a lack of courage, solutions are being left off the table, replaced instead with fear and mistrust. Previous generations inherited a Europe ravaged by war. They left us institutions meant to unite and safeguard the region. But how can they tell us Europe is about peace, when in Ukraine, a war is raging and thousands are dying in the Mediterranean; that Europe is about prosperity while millions are jobless; that Europe is about unity while Southern Europe is blamed for what is essentially a systemic problem. We want to take the European project to the next level: a new version is available. Not in our name Germany’s continued insistence on strict austerity as the only way to solve Europe’s problems is destroying the bonds that tie us together. It pits countries against one another, creating rivalry where solidarity is needed, and establishes a hierarchy among nations. The great European project, once a positive model for voluntary and meaningful cooperation, has devolved into a creditor-debtor relationship. We do not subscribe to such condescending and destructive policies. When thousands across Europe protest against the institutions formerly known as the “Troika”, it is clear that something is fundamentally broken in Europe. The victories of populist parties across the continent, from France to the Netherlands and from Germany to Hungary, are further evidence of the damage being done. Fear and alienation risks driving people further into the hands of Front National, Pegida and their like. But instead of recognising their responsibility for the European Project, politicians chase votes from the fringes of the political spectrum. Who we are We are your friends, your neighbours, your siblings, the passers-by on the street. We are the thousands who want to become millions of Europeans, convinced that to achieve success, risks must be taken. Many of us have lived abroad, speak more than one language, have fallen in love with people from across country-lines and hardly remember what border controls feel like. Europe is our home. We might have taken it for granted up until now. But not any more. We understand that now is the time to rethink sovereignty and democracy beyond the nation-state. In this globalised world, we are part of something bigger than our own, interconnected countries. Re-nationalisation contradicts this very fact. We are part of one Europe – without being forced to give up our regional or national identities. What we want Our plan for the future Europe is a republican one. To achieve political equality and social justice as well as fundamental human rights, essential changes towards a truly democratic European system are needed. Amongst those are: A single European democratic government with separated powers elected through transnational ballots. A transnational system guaranteeing social security -including unemployment insurance- whether we work in France or Poland today, in Spain tomorrow. It is time to be courageous and to try something new to create a different Europe. Daphne Büllesbach, Jonathan Buhl, Victoria Kupsch, Nora Rathje, Benjamin Zeeb If you want make a sign for a new Europe, you can sign here.
Le ragioni politiche di uno sgombero
La mattina del 7 maggio forze dell’ordine e ruspe hanno sgomberato e reso inagibile uno degli storici spazi sociali occupati della Capitale: SCUP (Sport Cultura Popolare). Sin da subito, attivisti e abitanti del quartiere si sono mobilitati tanto in rete quanto occupando fisicamente via Nola per impedire la distruzione dell’edificio. La strada riempita di libri, strumenti musicali, attrezzi da palestra è stata l’immagine più forte della difficile mattinata: SCUP per quasi tre anni è stato un punto di riferimento fondamentale nell’offerta cittadina di cultura e sport popolari. “Devastazione e saccheggio: questa la vostra città”, lo striscione appeso davanti alle forze dell’ordine dispiegate, rende l’idea del clima diffusosi tra gli attivisti romani. La loro reazione, tuttavia, è stata forte e determinata: convocata una manifestazione per le vie del quartiere alle ore 18, quest’ultima si è risolta in una nuova occupazione di uno stabile di proprietà delle ferrovie dello stato lungo via della Stazione Tuscolana. Il punto cruciale, infatti, rimanda ad un problema molto più complesso rispetto al semplice ennesimo episodio di chiusura di una spazio occupato e autogestito (solo di pochi giorni fa la notizia dei sigilli opposti al tendone di un altro centro sociale romano, il Corto Circuito). Rimanda all’intera e complessiva idea di “città” che si ha e che si vorrebbe egemonica; città interpretata nel suo più amplio significato di luogo aperto di partecipazione e mobilitazione, di scambio, di produzione culturale e politica. Questo lo sforzo che numerose realtà romane (dall’esperienza del teatro Valle, divenuta quasi paradigmatica, fino al Cinema palazzo, passando per Communia, solo per citarne alcuni) stanno provando a portare avanti nonostante l’evidente immobilismo dell’attuale Giunta. La questione è di fatto politica: quando si parla di spazi auto-organizzati non si parla semplicemente di meri luoghi di aggregazione, bensì si parla di restituzione alla cittadinanza del suo “diritto alla città”; si parla di città come “bene comune” da coltivare; si parla di costruzione di un nuovo modello di welfare da contrapporre alla crisi culturale, sociale ed economica in corso in tutta Europa. SCUP e tutte le esperienze simili rappresentano quel moto, dal basso e orizzontale, che restituisce dignità e speranza in uno scenario, quello romano ma anche italiano, volendo europeo, in cui il distacco abissale tra il significato di “politica” (occuparsi del bene pubblico) e una Giunta che si trincera dietro la scusa delle “competenze” non spettanti al Comune, si evidenzia con intensità tale da mettere in discussione il valore stesso della rappresentanza. Fare politica non è eseguire, ma immaginare la città che si vorrebbe e come la si vorrebbe vivere: qualcosa che il nuovo SCUP di sicuro farà. Di Federica Baiocchi
Europa: un nuovo modello è disponibile
Petizione Siamo indignati. Vediamo l’Europa cadere a pezzi davanti ai nostri stessi occhi. Politici che appartengono ormai al passato stanno sacrificando i principi di uguaglianza e di dignità sull’altare di un populismo di scarsa qualità. L’Europa ha un disperato bisogno di un cambiamento radicale in una vasta gamma di aree: sociali, finanziarie ed energetiche solo per nominarne alcune. Per mancanza di coraggio, però, soluzioni concrete vengono abbandonate sul tavolo, sostituite invece da paura e diffidenza. Le generazioni precedenti hanno ereditato un’Europa devastata dalla guerra. Ci hanno lasciato istituzioni volte a unificare e salvaguardare questa regione. Tuttavia, come possono dirci che l’Europa è un luogo di pace quando in Ucraina sta regnando la guerra e migliaia di persone stanno morendo nel Mediterraneo; che l’Europa è un luogo di prosperità quando milioni di persone sono senza lavoro; che l’Europa è unita quando l’Europa del Sud viene incolpata per quello che, essenzialmente, è un problema sistemico? Vogliamo portare il progetto europeo ad un livello ulteriore: un nuovo modello è disponibile. Non nel nostro nome La continua insistenza della Germania per una severa politica d’austerity come unica via per risolvere i problemi d’Europa sta distruggendo i legami che ci tiene uniti. Fa schierare un paese contro l’altro, creando un’atmosfera di rivalità quando sarebbe necessaria solidarietà e stabilisce un senso di gerarchia tra nazioni. Il grande progetto europeo, una volta positivo modello di cooperazione volontaria e costruttiva, si è sviluppato in una relazione creditore-debitore. Noi non aderiamo ad una tale politica di condiscendenza e di prevaricazione. Quando migliaia di persone protestano nelle strade delle capitali europee contro le istituzioni – precedentemente conosciute come “Troika” – è il segno che qualcosa si è radicalmente rotto in Europa. Le vittorie dei partiti populisti in tutto il continente, dalla Francia ai Paesi Bassi, dalla Germania all’Ungheria sono ulteriori prove del danno che è stato fatto. Paura e alienazione continueranno a condurre una parte della popolazione nelle mani di Front National, Pegida e altri simili. Tuttavia, piuttosto di riconoscere le proprie responsabilità riguardo al Progetto Europeo, i politici rincorrono i potenziali voti nelle frange più estremiste dello spettro politico. Chi siamo Siamo i vostri amici, i vostri vicini, i vostri fratelli, i passanti per la strada. Siamo migliaia che speriamo diventino milioni di Europei convinti che per raggiungere il successo, i rischi vadano presi. Molti di noi vivono all’estero, parlano più di una lingua, si sono innamorati di persone di altri paesi e difficilmente si ricordano cosa significhino i controlli di confini. L’Europa è la nostra casa. L’abbiamo forse data per scontata fino ad ora. Ma ora non più! Capiamo che è tempo di ripensare la sovranità e la democrazia al di là dello stato nazionale. In questo mondo globalizzato siamo parte di qualcosa di più grande dei nostri paesi, seppur interconnessi in molti modi. La re-nazionalizzazione contraddice questo stesso fatto. Siamo parte di un’unica Europa – senza dover essere obbligati ad abbandonare le nostre identità regionali o nazionali. Cosa vogliamo Il nostro piano per l’Europa è quello repubblicano. Per raggiungere uguaglianza politica e giustizia sociale così come i diritti umani fondamentali, è necessario un vero sistema democratico Europeo. Tra questi: Un unico governo democratico Europeo con separazione di poteri eletto attraverso votazioni transnazionali. Un sistema transnazionale che garantisca la sicurezza sociale, incluso un sussidio di disoccupazione – al di là del fatto che si lavori in Francia o in Polonia oggi, in Spagna domani e al di là della nazionalità dei nostri coniugi. È tempo di essere coraggiosi e di provare qualcosa di nuovo per creare un’Europa diversa. Daphne Büllesbach, Jonathan Buhl, Victoria Kupsch, Nora Rahtje, Benjamin Zeeb http://www.europaeische-republik.eu/index_ita.html
Europe : Une nouvelle version est disponible
Pétition Nous sommes révoltées. Nous voyons l’Europe se disloquer sous nos yeux. Les politicien.nes d’hier sacrifient les principes d’égalité et de dignité sur l’autel du populisme à bas coût. L’Europe est en besoin vital de changements radicaux dans un grand nombre de domaines, y compris ceux des politiques sociales, financiaires, et énergétiques. Mais par manque de courage, des solutions sont écartées, remplacées par la peur et la méfiance. Les générations précédentes ont hérité d’une Europe ravagée par la guerre. Elles nous ont laissé des institutions censées nous unir et protéger la région. Mais comment ose-t-on nous dire que l’Europe a pour but la paix alors même qu’une guerre fait rage en Ukraine et que des milliers de personnes meurent en Méditérannée, que l’Europe a pour but la prospérité quand des millions de personnes sont sans emploi, que l’Europe a pour but l’unité lorsqu’on préfère incriminer l’Europe du Sud plutôt que d’aborder des problèmes systémiques? Nous voulons mener le projet européen au niveau suivant: une nouvelle version est disponible. Pas en notre nom L’entêtement de l’Allemagne à imposer l’austérité comme unique solution aux problèmes européens est en train de limer les liens qui nous unissent encore. Les pays sont jetés les uns contre les autres, renforcant les rivalités là où la solidarité serait de rigueur, et établissant une hiérarchie des nations. Le grand projet européen, qui a pû être un modèle de coopération volontaire et approfondie, s’est dégradé en relations de créances. Nous ne souscrivons pas à ces politiques condescendantes et destructrices. Quand des milliers de personnes à travers l’Europe manifestent contre les institutions préalablement baptisées du nom de ‘Troïka’, il devient clair que quelque chose est fondamentalement brisé en Europe. Les victoires des partis politiques populistes à travers le continent, de la France aux Pays-bas et de l’Allemagne à la Hongrie, sont une preuve de plus des dommages accomplis. La peur et l’aliénation risquent de mener plus de monde encore dans les tentacules du Front National, de Pegida, et de leurs consorts. Mais plutôt que de reconnaître leur responsabilité pour le projet européen, les politiciens partent à la chasse à l’électeur dans les marges du spectre politique. Qui nous sommes Nous sommes vos ami.Es, vos voisin.Es, vos cousin.Es, les passant.Es dans la rue. Nous sommes les quelques milliers qui veulent devenir des millions d’européens, convaincu.Es que nous sommes que pour réussir, il faut prendre des risques. Beaucoup d’entres nous ont vécu à l’étranger, parlent plus d’une langue, se sont épris.Es de personnes au delà des frontières, et n’ont que peu de souvenirs de l’époque des contrôles aux frontières. L’Europe est là où nous sommes chez nous. Jusqu’à maintenant, nous la tenions pour acquise. Mais ce n’est plus le cas. Nous réalisons que le moment est venu de repenser la souveraineté et la démocracie au delà de l’Etat-Nation. Dans ce monde globalisé, nous sommes partie prenante d’un ensemble plus vaste que nos propres pays, interconnectés. La tentation de la re-nationalisation méconnaît ce fait. Nous faisons partie d’une Europe – sans être contraints d’ abandonner nos identités régionales ou nationales. Ce que nous voulons Notre plan pour l’Europe future est républicain. Pour construire l’égalité politique et sociale et garantir la mise en pratique des droits fondamentaux, et aller vers une Europe véritablement démocratique, des changements sont incontournables. Parmi eux: Un gouvernement européen démocratique aux pouvoirs définis et élus par un scrutin transnational Un système transnational garantissant la sécurité sociale – y compris l’assurance chômage – que l’on travaille en France ou en Pologne aujourd’hui et en Espagne demain, sans condition de nationalité d’un.E éventuel.LE partenaire. Il est temps de faire preuve de courage et d’essayer de construire une autre Europe. Daphne Büllesbach, Jonathan Buhl, Victoria Kupsch, Nora Rahtje, Benjamin Zeeb http://www.europaeische-republik.eu/index_fre.html
Call for applications: School trainings – Italy, the U.K.
As part of an ongoing project, EA is looking for: Trainers/organisation to provide 2 trainings on citizen rights in the EU in each of 5 schools in Italy Trainers/organisation to provide 2 trainings on citizen rights in the EU in each of 5 schools in the UK The project, entitled Citi-rights Europe, is focussed on improving the protection of citizen rights in the European Union. We’re working across ten countries, with 13 project partners to both develop case studies of when citizen rights are and are not being protected by EU institutions, and to work with young people and civil society to develop actions to protect rights and to imagine a Europe where rights protection is possible. For these, we will be developing learning materials to educate students (15-18) about citizenship and fundamental rights in Europe. We’re looking for persons or organisations to take these materials and go in to 5 schools (for 2 classes in each) to teach the material and promote the learning materials in Italy and in the UK. Applicants do not need to provide the trainings in both Italy and the U.K. – please state in the email title where you are applying for. To apply, please submit: An individual or organisational CV A short background and proposed schools/localities where you would work A total fee The deadline for applications is 24 May 2015 at 22:00. Please email all applications to citizenrights@euroalter.com
Against the great unraveling: Britain’s progressives must stand up for Europe and human rights
The results of the general election in the UK paint a frightening picture for those of us committed to Europe’s humanist and progressive heritage. It is not just Britain’s membership in the European Union which is at stake, but its very commitment to fundamental rights and values. These coinciding threats are equally important issues and have far reaching implications for Britons and Europeans alike. Salient points from the elections include: The Conservative government will attempt to repeal the Human Rights Act and thus pull Britain out of the European Convention of Human Rights under the leadership of a Minister who openly favours reintroducing the death penalty, as have several other Ministers in the new government. The Home office Minister has reiterated her staunch opposition for any European programme of sharing asylum seekers, and her support for the ‘let them die’ policy of not rescuing migrants at sea in the Mediterranean. The campaign was largely fought and won around a substantial economic misconception: that the previous Labour government managed the economy terribly and only the Conservative-led coalition policy of austerity restored some order and therefore these policies should be continued and even expanded. Most economists disagree with this judgment of Labour’s recent economic record and question profoundly the benefits of austerity. These views were sorely missing from public discourse, however, replaced instead by the scare-mongering of politicians and journalists. Placing the burden of fiscal adjustment onto the most vulnerable in society through welfare cuts undermines social rights and protections; further privatisation of public services and a lowering of rights at work are also likely to figure in the Conservative plans. The Scottish independence movement, added welcome energy and ideas, but also brought with it the emergence of nationalism both in Scotland and England. Historic precedent shows us that left unchecked, nationalist trends create a deeply problematic political landscape for progressives. Each of these align with broader political trends across Europe, and indeed examples from other European countries very regularly came up in the elections – chiefly the example of Greece with the totally spurious argument that Britain could have been in a similar financial situation if the previous government had not taken harsh austerity measures. What the transnational character of these political trends show is that Britain is not totally isolated from the European mainland, nor is the example set by Britain isolated from influencing politics in the rest of the continent. In a globalised world political ideas and ideologies spread rapidly across borders, and so the transnational level is an important level to have arguments about ideas. Whatever Britain decides will have impact on and lead to attempts to copy across Europe. Clearly one great danger to avoid is the unraveling of the European Union starting from Britain; another great danger is the (continued) undermining of the best European rights and values whether or not Britain is inside the EU. In the run up to the referendum, which should take place before 2017 according to David Cameron’s promise, there are two important political battles. The first is over the contents of the renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the European Union, and the second political battle will be the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ battle of the referendum itself. The question of the referendum, according to what has been said so far, should be between ‘yes’ to a renegotiated relationship, or ‘no’ to membership of the European Union. This clearly makes things difficult for anyone who thinks that Britain’s current relationship with the European Union is a good one, or those who think that Britain should be more integrated into the European Union. For the moment, the list of things Cameron has said should be renegotiated is vague and includes trying to impose some restrictions on welfare claimants in Britain from other European countries; a UK opt-out to the treaty commitment to ‘ever closer union’; ensuring changes in the single market cannot be imposed on non-eurozone countries by Eurozone countries; giving greater powers to national parliaments to block EU legislation; and extending the period of time until free movement applies to any new member states of the EU. Some of these demands may require treaty change, which is unlikely to impress other EU countries, and in any case could not be organized before 2017 – although it could be possible to create an agreement with the UK which would have legal force now, and be incorporated into the treaties at the next treaty change. These demands may not be enough for some parts of the Conservative party, which may push Cameron into demanding more, and potentially blowing his chances with European partners for getting any meaningful negotiation at all, which may push the UK towards the exit. There is a school of thought which holds that the UK referendum may be an opportunity to establish a two-speed Europe, or in any case remove the ‘UK obstacle’ to further political integration. Michel Rocard has argued that it could be better if the UK leaves to allow other countries to move towards a federal model; Andrew Duff has argued for a special kind of relationship for the UK on much the same grounds. Thomas Piketty and others have argued that the Eurozone countries should push forwards towards political union, and this would require separate institutions for the Eurozone and the wider European Union. Perhaps a UK referendum is an opportunity to start such a process. There is something in each of these proposals, and indeed, in the Bloomberg address in which David Cameron set out the referendum, he specifically mentioned as a reason for it that much change would be necessary in the Eurozone to address the fallout of the financial and economic crisis. But given the strength of the financial services in the UK, and the entanglements with and impact it has on the rest of the European economy – and so the strength of its lobby in the UK on one side, and the wariness of it on the part of the other…
Call for Interest: Bring the Opening of TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 to your city!
Please note: this call is open to EA members only! This year TRANSEUROPA Festival #Beyond Fragments will take place mostly in Belgrade, Serbia between the 1st and the 5th of October. The Festival will therefore be a bit different from previous years but it will still be strongly transnational! The Opening of TRANSEUROPA Festival will be its main transnational event, taking place simultaneously in several European cities. Which ones? Up to YOU! The Opening of TRANSEUROPA Festival will be co-created between an artists collective (being selected) and you! The Opening will be an urban game that offers a reflection on the theme of going beyond fragmentations in Europe. In each city, the realisation of the game (and its success) will depend on you, the collective will come up as a support and co-conceptor of the game! The opening will potentially take place on the 19th or the 26th of September 2015 so as to allow those who would like to make their way to Belgrade for the Festival there through a fun Mobility Challenge (more to come on that soon!) How do I take part? 1/ send us an email (s.pruvot@euroalter.com) expressing your motivation to bring the Opening to your city before MAY 28. Tell us why you are interested and how you think you can organise it (do you have time, friends, a local group, contacts from previous festival years?) 2/ Inform us about your availability to travel on June 18-21. To create the Opening in a transnational manner, there will be several steps. One of them is a transnational meeting to be held in Berlin in June 18-21. We’ll be able to invite up to 6 people to Berlin for an interactive workshop with on the Festival opening and more general discussions about TRANSEUROPA Festival. If you are not available on that week-end or if we cannot bring all those interested and available to Berlin for funding reasons, it is by no way a no-go, we’ll organise another way for people to dialogue on the Opening event with the other teams to make sure all those who want to can join (through an online discussion tool – probably with regular online meetings between now and the Festival)! Looking forward to reading your emails and being in touch with you!
20. June – Join the World Refugee Day
Not In Our Names – Stand Up for Another #EUMigration Policy on World Refugee Day. June 20th is World Refugee Day. On and around that day, across Europe, citizens, civil society organisations and activists are calling for demonstration and solidarity events. Here you can find information and updates from across Europe. In 2000, the United Nations declared June 20th World Refugee Day. Since then, conflicts and other life-threatening occurrences drove up to 2,5 millions people per year out of their countries (UNHCR, 2013). Europe has responded to this by strengthening its borders and its policies, with disastrous consequences. At least 20.000 people are estimated to have died trying to reach european territories since 1988. But still, member states find it easier to agree on the newly initiated ‘war on smugglers’, than on a common plan to resettle a mere 20.000 refugees in 28 countries in 2015. Europe can’t be allowed to continue on that path. Planned mobilisations: BERLIN: Demonstration and Concert: Remake Europe. democratic – in solidarity – borderless http://europa-anders-machen.net/aufruf/europe-remade-different-democratic-with-solidarity-without-borders STRASBURG: Ferry, not Frontex: A Boat to the European Parliament, June 20th (French & German) https://www.facebook.com/events/1589035331348749/permalink/1589237204661895/ ROME: FERMIAMO LA STRAGE SUBITO! (call for mobilisation, link to come) LONDON: Anti-racist and anti-fascist Block on End Austerity Now Demonstration, June 20th https://www.facebook.com/events/642344809233603/ Join! And stand-up against more barbed wire, bombs, detention and criminalisation; for access, protection, asylum, and dignity!
20 giugno: partecipa alla Giornata mondiale del rifugiato!
Non in nostro nome – Nella Giornata mondiale del rifugiato: tutt* in piedi per un’altra politica europea delle migrazioni! Il 20 giugno è la “Giornata mondiale del rifugiato”. In tutta Europa, cittadini, organizzazioni della società civile e attivisti fanno appello a organizzare manifestazioni ed eventi di solidarietà intorno a quella data. Qui puoi trovare informazioni e aggiornamenti a livello europeo. Nel 2000, le Nazioni Unite hanno dichiarato il 20 giugno “Giornata mondiale del rifugiato”. Da allora, conflitti armati, squilibri economici, disastri ambientali e altre minacce alla vita hanno costretto ogni anno circa 2,5 milioni di persone a lasciare il proprio Paese (UNHCR, 2013). La risposta dell’Europa a questo grande fenomeno, con cause profonde e complesse, è stata soltanto quella di rafforzare le proprie frontiere, irrigidendo le politiche di controllo dei flussi lungo le sue frontiere esterne e, indirettamente, negli Stati di transito. In particolare, la nuova strategia Europea prevede di esternalizzare i dispositivi di contrasto degli spostamenti di persone al di là del Mediterraneo, anche attraverso consistenti finanziamenti a regimi che non rispettano i diritti umani e che non hanno nulla di democratico. Questa strategia ha prodotto e continuerà a produrre conseguenze disastrose. Secondo le stime, almeno 20.000 persone sono morte provando a raggiungere il territorio europeo dal 1988. Nonostante ciò, gli Stati membri preferiscono insistere esclusivamente sulle misure repressive, puntando oggi sulla cosiddetta “guerra ai trafficanti”, invece di immaginare progetti per la riduzione degli squilibri economici globali, sul medio-lungo periodo, e di aprire immediatamente un canale umanitario di accesso allo spazio europeo, dando anche priorità al reinsediamento nei 28 Paesi dei poco più di 20.000 arrivati in Europa nel 2015. Non si può permettere all’Unione Europea di continuare su questa strada! Di seguito alcune delle mobilitazioni già programmate per il 20 giugno 2015: BERLINO: Manifestazione e concerto: Rifare l’Europa, democratica, solidale e senza frontiere http://europa-anders-machen.net/aufruf/europe-remade-different-democratic-with-solidarity-without-borders STRASBURGO: “Ferry, not Frontex”: una barca per il Parlamento europeo (appello in francese e tedesco) https://www.facebook.com/events/1589035331348749/permalink/1589237204661895/ LONDRA: Blocco anti-razzista e anti-fascista alla manifestazione “End Austerity Now” https://www.facebook.com/events/642344809233603/ Anche a ROMA in tanti si mobiliteranno per chiedere una radicale inversione di rotta alla politiche europee di gestione dei flussi migratori. Sindacati, organizzazioni di varia natura, reti antirazziste, associazioni di volontariato e collettivi di studenti (qui l’elenco completo) aderiscono all’appello “Fermiamo la strage subito!” e chiamano per il 20 giugno una manifestazione nazionale a Roma, nella cornice delle mobilitazioni che a livello globale si terrano per la Giornata mondiale dei rifugiati. L’appello: L’Europa nasce o muore nel Mediterraneo Pace, sicurezza, benessere sociale ed economico si raggiungono solamente se si rispettano l’universalità dei diritti umani di ogni donna e di ogni uomo. La regione del Mediterraneo è una polveriera ed il mare è oramai un cimitero a cielo aperto. Dall’inizio del 2015 nel mediterraneo sono morte più di1700 persone. L’Europa, per storia, per cultura, per geografia, per il commercio, è parte integrante di questa regione ma sembra averne perso memoria. Il dramma di profughi e migranti, il loro abbandono in mano alle organizzazioni criminali, il dibattito su come, dove e chi colpire per impedire l’arrivo di uomini e donne che cercano rifugio o una vita dignitosa in Europa, non è altro che l’ultimo atto che testimonia l’assenza di visione politica da parte dei governi dell’UE. Questa drammatica situazione ha responsabilità precise: le scelte politiche e le leggi dei governi europei che non consentono nessuna via d’accesso sicura e legale nel territorio dell’UE e costruiscono di fatto quelle barriere che provocano migliaia di morti nel Mediterraneo, nel Sahara, nei paesi di transito, nella sacca senza uscita che si è creata in Libia. Scelte coscienti e volute che configurano un crimine contro l’umanità. Continua a leggere… Partecipa! Alzati in piedi contro i fili spinati, le bombe, la detenzione e la criminalizzazione dei migranti e per l’accesso, la protezione, l’asilo e la dignità! 20 giugno: giornata globale dei rifugiati
One year after the European Parliamentary Election
It’s been one year since voters across Europe showed up in few, but vocal numbers to elect their representatives to the European Parliament. The message from voters and abstainers alike was clear: they’d had enough of the status quo in the European Union. A lot has happened in the year since: mainstream parties across the continent have lost electoral ground and far-right parties have emerged as a significant force in many countries. The UK, one of the largest members of the EU, is embarking on the delivery of its campaign promise to redefine its relationship with Europe, with the very real possibility that it might leave the EU. Meanwhile, Greece teeters on bankruptcy, a feeble and uncoordinated European response to conflict has turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard for refugees and a generation of young Europeans grapples with professional and economic precarity. As the European Parliament struggles to heed the message of the electorate, their colleagues in other EU institutions continue to sideline them. This sidelining has caused MEPs to lament not having enough to do. As the only directly elected body of the EU, the Parliament should make use of its very public platform. MEPs should be much more forceful in denouncing where current EU mechanisms fall short, and it should do so by speaking directly to the public. Ideally, the Parliament would take the initiative and call for treaty change to impose itself on debates around these critical topics. But other options are available, too, such as the Citizens’ Agora, promoting radical reform of the European Citizens Initiative or using time saved from examining legislation to tour Europe and lead public debate. If it dared to reach out to the public, the European Parliament could not only help address the democratic retrenchment, but also show the other institutions that there are consequences to sidelining the Parliament.
Call for Participation – TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015
Are you an artist, activist, designer, performer, hacktivist, gamer, thinker or collective who loves to share what you do or think? Do you want to co-create an exciting transnationally sourced and organised festival that combines politics with art and culture in Europe? Does the idea of picking up the pieces in order to go beyond the fragments of the current European political context excite you? Do you want to become part of a growing community in Europe and beyond that believes change only happens through joining our hands and minds? TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 – Belgrade #TEF15 TRANSEUROPA is a festival of arts, culture and politics. This year’s festival takes place mainly in Belgrade from October 1-5. The festival is transnational in its fabric, concept and content. Its main objective is to create a temporary space for people from throughout Europe to exchange, co-create and find common ground for future actions to call for democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. The programme is conceived of with various professionals, activists and artists throughout Europe in order to tackle the most burning issues facing the continent from a transnational point of view: war on the European continent, the rise of nationalism and xenophobia, the danger of the unravelling of the European Union (Brexit and Grexit), the continuation of self-defeating economic policies and mass unemployment, the persistence of corruption, the hecatomb in the Mediterranean, increased attacks on human rights and the questioning of freedom of movement for European citizens and migrants alike. These tendencies push us away from the core political principles of justice, unity and solidarity. But there are also positive, albeit fragmented signs. A growing political awareness among the younger generation of Europeans; renewed leadership by social movements and citizen initiatives, from the Irish referendum to the Spanish municipal elections; rising indignation towards perceived injustices, from the treatment of refugees to urban redevelopments or mass surveillance. TEF15 will give a strong push in this direction and go beyond fragments. Beyond fragments is a call to pick up the pieces: review the multiplicity of claims, positions, movements and practices in the European space, to undo the status-quo: shred the ideological mist that’s fallen on Europe and is being used to perpetuate an unjust system and set of policy choices and identify the path beyond: build convergences, propose concrete alternatives and develop a narrative and future vision. Today the risks of fragmentation are multiform: they are represented both by the rise of nationalist and xenophobic forces in Europe, as well as by the increased gap between the poor and the rich. They also translate into the tendency to separate the economy and politics from the imaginative side of human actions. TEF15 wants Europe to get back to signifying progress and creative change and to signify solidarity rather than oppressive policies. By focusing on the following topics, TEF15 seeks to empower all participants to imagine new dreams, thoughts and actions and a joint transnational and common action plan for the coming years. New forms of politics and movements: Disinterest in traditional party politics is growing. What does the rise of new forms of political and social movements across Europe tell us about the possibilities for citizen involvement and for a renewed relationship with political decision-making? How can radical democracy and political innovation be realised at the European level, rather than be content with a reversion to the ‘local’? How can it drive real change? The commons: Can the concept of the commons – what is commonly owned by the people – help change the way people interact with and conceive of goods such as water, air or even the city? How can it be translated into action not only locally but also transnationally? Can we speak about the commons while speaking about the European Polity? Migration and mobility: Free movement and mobility are at the core of the European Union. Today, with thousands of people drowning at its borders, these concepts are called into question. Rather than being valued, migration and movement are perceived as dangers. How can Europe retrieve these values crucial for its existence? What can be done to stop the rise of nationalistic and xenophobic movements? How can human rights be protected rather than scrapped? Alternative economies: The economy and the functioning of the economic system have made headlines since the beginning of the 2009 sub-prime crisis. The economy is presented as both the source of disaster and the only source of possible recovery, but it is also thought of as an area of expertise, wherein experts’ decisions should supersede democratic ones. What are the possibilities for citizens to claim back their rights to decide decision-making? How can local solutions such as participatory budgeting be translated at a European level? What real economic alternatives are there and how can they be enacted? Taking part The TEF15 programme is now open for your contribution. It offers a mix of activities, ranging from debates, conferences and workshops to artistic and cultural activities such as exhibitions, theatre performances and urban games. Our new festival website is launching soon. In the meantime, read the TEF13 catalogue. Click here to apply online by July 2, 2015 For more information, email us at info@euroalter.com, follow TEF15 on twitter and like the TEF15 Facebook page. All selected entries will be notified in the first week of July. Travel to and accommodation in Belgrade will be covered. There will be a small budget/stipend for each successful entry, depending on funding. We are excited to read your ideas. Now its up to you. Our partners in Belgrade Ministry of Space: co-coordinators of the festival, do-tank collective Grad Centre: venue for the festival, co-coordinator of events, not for profit organisation Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD): venue for the festival, co-coordinator of event, not for profit organisation Krokodil: not for profit organisation Karkatag: artists performance, artists collective Novo Doba Festival Kamerades (photo collective) Elektrika Ulice za bicikliste Tačka komunikacije NOFM (independent internet radio) Goethe Institut Our partners in the rest of Europe Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique, Stanisław Brzozowski Association) Academia Ciudade, Portugal, Citizenship Academy, not for profit organisation The European Civic Forum, not…
The world upside down: insurgents are serious, national leaders muddle through
With prospects of economic stagnation at best, the timidity of European leaders appears more reckless than the gambles of insurgent parties.
Se gli unici partiti che fanno sul serio sono quelli radicali
With prospects of economic stagnation at best, the timidity of European leaders appears more reckless than the gambles of insurgent parties.
Three messages for ‘youth’ activists, inside and outside the institutions
Remarks by Niccolo Milanese to the EU-Southern Neighbourhood Forum, Brussels 28th May 2015 – as part of the panel on Parallel Mediterranean Experiences: common challenges and approaches to secure a better future for youth. For the past years I have been working in this context to, on the one hand, coordinate and organize young political activists throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, and on the other hand create dialogue with the political institutions in the same regions – on the basis that if you don’t engage with the institutions you end up with institutions you don’t like. That basic belief made me quite unpopular sometimes on both sides, amongst the institutions and amongst the movements: the institutions are made uncomfortable when the have to work with people who are often angry or disappointed with them, and the movements are sometimes taken out of their comfort zone when they are forced to confront the compromises and trade-offs required in political institutions. But if anyone is listening on either side, I’ve come up with three simple headline messages to address to all those working for ‘youth’. Careful about using ‘youth’ It might seem like youth is an unproblematic scientific term, but there is no shared definition of who counts as ‘youth’, and the term often functions ideologically. One day a politician can justify austerity by saying that ‘it is important to cut the deficit because it is unfair to pass on our debts to the younger generation’. The next day the same politician can justify increasing the cost of university education (and therefore putting anyone who goes to university into debt) on the grounds that young people have their whole lives to pay back the investment they make into their education. On the third day the one and same politician is surprised that no young person has any confidence in him at all any more. What actually has happened under the cover of a rhetoric of ‘youth’ in this kind of manoeuvre is a transfer of collective debt onto individuals, some of whom may be young, others of whom are not. We are all familiar with ways in which applying the label ‘youth’ is used as a way of disenfranchising that group of people. It can also be used as a way of justifying lesser rights, or even of giving benefits at the expense of some other group. When we think of many of the phenomena of injustice we associate with youth, whether it be job insecurity or difficulty of entering the job market, lack of affordable housing, the expense of good education, these are actually phenomena which affect the whole society. Young people may experience the injustice in greater numbers because they are more vulnerable, but typically to make successful campaigns, we need to show that the issue is universal. Otherwise youth remains a minority, or is regarded as a more or less privileged group, to be balanced against other parts of society. Therefore paying attention to the ‘youth’ framing of issues is particularly important both for campaigners and institutions. Make change possible We often say we are pushing for change, or trying to make change happen. It may be a more difficult question to ask if we are making change possible. Every campaigner wants to achieve change, and every politician dreams of bringing about change. But even as they do this, both campaigners and politicians may be reinforcing structures which actually prevent real change from taking place, usually by acting to reinforce their own positions. Making change possible also means potentially losing one’s own privileges or centrality. It requires admitting that the change might actually come from structures and processes in which one is not involved, which one might actually be standing in the way of. This could lead those in the movements to ask to what extent those movements are reinforcing some elements of exclusion or injustice, by asking who has access to the movement, who speaks on behalf of it, whether it is acting democratically in allowing space also for other movements and interests. And it could lead the institutions to ask whether – despite what is often in the rhetoric of politicians – they are really allowing change to take place, or facilitating it. That is something that the European Union needs to ask itself very seriously at the moment – is the EU as an institution really allowing change to take place? Make mobility meaningful Both campaigners and policy makers in the Euro-Mediterranean region speak a lot about mobility. This is justified: the lack of international mobility (through restrictive and discriminatory visa regimes) of people from the Southern shore of the Mediterranean is one of the main things holding back both social and economic progress in those countries. We need to be careful when talking about mobility not just to talk in terms of opportunities for individuals to find work or training, however. If we allow mobility to be reduced to opportunities in this way, we reinforce a logic which makes mobility appear threatening for the majority population, firstly by suggesting mobility will mean people face greater competition for any opportunities there are, and secondly by suggesting mobility is an individual privilege, and has no social consequences. We need to make mobility meaningful, and by that I mean we need to make it socially meaningful. In the programs of mobility that are put in place by political institutions, there needs to be thought about how those who are mobile touch the places they travel to. Those who are mobile need to be allowed, and encouraged, to contribute socially, economically and culturally to the places they go to. At the moment we tend to shut out ‘visitors’ from the possibility of contributing. Instead of creating a common world, this has a tendency to turn real situated places which are culturally rich and connected to their surroundings into non-places of transit, whether those places of transit be universities, towns, cities or companies. Mobility becoming meaningful…
APPELLO ALLA PARTECIPAZIONE – TRANSEUROPA FESTIVAL 2015
Il TRANSEUROPA Festival sta arrivando! Dall’1 al 5 a Ottobre 2015, a Belgrado, attivisti, artisti, designer, performer, hacktivisti, pensatori, collettivi politici provenienti dai quattro angoli dell’Europa si incontreranno nella cornice del Festival. Se vuoi partecipare alla co-creazione di questa entusiasmante esperienza organizzata e realizzata a livello transnazionale, in una combinazione di arte e cultura, dibattiti e divertimento, fatti avanti! Il TRANSEUROPA Festival è aperto a nuove idee e contributi. Se hai in testa perfomance, dibattiti, proiezioni, spettacoli teatrali o giochi urbani, attività artistiche o culturali… proponile e ti faremo sapere se è possibile ospitarle all’interno del Festival. Qui trovi il MODULO DI PARTECIPAZIONE AL FESTIVAL, dove puoi descrivere l’attività che hai in mente e tutto quello di cui hai bisogno per realizzarla. Qui, invece, puoi leggere la versione integrale dell’appello: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION – TRANSEUROPA FESTIVAL 2015. Per qualsiasi dubbio o richiesta, contattaci a info@euroalter.com o @transeuropafest (la lingua di comunicazione del Festival sarà l’inglese, pertanto anche le comunicazioni devono essere realizzate in questa lingua) Ecco il teaser del Festival, edizione 2013:
Italy sows seeds of hatred against Roma and migrants to win votes and consensus
Last week in Italy, a heated and racially-charged debate about the Roma community dominated headlines. The debate was sparked by a tragic hit-and-run incident that took place in Rome on May 28. While fleeing a police checkpoint, the driver hit nine people, killing one. The driver and one of the passengers fled authorities, while another passenger was immediately detained. When it was reported that the arrested woman was Roma, a wave of racist rhetoric swept across news outlets, the internet, and within communities across the country. Among the more extreme statements were: “We must burn all Roma people” and “Roma people are the dregs of humanity”. Right-wing political organizations sought to exploit the tragedy for political gain. A fascist organization, CasaPound, infiltrated an anti-Roma sit-in near a Roma camp and organized a new sit-in. Members of the political party Lega Nord participated in several television broadcasts, harshly attacking Roma and even campaigning for the bulldozing of Roma camps and social centers. Local elections were one of the reasons for the harsh tone, but not the only one. The hysteria developed as a result of a political climate that is increasingly focused on marginalizing the “other”. Main contributors to this climate include Lega Nord and CasaPound. Lega Nord was founded in the 90s to pursue the secession of the “productive North” from the “lazy South” of Italy. Recently, a series of corruption scandals linked with Lega Nord’s former leader, Umberto Bossi, and his political associates threatened to fold the party. Lega Nord’s new leader, Matteo Salvini, changed the party’s focus from regionalist to nationalist. This calculation was made in response to the growing electoral success of racist and anti-European right-wing parties, particularly Marine Le Pen’s Front National. To create something similar on this side of the Alps, Salvini’s electoral strategy has been to capitalize on anti-austerity sentiment to push a nationalistic, anti-European agenda. Racism has always characterized Lega Nord’s approach. Initially it targeted Southern Italians, but in seeking a national base, it has identified new enemies. Indeed, the party’s slogan, “Italians First”, aims to blame migrants and Roma for any and all problems with the welfare system. In the current climate, every crime committed by foreigners, every opening of a new refugee facility and every new arrival of migrants is used to stoke hatred against these people. The far-right systematically portrays Roma and refugees as criminals who receive preferential treatment from the government, thus generating their own “social truth”. Some sociologists define a “social truth” as a position that is perceived as true without any link to reality. The current economic landscape makes for fertile ground for this type of discourse: over 12% unemployment, 40% youth unemployment, 25% of families at risk of poverty and a policy shift toward market-based policies at the expense of the welfare system, precisely when it is most needed. The Italian media consistently ignores facts that contradict headlines: according to the Italian road safety association ASAPS, 76% of hit-and-run drivers in 2013 were Italian; just two days after the tragedy in Rome, an off-duty police officer driving a motorcycle under the influence of alcohol and cocaine ran over a 78 year old man, killing him instantly; the woman who died in the accident in Rome came from the Philippines, so she too was a migrant. The lack of a critical media and of a strong, opposing vision by the Italian left enables the far-right to dominate the debate about the economy, welfare and rights. Without opposing views and ideas, the notion of societal-membership as a nationalistic construct will continue to grow in Italy, further strengthening Lega Nord and CasaPound along lines already seen in other parts of Europe. Another vision of society is strongly needed. It is the only effective antidote to racism. Written by Giansandro Merli
Gezi Park was not for nothing
Cars with colorful flags drive hooting through the night. Two old men hug and kiss each other on the cheeks like long lost brothers. Young men and women dance in a circle to the beat of oriental music. It is Turkey’s election night and HDP supporters in Berlin Kreuzberg are celebrating the results. The pro-Kurdish leftist Party HDP surpassed the 10% threshold with ease and received 80 out of 550 parliamentary seats. This is a historic moment in Turkish democratic history for several reasons. First, for the first time after 13 years, the ruling party, AKP, must enter into a coalition. This means, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will not be able to change the Turkish constitution and implement a presidential system. These plans have been heavily criticized as serving the main purpose of strengthening Erdoğan’s own power and weakening democratic control mechanisms. Second, these elections are a first landmark for the representation of minority groups. Not only did four christian delegates enter the parliament, but also the first Roma candidate secured a seat. But of course, the biggest success was celebrated by the Kurdish people, who after decades of struggle for their rights have entered the parliament for the first time. Yet, the HDP did not only receive votes from the Kurdish population but appealed to a much broader electorate of women’s rights activists, liberals, leftists and environmentalists. As Imran Ayata, author and campaigner, explained during European Alternatives’ election party, the HDP was able to create a new identity, a new “we” of the left groups and organizations after the Gezi Park protests. Hence, the 13% is also a victory for the people whose protest quickly grew from protecting a small park in Istanbul to a forceful demand for a new political culture. “Our Gezi Park protests were not for nothing” said a smiling young woman. Yet, coalition building will be difficult and some commentators are already expecting reelections soon. But no matter how the next Turkish government will look, the political landscape will not be the same.
Europeans have already influenced TTIP negotiations. We must do more.
Over the past year, more than 2 million European citizens have spoken out against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and European Union. It is one of the most successful trans-European campaigns to date. TTIP is high on the agendas of European citizens. Last year 150,000 people responded to a European Commission consultation. Responses were by and large highly critical of the treaty. Notably, 97% of respondents opposed ISDS, the controversial proposal for an ‘investor-state dispute settlement’ system which grants privileged powers to foreign corporations. Europeans are surely right to be concerned about the speed with which the treaty is being negotiated, the risk of corporate lobbyists dominating the negotiations and the secrecy of ISDS, which risks taking arbitration with significant consequences for public policy out of public view and into secret courts. Public concern has led to some signs of a policy shift inside the European Commission, which is negotiating the treaty on behalf of member states. Jean-Claude Juncker, whilst campaigning to be elected as President of the Commission, remarked that he thought ISDS should not be part of the the trade agreements. Cecilia Malmström, the trade Commissioner, has laid out plans for creating a public court for trade disputes, updating an ISDS system she argues is already in place with hundreds of agreements by member states with third countries made over the last decades. Public pressure and debate must be kept up to keep pushing negotiators towards acting in the general interest The European Parliament will ultimately be in a position to agree to or to block TTIP. It therefore has a huge responsibility for working towards a good agreement in the interests of citizens on both sides of the Atlantic. Many of the Parliamentary committees have made proposals on how to safeguard various public health, safety and environmental standards, and have been critical of the ISDS procedures. News of the parliament’s International Trade Committee vote in favour of a pro-ISDS report, therefore, was met with both shock and consternation. Civil society across Europe has labelled May 28 a “gloomy day for democracy” and accused MEPs of “betraying the European people”. Last month, reports came out in the international press of US senators changing their minds and voting in favour of fast-track approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership after receiving substantial donations from corporations. On June 10, the European Parliament will have to vote in plenary session whether to approve, reject or amend the report of its Trade Committee. This is an important opportunity for the parliament to show whether it stands by citizens or by corporations. The previous parliament asserted its authority by rejecting the SWIFT agreements and the ACTA agreements, responding to widespread public concern. With TTIP the stakes are even higher.
I cittadini europei hanno già influenzato il TTIP. Adesso dobbiamo fare di più.
Durante lo scorso anno, più di 2 milioni di cittadini europei si sono espressi chiaramente contro il Trattato transatlantico sul commercio e sugli investimenti (TTIP) tra Stati Uniti e Unione europea, in una delle campagne transnazionali di maggior successo di sempre. Il TTIP non è un tema da esperti. Lo scorso anno 150.000 persone hanno partecipato a una consultazione della Commissione europea a riguardo. Le risposte sono state nella loro maggior parte molto critiche verso il trattato – in particolare, il 97% sii è dichiarato contrario all’ISDS, la proposta molto discussa di un ‘sistema di risoluzione delle controversie tra investitore e Stato’, che garantirebbe forti privilegi alle società straniere creando una giurisdizione ad uso e consumo delle multinazionali in corti speciali fuori dal diritto pubblico. I cittadini europei hanno certamente ragione a essere preoccupati, sia per la velocità con cui si sta negoziando il trattato, sia per il rischio di una posizione dominante delle lobby aziendali nella procedura di negoziazione. Recentemente, la stampa internazionale ha portato alla luce lo scandalo di senatori degli Stati Uniti che hanno deciso di cambiare idea e votare a favore di un’approvazione accelerata del trattato in seguito a donazioni consistenti da parte di multinazionali. La forte parteciapzione nella campagna TTIP e le tante voci contrarie hanno portato ad alcuni segnali di cambiamento di posizione in seno alla Commissione europea, che sta negoziando il trattato per conto degli Stati membri. Jean Claude Junker, durante la campagna elettorale per essere eletto come presidente della Commissione, ha dichiarato la sua opposizione al sistema di ISDS. Cecilia Malmstrom, il Commissario per il commercio, ha esposto alcuni piani per la creazione di un tribunale pubblico per le controversie commerciali, affermando che l’aggiornamento di un sistema di ISDS è già in atto con centinaia di accordi realizzati nel corso degli ultimi anni tra Stati membri e Paesi terzi. Ora il dibattito e la pressione dell’opinione pubblica devono essere mantenuti alti per assicurarsi che le decisioni vengano prese nell’interesse generale. Alla fine, il Parlamento europeo sarà nella posizione di accettare o bloccare il TTIP. Ha quindi l’enorme responsabilità di lavorare per un buon accordo, nell’interesse dei cittadini di entrambe le sponde dell’Atlantico. Molte delle Commissioni parlamentari hanno fatto proposte su come salvaguardare standard elevati relativi alla sanità pubblica, alla sicurezza e all’ambiente, e hanno criticato le procedure dell’ISDS. Ha quindi provocato profonda costernazione il fatto che la scorsa settimana la Commissione del parlamento europeo per il commercio internazionale abbia approvato una relazione molto ambivalente sull’ISDS. In tutta Europa, la società civile ha definito il 28 maggio ‘una giornata nera per la democrazia’ e ha accusato i parlamentari di aver ‘tradito il popolo europeo’.
Tania Bruguera manhandled over a minute of speech
We are shocked and appalled at recent images showing European Alternatives board member, the Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera, with her arms covered in bruises obtained from her most recent arrest by Cuban authorities. Freedom of speech and expression are fundamental to a free and democratic society. They should be welcomed, not attacked. Bruguera’s most recent arrest, on May 28, came months after her initial arrest on December 30, 2014. It happened in broad daylight during the Havana Biennale, and was caught on video. In the video, Bruguera is calm and fully cooperative. A week later on June 9, images of her severely bruised arms were shared on her Facebook page. As relations between Cuba and the United States undergo an historic transformation, the rest of the world must not overlook the Cuban government’s systematic and violent efforts to suppress not only criticism of itself, but the mere act of artistic and political discourse. Since her initial arrest, Bruguera’s passport has been revoked. She has been given the option of leaving Cuba on the condition that she never return. Bruguera’s art is neither doctrinaire nor prescriptive. It challenges us to engage in the political and the social realms. The piece for which she was originally arrested, Tatlin’s Whisper, invited people to speak freely for one minute. A minute of free speech proved a minute too much for the Cuban government. European Alternatives denounces the actions of Cuban authorities and calls on political leaders in Europe and the United States to advocate on Bruguera’s behalf specifically, and on the right to free expression more broadly. European Alternatives calls on artists and curators – specifically those present at the Havana Biennale to act visibly to urge the Cuban government to change its behaviour. We ask that you help spread her story.
Two years after Snowden, the right to privacy remains elusive
auf Deutsch lesen Rights and liberties do not protect themselves. The very premise of democracy, rule by the people, requires all of us to do the hard work of establishing and maintaining them. But two years after Edward Snowden’s devastating revelations about sweeping government surveillance, while some encouraging steps toward progress have been made, it’s clear that more work is needed. We cannot rely solely on political elites to bring about the societal change needed to address the ongoing erosion of our right to privacy. In pitting our security against our privacy, political leaders have successfully contributed to a climate in which giving up privacy is treated as a reasonable concession. It is not. Privacy is a necessary precondition of human dignity. We need not behave as subjects, however. Indeed, we have the capacity to be the actors. The arc of history shows that time and time again, social movements have led the way in the fight for rights and liberties. It is therefore our job, now, to fight for this right. The Bulgarian-German writer Ilja Trojanow said: a society that gives up on its protection of privacy without a struggle, reveals everything about its inner condition. Privacy is not a partisan issue, but one that affects us all. And so we need to build a stronger, cross-sector, transnational movement to reject the surveillance state. This is already being done by actors such as the European Digital Rights Association, EDRi; La Quadrature du Net; Code Red and many individual activists. Let’s build on their important work. One way in which European Alternatives is building on this work is by participating in a CryptoParty at the Berlin based c-base, to teach citizens how to protect themselves online. Prior to that, we will hold two debates on surveillance, privacy, why we should care (more) and how we can act: with Tactical Tech, the Centre for Internet and Human Rights, the University of Rome and others. Zwei Jahr nach Snowden bleibt das Recht auf Schutz der Privatsphäre schwer fassbar Wir sind einem Irrtum aufgesessen wenn wir uns einbilden, dass es Strukturen und Sicherheiten gibt, die eine Gesellschaft per se demokratisch machen. Der Bürger kann sich nicht einfach zurücklehnen, da ein Gewisses Mass an Demokratie gesichert ist. Zwei Jahre nach Snowden’s Enthüllungen über die umfassende Überwachung der Geheimdienste wird deutlich, dass trotz einiger mutiger Schritte gegen die Einschränkung unserer Freiheit noch weit mehr getan werden muss. Der Bürger, der seine Freiheit nicht wirklich wertschätzt, ähnelt in seiner Verfasstheit eher einem Untertan. Wir haben aber die Kapazitäten Akteure zu sein und zu werden. Wir können uns nicht alleinig auf die politischen Eliten stützen, um die gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen die den Schutz der Privatsphäre sicherstellen, herbeizuführen. Das Ausspielen von Sicherheit gegen Privatsphäre hat erfolgreich auf Hinwirken der Politik dazu beigetragen, dass die Aufgabe unserer Privatsphäre als ein angemessenes Zugeständnis gehandelt wird. Das ist es nicht. Das Recht auf Privatsphäre ist eine notwendige Vorraussetzung der menschlichen Würde. Die Geschichte lehrt uns, dass es soziale Bewegungen waren, die sich für den Erhalt und die Erweiterung unserer Rechte und Freiheiten stark gemacht haben und immer wieder die Kämpfe darum gewonnen haben. Der Schutz der Privatsphäre ist ein gesamtgesellschaftliches Thema, eines das uns alle etwas anbelangt. Der erfolgreiche Einsatz gegen den Überwachungsstaat funktioniert nur durch eine eine starke, übergreifende, transnationale Bewegung. Einige Akteure wie EDRi (European Digital Rights Association), La Quadrature du Net, Code Red und andere arbeiten daran bereits, wir sollten daran anknüpfen. Der deutsch-bulgarische Author Ilja Trojanow beschreibt wie es ist, wenn wir kollektiv, dem Irrtum der sich selbst-erfüllenden Demokratie aufsitzen: Eine Gesellschaft, die das Grundrecht auf Schutz der Privatsphäre kampflos preisgibt, verrät alles über ihre innere Verfassung. Am Freitag, 19. Juni, wird European Alternatives eine Cryptoparty organisieren, auf der Teilnehmer lernen wie man sich online besser gegen Überwachung schützen kann. Davor diskutieren zwei Panels die Themen Überwachung, Privatsphäre und darüber warum wir uns (mehr) darum kümmern sollten und was wir tun können: mit dabei sind Tactical Tech, Centre for Internet and Human Rights, Reporter ohne Grenzen und die Universität Rom.
Onda Pride 2015: “It’s #Human Pride”
Sabato 13 giugno le strade di 15 città italiane saranno invase dai colori e dall’allegria dell’Onda Pride 2015. Da Milano a Palermo, da Roma a Cagliari, da Bologna a Napoli, da Perugia a Torino, queste manifestazioni saranno l’evento più importante dell’anno nella battaglia per i diritti LGBTQI. Decine di migliaia di persone scenderanno in piazza per un Paese più umano. Una vera e propria “forza propulsiva di cambiamento, liberazione, diversità, diritti che vuole dare il suo contributo alla crescita democratica, civile e sociale dell’Italia”, come sostiene il comunicato ufficiale della mobilitazione. Tante le rivendicazioni e molti i punti di collegamento con le altre componenti sociali che vivono situazioni di discriminazione. Soprattutto in un Paese come l’Italia, dove la crisi economica e le politiche di austerity continuano a far crescere forze populiste, razziste e nazionaliste, che “soffiando sul fuoco dei pregiudizi puntano a mobilitare parte dell’opinione pubblica allo scopo di bloccare ogni avanzamento dei diritti”. L’Italia, infatti, sembra andare controcorrente rispetto alla tendenza positiva che si sta affermando in Europa. Poche settimane fa, l’Irlanda è entrata nella storia come primo Paese al mondo ad approvare i matrimoni omosessuali attraverso un referendum popolare, una grande prova di democrazia in cui la stragrande maggioranza degli irlandesi ha votato a favore dei diritti e contro le discriminazioni. Il 9 giugno, invece, il Parlamento europeo ha approvato una risoluzione in cui riconosce il “matrimonio gay” e ha invitato ad adeguare le leggi alle esigenze delle “famiglie monoparentali e dell’omogenitorialità”. Il Pride 2015 sarà quindi un’occasione molto importante per affermare la voglia di innovazione e diritti, nel solco di quello che sta accadendo nel resto d’Europa. A Roma l’appuntamento è alle ore 15, in Piazza della Repubblica. Il documento politico ufficiale dell’Onda Pride 2015 Il comunicato delle realtà di movimento: Tutta nostra la città!
Introducing the Democracy Rising World Conference
We are delighted to announce our partnership with the inaugural Democracy Rising World Conference, organised by the Global Center for Arts and Studies (GCAS). The conference takes place in Athens on July 16-19. An impressive list of speakers has been announced, including French philosopher Alain Badiou; the English Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker, Tariq Ali; Channel 4 journalist, Paul Mason; Podemos MEP, Lola Sanchez; Canadian-American documentary filmmaker, Astra Taylor and Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Zoi Konstantopoulou, to name but a few. Watch out for European Alternatives in and around the conference. We will run an exciting experimental project involving cameras, great minds and great ideas, as we work to bring alternative ideas and approaches to a larger audience. We asked GCAS’ founder, Creston Davis, to tell us a bit about the work of both GCAS and the goals of the upcoming Democracy Rising World Conference. What is the Global Center for Arts and Studies? GCAS is a school founded in response to the neoliberalisation of education, which has been turned into a profit-making venture at the expense of not only the students and faculty, but also at the expense of culture, knowledge and democracy. Our mission is to educate everyone in the world for free as we form a transnational community committed to the principles and struggle for democracy. What are the goals of the Democracy Rising World Conference 2015? We have organized “Democracy Rising” a conference that brings together academics, politicians, novelists, activists, workers, and journalists in order to strategize a passage beyond the neoliberal mantra, “There is no alternative” (TINA). What do you see as the way forward for European activists? It is a question, above all, about organisation. We know that the voices and desires of an overwhelming majority of people on this planet, and in Europe, are in an absolute state of repression. Repression can only last so long, so it is a question of timing. The Irish have an expression, Tiocfaidh ar la, that means “our time will come”. And our time is close to reinvigorate democracy on a large scale both locally and transnationally. So the way forward is first organisation and networks. But I would add another step to this: education and knowledge. We are in desperate need for more educational spaces in which to train people in the art of communicating, understanding power-relations, history, and to learn what it means to build something together.
Due anni dopo Snowden, il diritto alla privacy rimane un’esclusiva
I diritti e le libertà non si preservano da soli. La reale premessa di una democrazia, controllata dal popolo, richiede che noi tutti lavoriamo duramente per fissarli e mantenerli. Tuttavia, dopo due anni che sono state diffuse le scioccanti rivelazioni di Snowden sulla sorveglianza completa imposta dai governi, anche se sono stati compiuti alcuni incoraggianti passi in avanti verso il progresso, è chiaro che c’è ancora molto lavoro da fare. Non si può solamente contare sul fatto che le cerchie politiche apportino quei cambiamenti sociali necessari per affrontare l’attuale sgretolamento del diritto alla privacy. I leader politici, mettendo la sicurezza in contrasto con il diritto alla riservatezza, sono riusciti a creare un clima in cui la rinuncia a tale diritto è considerata una sconfitta accettabile. Ma non è così. La privacy è un prerequisito fondamentale della dignità umana. Dobbiamo in ogni modo comportarci da soggetti attivi. Abbiamo infatti la capacità di agire. La Storia ci mostra come più e più volte i movimenti sociali hanno aperto la strada alla lotta per i diritti e le libertà. È perciò nostro dovere, adesso, combattere per questo diritto. Il problema della privacy non appartiene solo ad alcuni, ma riguarda tutti noi. Per questo, c’è bisogno di creare un movimento transnazionale e intersettoriale più forte, capace di contrastare la sorveglianza dello Stato. Questo tipo di lavoro è già stato avviato da alcuni attori, come la EDRi ( European Digital Rights Association), La Quadrature du Net, Code Red e altri attivisti. Come afferma lo scrittore bulgaro- tedesco Ilija Trojanow: «Una società che rinuncia al proprio prerequisito di privacy senza combattere, la dice lunga riguardo alla sua condizione interna». Venerdì 19 giugno, European Alternatives si unisce con l’associazione hackerspace C-base di Berlino per un Cryptoparty, per aiutare i cittadini a capire come proteggersi online. Prima di tutto, terremo due dibattiti riguardo le problematiche della sorveglianza, della privacy, del perché preoccuparsi (di più) e di come agire: con la collaborazione di Tactical Tech, Centre for Internet and Human Rights , Università di Roma e altri (per maggiori dettagli consultare la pagina http://citizenrights.euroalter.com/event/createreact-digital).
Tania Bruguera malmenata per un minuto di libera espressione
Siamo sconvolti e scioccati per le recenti immagini che mostrano un membro del consiglio di European Alternatives, l’artista cubana e attivista Tania Bruguera, con le braccia coperte di lividi causati dal suo ultimo arresto da parte delle autorità cubane. La libertà di parola e di espressione sono fondamentali per una società libera e democratica. Queste libertà dovrebbero essere accolte, non attaccate. Il più recente arresto di Bruguera, il 28 maggio, è arrivato mesi dopo il suo arresto iniziale del 30 dicembre 2014. È accaduto in pieno giorno durante la Biennale dell’Avana ed è stato ripreso dalle telecamere. Nel video, Bruguera è calma e pienamente cooperativa. Una settimana dopo, il 9 giugno, alcune delle foto delle braccia piene di lividi sono state condivise sulla sua pagina Facebook. Mentre le relazioni tra Cuba e Stati Uniti subiscono una trasformazione storica, il resto del mondo non deve trascurare gli sforzi sistematici e violenti del governo cubano di sopprimere non solo la critica stessa, ma il semplice atto di discorso artistico e politico. Dal suo arresto iniziale, il passaporto di Bruguera è stato revocato. Le è stata data la possibilità di lasciare Cuba, a condizione di non ritornarci. L’arte di Bruguera non è né dottrinaria, né prescrittiva. Ci sfida ad impegnarci nella politica e nel sociale. Il pezzo che ha causato il primo arresto, Whisper di Tatlin, invitava la gente a parlare liberamente per un minuto. Un minuto di libertà di parola si è rivelato un minuto di troppo per il governo cubano. European Alternatives denuncia le azioni delle autorità cubane e invita i leader politici in Europa e negli Stati Uniti a difendere Bruguera in particolare e il diritto alla libera espressione in senso più ampio. European Alternatives invita artisti e curatori – in particolare quelli presenti alla Biennale dell’Avana – ad agire visibilmente per sollecitare il governo cubano a cambiare il suo comportamento. Vi chiediamo di contribuire a diffondere la sua storia.
A proposito della Democracy Rising Conference di Atene
Siamo lieti di annunciare la nostra partnership con la prima edizione della Democracy Rising World Conference, organizzata dal Global Center for Arts and Studies (GCAS). La conferenza si terrà ad Atene dal 16 al 19 luglio. Un elenco impressionante di oratori è stato annunciato, tra cui: il filosofo francese Alain Badiou; lo scrittore inglese-pakistano, giornalista e regista, Tariq Ali; il giornalista di Channel 4, Paul Mason; la parlamentare europea di Podemos, Lola Sanchez; la documentarista canadese-americana, Astra Taylor; la presidente del Parlamento greco, Zoi Konstantopoulou; e tanti altri esponenti del mondo della cultura e della politica. Cercate European Alternatives che si aggirerà per la conferenza. Realizzeremo un entusiasmante progetto sperimentale che coinvolge telecamere, grandi menti e grandi idee, dal momento che lavoriamo quotidianamente per diffondere prospettive e approcci alternativi tra un pubblico sempre più ampio. Abbiamo chiesto a Creston Davis, fondatore del GCSA, di raccontarci qualcosa a proposito del lavoro di GCSA e degli obiettivi della Democracy Rising World Conference, ormai in arrive. Cos’è il Global Center for Arts and Studies? GCAS è una scuola fondata in risposta alla neoliberalizzazione dell’educazione, un processo che l’ha trasformata in un’impresa a scopo di lucro a scapito non solo di studenti e docenti, ma anche della cultura, della conoscenza e della democrazia. La nostra missione è quella di educare chiunque, in ogni parte del mondo, gratuitamente. Siamo una comunità transnazionale impegnata a rispettare i principi e la lotta per la democrazia. Quali sono gli obiettivi della Conferenza Democracy Rising World Conference? Abbiamo organizzato “Democracy Rising” – una conferenza che riunisce accademici, politici, scrittori, attivisti, operatori e giornalisti – al fine di mettere a punto delle strategie di superamento del mantra neoliberale “There Is No Alternative” (TINA). Secondo te, quale strada dovrebbero seguire gli attivisti europei? Si tratta, soprattutto, di una questione di organizzazione. Sappiamo che le voci e i desideri della stragrande maggioranza delle persone, su questo pianeta e in Europa, sono in uno stato di assoluta repressione. Ma la repressione può durare solo per un po’, quindi è una questione di tempo. Gli irlandesi hanno un’espressione, Tiocfaidh ar la, che significa “il nostro tempo arriverà”. E il nostro tempo è vicino a rinvigorire la democrazia su larga scala, sia a livello locale che transnazionale. Quindi la strada principale da seguire è quella dell’organizzazione e delle reti. Ma vorrei aggiungere anche altri due elementi: l’educazione e la conoscenza. Abbiamo un disperato bisogno di maggiori spazi educativi in cui formare le persone all’arte di comunicare, di comprendere le relazioni di potere e la storia e di imparare che cosa significa costruire qualcosa insieme.
#20G: fermiamo la strage, cambiamo l’Europa!
Il 20 giugno è la “Giornata Mondiale del Rifugiato”. In tantissime città ci saranno manifestazioni e iniziative di denuncia rispetto alle politiche di contrasto dell’immigrazione e di solidarietà con migranti e rifugiati. A Roma si terrà una manifestazione nazionale in piazza del Colosseo, dalle ore 15. Qui trovate l’evento facebook e qui l’appello completo. In fondo alla pagina, invece, potete leggere il comunicato stampa, che vi chiediamo di aiutarci a far circolare. European Alternatives è tra i promotori della manifestazione di Roma e di quella di Berlino. Nella capitale tedesca si muoverà un grande corteo, a cui hanno aderito già tantissime associazioni e realtà politiche, a partire da un appello che tiene insieme tre punti: opposizione alle politiche securitarie di contrasto dei flussi migratori; no all’austerity e alle politiche neoliberali; sì a un’Europa solidale, che accolga le richieste che vengono dalla Grecia. Qui l’appello completo (in inglese). Il 20 giugno la manifestazione nazionale Fermiamo la strage subito! Roma, ore 15, piazza del Colosseo “L’Europa nasce o muore nel Mediterraneo. Solo se si rispettano i diritti umani di ogni uomo e di ogni donna è possibile garantire pace, sicurezza e benessere sociale ed economico”. Inizia così l’appello delle centinaia di organizzazioni sociali e sindacali, artisti, intellettuali e singoli cittadini che hanno indetto per sabato 20 giugno una manifestazione nazionale a Roma, in piazza del Colosseo alle 15. Il 20 giugno è la giornata internazionale del rifugiato e tante saranno le iniziative promosse non solo in Italia ma anche in tante altre piazze del mondo, con cui è previsto un collegamento durante la manifestazione di Roma. La regione del Mediterraneo è attraversata da conflitti e tensioni e quel mare è diventato un enorme cimitero liquido. Solo dall’inizio del 2015 vi hanno perso la vita più di 1700 persone. L’Unione europea, i suoi singoli paesi membri, hanno finora agito con l’egoismo dell’irresponsabilità, preoccupandosi di salvaguardare i confini anziché le vite umane, nascondendo dietro la presunta “lotta agli scafisti” la volontà di rafforzare il controllo militare delle frontiere, fino alla decisione di questi giorni di sospendere Shenghen con l’effetto di lasciare ammassati per giorni nei luoghi di transito uomini, donne e bambini, un esercito di disperati privi di tutto: un letto per dormire, il cibo per sfamarsi, l’acqua per dissetarsi e lavarsi, privati cioè e innanzitutto della loro dignità di esseri umani. Nell’appello i promotori indicano 10 priorità per superare l’emergenza, dall’apertura di canali di ingresso umanitari alla pianificazione di un sistema efficace d’accoglienza, dalla sospensione degli accordi – come il processo di Karthoum – con paesi che non rispettano i diritti umani all’apertura immediata di un programma di ricerca e salvataggio nel mediterraneo. Al primo posto va messa infatti la salvaguardia della vita delle persone, la loro sopravvivenza in condizioni dignitose. Dal palco del 20 giugno si alterneranno alle voci dei promotori, la lettura di storie di rifugiati, performance artistiche e musicali, il tutto affidato alla conduzione di Massimo Cirri e Sara Zambotti di Caterpillar Radio 2. Fra gli altri, interverranno i segretari generali di Cgil, Cisl e Uil: Susanna Camusso, Anna Maria Furlan e Carmelo Barbagallo. Roma, 15 giugno 2015
Hack (y)our Borders Workshop in London
Over the weekend of 13-14 June, the Hack (y)our Borders Workshop took place in London. Thanks to the support of the Herne Hill Community Forum, a not-for-profit organisation that runs activities for the Herne Hill community of South London, the workshop was staged in the square just outside the Herne Hill railway station, making it a very public event. Despite the chilly weather, attendance was high with around 50 people taking part. In addition to two participants from Brazil and China who are currently doing mobility activities in London with Transnational Dialogues, around ten more people from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Vilnius and Warsaw participated in the workshop. The aim of the event was to tackle the two main issues addressed by Transnational Dialogues (i.e., unsustainable youth unemployment and youth at risk of social marginalisation): a) through raising awareness of social barriers in the public space of Herne Hill, London, and confronting them with comparable experiences from Brazil, China and other parts of Europe; b) sharing tools and skills in furniture building and design with all the young participants and youth workers who were present over the weekend. A full report on the workshop’s activities will follow on the Public Space Makers blog, edited by European Alternatives’ board member, Noel Hatch. The workshop was organised by European Alternatives within the scope of the Transnational Dialogues and Hack (y)our Border projects, in collaboration with radarq and Laimikis, and with the support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and of the Idea Camp programme of the European Cultural Foundation. A talk on artistic interventions in public spaces, featuring two of the workshop participants, Andressa Vianna and Biin Shen, will take place at the Bartlett School of Planning, at the University College London, on Thursday June 18.
Blaming refugees easier than taking responsibility for devastation of austerity
Our elected leaders do not have an easy task on their hands: they must revive a battered economy during a time when globalisation is fundamentally changing the labour market. They could have made the task easier on themselves by not adopting austerity, a historically devastating policy when applied in times of economic contraction. But instead of acknowledging a need to change course, European politicians across the political spectrum have found a convenient scapegoat in refugees. 60 million people around the world are currently fleeing war. To hear our politicians speak of this crisis, you would think all 60 million refugees were being housed in Europe, and are wreaking havoc on our welfare systems. In reality, the European Union –the battleground of two world wars, home to 500 million people and one of the richest regions in the world– received 216,300 applications for asylum in 2014. By contrast, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have taken in 2.2 million refugees. Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya have absorbed half a million South Sudanese refugees. Despite this embarrassingly modest number of refugee applications, we are to believe that they are a drain on our economy and of such danger to us, that it is better to let them drown by the thousands in the Mediterranean? As long as politicians continue to pit refugees against those who are legitimately concerned about their financial future, solutions to our economic woes will remain elusive. Refugees are neither a drain on our economy, nor potential criminals. They are victims of wars in which we have played no small role. This blaming of outsiders who lack citizens’ rights is convenient, and enables political leaders to avoid the more difficult conversations on the need to create jobs for a generation of young people across the continent. It is time to face reality. Five years of austerity policies have brought the Greek people to their knees and mired the rest of Southern Europe in stagnation. It is shameful to blame poor pensioners or minimum wage workers for public debts made to bail out European banks, and to blame migrants and refugees for jobs that austerity has wiped out and globalisation has relocated. European elites need to take responsibility for failed policies and for privileging the rich and the banks over people like us. So on June 20, World Refugee day, let us do more than stand alongside refugees, and support their efforts to find a safe haven and rights protections. Let us reject the politicization and scapegoating of refugees for the inability of our leaders to respond to the modern economy. If we do not change course, Europe can become a space of resurgent fascism and nationalism. But if we work to build a new Europe, it can become a space of humanity, justice and fairness. We know the Europe we want. The prospect of building a new Europe is bold. But the consequences of inaction are devastating. Let us choose the bold path instead.
TRANSEUROPA Festival, reshaped
TRANSEUROPA Festival is shedding its old skin and emerging anew. We want to explain why and how the festival has changed, and to invite our community and partners to join us in making #TEF15 the success we want it to be. At European Alternatives, we believe that in the face of new obstacles and challenges, one must innovate, renew and create. This is true of the European project in general, but also applies to EA’s activities. The organisation questions itself and examines how best to develop and increase our reach. And in so doing, we determine the way forward. Politics is greater than the mere act of ‘policy making’. Politics should be a controversial space, informed by different experiences and realised by a broad range of societal actors. This is why the role of artists, creatives, academics and activists from Europe and beyond is central to our goal of imagining, demanding and enacting a new Europe. The festival provides the space for this form of collaboration. From 2007 to 2009 the festival was held in London. Activists from across Europe wanted to bring the festival to their cities in order to connect with their local audience. What followed was weekends of collaboration among activists across Europe to jointly plan a truly transnational festival. Their hard work paid off and for four years in a row, the festival was held simultaneously in as many as 13 cities. The success of the festival relied on local groups made up of activists who had both conceived and organised the event. The amount of energy that went into and came out of the planning was amazing. But some fatigue sank in as well, and we had to reassess how best to reach the festival’s objectives while keeping energy going from one edition to the other. The festival has always aimed to provide a transnational space, as well as to promote the transnationalisation of people and organisations. It is the standard that we set for ourselves. But as those who work transnationally know, the logistical challenges are significant, and there is no reference book to turn to. Success comes through hard work, experimentation, learning from mistakes and a little bit of luck. One of the main difficulties of the simultaneous multi-city format that surprised us most was that of the exchange between people from different cities. They were too focused on creating a successful event in their own location to meaningfully connect with their counterparts in other cities during the festival period. We learned that – for organisers and activists – the most meaningful transnational interactions took place in the planning meetings, not the festival itself. For the audience, the symbolism of a multi-city festival and the opportunity to exchange with people from all over Europe without travelling remains strong. We discovered that a simultaneous opening event and closing forum were the most successful transnational elements of the festival. The opening event is a common celebration and its synchronisation can be staged to create a symbolic common shared moment among participants. Due to this success, #TEF15 will again begin with a transnational opening event that offers opportunities for activists to gather in different European cities. Some will journey on to Belgrade for the main festival. So as not to lose the richness of a participant driven festival, we are asking participants to co-create the festival in Belgrade. There will also be several outreach events after the festival. Shifting the festival activities from a multi-city to a single-city event was not an easy decision, but one pursued out of necessity and a willingness to gather forces in order to be able to strengthen the format in the coming years. Our funding changed, so in 2015 we do not have the resources to organise the necessary planning meetings in multiple cities, for multiple people. The festival this year will be different to previous years. Future years will also be different, as we continue to seek funding to support a far-reaching event and experiment with ways to bring a transnational agenda to local audiences. And as we continue to listen to the needs of our community.
CreateReact Training program: Kick-off in Berlin
The protection and promotion of our citizen rights in Europe are not something we should take for granted. Examples of rights abuse range from privacy rights to Roma discrimination. Since member states and the EU institutions themselves are oftentimes not able or willing to provide sufficient protection, it is up to civil society to act. European Alternatives supports this struggle with its Citizen Rights project. One important component of this project is its training program “create react” for activists, which started last weekend in Berlin and will travel to five other European cities. The focus of this first training program was surveillance, privacy rights and digital activism. We started Friday afternoon in a famous Berlin hackerspace with three different discussions and panel on surveillance. In order to not only talk but also act on this issue, we stayed in the hackerspace for a cryptoparty during which experts helped to make our digital devices less prone to surveillance. The weekend continued with different sessions and workshops covering different aspects of digital activism. We learned for example about liquid democracy, a tool to enhance online participation, how to visualize data and how to use gaming as a campaign tool. After this rich and fruitful weekend, we are looking forward to thenext training session in Lisbon.
TANIA BRUGUERA MALMENÉE APRÉS UNE MINUTE DE DISCOURS
Nous sommes profondément choqués et horrifiés par les photos montrant les bras couverts de bleus de Tania Bruguera, artiste et activiste cubaine et membres du conseil d’Alternatives Européennes ; des stigmates laissés par les autorités cubaines lors de son arrestation. La liberté d’expression est intrinsèque à une société libre et démocratique ; elle doit être un droit et non un délit. Cette arrestation datant du 28 mai survient des mois après une première arrestation le 30 décembre 2014. La scène, qui a été filmée, s’est déroulée en plein milieu de la journée lors de la Biennale de La Havane. Sur cette vidéo, Bruguera apparaît calme et très coopérative. Une semaine plus tard, le 9 juin, elle poste sur sa page Facebook des photos de ses bras couverts de bleus. Bien que les relations entre Cuba et les États-Unis aient connu un grand changement historique, le reste du monde ne doit en aucun cas ignorer les efforts systématiques et véhéments mis en place par le gouvernement cubain pour éradiquer la critique démocratique et et les discours politique jusqu’au moindre acte artistique. Depuis sa première arrestation, Bruguera s’est vu confisquer son passeport, par ailleurs, on lui a suggéré que tout départ de Cuba serait définitif. L’art de Bruguera n’est ni doctrinaire ni normatif. Il nous incite à prendre part aux domaines politique et social. Sa pièce « Tatlin’s Whisper », pour laquelle elle a d’abord été arrêtée, invitait les personnes à s’exprimer librement pendant une minute. Une minute semble déjà trop long pour le gouvernement cubain. Alternatives Européennes dénonce le comportement des autorités cubaines et appelle les chefs des gouvernements en Europe et aux États-Unis à prendre la défense de Bruguera et de prôner la liberté d’expression dans le monde. Alternatives Européennes appelle également les artistes et programmateurs, principalement ceux présents à la Biennale de La Havane, à prendre des mesures visibles pour pousser le gouvernement cubain à changer de comportement. Pour que ces actes ne restent pas impunis, aidez-nous en partageant cette histoire au maximum.
Bridges, not weapons!
An appeal for a migrant, asylum seeker and refugee reception policy.. It is estimated that over 20,000 people have lost their lives along Europe’s borders over the past 20 years, with almost 2,000 of them perishing in the Mediterranean since the start of 2015. The Member States of the European Union (EU) will address the issue of these repeated tragedies at the 25-6 June European Council meeting. Our organisations cannot accept the fact that the EU’s institutions are not prioritizing saving lives. On the contrary, the EU and its Member States had no trouble agreeing to reinforce its arsenal of security measures, which is largely responsible for these migration tragedies, and have added the option of armed intervention to Frontex’s remit. The UN and some countries from the Southern Mediterranean, including Libya, have strongly criticized these plans. In response to this refusal to accept the reality of the migration situation and the repeated breaches of the EU’s founding principles, our organisations have decided to take action to urge Europe’s leaders to implement an alternative policy that respects fundamental rights, life and human dignity. They are calling on civil society to rally round and follow them. In light of the urgent nature of the situation, they are calling for everything possible to be done to protect people who are forced to risk their lives in order to reach a safe place and to exercise their right to freedom of movement. In order to achieve this and without delay, our organisations are calling for the European Union and its member states to implement the following measures as a matter of urgency: Organize a properly resourced maritime search and rescue operation supported by all the Member States to prevent boats from sinking and rescue anyone in distress. Frontex, even if its resources are increased three-fold and its area of intervention is widened, remains a security agency. Implement a broad-based and real migrant and asylum seeker reception and refugee protection mechanism, based on solidarity between Member States and guaranteeing that asylum seekers have the freedom to choose their country of residence. Open up legal and safe immigration channels for migrants and asylum seekers and immediately abolish the transit visas required by many people fleeing war-torn countries, such as Syria. Immediately activate the system laid out in Council Directive 2001/55/EC on minimum standards for giving temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons, for example from Syria or Eritrea. Refuse and / or suspend migration related cooperation with countries of origin and transit countries that fail to respect freedoms and fundamental rights. The European Commission and the Council of the EU have proposed deploying the military against people traffickers and smugglers. Our organisations feel that the use of force is disproportionate and dangerous for migrants and asylum seekers who would be caught between a rock and a hard place. Through our cross-Europe campaign, set to run on the eve of the next European Council meeting on 25 June, our organizations are calling for each and every individual to support and publicize this appeal and to take any useful initiative to organize and bolster the campaign events so that the European Union takes immediate action, implementing emergency solutions for those seeking protection. Our organisations are insistently calling for a meeting at the European Council in order to convey an alternative opinion, as it is wrong to claim that only one policy is possible. Our organisations will be in Brussels on 24-5 June to remind the European Council of its responsibility to defend fundamental human rights. The organisations will hold a press conference on 24 June to be attended by the appeal’s signatory organisations. You can support the appeal here. Signatories:
Des ponts, pas des armes !
Appel en faveur d’une politique d’accueil des migrant-e-s, des demandeur-se-s d’asile et des réfugié-e-s En vingt ans, on estime que plus de 20 000 personnes sont mortes aux frontières européennes, dont presque 2 000 en Méditerranée depuis le début de l’année 2015. C’est de ces drames à répétition que les États membres de l’Union Européenne (UE) traiteront lors du Conseil européen des 25 et 26 juin. Nos organisations n’acceptent pas que les institutions de l’Union européenne n’accordent pas la priorité au sauvetage des vies. Au contraire, l’UE et ses Etats membres se sont accordés sans difficulté pour renforcer l’arsenal sécuritaire pourtant en grande partie responsable de ces drames et ont ajouté aux missions de l’agence Frontex la possibilité d’une intervention armée. Ce projet est fortement critiqué par l’ONU et certains États du sud de la Méditerranée, dont la Libye. Face à ce refus de la réalité migratoire et aux négations répétées des principes fondateurs de l’Union européenne, nos organisations ont décidé d’agir pour exhorter les dirigeants européens à mettre en œuvre une autre politique, conforme aux droits de l’Homme, au respect de la vie et de la dignité humaine. Elles appellent les sociétés civiles à se mobiliser et à les suivre. Devant l’urgence de la situation, elles demandent que tout soit fait pour protéger les personnes contraintes de risquer leur vie pour se rendre en lieu sûr et de recourir à leur droit à la mobilité. Pour cela et sans délai, nos organisations demandent à l’Union Européenne et à ses états membres la mise en œuvre urgente des mesures suivantes : organiser une véritable opération de sauvetage en mer, dotée des moyens nécessaires et portée par l’ensemble des États membres pour prévenir les naufrages et secourir efficacement toute personne en détresse. Frontex, même avec un triplement de ses moyens et l’extension de sa zone d’intervention, reste une agence sécuritaire ; mettre en place un mécanisme large et réel d’accueil des personnes migrantes et demandeuses d’asile et de protection des réfugié-e-s, sur la base de la solidarité entre États membres qui garantisse le libre choix du pays d’asile ; ouvrir des voies d’accès légales et sûres pour les migrant-e-s et les demandeur-e-s d’asile et supprimer immédiatement les visas de transit imposés aux nombreuses personnes qui fuient les pays en guerre, tel la Syrie ; activer sans aucun délai le dispositif prévu par la Directive 2001/55/CE relative à des normes minimales pour l’octroi d’une protection temporaire en cas d’afflux massif de personnes déplacées, par exemple de Syrie ou d’Érythrée ; refuser et/ou suspendre toute coopération en matière de migration avec les États d’origine et de transit vers l’Europe qui ne respectent pas les libertés et les droits de l’Homme. La Commission européenne et le Conseil de l’UE ont proposé l’usage de la force armée contre les trafiquants et les passeurs. Nos organisations considèrent que le recours à la force est disproportionné et dangereux pour les personnes migrantes et demandeuses d’asile ainsi prises entre deux feux. Afin que l’Union européenne agisse immédiatement en mettant en œuvre des solutions d’urgence en faveur des personnes en recherche de protection, nos organisations appellent, au cours de la campagne qu’elles organisent à travers l’Europe à la veille du 25 juin, date du prochain Conseil européen, chacune et chacun à soutenir et relayer largement cet appel et à prendre toute initiative pour organiser et amplifier les mobilisations. Parce qu’il est faux de prétendre qu’il n’y a qu’une seule politique possible, nos organisations demandent avec insistance au Conseil européen une rencontre, afin de faire entendre une voix alternative. Nos organisations seront présentes à Bruxelles les 25 et 26 juin pour rappeler au Conseil européen les responsabilités qu’il a dans la défense des droits fondamentaux des personnes. Elles tiendront le 24 juin, une conférence de presse en présence d’organisations signataires de cet appel. Signataires :
The Rape of Europe
In the minds of a generation Europe risks becoming associated with technocracy, failure, and misery, and the place where dreams are broken
Il ratto d’Europa
Sei mesi di negoziati tra la Grecia e i suoi creditori hanno raggiunto un solo risultato: dimostrare oltre ogni dubbio che le attuali strutture politiche dell’Eurozona rappresentano una minaccia all’Europa e ai suoi ideali di democrazia e giustizia. Alcune cose ci sono chiare. 1. L’offerta presentata alla Grecia da parte delle istituzioni europee e ribadita da Jean-Claude Juncker il 29 giugno non può essere difesa. Si tratta di un pacchetto recessivo che condanna la Grecia a continuare in una spirale di depressione economica, miseria umana e insostenibilità del debito. Il pacchetto non fa altro che individuare ulteriori aree di austerità al fine di liberare risorse sufficienti a ripagare gli interessi sul debito. Non vi è alcuna misura per il rilancio dell’economia greca, né alcun apprezzamento per la crisi economica e occupazionale senza precedenti del Paese. 2. La questione del debito va affrontata in modo serio. Abbiamo bisogno di un accordo europeo sul debito per trovare una soluzione equa che metta la Grecia e l’Europa su un percorso sostenibile di recupero. L’accordo sul debito di Londra, che ha cancellato il 50% del debito pubblico della Germania nel 1953 e ha permesso di dare avvio al miracolo economico del Paese, è un importante precedente storico. 3. Il voto “Sì” al referendum di domenica 5 luglio, seguito da un possibile cambio di governo a causa di una strategia della paura, è un suicidio economico per la Grecia e un suicidio democratico per l’Europa. 4. Le strutture di governance dell’Eurozona sono rotte. Non sono né democratiche, né giuste, né capaci di conseguire un accordo soddisfacente e lungimirante. Dalla Grecia alle migrazioni, il processo decisionale europeo continua ad accumulare errori storici. L’incapacità e la mancanza di volontà di costruire una reale democrazia transnazionale sta distruggendo la democrazia a tutti i livelli e mettendo a rischio il benessere di tutti i popoli d’Europa. 5. Il gioco della colpa è una sciocchezza. Le responsabilità si trovano in ogni lato del tavolo. I precedenti governi greci hanno la responsaibilità di avere accumulato debiti insostenibili per alimentare un sistema corrotto fino al 2008. I creditori privati, in primo luogo le banche francesi e tedesche, hanno la responsabilità di prestiti sconsiderati, pur essendo state salvate a spese del popolo greco tramite i bail out. Le istituzioni europee e il Fondo Monetario Internazionale hanno responsabilità per aver giudicato malissimo l’impatto dell’austerità imposta dopo i “salvataggi” del 2010 e il 2012 e per il tentativo di replicare adesso le stesse politiche fallimentari. Anche il governo di Syriza ha delle responsabilità, tra cui quella di non essere riuscito a fornire controproposte di riforme radicali e di aver chiamato un referendum così tardi nel processo di negoziazione. Dopo il crollo della giunta militare greca nel 1974, l’Europa ha rappresentato una promessa di stabilità e di prosperità e una forza potente per la democratizzazione del continente. Il rischio di sonnambulismo verso la distruzione di questo patrimonio è reale. Se nelle menti di una generazione l’Europa viene inesorabilmente associata alla tecnocrazia, al fallimento e alla miseria; se l’Europa diventa il problema e non la soluzione; se l’Europa diventa il luogo dove i sogni vengono infranti, allora l’Europa è stata rapita una volta di più. E pochi, questa volta, lotteranno per lei. Ci sarebbe bisogno di una profonda trasformazione democratica e costituzionale dell’Europa e dell’Eurozona. Abbiamo poche speranze che i nostri leader timidi e sconsiderati possano riuscire, dopo tanti fallimenti, a vincere questa sfida storica. In questa fase ci vuole coraggio e speranza per immaginare uno scenario positivo. Ma se tale scenario potrà materializzarsi, passerà attraverso lo shock di un chiaro rifiuto di un sistema, quello si, in bancarotta. Il mito greco dell’Europa, come dipinto sopra da Guido Reni nel famoso quadro “Il ratto d’Europa”, è centrale per European Alternatives.
Don’t sell the sea, defend the sea!
The Adriatic Sea is in danger. Oil company interests on either sides of it are seeking to power up their drills. As the costs to the Adriatic rise, mobilizations to safeguard the environment and combat the oil industry are growing. Everything will be decided on a European and transnational level, making it is necessary to shift the debate and to strengthen relationships between groups and citizens that are struggling in the different countries. As Naomi Klein argues in her book, This Changes Everything, the neoliberal economic model creates a system in which the climate is particularly vulnerable, as the environment is subjected to market forces. Neoliberal doctrine is inherently profit-seeking. In the case of the environment, this is at the expense of human life and the natural environment. Within this economic and political system, the main elements that form the basis of human life, and that as such should be protected as commons -air, water, land, food- are used as sources of profit. And the rules of profit and markets govern them. The Adriatic Sea is one of the most threatened areas. From both coasts. Governments of states bordering it –from Italy to Montenegro, from Croatia to Greece– do not hide the belief that oil extraction is an area of strategic investment for the coming years. In these countries, they have already adopted legislative measures in order to remove potential obstacles to the extraction. In many cases, concrete actions to assess the actual presence of black gold have already started. In short, the drills are gearing up. As for Italy, the legal framework of the search for oil is the “Sblocca Italia” (“Unlock Italy”) decree, immediately renamed by environmental actors as “Dirty Italy” or “Unlock Drill “. Approved by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s government, the decree simplifies the authorization procedures for the start of works of exploration, drilling and storage, which can bypass all the rules that defend landscapes and the environment. This act establishes the “public utility and the urgency of the oil”, paving the way for a specific development model, which places black wells before tourism, quality food production and fishing. Campania, Abruzzo and Puglia are the Italian regions that at this early stage run the greatest risks of destruction and looting of their territories. The plans of exploration and drilling have terrifying numbers. In Abruzzo, 396,763 hectares of land (over 36% of the total area) and more than 469,731 hectares in the sea (an area larger than Molise). In Puglia, the entire coast is in danger, from the natural park of Gargano to the south of the Salento peninsula, for a total of 1.6 million hectares of sea: an area comparable to that of the entire region. Things are no better on the other side of the Adriatic. Croatia and Montenegro have launched international tenders for exploration and exploitation of gas and oil in their waters. Croatia has put out to tender an area of 12 thousand square kilometers, just in front of the coast of Puglia and Abruzzo, for oil exploration and development of mining equipment. ENI also has captured a slice of the pie. For its part, the Montenegrin government completed the tender, and announced the allotment of their waters. Although the future looks bleak, it is actually yet to be written. Wherever drilling has been planned, a committee of citizens determined to block it grows. In all the regions of Southern Italy,grass-roots organisations grew, willing to defend the land and the sea against the risk of extractions. This mobilization has produced dozens of initiatives of denunciation, which culminated in the national demonstration on May 23 in Lanciano. Here, more than 60,000 people, despite the silence of the mainstream media, marched against exploration and mining in the Adriatic. In Croatia and Montenegro the best tool used by the movements to stop the exploration and extraction of oil has been tourism. In these countries, tourism represents a significant percentage of gross domestic product and oil activities would seriously affect the economy of coastal areas. In Croatia S.O.S. Adriatic, a coalition of NGOs, committees and civil society initiatives aims to stop the drills in the Adriatic. Coalition participants include: Green Forum (Zeleni forum), Zelena akcija/FoE Croatia (Zagreb), Sunce (Split), Zelena Istra (Pula), Žmergo (Opatija), BIOM (Zagreb), in collaboration with Greenpeace Croatia e WWF Adria. The transnational nature of environmental destruction and the exploitation of the Adriatic call for urgency in seeking common strategies of resistance and action. The chance to snatch victories depends on the ability to carry out organizational processes and mobilization that exceed the boundaries of nation states and define a trans-European struggle for the commons. In the next few months it will, therefore, be necessary to create opportunities to exchange ideas on the issue of the opposition to drilling, also leading up to the COP21 summit taking place in Paris. As European Alternatives, we propose to make available the TRANSEUROPA Festival, which takes place in Belgrade from 1-5 October, to achieve a European meeting in which many local groups that are fighting against the drilling of the Adriatic sea can meet, discuss and imagine common strategies.
Il mare non si vende, il mare si difende!
Il mare Adriatico è in pericolo: gli interessi dei petrolieri spingono da entrambe le sponde per accendere le trivelle. Lungo le sue coste stanno proliferando le mobilitazioni in difesa dell’ambiente e contro il petrolio. Tutto si deciderà a livello europeo e transnazionale: è su questo piano che occorre spostare lo scontro, costruendo relazioni tra i comitati e i cittadini in lotta nei diversi Paesi. «Cambiare il clima della terra in modo che diventerà caotico e disastroso è più facile che accettare la prospettiva di cambiare la logica fondamentale del capitalismo, basata sulla crescita e la ricerca di profitto». Ha ragione Naomi Klein in This changes everything ad identificare nell’alterazione ambientale e climatica del pianeta uno degli aspetti centrali dell’attuale sistema economico. Le dottrine neoliberali perseguono la massimizzazione del profitto ad ogni costo e in qualsiasi campo, dalla vita umana all’ambiente naturale. È in questa tendenza generale che bisogna inserire i processi di intensificazione delle forme di sfruttamento degli esseri viventi e quelli di mercificazione delle risorse naturali e del patrimonio ambientale. All’interno di questo sistema economico-politico, i principali elementi che sono alla base della vita umana, e che in quanto tali dovrebbero essere tutelati come beni comuni – l’aria, l’acqua, la terra, il cibo – sono utilizzati eslusivamente come fonti di profitto. E alle regole del profitto e dei mercati vengono sottoposti. Nel mondo e in Europa, stiamo assistendo a una crescente intensificazione di simili dinamiche. Uno degli esempi più significativi è quello delle trivellazioni petrolifere. Nonostante sia stato raggiunto un livello di sviluppo scientifico e tecnologico tale da permettere di investire su fonti energetiche alternative, rinnovabili, a impatto ambientale molto basso, l’esigenza di garantire enormi profitti a pochi soggetti continua ad orientare le politiche energetiche. Per questo, nei diversi Paesi europei stiamo assistendo a una generale rimozione degli ostacoli giuridici all’estrazione del petrolio e persino a politiche proattive in questo settore. Il mare Adriatico è una dellle aree maggiormente sotto attacco. Da entrambe le coste. I governi degli Stati che si affacciano su quel lembo di mare, dall’Italia al Montenegro, dalla Croazia alla Grecia, non nascondono la convinzione che l’estrazione del petrolio sia un settore di investimento strategico per i prossimi anni. In questi Paesi sono già state adottate misure legislative al fine di rimuovere possibili ostacoli all’estrazione. In molti casi, sono partite anche azioni concrete con l’obiettivo di valutare l’effettiva presenza di oro nero. Insomma, le trivelle stanno scaldando i motori un po’ ovunque. Per quanto riguarda l’Italia, la cornice normativa della ricerca del petrolio è il decreto “Sblocca Italia” (133/2014), immediatamente ribatezzato dai movimenti e dai cittadini che si battono per la difesa dell’ambiente “Sporca Italia” o “Sblocca Trivelle”. Approvato dal governo Renzi, il decreto semplifica le procedure autorizzative per l’avvio di opere di esplorazione, trivellazione e stoccaggio, che potranno scavalcare tutte le norme che difendono paesaggi e ambiente. Quest’atto normativo sancisce la “pubblica utilità, urgenza ed indifferibilità del petrolio”, aprendo la strada a un modello di sviluppo preciso, che antepone i pozzi neri al turismo, alla produzione alimentare di qualità e alla pesca. Campania (principalmente la zona dell’Irpinia), Abruzzo e Puglia sono le regioni che in questa prima fase corrono i rischi maggiori di devastazione e saccheggio dei territori. I piani di esplorazione e trivellazione hanno numeri da brivido. In Abruzzo, si parla di circa 396.763 ettari su terra (più del 36% dell’intera superficie) e di oltre 469.731 ettari in mare (un’area più grande del Molise). In Puglia è tutta la costa ad essere in pericolo, dal parco naturale del Gargano alle propaggini più a sud della penisola salentina, per un totale di 1,6 milioni di ettari di mare: una superficie paragonabile a quella dell’intera regione! Le cose non vanno meglio dall’altro lato dell’Adriatico. Croazia e Montenegro hanno lanciato gare internazionali per la ricerca e lo sfruttamento di gas e petrolio nelle loro acque. La Croazia ha messo a bando un’area di 12mila chilometri di metri quadrati, all’altezza delle coste pugliesi e abruzzesi, per la ricerca di idrocarburi e lo sviluppo di impianti di estrazione. Anche l’ENI si è accaparrata una fetta della torta. Dal canto suo, il governo montenegrino, conclusa la gara d’appalto, ha annunciato la lottizzazione delle proprie acque. Eppure, sebbene il futuro sembri nero come il petrolio, in realtà è ancora tutto da scrivere. Dovunque venga annunciata una trivella, nasce un comitato di cittadini determinati a bloccarla. In tutte le regioni del Sud Italia sono nate strutture organizzative dal basso, intenzionate a difendere il mare e la terra contro il rischio estrazioni. Questo comitatismo diffuso ha prodotto decine di iniziative di denuncia e mobilitazione, che sono culminate nella manifestazione nazionale del 23 maggio a Lanciano. Qui, oltre 60mila persone, nonostante il silenzio dei media mainstream, hanno sfilato per affermare la volontà di impedire ad ogni costo le attività esplorative ed estrattive. In Croazia e Montenegro la leva principale utilizzata dai movimenti per fermare la ricerca e l’estrazione del petrolio è quella del turismo. In questi Paesi, infatti, il turismo rappresenta quote rilevanti del prodotto interno lordo e le attività petrolifere rischierebbero di compromettere seriamente l’economia delle zone costiere. In Croazia è nata S.O.S. Adriatic una coalizione di ONG, comitati e iniziative della società civile che si prefigge di fermare le trivelle in tutto l’Adriatico. Partecipano alla coalizione: Green Forum (Zeleni forum), Zelena akcija/FoE Croatia (Zagreb), Sunce (Split), Zelena Istra (Pula), Žmergo (Opatija), BIOM (Zagreb), in collaborazione con Greenpeace Croatia e WWF Adria. La transnazionalità dei processi di distruzione ambientale e dei piani di sfruttamento del mare impone ai movimenti l’urgenza di ricercare strategie comuni di resistenza e di azione. Mai come ora, la possibilità di strappare delle vittorie dipenderà dalla capacità di mettere in campo processi organizzativi e di mobilitazione che superino le frontiere degli Stati nazionali e definiscano una lotta transeuropea per i beni comuni. Nei prossimi mesi sarà dunque impresicindibile creare degli spazi di confronto sul tema dell’opposizione alle trivelle, anche verso l’importantissimo vertice di Parigi COP21 (la Conferenza delle Parti sulla Convenzione Quadro delle Nazioni Unite sui Cambiamenti Climatici). Come European…
Greek referendum: a transnational experience
Last Saturday and Sunday, Giansandro Merli of European Alternatives, DINAMOpress.it and AteneCalling.org, was in Athens to follow the vicissitudes linked with the Greek referendum. It was an historical turning point for the future of the whole of Europe and a step towards the building of transnational relations and common political perspectives from below. There are places in the world that history likes to visit. The Athens of the crisis is one of these places. And the Greek referendum has probably been among the most important historical moments of the last years. I had this feeling in the last days and so I decided not to miss the opportunity to experience it for myself. I arrived in the city on Saturday morning, a few hours after the YES and NO square demonstrations, and a few hours before the vote. As always, Athens immediately offered me some surprises, in the form of little changes with big meanings. Such as the message on the metro ticket machines that said: “Public transportation is free until further notice”. Or the crowds hanging around the Periptera [little kiosks], reading the first and last pages of the newspapers. And the lively discussions between NAI (yes) and OXI (no) everywhere. And the tens of languages that could be heard in the city center: people who, despite the weather, were not speaking about holidays and islands, but whether Europe has a future or not. Talking at length with the supporters of the NO-vote, I retraced the changes of mood of the last week. They told me about the certainty of winning right after the announcement of the referendum. About the overturning of the forecast, when the banks closed. And about the important events of the last three days that gave hope again. First, the touching OXI square of Friday, probably crowded as never before. And, moreover, several little positive signs that were appearing here and there. The funniest and most meaningful were the little revolts of the people in line at the ATM against the journalists who went there expecting to find YES supporters. However, on Saturday, the tension was very high, and nobody could be sure of the final result. I was in the district of Exarcheia with Greek and transnational activists, above all Germans from the Blockupy organizations. Exarcheia is a famous area of Athens, known for its leftist and anarchist tradition, and in the recent years for the riots that often took place there. Being with activists from several European countries underscored how widespread an awareness there is that a national referendum of a small country could change the life and future of all Europeans. On Friday, the tens of demonstrations that took place across Europe showed publicly the growing awareness of being not just on the same continent, but in the same boat. On Sunday the atmosphere of the city was that of a nervous wait. During the morning, the streets were crowded with people going to vote, or still discussing about what to do. While in the afternoon, due also to the heat, it seemed that everybody had gone back home, to stop and wait for 7 p.m. Around 8.30 p.m., the first results started to arrive. I was following the news coverage in Exarcheia, and the mood became better and better as the percentage of the counted votes increased. When they were around 20% of the total, people around me began to relax and smile. Things were going better than any expectations. With 30% of votes counted, the party started. A spontaneous demonstration moved towards Klafthmonos, the square where the people of SYRIZA were awaiting the results. As the demo passed through the streets, people joined it, sang, raised their fists and shouted OXI. It seemed that a pall of fear had suddenly disappeared, and even if everybody knew that very difficult days were to come, a sense of pride and dignity was triumphing. In Klafthmonos, hundreds of people danced and sang “Bella Ciao”, songs of the Greek resistance and others about Allende. People cried, kissed and hugged. A second spontaneous demo marched from that square to Syntagma. There, the people were in the thousands. Greek and red flags fluttered everywhere. There was a speaker’s corner and many people wanted to share their opinion. You could hear English spoken in different accents, people thanking the “brave Greeks”, or accusing the Troika and the pro-austerity front. Even though there was no speech by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, as it normal with an electoral victory, people continued to arrive and fill Syntagma square until very late. Each wanted to participate in this historic event. After some hours of celebration, I returned to Exarcheia with the transnational activists. There, we found some barricades on fire, the smell of tear gas, and MALT and DELTA units patrolling the perimeter of the district. It seemed that even the anarchists were celebrating in their own way. To conclude with some reflections, we can say that the referendum has been a vote against fear: against the fear instigated by the media, against the fear produced by the closure of the banks, against the fear of the threats that came from the most powerful people in the world. The Greeks showed a dignity beyond any expectations. It was not easy to go and vote NO in the current climate. But it happened, and with a margin greater than even the most optimistic forecasts. Millions of people decided that it is better to take a leap of faith and risk losing everything, than to continue with austerity policies. This is a message directed at the whole of Europe, which now must take into consideration this fundamental result. On Sunday, politics and democracy returned to the European space, after they had been expelled for a long time by market needs and “technical” solutions. And they came back directly on a European level: the debate about the vote was European probably as never before, the demonstrations, the discussions and the international solidarity involved not…
La democrazia non è Facebook – comunicazione e politica
Eurexit!
The author, Gianluca Solera, is a member of the Advisory Board of European Alternatives. Read his full bio here. The Treaty of the European Union says: «The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail». «It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States», and «It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights» in its relation with the wider world. Solidarity and democracy are founding values of the European Common House, and these have been the values which have made of this transnational institution a stabilizing force and a model for the neighbouring peoples. When these values do not inspire any more political courage and vision, the EU as a political project is at stake. Syriza, the coalition of leftist political groups that recently won the Greek elections, certainly lack ministerial experience and European diplomacy, and its unconventional political performance bothers the EU administration. During a recent visit in Greece, a group of German journalists highlighted the fact that in the first three months of its mandate, the new Greek government was only able to issue two laws – the first one to alleviate the internal humanitarian crisis (for instance, discounting the arrears owed by families unable to pay their energy bill), and the second one to soften charges and fines applied to dilatory tax debtors – while a third one on the living conditions in Greek prisons and the release of debtors from detention was on the parliamentary agenda. However, is it not better to have no new laws than bad laws? Have we forgotten that Syriza has not created the crisis of the Greek State, its corrupt system, its burden of privileges and injustices, its easy expenses? Other political parties, affiliated with the governmental forces leading the chancelleries of countries such as Germany or France, did. Why should Syriza then be accused of the current budgetary disaster of Greece? Why should it be forced to apply the same measures which have not helped to redress the course so far? Between last Tuesday and Wednesday, the Greek Prime Minister asked for a package of 30 billion € from the European Stability Mechanism to avoid the default and restructure of public debt within two years, but the EU leaders did not take it on board. In the same hours, the European stock exchange markets burnt off almost 290 billion € of capital, almost 10 times more than the last Greek offer for a reasonable deal! Bank rescue operations in Europe have been the rule since 2008; why such an iron fist against the Hellenic nation? Greece is both patient and doctor. Forced to take drugs delivered by a multinational pharmaceutical company who looks at symptoms but does not care about the causes and the effects. Nobel prize laureates such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have in the last hours defended the line of the Greek government, appealing to the Greeks’ historical mission to oppose democracy to the project of a Europe of winners and losers, a Europe of non-solidarity. Can you believe that the man in charge of convincing the Greek government to stay within the lines of the austerity doctrine, the president of the European Commission, Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker, during twenty years channeled Luxembourg toward making its fortune out of the robbery of European industrial gains, upon the shoulders of workers and public administrations, reshaping the Grand-Duché as Europe’s largest tax haven? Can we really forget that the role of victim nowadays played by the German Chancellor does not honour her country for the debt relief it enjoyed after the end of the two World Wars, and which contributed to lay the bases of the current German economic primacy? «More than a partisan and cynical choice» says prof. Georges Prévélakis «for Syriza, breaking-up with Europe would stand for the refusal to betray the deads [the tradition of egalitarianism and the struggle against authoritarianism and fascism] for the well-being of the alives. For a Europe accustomed to economic rationalism, these aptitudes might look irrational. This story reminds us that political life is not only made of digits and calculations, but also of history and culture». The project of a Europe of winners and losers is the same which is inspiring slogans and policies (or non-policies) with respect to refugees and migrants, the same which has let post-Arab Spring countries slip into disorder and renewed authoritarianism. Take Egypt. If fewer than two years ago the current president, al-Sīsī, was depicted as a putschist, he is now considered the best political and commercial partner in the Mediterranean Arab region. Las March, the Italian company ENI signed a cooperation and development agreement for oil and gas exploration for the value of 4,5 billion € with the Egyptian authorities. Two months later, it is the time of the German company Siemens to be awarded record energy orders that would boost Egypt’s power generation by 50%, for a total value of 8 billion €. And this while freedoms are violated, media scrutiny and political opposition screwed up, justice has not yet been made on the killings perpetrated against the youth of the 2011 Revolution, the number of political prisoners is estimated between 20,000 and 40,000, and the struggle against corruption spares military intelligence and security forces. Even South-Africa, with its extraordinary experience of post-Apartheid reconciliation, acts more courageously than Europe. And last June, al-Sīsī cancelled a visit to attend the African Union Summit in Johannesburg, after a lawyer’s association in the country filed an official request for his arrest upon arrival, for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the killings that resulted from the 2013…
Talk Real: comunicazione e politica
Insieme alla casa di produzione Piroetta e a un’ampia rete europea di attivisti, European Alternatives sta producendo un nuovo talk show per web-tv, offrendo uno spazio per discussioni dinamiche ma in profondità, da una prospettiva radicale. Talk Real vuole essere una piattaforma audiovisiva agile informale e professionale, per la diffusione di idee innovative e per la circolazione delle organizzazioni e dei singoli che ci stanno dietro. Talk Real coinvolge una partecipazione eterogenea di intellettuali, lavoratori della cultura e attivisti. Tra i partecipanti che saranno presenti nelle prime puntate troviamo Gilberto Gil (cantante ed ex ministro della cultura del Brasile), Ugo Mattei (personalità chiave del movimento per i beni comuni), Srecko Hovat (attivista e filosofo), Luciana Castellina (scrittrice, giornalista, tra le fondatrici de Il Manifesto, più volte europarlamentare), e molti altri. Talk Real é una trasmissione nomade: le puntate saranno ambientate in luoghi profondamente connessi con lotte in corso. Le prime tappe sono a Roma, all’interno del Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Metropoliz, a Torino, al Festival dei Beni Comuni, a Lisbona, in un incontro di attivisti europei, e ad Atene, durante la conferenza Democracy Rising. La regia é affidata a Berardo Carboni, autore di film e documentari per cinema e TV, e tra i protagonisti dell’esperienza del Teatro Valle Occupato. Tra i modelli che ci hanno ispirato ci sono Fort Apache di Pablo Iglesias, The Stream di Al Jazeera, The World of Tomorrow di Julian Assange, o programmi come Recetas Municipales del gruppo di attivisti spagnoli Zemos98. Talk Real vuole conservare un’apertura costante sul mondo che lo circonda, per essere attraversato e trasformato dalle tensioni e dalle energie che percorrono la società. Facciamo quindi appello a organizzazioni, piattaforme web, attivisti, artisti e giornalisti affinché siano parte viva di Talk Real proponendo argomenti caldi di dibattito, possibili ospiti e luoghi da scoprire. Puntata 0: La democrazia non è Facebook – Comunicazione e politica Ospiti: Luciana Castellina, Dimitri Deliolanes, Eric Jozsef, Thomas Fazi Dopo aver visto il video, facci sapere cosa ne pensi! Contatti Facebook: European Alternatives Twitter: @EuroAlter
European Commission announces launch of two media pluralism initiatives
Guest author Eleonora Nestola is an Attorney at Law, specialised in European law and policies. The new European Commission took over its mandate last November. The New Commissioner for Digital Economy & Society, Gunther Oettinger (DE), speaking at the Global Media Forum in Bonn referred to media pluralism as a ‘crucial value’ for the EU and stressed the Commission’s full commitment to protecting it. ‘Political pressure, economic hardship, physical attacks against journalists, restrictive legislation and a general financial crisis in the sector all influence the media’s ability to operate freely. A lack of media freedom and pluralism affects negatively the European media and creative industries’. Since 2012, the Commission is involved in backing actions aimed at supporting and protecting media pluralism. Within this framework, Commissioner Oettinger announced two new independent projects to be undertaken in the coming months. The two initiatives, one coordinated by the Leipzig Media Foundation and the other one by Index on Censorship, will address media freedom violations in the EU and neighbouring countries. They are part of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) and have the support of the European Parliament. The ECPMF is an independent nonprofit European Cooperative Society. Its missions are to unite Europe’s highly fragmented media freedom community and to address media freedom violations in Europe. The aim of ECPMF is to mobilise support for journalists facing political and economic pressure and to act as a major contact and information point for media freedom in Europe. This is done through a network providing adequate tools (technical and legal) to journalists, in order to deal with threats and violations of editorial liberty and freedom of speech. Moreover, the Center constantly collects information and carries out research to encourage professionals and citizens to report abuses. The Media Pluralism Monitor tool is another EU-financed pilot project. It is run independently by the European University Institute in Florence (Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom – CMPF) to identify potential risks to media pluralism in member states. It was launched as a pilot project in 2014 by Index on Censorship, the first phase of the project, was based on a sample of nine member states and showed that risks to media pluralism are spread all over the EU. In the last 12 months, more than 750 violations have been reported, including threats of violence, harassment, intimidation and legal penalties. The tool is now to be applied to the remaining member states. Those projects, part of a large number of actions started in the previous years, are intended to play a crucial role in the future European policy reforms impacting media pluralism and freedom of expression, notably regarding access to online news, contents and information, the reform of the copyright system and the revision of the audiovisual directive. Those reforms will affect a number of sectors with high private interests and therefore the European Commission, holding the power of initiative, along with the other European legislators will be called to preserve freedom of access to contents from the pressure of influential stakeholders (such as publishers), particularly strong in certain member states, willing to preserve their traditional positions at the expense, sometimes, of other legitimate interests. Relevant links Oettinger speech at DW Global Media Forum: The role of traditional and new media in the digital age – the EU view European Federation of Journalists: Oettinger: “Lack of media freedom and pluralism affects negatively media and creative industries” Digital Agenda for Europe: Commission seeks views on Europe’s audiovisual media rules European Alternatives: European Initiative for Media Pluralism
#TalkReal in Athens – Democracy Rising
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QOdOBX6YsI[/youtube] European Alternatives is proud to present a new media format to you: Talk Real. In this talk show host Lorenzo Marsili discusses urgent political questions with distinguished guests. The first episode was shot in Athens and deals with the relationship between the Left and Europe since the Greek crisis. Guardian journalist Owen Jones asked if it is time for the left to abandon the European Union. Greece’s leftist party Syriza appears to answer with a resounding “No”. The fierce negotiations between the Greek government and its Eurozone partners go beyond the question of debt to different visions for Europe’s future. The refusal of the Greek government to prepare serious plans for a return to the drachma, and its determination to persist in Eurozone negotiations, highlights the belief that the level of progressive struggle is at the European, not national level. Why is this? And is it still the case following the return of a harsh memorandum and talk of defeat and capitulation? There is no doubt that the result of the negotiations is not a good result. The agreement is economically recessive and democratically shameful, as the trending hashtag #ThisIsACoup underscored. But the masks have fallen, and the structures and legitimacy of Eurozone governance are irrefutably broken. The question to pose now is not only what should Syriza or Greece do, but above all what should be done to relaunch a struggle for a democratic and just Europe. Can Greece’s struggle be the catalyst for a wider European popular mobilisation? These are some of the questions that we discussed in Athens in this episode of #TalkReal. With Costas Douzinas, acclaimed Greek intellectual close to Syriza; Margarita Tsomou, Greek performer and commentator based in Berlin; Jerome Roos, writer and founder of Roar magazine and Srecko Horvat, Croatian philosopher and member of the board of European Alternatives. #TalkReal To go in depth. During this episode we also spoke about… … Costantin Costa-Gavras French Resistance: Costa Gavras, interview by The Guardian Capital – Trailer … Conferenza di bandung, 1955 President Sukarno Opening Speech Some materials … Rudi Dutschke A Long March through the Institutions (VIDEO) The Attack on Rudi Dutschke: A Revolutionary Who Shaped a Generation, da der Spiegel
Democracy Rising – Syriza and Europe
Enabling the Finnish far-right, at the expense of the Greeks
Finland in July has an otherworldly quality to it: the midnight sun makes 11 p.m. identical to 11 a.m. and, because by August it might be cold again, cities quieten as people head to cabins by a lake, or to the archipelago, to enjoy the delightfully mild summer. Not all Finns closed up shop for the summer, however. The recently formed Finnish government of the center right and the far right nationalists was busy drawing a chilling hard line in debt-crisis talks with a zeal for austerity so fanatical as to make Angela Merkel look charitable toward Greece. The new government includes some familiar faces, such as Finance Minister Alexander Stubb, head of the National Coalition party. Stubb has served as Foreign Minister, Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade, as a Member of the European Parliament and, up until recently, as Prime Minister. But it also includes some controversial newcomers, such as Foreign Minister Timo Soini, leader of the far-right, ethnonationalist Perussuomalaiset party. In English the name, which is a compound word, translates directly to “Basic Finns”, but the party calls itself “The Finns”. Given the amount of Finns who take issue with the co-opting of the word, we use the Finnish abbreviation, PS. While Finland has a President, the power of that post has diminished significantly over the years as more power has been transferred to the Parliament. The new government is led by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, a technocrat and millionaire businessman and leader of the Centre Party. But Soini and Stubb are the public faces of the most recent round of debt-crisis negotiations in Finland. At first glance, theirs is an awkward partnership: Where Stubb is a polyglot and avowed pro-European, Soini is a self-proclaimed Eurosceptic who runs a political party with a proclivity for flirting with neo-Nazis. Stubb was raised bilingual with both of Finland’s national languages: Finnish and Fenno-Swedish. Soini wants to end existing minority protections for Fenno-Swedish, which is spoken by approximately 5% of the population. It is on economic issues that these seemingly different politicians have found common cause. Together they have held an unyielding hard line against Greece. How this unity was found tells us a lot about how an anti-European party agenda-item became government policy in the overwhelmingly pro-European Finland, which joined the EU in 1995 and the Eurozone in 1999. In many respects Finland was late to the far-right party. Unlike many of PS’ European counterparts, the party does not owe its electoral success to a xenophobic, anti-immigrant platform. PS’ astounding 2011 electoral victory, where they won over 30 new seats, was a direct result of its staunch anti-bailout stance. So significant a theme were the bailouts in the 2011 elections that then Finance Minister and leader of the Social Democratic party, Jutta Urpilainen demanded collateral in exchange for bailout funds. Urpilainen’s adamance led to a new economic term entering the Finnish lexicon: takuu. Though Urpilainen remains proud of these conditions, she angered European leaders, and the obscurity of the term has led to ongoing confusion and debate about what kind of deal Finland actually made with Greece. That the success of the far right, previously an insignificant player in Finnish politics, is linked directly to Greece has, perhaps more than anything else, resulted in the timidity of those opposed to the government’s fanatical austerity. And it made anyone within a stone’s throw of the political center a staunch advocate of extreme austerity. The most prominent Finn to speak out against the hard line is former Foreign Minister, Social Democrat Erkki Tuomioja, who warned of the repugnance of kicking those who are already down. In the last few days a member of the Green Party and of the Swedish People’s Party of Finland have spoken in favour of debt relief for Greece. Their views, however, are individual and thus far no political party has spoken forcefully against the government’s line. These are economically insecure times for Finland: sanctions against Russia hit its economy harder than most and the contraction of the paper industry and layoffs at Nokia have made for nationwide anxiety about the future. The media has seized on this anxiety to stoke national pride –Finns identify as frugal and debt-averse and take great pride in having paid off their World War II reparations– with the tired trope of the hard-working-North vs. lazy-South. National pride, however, is proving a poor substitute for sound economic policy and the extension of a basic standard of living to the Greek people. The already battered Finnish economy would surely be crushed by a reversion to nationalism, were this trend to persist. But without viable opposition from the left and with so-called centrists climbing in bed with the far-right, a change of course is unlikely. The ease with which otherwise non-nationalistic political leaders have formed alliances with overtly nationalistic, xenophobic parties is perhaps a greater threat to Europe than the right-wing parties themselves. That no incumbent parties, even those in opposition, have stood up to the extreme course of the government leaves those of us who vote in Finland up for grabs for anyone with the vision to work for Finland as a European partner, not the northern bully we’ve become. The author, Eeva Moore, is Head of Communication at European Alternatives. She is part Finnish.
E’ possibile cambiare l’Europa? | Toni Negri, Ugo Mattei, Sandro Mezzadra
#TalkReal, Atene: per la sinistra è davvero il momento di abbandonare l’UE?
Pochi giorni fa, il giornalista di The Guardian Owen Jones ha chiesto pubblicamente se per la sinistra sia giunto il momento di abbandonare l’Unione Europea. In questo episodio di #TalkReal, quattro ospiti d’eccezione discutono questo tema. La strategia praticata da Syriza per mettere fine all’austerità ha fallito. Che cosa comporta ciò per il futuro della sinistra greca e per il movimento europeo contro l’austerità? Nelle ultime settimane, le maschere sono davvero cadute: le strutture e la legittimità della zona euro sembrano ora completamente distrutte. Ma è davvero giunto il momento per la sinistra di abbandonare la moneta unica, o addirittura l’Unione Europea? E che ruolo possono giocare i movimenti sociali nella ricostruzione di un progetto transnazionale radicale contro l’austerità e per un’Europa democratica e socialmente equa? Queste sono alcune delle questioni al centro del nuovo episodio di Talk Real “Syriza and Europe”, registrato ad Atene durante la Democracy Rising Conference organizzata dal Global Centre for Advanced Studies. Ne abbiamo discusso con: Costas Douzinas, noto intellettuale greco vicino a Syriza; Margarita Tsomou, performer greca e opinionista, residente a Berlino; Jerome Roos, scrittore e fondatore di ROAR Magazine; e Srećko Horvat, filosofo croato e membro del consiglio di European Alternatives. Presenta e modera Lorenzo Marsili, direttore di European Alternatives. ENGLISH (Sottotitolato in italiano) [Guarda anche la Puntata 0 di Talk Real: La democrazia non è facebook – Comunicazione e politica /More info] Per approfondire. In questa puntata si è parlato anche di… … Costantin Costa Gavras French Resistance: Costa Gavras, interview by The Guardian Capital – Trailer Filmografia … Conferenza di Bandung, 1955 President Sukarno Opening Speech Lo spirito di Bandung 60 anni dopo, da ilcaffegeopolitico Dichiarazione conclusiva della Conferenza di Bandung … Rudi Dutschke A Long March through the Institutions (VIDEO) The Attack on Rudi Dutschke: A Revolutionary Who Shaped a Generation, da der Spiegel
#TalkReal: Cattivi maestri – Si può cambiare l’Europa?
I negoziati tra la Grecia e i creditori, l’arroganza del governo tedesco, la portata del ricatto praticato attraverso il debito hanno aperto un grosso dibattito a sinistra sulle prospettive spaziali dei processi di trasformazione sociale. Dopo la puntata registrata ad Atene, torniamo a parlare delle possibilità di cambiare quest’Europa, da sinistra. Dalla Grecia all’immigrazione, il processo decisionale europeo continua ad accumulare errori storici. L’incapacità di costruire una reale democrazia transnazionale sta compromettendo il benessere di tutti i popoli d’Europa. Le vicende delle ultime settimane dimostrano con chiarezza che le strutture di governance sono rotte. Ma l’Europa appare oggi a molti come uno spazio in cui è sempre più difficile costruire politiche ed economie realmente alternative al pensiero unico dominante. Ma è ancora possibile immaginare una trasformazione radicale, democratica e costituzionale del nostro continente? Siamo ancora in tempo per farlo? E con quali mezzi? Con quali forze ed alleanze? Nella puntata di TalkReal girata al festival dei Beni Comuni di Chieri, in provincia di Torino, abbiamo posto queste ed altre domande a: Toni Negri (controverso teorico dell’Autonomia e oggi tra i più noti intellettuali mondiali), Sandro Mezzadra (professore all’Università di Bologna e animatore del collettivo Euronomade), Ugo Mattei (giurista e personalità chiave del movimento per i beni comuni), Laura Pizzirani (attrice e attivista del Teatro Valle), e Guido de Togni (ricercatore e attivista). Con un intervento in chiusura di Gilberto Gil (musicista di fama mondiale ed ex-ministro della cultura del Brasile). Presenta e modera Lorenzo Marsili, direttore di European Alternatives. Guarda anche le altre puntate: Roma: La democrazia non è facebook – Comunicazione e politica Atene: Democracy Rising – Syriza and Europe
Germany’s Eurosceptic party has a new face
Bernd Lucke and Frauke Petry before the power struggle. In the midst of the debt crisis, all eyes are on Angela Merkel. Yet, off the big stage, a small revolution took place in the German party-political landscape. The populist “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD), a party that was formed out of frustration with the financial crisis, took a major shift to the right. An internal power struggle between the nationalists and the liberal-conservative wing has been decided. The party first became popular in 2013 when the German Parliament debated the rescue measures for the Greek economy. The AfD leader at that time, Bernd Lucke, a professor of economics, argued against any type of rescue measures and for the dissolution of the common European currency. Furthermore, Lucke demanded the transfer of competencies from Brussels back to the individual nation states, and favoured a referendum on the Euro-rescue packages. For many people, this sounded like a welcoming alternative to the politics of the Merkel-government. Only two years after its founding, the AfD had a major success by receiving 4,7% of votes in the 2014 national elections and hence, just missed the 5% entry hurdle. Today, the Eurosceptic party is represented in five federal state parliaments. Lucke developed a very successful and likewise dangerous strategy: he spoke to disappointed middle-class voters without sounding too politically radical. At the same time, he flirted with hardcore nationalists and conservatives, who had not found a home in the established party system. This was a risky game from the beginning. Oftentimes, Lucke found himself relativising or rejecting xenophobic or nationalist comments made by his party members. In turn, they became frustrated with his “despot-style leadership”. Finally it was Frauke Petry who openly challenged Lucke’s power. Petry is the head of the party in Sachsen, a federal state in which the AfD won 9,7% in recent elections. It was also Petry who encouraged the party to seek common ground with the Pegida-protests, a movement demanding stricter migration laws and the protection of national values and traditions. In the beginning of July, the AfD held a party convention to debate the leadership question. After the first election round, Petry won with a clear majority and became the new party leader. Lucke, who has been the face of the party since its foundation, not only left his position but the party as well. The party became too right-wing and xenophobic, he argued. What will happen to the AfD now? There are two possible scenarios: They will either continue to win over voters despite their openly racist and nationalistic views and establish a stronghold in the right corner, like the Front National. Or they will face a future of irrelevance. They already have a new competitor for the next elections: Lucke has established a new party.
Blockupy: A European OXI
The Frankfurt based anti-austerity movement Blockupy has issued a Europe-wide call to action. Blockupy is urging people across the continent to build on the recent Greek ‘Oxi’ vote to say no to crushing austerity policies. That Greeks overwhelmingly voted ‘no’ to more punitive austerity, only to be forced by the EU to accept more of the same is not only a sign of the need to end these damaging policies, but also the need for a transnational ‘oxi’ against an undemocratic Europe. “[O]ur NO simultaneously is a YES to a radically different kind of Europe, which has nothing to do with the rotten Europe of the powerful oligarchies, but which needs to be rebuilt completely from the bottom.” Read the petition in full in English or in Italian.
Connect Knowledge – Change Europe @Riot_Village
We have supported and participated in the activist European student meeting Episteme. Here is the closing statement!
Educazione contro austerità: Dal meeting europeo Episteme
Abbiamo sostenuto e partecipato ad Episteme, un incontro di delegazioni studentesche europee. Ecco l’appello conclusivo!
Are European Alternatives still possible?
#TalkReal 4: sono ancora possibili alternative europee?
Abbiamo girato a Lisbona la quarta puntata di Talk Real, durante il board meeting della nostra associazione. Abbiamo continuato a chiedere e a chiederci se è ancora possibile pensare di trasformare radicalmente l’Unione Europea nella direzione di una vera democrazia transnazionale, libera dalle politiche di austerity e dal ricatto del debito. Siamo partiti da una domanda semplice, molto simile a quelle poste durante le puntate di Torino e di Atene. Una domanda per noi evidentemente pregna di significato: sono ancora possibili alternative europee? Ne abbiamo discusso con alcune delle personalità chiave di European Alternatives, impegnate da anni nella promozione di democrazia, giustizia e cultura oltre lo Stato nazione: Niccolo Milanese, poeta, scrittore e tra i fondatori di EA; Daphne Buellesbach, direttrice dell’ufficio di Berlino; Beppe Caccia, membro del board; e Ségolène Pruvot, urbanista e direttrice dell’ufficio di Parigi. In questa riflessione collettiva abbiamo provato a interrogarci su quali meccanismi è necessario attivare per ridefinire effettivamente i rapporti di forza a livello europeo, su quali mobilitazioni transnazionali (come Blockupy) sono necessarie e di quali forme di immaginazione politica abbiamo bisogno per mettere fine al “sequestro della democrazia” realizzato in questi anni dai mercati finanziari. Dopo il successo delle prime puntate e le migliaia di visualizzazione ricevute, Talk Real tornerà a settembre, con una produzione aperta a proposte e contaminazioni, sempre sull’onda dei temi caldi di dibattito politico e di mobilitazione sociale. Per chi ha voglia di essere parte attiva nella produzione e aiutarci – attraverso consigli, critiche e commenti – a fare meglio, abbiamo creato un brevissimo test. Vi invitiamo a compilarlo a questo link. Stay tuned…
Green Screen Diaries
We want to play with you… Green Screen Diaries is a transnational story-telling game that connects places and people, past and future in Europe. This is how it works: your team will receive a starter kit in a mysterious box wrapped in green cloth. Inside: an exploration kit that unfolds step by step. Leading you and your team on a journey through your city. You will collaboratively write, perform and record a diary entry from the future using public spaces, chalk, your voice, smartphone and a green screen. You will integrate fragments from other futures, creating new fragments for other futures. In the end, you will close the box and pass it on. Each journey is just one link in an expanding network of European imaginations. Asking the questions: How can we explore Europe from the inner world, from an outside perspective and what will the future look like? You and your friends would like to try it out? Get the game box sent to you with a detailed description and all tools that you need by registering under greenscreendiaries@gmail.com In case you are interested, but you do not have enough players, why not create a facebook page and make us promote it? In this case write to p.sombetzki@euroalter.com For Berliners, there are already some dates on which we will gather and play: 13/09, 15/09 and 16/09 For one of these dates please register via berlin@euroalter.com You find the facebook event for the Berlin dates here. FAQ Q: What is this game? A: The Green Screen Diaries is a 1-2 hour long game for 3-6 players. It is a part of the Transeuropa Festival. But just order a box, gather some friends and let the magic happen. Trust us! Q: But I want to know what happens NOW! A: Okay, okay. In the box you will find instructions how to – safely! – take a peek into the future. And chalk, dice and a green screen. The game will move with you through your city and will try to help you to think differently about it. Uh, in the end you will make a gorgeous video. Or two. Q: Videos with the green screen? A: Yes, you and your friends will be script writers, audio directors and guerilla film makers. Q: Sounds complicated… A: Not at all. You will need a smart phone, but it is not an app. Don’t worry about the technical stuff. The box will explain it all. Q: You mentioned the Transeuropa Festival. What is that? A: It is a Festival of arts, culture and politics that will take place in Belgrade in October. The game will also end in Belgrade so that all the boxes will come together one last time. Q: Why is it then called “transnational storytelling”? A: Because some futures are so beautiful or dangerous or different that you can only approach them by working together with people from all over Europe. Hmh. Maybe it is a tiny bit political after all.
Three questions for Peter Sunde
Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, tweeting as @brokep, is a computer expert and best known for being a co-founder and former spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine. He is an equality advocate and writes about concerns over the centralization of power in the European Union on his blog. Sunde also participates in the Pirate Party of Finland. This week we asked three questions to Peter, who is taking part in this year’s Transeuropa Festival as a panelist and creative contributor: What will you share at TRANSEUROPA? I’m going to talk about my current work on finding solutions to the problems coming out of globalisation. Being pro- or anti- globalisation is kind of useless, but looking at the current situation, we need to find ways to deal with those. Everything from ethical aspects of the right of people to move freely to the accountability of corporations. I want to look ahead and find solutions of tomorrow’s problems today, instead of being pro- or anti-today. What European fragmentation are you most concerned about today? Definitely the rise of the extreme right-wing and the racism it brings. This has happened before in Europe and historically we have a really bad way of handling it. Why TRANSEUROPA? I think it’s important to not just repeat the same thing over and over again, but to find new ways of reaching people and new forms of discussion. We’ve tried other options before, so I want to try the Transeuropean way as well!
#RefugeesWelcome: if another Europe exists
As leaders prove once again incapable of rising up to the gravity of times, we are energised in witnessing the emergence of migrants and refugees themselves as a real political actor in Europe
#RefugeesWelcome: se esiste un’altra Europa
Se i governi hanno offerto uno spettacolo vergognoso, è invece un straordinariamente positivo, in queste ore, l’emergere dei migranti e dei rifugiati stessi come vero e proprio attore politico in Europa
Three questions for Nabeelah Shabbir of the Guardian
What will you share at TRANSEUROPA? A continuation of a conversation we should all be having more often: we feel that climate change is something that will happen in the future. What can I do and how can I act to talk about it right now? How can a UN summit in Paris this year be something that matters to me too, even if I give up with politicians, businessmen and the power of the fossil fuel industry? What European fragmentation are you most concerned about today? Climate change, migration, euroscepticism, solidarity, the rise of the far right, breaking down linguistic barriers which put obstacles to understanding each others’ cultural values – which should be easier down in a more internet-friendly world of devices and ultra ease of travel on this continent. What’s next for us? How can the EU avoid ignoring its regions on our doorstep – the Middle East, Balkans, Caucasus, Eurasia. Why TRANSEUROPA? I participated in a transnational forum on civil rights and democracy in Europe, as part of the Citizens Pact organised by European Alternatives in Barcelona in 2013, and was very impressed with the intensity of the meeting, the scope it had, the genuine depth of action pledged. I also attended the Subversive Festival in Zagreb the same year, some of whose speakers will be back at Transeuropa 2015, so I am looking forward to hearing more. I’m pro- any organisation which comes together to transcend borders and national European lives to build something bigger out of the political and economic union we’re all bound by. The #TEF15 website has everything you need to know about who’s coming, how to get there. The festival is free and open to all, but do register.
Three questions for Manos Moschopoulos
Manos Moschopoulos is program officer for the Migration and Inclusion team of the Open Society Initiative for Europe. Manos’ areas of focus include the migration route through Turkey, Greece and the Western Balkans, promoting alternatives to the administrative detention of migrants and asylum seekers, empowering migrant- and refugee-led organisations’ voices in the ongoing debates on migration and ensuring access to citizenship for second generation people. A native of Athens, he is now based in London and has lived in Belgrade, Budapest, and Skopje. Manos tweets about migration, politics and football at @maledictus. This week we asked Manos three questions about Transeuropa and what it means to go beyond fragments: What will you share at TRANSEUROPA? The photograph of Aylan Kurdi has increased pressure on European leadership to respond to a crisis that has been unfolding for months, as people flee war and persecution to find a place they can live with safety and dignity. Over the past year I have had the honour to work with some inspiring people on the ground that provide emergency relief to the thousands of refugees in Greece, Italy, and Macedonia, whose voices should be amplified and shared as Europe is debating its response to the ever-increasing number of people risking their lives to reach our countries. Thousands of locals across the routes have organised through social media and other platforms to step up to a challenge that many politicians have shied away from and their energy and compassion can have a lasting impact on the way we discuss, think and act about asylum and migration. I will be sharing what I have seen at the border crossings in the Balkans, the experiences that refugees have shared with me on their way to the north of Europe and my ideas on how civil society and grassroots movements can help transform policies and hold governments, law enforcement and other authorities to account. What European fragmentation are you most concerned about today? The most visible manifestation of the European project is the freedom of movement of people across the EU. This concept has been brought into question both on a political level, where in Britain I watch – as a migrant myself – migrants from other EU states get demonised on a daily basis by politicians and tabloids, but also on a practical level, with numerous reports of border controls targeted at asylum seekers in between Schengen area states. Moreover, the European project was driven by the promise of uniting the continent after the fall of the Berlin Wall, however today European governments are building new walls on European soil between the EU and other countries. Beyond this, Europe’s inability to help the ever-increasing number of people that are entitled to our protection has led to abuses, crackdowns and calls to abandon our obligations under international law, either by placing newspaper ads in Lebanon to tell refugees they’re not welcome here, or by refusing to accept a small number of refugees as part of a European resettlement deal. We need to make our case and reach out to those that are swayed by the xenophobic arguments to protect these crucial aspects of the European project: our ability to move around, Europe’s role as a beacon of human rights and making sure that our continent is free of barriers, physical or otherwise, in between our political space and the countries that aspire to join it. Why TRANSEUROPA? I have met people involved with Transeuropa at other events across Europe and I have been impressed by their energy and commitment to transform the European political and social space. The width of topics discussed and the panels that have been put together surely promise engaging and deep discussion and I think that many spaces for action and cooperation will open as a result of the event. Also, Belgrade is the perfect setting for a discussion about Europe’s integration project and the migration route, as it lies in a country that is still waiting for the promise of EU accession and the city is a transit point for many refugees on a daily basis.
Denmark: report from a closed Schengen border
Jackson Oldfield is a Senior Project Manager at European Alternatives, overseeing the Citizen Rights programme. He was informed by German railway workers that only those with Danish, Swedish or German passports would be allowed to enter Denmark.* In his State of the Union speech yesterday, Jean Claude Juncker outlined his plan for EU member states to take in 120,000 extra refugees. Angela Merkel warned it might not be ambitious enough, the UK’s David Cameron distanced itself from the mechanism, deciding to take a paltry 4,000 extra Syrian refugees a year, and the media kept criticising the ever criticisable Orban. But, while overshadowed by Juncker, Merkel, Cameron and Orban, an equally divisive, dangerous and disturbing power play was unfolding in Europe’s north: Denmark closed it borders. Or rather, it closed its borders to all but its citizens and residents and the residents and citizens of its nearest neighbours – Sweden and Germany. This is both a personal and impersonal account – I should say I too was one of those travelling from Germany to Denmark yesterday, but with the wrong passport (British) – but actually this is not an individual or isolated situation, but rather one that challenges the whole idea of the European Union and something we should all be concerned about. Why do I say this? First, the closure was apparently in response to Juncker’s plan for refugees. The Swedish Government requested that Denmark stop letting asylum seekers directly through to Sweden and asked Denmark to instead process asylum claims in Denmark, in accordance with the Dublin rules. In a country where non-Danes have faced stigmatism from official sources for over a decade, the logical solution in the un-logic of xenophobia was for Denmark to close its borders. The founding principles of the EU are human rights, solidarity and human dignity. If this fundamental breach of those principles, and the violation of the Schengen Treaty as a means to uphold the Dublin Regulations go unchallenged, it can only be seen as a serious threat to the EU’s credibility. Second, the challenge to freedom of movement that this situation has raised is severe. For an EU member state to close its borders to citizens of another EU member state and the selective nature of the closure in limiting entry to nationals of only three countries challenges the very transnational nature of what it means to be a European citizen and can only support xenophobic and extremist parties across the EU. To allow this action to go unchallenged would represent a total failure of the EU institutions and national governments to live up to the principles of the EU. For at least a day, forget Orban, forget Cameron, forget Juncker – if Europe is going to be the union we want it to be, we need to all look north to claim our rights as citizens and non-citizens of Europe. *An earlier version stated that he was denied entry into Denmark from Germany due to his British passport. This version has been corrected.
TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 calls on political movements to go beyond fragments
Press Release: TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 calls on political movements to go beyond fragments Europe-wide festival of politics and culture culminates in Belgrade, Oct. 1-5 September 10, 2015 – The unfolding “refugee crisis” in Europe demonstrates in brutal detail the consequences of Europe’s fragmentation. From Greece to Calais via Hungary and Ventimiglia, rising nationalism is causing countries to retreat from joint challenges and to remilitarise Europe’s borders. While underscoring the ineptitude of regional and national governments, the events of the last week demonstrated the breathtaking power of civil society. “Where governments were bureaucratic, European civil society was responsive. Across the region, networks sprouted and united online and on the ground to support refugees who themselves were empowered to challenge European borders,” said Daphne Büllesbach, a Director of European Alternatives and co-organiser of the festival. “At TRANSEUROPA, we’re mobilising the people who make this kind of change happen to move further beyond defragmentation to build a new Europe.” “We are excited to have this lively debate in Belgrade,” adds the Ministry of Space collective, the local co-organizer of the festival, “as it is the place that vividly experiences many European policies, struggles and dilemmas, but also hypocrisies, including the refugee crisis, austerity measures, megalomaniac projects and new kinds of movements.” The festival programme is divided into three themes: new forms of politics and movements, alternative economies and the commons. Contributors include artists, activists and leading thinkers such as philosopher Srećko Horvat, political scientist Ulrike Guérot, activist and Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, author and activist Brett Scott, theatre director Angela Richter and Guardian journalist Nabeelah Shabbir. In collaboration with artist and activist Tania Bruguera, who serves on EA’s advisory board, the festival will highlight the interconnectedness of art and activism through the Why Artivism? performance. The performance is a transnational reenactment of Tania Bruguera’s marathon reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism during her detention in Cuba. Readings will take place on September 26 in Belgrade, Rome, Berlin, Lisbon, Paris and Warsaw. With Serbia the new route of choice for so many refugees, a number of artistic performances to be held in Belgrade are particularly timely: a documentary performance on Europe’s relationship with “otherness”, a photography exhibit illustrating the crossing of EU borders’ barbed wire and a night of Syrian poetry-in-exile. Throughout its seven year history, the festival has called upon participants to imagine, demand and enact a new Europe. Never has this call been more urgent than today: mounting crises, many self-made and re-erecting of borders such as yesterday when only those with a German, Swedish or Danish passport were allowed to enter Denmark across its southern border, show an alarming reversion to a Europe of nationalism and borders. TRANSEUROPA Festival is about the other Europe: the one that is unified and borderless and not defined by the EU. TRANSEUROPA Festival is free and open to the public. International participants who need it may seek support for their accommodation in Belgrade. # # # Contacts European Alternatives: Lucile Gemähling l.gemaehling@euroalter.com / +49 15 78 75 09 657 Ministry of Space: Virdzinija Djekovic virdzinia@gmail.com / +381 60 516 92 28 European Alternatives (EA) is a transnational civil society organisation promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. EA has offices in Rome, Paris, Berlin and London, and member groups across the continent. More information at www.euroalter.com. For more information on the TRANSEUROPA Festival, visit http://transeuropafestival.eu Ministry of space (Ministarstvo Prostora) is a collective founded in 2011 with the aim of monitoring future development of Belgrade and other Serbian cities. In implementing its projects and activities the Ministry of space closely collaborates with a network of researchers, activists, groups and individuals working in different fields such as architecture, urban planning, sociology, art and political science. More information on http://issuu.com/ministarstvoprostora/docs/ministry_of_space This press release is also available in Portuguese.
European Aperitives #1 – Elezioni in Grecia
Tsipras ha tradito il grande OXI del referendum o non poteva fare altro che accettare il memorandum? SYRIZA è destinata a prendere il posto del PASOK o può ancora mettere in campo politiche radicali? Di certo sembra esserci soltanto questo dato: quello che accade in Grecia riguarda sempre più l’Europa intera. Anche per questo domenica 20 settembre, al Beba do Samba a San Lorenzo (via dei Messapi, 8), seguiremo insieme la diretta dello spoglio delle elezioni greche. Commenteremo a caldo i risultati con Dimitri Deliolanes (giornalista greco e scrittore); Giacomo Russo Spena (giornalista e redattore di micromega); Claudia Bernardi (ricercatrice); Marco Bascetta (giornalista Il Manifesto); e altri ancora che verranno annunciati a breve… Durante l’iniziativa sarà offerto un aperitivo e Bato Rèn animerà l’ambiente con selezioni musicali elettro-balkan. Qui l’evento facebook. Programma: ➨ 18.30-20.00 Diretta dello spoglio delle elezioni greche e ♬ aperitivo musicale ♬ ➨ 20.00-22.00 Microfono aperto: commenti a caldo con Dimitri Deliolanes (giornalista e scrittore), Giacomo Russo Spena (giornalista e redattore di MicroMega), Claudia Bernardi (ricercatrice), Marco bascetta (giornalista il Manifesto), e altri ancora… ➨ 22.00-23.30 ♬ Dj set elettro-balkan di Bato Rèn ♬
Three questions for Andrej Bereta
Andrej Bereta (Serbia) is a Curator-Art Historian and Cultural entrepreneur (Co- Founder of ARTIKAL, Belgrade, since 2008). Since 2011 he works on the Project About and around curating/Kustosiranje (co- authorship with Srdjan Tunic), an educative and research curatorial project, based on the idea of lifelong learning, designed for professionals and students from the fields of arts and culture, and open for general public. Since 2014 he is Curator of Arts Kozara (2014, 2015): international AiR, Art Laboratory in nature on mountain Kozara (BiH). In 2008 he co-created the Project ARTUR- Cultural tour for disabled persons. Andrej is co-creator and participant of Creative Mentorship Lecturer on Visual Arts at Independent University of Banjaluka (BiH). This week we asked Andrej about his contribution to TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 and why a transnational approach is needed. 1. What will you share at TRANSEUROPA? I’ll present briefly our Civic Association ARTIKAL (Belgrade, established 2008) and project About and around curating/ Kustosiranje, defined as research within contemporary art and curating practice. Our regional collaboration with Bosnian partner Tac.Ka (Prijedor, BiH) on project Ars Kozara, AiR and Art Laboratory in Nature, will be briefly presented too, especially latest edition. Together with Xavier de Luca (JISER, Barcelona), I am planning to present our experiences in cultural exchange through mutual projects (DJART Festival), and other projects, which connects our organizations with other initiatives in MENA region. We’ll organize and facilitate one workshop aiming to support others to collaborate in regional projects within arts and culture. Also, we plan to have one discussion panel about same topic, with main idea to distress important issues, exchange different experiences and ideas with participants from developing a concept in collaboration, to fundraising, sustainability and possible hinders. 2. What European fragmentation are you most concerned about today? Europe is way more fragmented continent then it appears to be. I guess that greatest gap is between EU and non- EU countries, which reflects in reality on pretty modest possibilities for collaboration (Cultural, Academic field…), equality in approach to funds and same individual treatment. As usual, common citizens and interesting initiatives pays highest price of dis-balance between public political proclamation and real act. Current exodus- horror situation about refugees (mostly from Syria), which seems that most of Europe sees as threatening flood of “others”, draws pretty clear image of questionable principles and ability of whole Continent to act according to them. 3. Why TRANSEUROPA? It is a very good idea to be a part of TRANSEUROPA festival, also to re-check where we are: to meet interesting and innovative people, share ideas and knowledge and discuss about mutual interests within field of culture. It is a great chance to brainstorm with other participants some possible new ideas which could be shaped as concepts for some future actions. As far as I concern, this kind of “gathering” should happen at least twice a year, to push way more vivid mobility and exchange of people, their ideas, different “flavors”. It is in best interest of whole Europe, I believe.
Greek voters keep alternatives open in Europe
The results of the elections in Greece maintain open the space for an alternative in Europe. Undeniably, the scope of the new government remains severely constrained by the application of the memorandum. There are however two important ruptures that now remain possible. The voters in Greece have reaffirmed a commitment to a radical transformation of the European space and to an end to self-defeating policies of austerity. The government of Greece cannot achieve any of these results on its own. The ball is in the court of the rest of Europe, with the task of both changing the balance of forces at national level, including in the elections ahead in Portugal, Spain and Ireland, and of changing European common sense by developing effective transnational mobilisations. It is clear to many that in the medium term the current memorandum is economically and politically unworkable under current terms: a radical Greek government and a renewed balance of forces in Europe represent the best chance for its renegotiation and for the renegotiation on a transnational level of European democracy and economic policy. Secondly, whereas the fiscal leverage might be constrained by the memorandum, Syriza retains the possibility of promoting progressive social policies, clearly demanded by the population. These include shifting the burden of austerity from the lower to the upper classes, and notably the oligarchy; allowing for a greater self-organisation of society through initiatives of mutualism and solidarity; or again fighting xenophobia by tangible policies as the recently passed law granting Greek citizenship to children of migrants born in Greece. The idea of a regressive return to national autarchy has been defeated by these elections, which have reiterated again, with startling tenacity given the circumstances, the commitment of the majority of people in Greece to a certain ideal of a democratic Europe of solidarity. The increased abstention and frustration with Syriza also manifested at these elections are warning signs that this commitment is not unshakable, which should remind European institutions and other European governments of their own responsibilities.
“European Aperitives” atto primo
Domenica 20 settembre, abbiamo organizzato a Roma il primo di una serie di “European Aperitives”, in occasione delle elezioni greche. In tanti sono venuti ad assistere con noi alla diretta dello spoglio e a commentare i risultati che man mano arrivavano dalla penisola ellenica, tra un bicchiere di vino e un po’ di musica balcanica. Una serata piacevole, anche alla luce delle notizie arrivate da Atene. Mentre SYRIZA si confermava primo partito, mantenendo il 35% dei voti nonostante il terzo memorandum, abbiamo sviluppato un vivace dibattito, che ha toccato i principali nodi politici che il nuovo governo si troverà ad affronterà. Dimitri Deliolanes, Giacomo Russo Spena, Claudia Bernardi, Marco Bascetta, Mark Bergfeld, Monica Pepe ci hanno aiutato a leggere il voto greco. Sebbene con giudizi differenti sui limiti e le possibilità del nuovo governo, i vari interventi sono stati concordi nell’interpretare la vittoria di SYRIZA come un fatto che mantiene aperto uno spazio di possibilità per trasformare in senso democratico questa Europa. Una battaglia ancora lunga, che forse ieri ha fatto un nuovo passo in avanti, ma che di sicuro avrà bisogno dell’impegno e della partecipazione transnazionale di tutti quei soggetti che vogliono mettere fine alle politiche di austerity e costruire uno spazio europeo segnato dai diritti e dalla giustizia sociale. Leggi anche: GREEK VOTERS KEEP ALTERNATIVES OPEN IN EUROPE
First European events of Tania Bruguera’s Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism kick off TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015
First European events of Tania Bruguera’s Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism kick off TRANSEUROPA Festival 2015 Events in London, Rome, Paris, Lublin and Belgrade part of transnational festival of art, politics and culture September 24, 2015 – On Saturday, September 26, five European cultural institutions will host reading performances of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. The events are part of the 2015 TRANSEUROPA Festival, a festival for arts, politics and culture, co-organised by European Alternatives and the Belgrade based Ministry of Space. “In the midst of what media and politicians call the ‘migrant crisis’ or ‘refugee crisis’, when people are defined with a title that implies they are never arriving or welcome anywhere, Hannah Arendt’s reflections on statelessness, asylum seekers, the violence of the nation, political action and freedom of expression resonate more than ever.” Said Ségolène Pruvot, European Alternatives Arts and Culture Director. The Cuban artist, activist and European Alternatives board member, Tania Bruguera, inaugurated the Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism in May of 2014 in Havana with a 100 hour reading of The Origins of Totalitarianism. At the time, Bruguera was prevented from leaving Cuba after being arrested during a public performance. Over the course of several months, she faced regular interrogations by the police. The reading performance is hosted by the Plateau/FRAC Île de France in Paris, London’s Rivington Place, Maxxi Museum in Rome, the War and Peace exhibition in Lublin, and the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) in Belgrade. Logistical information for each event can be found at transeuropafestival/why-artivism. TRANSEUROPA Festival culminates in a five day programme in Belgrade, starting Oct 1. Over 50 contributors, artists, intellectuals and activists will join the discussion on Europe’s present and future. Amongst them are human rights lawyer Renata Avila, philosopher Srećko Horvat, political scientist Ulrike Guérot, author and activist Brett Scott, theatre director Angela Richter and Guardian journalist Nabeelah Shabbir. TRANSEUROPA Festival is free and open to the public. Download the PDF press packet. # # # Contacts: European Alternatives: Lucile Gemähling l.gemaehling@euroalter.com / +49 15 78 75 09 657 Ministry of Space: Virdzinija Djekovic virdzinia@gmail.com / +381 60 516 92 28 European Alternatives (EA) is a transnational civil society organisation promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. EA has offices in Rome, Paris, Berlin and London, and member groups across the continent. More information at www.euroalter.com. Ministry of space (Ministarstvo Prostora) is a collective founded in 2011 with the aim of monitoring future development of Belgrade and other Serbian cities. In implementing its projects and activities the Ministry of space closely collaborates with a network of researchers, activists, groups and individuals working in different fields such as architecture, urban planning, sociology, art and political science. More information on http://issuu.com/ministarstvoprostora/docs/ministry_of_space For more information on the 2015 TRANSEUROPA Festival, visit the website http://transeuropafestival.eu, follow us on twitter https://twitter.com/transeuropafest and like us on Facebook http://facebook.com/transeuropafestival. The festival hashtag is #TEF15
From Nickelsdorf to Röszke and Horgos – #notwelcomeland
Pictures of desperate people standing in front of the new iron curtain at the European Union’s border dominated European news and headlines. A lot has been written about the dramatic and inhumane conditions of the refugees’ route to Europe and the hostile politics of states like Hungary. As I have travelled from Austria via Hungary to Serbia and have witnessed many of the “hotspots” in the last weeks, I can confirm it all from my own viewpoint as a volunteer in these places. But after the first encounters with people lacking the most fundamental needs had left a strong impression on me, one almost gets used to the conglomerate of refugees, police, helpers, media and the omnipresent although not directly visible politics behind it all. After these intense days at the borders in Nickelsdorf, Röszke, Horgos and in Belgrade, two questions came to my mind: What have I actually seen and what follows from that? In Röszke, at the Hungarian-Serbian border, most of the refugees arrived at night. Two days before Hungary closed the last hole in the fence, 1,2000 people made their way to the improvised camp on the Hungarian side in one night. As they were entering the EU along old railway tracks, volunteers gave their best to supply them with water, food and warm clothes of which they were all desperately in need. What was also needed, but far more difficult to give, was information about what would await them in the EU. How could they get to Germany or Sweden? It was impossible to give answers since the political situation changed every day. What followed from this was a feeling of helplessness and anger on both sides. Obviously for most of the women, men and children, I tried to deliver information to, it was not about a better life, but about a life at all. The camp in Röszke was almost entirely run by volunteers from all over Europe. For political reasons the large aid organisations only took part in the final days. Most of the volunteers were in their 20s, not very experienced and had decided spontaneously “to do something”. Their professional background was quite mixed. I handed out muesli bars with a bank consultant and a real estate agent one night, but there were also musicians and of course a lot of students. Many of them went far beyond their limits. Only the lack of coordination was sometimes bigger than their good will to help. When everyone wants to do something but there is no clear structure things get stuck. In emergency situations like this you need hierarchies. As one French volunteer said: “Democracy doesn’t apply to all situations”. If you don’t have a clear direction, help becomes inefficient. If you have one, it’s amazing what can be achieved by a group of people who haven’t met each other before. In Serbia, due to the coordination and organisational talent of a Swedish activist, 20 volunteers managed to give out food, water and hygiene items to over 2,000 people in a matter of hours. The biggest achievement in this situation was to make the tired crowd actually wait in line. Because there is one rule: Never open a food truck in a refugee camp. It will cause unnecessary situations of people fighting to stand in the first line and the strongest will get the most. The first time I saw cameras focussed on people in these exceptional situations I interpreted it as inappropriate. How can you film if you see that this young girl and her grandfather need a blanket and something to eat? It took a while until I understood that journalists and refugees are allies. Worse than filming these situations would be not to show the world what happens at the European Union’s borders. And as one could observe the roles of journalists and activists began to mix. Journalists became helpers when distributing water and helpers became journalists when they took pictures of the situation and posted it in their social networks. By the way, almost all of the spontaneous coordination was done on facebook. The illegalisation of people crossing borders is completely unnecessary. People suffering and dying on their way to Europe is not a tragedy. It is a politically caused catastrophe that could have easily been avoided. Once again it became clear that you can’t talk about the refugee crisis and be silent about capitalism. For the moment it is especially true what Rosa, one of the many volunteers, wrote on Facebook: “we can greet them as friends or as enemies – they will come either way. However, our choice will define our shared future: if we chose to define them as our enemies, we will live in a country full of enemies. If we chose to call and treat them like friends, we will live knowing that we helped our new friends find safety, stability and peace.” article and photos by Lukas Stolz
Transeuropa Festival program and reader available
Download here the program and full reader for Transeuropa Festival!
Stop-TTIP day of action
This autumn the dispute over the trade and investment agreements TTIP CETA entered a heated phase. Both agreements threaten to undermine democracy and the rule of law. The Initiative ‘Stop TTIP and CETA’ has gathered more then 3,2 million signatures from across the continent. If it would have been accepted as a European Citizens Initiative, it would have been the most successful one to date, showing a strong opposition to the European Commission plans. In Berlin, the October 10 will be a mobilisation day to protest the deal. The demonstration is a joint effort by more than 30 organisations including ‘Stop TTIP and CETA’, the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) with its member trade unions, agricultural and consumer associations as well as environmental, cultural and development organisations. Together, they are criticising the lack of transparency surrounding negotiations and condemning the agreements as a threat to ecological and social standards. The coalition is calling for standing to together for a trade and investment policy, which is based on high environmental and social standards and promotes sustainable development in all countries. It must, in particular: preserve democracy and the rule of law and ensure that states, countries and communities remain in a position to act, now and in the future, respect and strengthen national and international standards for the protection of humans and the environment, and promote the development of a just economic world order and call to account and bring to justice companies around the world. The full call for action, is online (in German).
TalkReal is coming back!
In arrivo due nuove puntate su alcuni tra i temi più caldi dell’attualità politica. Il 15 ottobre discuteremo di reddito contro le ineguaglianze sociali con Maurizio Landini (segretario FIOM), Daniele Pesco (deputato M5S), Peppe Allegri (ricercatore) e Elena Monticelli (ACT). La puntata sarà online tra pochi giorni, mentre in tanti si preparano a scendere in piazza nella giornata mondiale contro la povertà del 17 ottobre per chiedere l’approvazione di una legge sul reddito garantito. Poco dopo, saremo a Bologna a discutere dei rapporti tra movimenti sociali, istituzioni politiche e nuove forme di rappresentanza con Elly Schlein (Parlamentare Europea), Gian Marco de Pieri (TPO) e Stefano Bonaga (filosofo e politico). Gireremo la puntata nella casa dell’attivista del centro sociale bolognese, da alcune settimane agli arresti domiciliari per una contestazione contro il governatore della Banca d’Italia tenutasi lo scorso anno. Questo episodio sarà utile ad indagare alcuni degli esperimenti di rappresentanza municipalista nati dal basso in tutta Europa. Seguici sui social network: Youtube (con i link alle puntate precedenti) Facebook Twitter
Philippe Van Parijs on Basic Income
Reddito e diseguaglianze con Maurizio Landini e M5S
Women’s Initiative for Peace – Turkey: campaign to stop deal between Germany and Turkey
The German Prime Minister Angela Merkel [was in] Turkey on Sunday in order to negotiate with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey. What is on the table is a deal that is as opportunistic as it is dangerous: if Turkey accepts to keep within its borders the Syrian refugees already on its soil (numbering around 2 million) as well as those that are to come, Prime Minister Merkel allegedly agrees to facilitate Turkey’s entrance into the European Union, consider a visa exemption for Turkish citizens traveling to Europe, and donate 3 billion Euros to Turkey for its expenses on these refugees as a proof of the good will of the EU. This deal, approved also by the German Right, is unbelievable on all levels. First of all, did anybody ask Syrians for their opinion? The conditions in Turkey are appalling for Syrian refugees. President Erdoğan has also stated over and over again that he has the intention to settle these refugees in a buffer zone on the Syrian border. What this visit means in the short term is a European seal of approval for this project, which entails both even more unlivable conditions for refugees and a clear attack by Turkey on the people of Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Moreover, it is clear that this visit, especially in this period right before the election in Turkey, shall function as significant support for the election campaign of the AKP, since President Erdoğan makes no effort to hide his relationship with this party and retain the impartiality his position requires. This view has been expressed in the Bundestag by both the Left Party and the Greens. This support for AKP’s electoral campaign comes in a period in which this party has greatly damaged the prospect of peace both in Turkey and in the Middle East in general. It has been a mere week since the Ankara bombings. We women were witness to this massacre. It has been a mere week since the police in Turkey attacked people trying to carry those wounded in these bombings to hospitals, using bullets, tear gas and pressurized water. Right after this, the Minister of the Interior had the nerve to claim that “there is no weakness regarding security.” The Minister of Justice was able to laugh upon hearing the question of whether the Minister of the Interior would resign. The Prime Minister saw no problem in stating that they have a list of all potential suicide bombers, but could not intervene until the attack had been carried out since the crime was not yet committed. The President, with whom Prime Minister Merkel shall meet, declared that “resignation is not an appropriate mechanism in each and every single incident.” This, after one of the most bloody incidents in the history of the country… And this is not all. In Turkey, the State is currently waging war on all societal groups that are demanding and working towards peace. Countless civilians have been imprisoned or deliberately killed by state security forces especially in the Kurdish region since the end of the cease-fire, and many war crimes have been committed. These have all been documented by human rights organizations. Does the European Union, then, suddenly consider all of these acts acceptable and decide that Turkey has become more fitting of its criteria in exchange for keeping Syrian refugees away? When so many people in Turkey see at least some responsibility for the massacre that took place in Ankara in those that govern us due, for one, to their leniency towards ISIS, we ask Prime Minister Merkel not to award them money and legitimacy in return for keeping this refugee crisis ‘under control’. We call upon women’s organizations in Germany and the international public at large to prevent this deal. We know that this a real solution neither for the plight of refugees, nor the problems in Europe or Turkey. All this does is imprison Syrian refugees within the borders of Turkey while condoning all kinds of rights violations on all levels within this country. All of our lives and our hopes to live in peace should be worth more than this. It is nothing short of an obligation for all of us women to react immediately to this deal, because a deal of this sort is dangerous for the future of the Middle East, Europe, and in longer term, the future of the entire world. Women’s Initiative for Peace – Turkey #StopTheDangerousDeal #StopMerkelErdoganDeal @barisicinkadin / www.barisicinkadinlar.com
Online il nuovo #TalkReal su reddito e disuguaglianze
“Il rischio che vedo per il futuro non sono i robot, ma il capitalismo. Potremmo vivere tutti quanti una vita piena e ricca, se solo la ricchezza fosse redistribuita”. Ad esprimersi recentemente con queste parole è stato Stephen Hawking, astrofisico inglese e fra i maggiori scienziati mondiali. Ed in effetti appare quantomeno bizzarro che a fronte di una capacità produttiva senza pari nella storia, ancora così tante persone, e forse un numero crescente, continuano a vivere in povertà, disoccupazione o precarietà. Mentre il governo italiano vara l’ennesima manovra a favore delle classi più agiate, è forse il momento giusto per sollevare lo scandalo della concentrazione della ricchezza e dele diseguaglianze crescenti nel nostro Paese. E tornare a parlare di redistribuzione della ricchezza e reddito garantito. In questa puntata di TalkReal lo facciamo con Maurizio Landini (segretario generale FIOM-CGIL), Daniele Pesco(deputato M5S ed estensore della proposta di legge sul reddito di cittadinanza del movimento cinque stelle), Elena Monticelli (attivista di ACT) e Peppe Allegri (Il Quinto Stato e Basic Income Network). TalkReal è un primo esperimento nell’utilizzo dell’audiovisivo online per trasmettere contenuti politici più approfonditi e di parte di quanto non permetta il mezzo televisivo, ma con uno stile più dinamico di quanto non avvenga in seminari o dibattiti pubblici. Potete trovare i video precedenti nella nostra pagina facebook e youtube. Guarda l’intervista completa a Philippe Van Parijs, in esclusiva per TalkReal.
Playing towards a sustainable future
On Wednesday, October 21 the EA Berlin office provided the setting for a serious gaming night. Around 20 people from various backgrounds came together, among them activists, artists, researchers and individual members of the EA Berlin network. In three groups they explored future scenarios of an EU economy aiming at a sustainable future. The game was run by Dr. Laurent Bontoux, Policy Analyst at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, and organised in collaboration with the Ecologic Institute Berlin and Ecoscholars. Bontoux’s team at the JRC developed the serious game to enable players to experience and act through plausible alternative futures, by thinking and conversing systemically outside of their usual frame of reference. Additionally, the game also attempts to retrieve insights for ‘real life’ EU policy makers to actually foresee which possible actions may lay ahead for possible use in the future or already today. To be able to take as realistic actions as possible, the game uses four scenarios from a JRC foresight study to provide a framework for the alternative future worlds that players explore. The scenarios range in a cross from no to high fiscal intervention on the horizontal and from no to a high degree of collaboration between civil society organisations, businesses, EU policy makers and other policy makers on the vertical. The four categories of actors are represented in the game by one player each. In three rounds, looking five, ten and then twenty years ahead, an additional player, the public voice gives an insight into society’s perspective. Its point of view can change in the three rounds and is not necessarily always in line with the societal drive which functions as an underlying variable to take into account in the players’ actions. To give the game an even more realistic twist, other variables such as ‘hyper-connectivity’ or ‘rapid urbanisation’ specify the setting in which players act. A wide set of conditions for action as well as occurring issues such as migration related to the overarching theme of climate change make the game complex as well as realistic. A token system weighs the success of actions taken by the four actors. Especially important in this stage is the judgement made by the public voice. Whereas actions such as an investment in Research and Development of a policy maker may make sense in a generally collaborative and hyper-connected setting, the public voice may prefer at that stage of the game an investment in infrastructure of a regional company. As in real life, it remains difficult to take actions that incorporate everybody’s interests, or to stick to decisions made on principle. After previous game sessions with actual policy makers, business owners and civil society representatives, the diverse group in Berlin provided an alternative but no less strategic perspective on actions to be taken in future world scenarios. Given the framework of migration as an issue resulting from climate changes, players discussed a wide range of options for, in particular, collaborative actions towards sustainable paths of the EU’s economy.
The Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism
Vento di Spagna: popolo e potere
Time for a new economics
In a time when neoliberal capitalism has been widely discredited as a tool for economic stability, with social movements across Europe challenging the economic system that brought the financial crash and recession, we are still being presented with the argument that to neoliberal economics, There Is No Alternative. Challenging this position was the New Economics Foundation’s Copenhagen summit, which European Alternatives participated in this September. The summit aimed to lay the foundation for a transnational network in Europe dedicated to research and action to shift the debate from There Is No Alternative to explaining the real options for creating a global economic order based on solidarity and sustainability. Why did we go there to join in a discussion about new economics? It is clear from empirical data that the neoliberal economic policies in place since the 1980s have not had the trickle-down effect its proponents always promised – the income gap has widened in all European countries, while the financial crash itself was a product, among other reasons, of economic policies that allowed bankers to play risky games with personal debt. Apart from anything else, the human cost of neoliberal economics and the climate crisis also necessitate that we think again about the economic system. Changes to the economic system will not happen overnight, however what this summit discussed and the work the network born out of it will do is to take steps forward that both show that another economics is possible and articulate how we move towards new economies. A key principle is that we need to think of economics in its true sense of the way society organises itself to provide for the needs of the people in a transparent, participatory and sustainable way, rather than seeing it as synonymous with the ‘market’. A number of concepts that the network will be exploring to build a new economics include the future of work in a post-growth society, increasing equality within ecological limits and changing private sector growth imperatives. This kind of thinking matters, beyond those interested in economics. We live in a time both where neo-liberal economics are omnipresent but where social movements are increasingly challenging its logics. Solidarity, equality and participation are not hallmarks of the economic system for many of us, but they could be. Already today – with the rise in precarity, lack of affordable housing and cuts to social protections, we need to engage in this debate. But as we embark on an era of unprecedented climate changes, which is threatening the human rights of billions of people across the world, those of us outside the world of mainstream economics must engage with those working on the academic side of the debate to research and articulate economic policy alternatives and to find a common language to fight for a new economics. Read more about European social rights on our Citizen Rights platform here. Author: Jackson Oldfield Picture by Simon King
Vento di Spagna: popolo e potere
In Europa e in Italia i cittadini vivono in uno stato di scollamento con i propri rappresentanti. C’è rimedio al declino democratico? In che modo il “popolo” può riprendere spazio e parola? Gli esempi di Grecia e Spagna sono ripetibili in Italia? Ne abbiamo discusso non a caso a Bologna, città al centro delle cronache nazionali per i recenti casi di sgombero coatto (dall’Atlantide all’ex Telecom) decisi dalla prefettura. Insieme al nostro LORENZO MARSILI (European Alternatives) si sono confrontati: – ELLY SCHLEIN: giovane eurodeputata di “Possibile”, il movimento politico lanciato solo pochi mesi fa da Pippo Civati. – GIANMARCO DE PIERI: attivista bolognese del centro sociale TPO, agli arresti domiciliari in seguito alla sua partecipazione ad una manifestazione di protesta contro la visita del governatore di Bankitalia del 22 ottobre 2014. – STEFANO BONAGA: filosofo bolognese, autore insieme a Nadia Urbinati di una riflessione su cittadinanza ed empowerment, “Manifesto per una costituente egalitaria”. Seguici su facebook (TalkReal) e twitter (@talkrealtv)
A Democratic Rupture
“It is so much that does not fit here” (“É tanta coisa que nem cabe aqui”). That is the sentence written in one of a multitude of posters that were occupying the streets during the mass protests of June 2013 in Brazil. The demonstrations of June 2013 unfolded in a powerful aesthetic experiment. Artists joined activists, countless collectives took shape in their own manifestations, and all this production was itself poetically and politically recorded. Those actions, many of them performative, opened the political imaginary to other forms and contents of the struggle. At the same time that this aesthetic was being formed in the immediate clash of the streets and the networks, the June 2013 movement actualized and activated aesthetics that were less linked to the events, but that were keeping with them indirect relations, forms of politics proposed through the art, within and without the institutions. The aesthetic of politics and the politics of aesthetic also exchange points of view. The event “Brecha Democrática” (Democratic Rupture) aimed at being the space-time of those exchanges, linking the Brazilian insurgence with the Spanish 15-M and the resistances in the margins of Europe. “Brecha Democrática” took place in Venice on 10-11 October 2015, within the framework of Transnational Dialogues, an exchange and research programme across Brazil, China and Europe, started by European Alternatives in 2011. The event was organised in collaboration with Universidade Nômade, S.a.L.E Docks, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and the Municipality of Marghera. All the discussions of the round-tables, in English or Italian, hold at S.a.L.E Docks in the afternoon of Sunday 11 October are now fully accessible online: The three panels were: 1. Democratic Breach Today: Brazil and Europe between crisis and rebellion – Speakers: Giuseppe Cocco / Raul Sanchez / Fabio Mengali / Lorenzo Marsili 2. The Aesthetic of Politics and the Politics of Aesthetic – Speakers: Luiz Camillo Osorio / Barbara Szaniecki / Valeria Mancinelli / Massimo Mazzone / MP5 | with a presentation of videos and images on Brazilian demonstrations and artivism 3. Marginal Notes: Where the next rupture will be – Speakers: Silvia Dal Dosso / Luigi Galimberti / Jota Mombaça / Marco Baravalle The full text “Brecha Democrática” is available here in English, Italian and Portuguese. It was collectively drafted and edited by some of the contributors to this event.
Una rottura democratica
“Ce n’è così tanto che qui non ci sta” (“É tanta coisa que nem cabe aqui”). Questa frase era scritta in uno tra la moltitudine di poster che occupavano le strade durante le proteste di massa del giugno 2013 in Brasile. Gli accadimenti del giugno 2013 si sono dispiegati in un potente esperimento estetico. Gli artisti si sono uniti agli attivisti, innumerevoli collettivi hanno preso forma in modi a loro propri, e tutta questa produzione fu poeticamente e politicamente registrata. Quelle azioni, molte delle quali performative, aprirono l’immaginario politico ad altre forme e contenuti di lotta. Mentre questa estetica si andava formando nello scontro immediato tra le strade e le reti, il movimento del giugno 2013 attualizzò e attivò delle estetiche che erano meno legate agli eventi, ma che mantenevano con esse rapporti indiretti, forme di politica proposte tramite l’arte, dentro e fuori le istituzioni. Anche l’estetica della politica e la politica dell’estetica si scambiano i punti di vista. L’evento “Brecha Democrática” (Breccia Democratica) si è posto l’obiettivo di costituire lo spazio-tempo di tali scambi, collegando l’insorgenza brasiliana con il 15-M spagnolo e le resistenze ai margini dell’Europa. “Breccia Democratica” si è svolto a Venezia tra il 10 e l’11 ottobre 2015, all’interno della cronice di Transnational Dialogues, un programma di scambio e ricerca tra Brasile, Cina ed Europa, avviato da European Alternatives nel 2011. L’evento è stato organizzato in collaborazione con Universidade Nômade, S.a.L.E Docks, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo e Comune di Marghera. Tutte le discussioni delle tavole rotonde, in inglese o italiano, che si sono tenute al S.a.L.E Docks durante il pomeriggio dell’11 ottobre sono già consultabili online: 1. La breccia democratica oggi: Brasile ed Europa tra crisi e ribellione. Relatori: Giuseppe Cocco / Raul Sanchez / Fabio Mengali / Lorenzo Marsili; 2. L’estetica della politica e la politica dell’estetica. Relatori: Luiz Camillo Osorio / Barbara Szaniecki / Valeria Mancinelli / Massimo Mazzone / MP5 | con la presentazione di video e immagini su manifestazioni brasiliane e artivismo. 3. Note marginali: dove sarà la prossima rottura. Relatori: Silvia Dal Dosso / Luigi Galimberti / Jota Mombaça / Marco Baravalle Il testo completo “Breccia Democratica” si può trovare a questo link in inglese, italiano e portoghese. E’ stato scritto collettivamente e rivisto da alcuni dei partecipanti a questo evento.
What can we do to fight for the protection and extension of citizen rights?
Within Europe today, we see EU member states erecting walls and fences rather than respecting the spirit of the Refugee Convention, attempts to limit the principle of the free movement of persons, and austerity policies restricting access to healthcare and targeting vulnerable groups, among a myriad of other challenges to fundamental and citizenship rights. At the same time, with the seeming increasing frequency and severity of events, it can often feel that we are being pushed further and further into focussing on single issues, whether on human rights violations in one member state or trying to defend the rights of one group. In the face of these challenges, what can we do to fight for the very principles that the EU is founded on? At European Alternatives, we believe that the answer to this question will not come from us alone, but from creating a community of civil society organisations across Europe, committed to fighting for fundamental and citizenship rights and to working transnationally to do so. Five months ago, we started the CREATE|REACT programme to look at these questions and continue our work in building this community. Beginning in June, we’ve been working with civil society activists from across Europe to better understand areas of right protection that are being challenged, how we can work on these areas using new techniques and how we can do so transnationally. Our first session took place in Berlin and looked at the topic of digital rights – what are the rights implications of growing digital surveillance and how can we advocate for privacy rights across borders, when living in an age of ubiquitous surveillance? Activists from 12 countries were joined at this session by trainers from the Open Knowledge Foundation, Furtherfield, Tactical Tech and Reporters Without Borders, among more. Lisbon was the location of our second session, which took place in July and looked at economic and social rights, how we can use community engagement as a tool to protect rights and how we can link community-led campaigns across borders. This session was led by Academia Cidada and looked particularly at the work being done in the district of Loures to combat social exclusion. In September we went into our third session, this time in Warsaw and looking at cultural rights. Led by Krytyka Polityczna, this session looked at cultural rights, joining artistic and cultural projects to work on human rights protection and how this is being concretely practiced in Poland. Included in this session were discussions on using artistic means to challenge extreme right violence and campaigning with communities losing cultural heritage. October has seen the fourth of our sessions. This was held in Budapest, led by the Hungarian Europe Society, and focussed on EU legal instruments to enforce rights. has seen the fourth of our sessions. This was held in Budapest, led by the Hungarian Europe Society, and focussed on EU legal instruments to enforce rights. Kicking off our event in Budapest, we held a public conference – What can we do to create a Europe of rights and values? – together with European Civic Forum. Building on previous conferences on the response of the European institutions to systematic breaches of fundamental rights, discussions at this meeting focussed rather on the concrete steps civil society could take to address gaps in rights protection, and what is already being done, from refugee and migrant political activism to the movement against the Spanish protest law. This served to frame a lot of the discussion that took place the coming days, where we looked at what EU institutions can and cannot do to enforce rights protection, in particular looking at the fields of refugee protection, media pluralism and constitutionalism and democracy. We have two more sessions coming up – Media in Venice in January 2016 and Policy in Brussels in February 2016 – and the work is just beginning on how to build or rebuild a Europe of rights and values. An important first step though is knowing that these rights are ours and that we are not alone in fighting for them. By February 2016 over 50 civil society groups and activists ready to work transnationally for fundamental and citizenship rights will be connected across Europe through CREATE|REACT. The EU was ‘founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities’ – together, we can remind the EU of that. Author: Jackson Oldfield
#TEF15: TRANSEUROPA Festival Evaluation
This year’s TRANSEUROPA Festival took place in just one city, Belgrade, instead of 13 as in previous years, while additional activities were held across Europe: Why artivism readings and the game Green Screen Diaries. The festival’s main objective remained the same: bringing different people from different backgrounds, across disciplines and nationalities together to discuss, live and experience another Europe. We received responses from 40 participants. Internally, staff has spent the last month evaluating the festival. Here is an overview of what we have discovered to be the most interesting findings: The overall quality of the TRANSEUROPA Festival Almost everyone (just under 95%) acknowledged the quality of the festival. Just about half (48.7%) of the participants thought the quality was very good and another quarter (25.6%) even stated it was of excellent quality. An additional fifth (20.5%) still rated the quality good. As shown in the upcoming sections, speakers, participants and location have contributed to the high quality of the festival. The decision to have the festival in one city only and the choice of Belgrade Generally, respondents liked the idea of the festival taking place in just one city. Almost 90% said they thought the decision was either very good or good and no one found the idea to be not good at all.That is in the top 3 highest approvals received in the evaluation, topped only by “the chance to meet people from different countries and contexts” (also 90% approval) and the decision to organize the festival in Belgrade (100% approval)To some, the sessions and workshops of the festival were still too widespread across the city and they would “opt for a more centralized festival”, while the internal discussion evolves around the question of whether or not the festival was too centralized already as to be called transeuropean. The quality of speakers, workshops, panels We were very pleased to read the feedback about the speakers at both workshops and panels. Three quarters of speakers were described as being either very or extremely engaging and the choice of topics was acknowledged to be good or very good by nine out of ten people. While the quality of the workshops was rated as high, a problem evolved which is best articulated by the following comment: “[there is a] need to produce documentation for all the activities since we had to choose between equally good ones”. The criticism here, we believe, is an organizational one: Too many things happening at the same time as well as the cost restraints associated with recording each event. This feedback is also reflected in the call for a more centralized festival. Another proof of not only the quality of invited speakers but also of each participant, is the call for more and earlier lightning-talks, which was mentioned in the comments. They were seen as a good means to identify like-minded participants and from the very beginning of the festival discuss possibilities of future collaboration. This leads us to our last section: Follow-up possibilities / for future collaborations We further asked the participants how they would rate the possibility for future collaborations with other participants and/or with European Alternatives. We were delighted that 50% of the respondents said it would be likely or very likely that new projects and collaborations will emerge from their participation in the festival, while almost the entire other half stated that it is possible. Only five percent believed it was not likely. Three quarters (75.7%) of respondents are further interested in collaborating with EA in the future, something that we are already looking forward to. We are constantly looking at new ways to get involved with EA, while we are always open for collaboration ideas from the outside, just get in touch with ideas or proposals. Bringing people together who would not otherwise have met is why we organize the festival, thus these figures fuel our hope for more transnational collaboration between civil society actors, artists and cultural workers. It adds to our belief that there is a chance for an alternative Europe. We are looking forward to hearing from you and participating in projects that have or will have emerged from the festival. We will now turn our minds to the 2016 Transeuropa-Campus before the next edition of TRANSEUROPA Festival in 2017.
Towards a Plan ‘D’ for Democracy in Europe
TalkReal: Towards a Plan ‘D’ for Democracy in Europe
How and why has Europe been split? Which Europe is in crisis? How can people organise to reclaim the European project from neoliberalism and defend it against a plethora of right wing nationalisms? For years we have been told ‘There is No Alternative’, that the status quo is both healthy and here to stay. But as national and transnational institutions struggle to contain a complex and multi-headed crisis it is clearer than ever that radical change represents our only chance of a better future. On this new episode of TalkReal (like it on facebook!) we debate with Walter Baier (Coordinator of Transform), Katerina Anastasiou (Change4All), Kurto Wendt (Convoy Refugee) and Alexandra Strickner (ATTAC Austria) about the future of democracy in Europe, the changing borders and the challenges that transnational movements face today. Hosted by Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives), directed by Berardo Carboni. Find out more on our social media channels: facebook.com/TalkRealTV twitter.com/TalkRealTV Find all the episodes on our youtube channel.
TALKREAL: TOWARDS A PLAN ‘D’ FOR DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE
Come e perché l’Europa si è divisa? Come le persone possono organizzarsi per riprendersi il progetto europeo dalle grinfie del neoliberalismo e difenderlo contro le mire dei nazionalismi delle destre? Per anni ci hanno detto che “Non c’è alternativa”, che lo status quo va bene e non cambierà. Ma siccome le istituzioni nazionali e transnazionali faticano a contenere una crisi complessa e a più facce, è più che mai chiaro che le trasformazioni radicali rappresentano la nostra unica possibilità per un futuro migliore. In questo nuovo episodio di TalkReal (seguici su facebook!) discutiamo con Walter Baier (Coordinator of Transform), Katerina Anastasiou (Change4All), Kurto Wendt (Convoy Refugee) e Alexandra Strickner (ATTAC Austria) del futuro della democrazia in Europa, delle frontiere che si ridefiniscono e delle sfide che i movimenti transnazionali hanno oggi davanti. Condotto da Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives), diretto da Berardo Carboni. Seguici sui nostri canali: facebook.com/TalkRealTV twitter.com/TalkRealTV Guarda gli ultimi episodi: youtube channel.
Paris bomb attacks: music, happiness and rock’n’roll should be part of the answer, not war on terrorism
The simultaneous bomb attacks that hit Paris on November 13 have left us shocked, hurt and almost speechless. After the shock, and while mourning for those directly hit, we needed time to reflect and to see how political leaders reacted. Unfortunately, that response has added insult to injury. The people the attackers targeted were mostly young people – those out on a Friday night in bars, cafés and concert halls – and a population that is living and enjoying a multicultural atmosphere. The targeted activities fall into categories ISIS has labeled as ‘perversion and vice’: rock ‘n’ roll, partying, entertainment. All of which are associated with French and Western culture. The attackers wanted to denounce our ‘way of life’ and to fragment a population that lives largely -so far, and despite well-known social and economic fractures- in peace. In their zeal to appear resolute and strong, our leaders have walked directly into the trap set for them by ISIS: waging war and redoubling military efforts. We agree that the response should be forceful, and indeed include targeted military action to remove the financial and communications capacities of ISIS, but the force of our response should come from the degree to which it opens up political possibilities in Syria and Iraq. Not from the degree of destruction it causes. Several points should be open for discussion and criticism: The use of the term ‘war’ Shortly after the attacks, French President François Hollande and his government announced that the country was officially at war with the terrorists. We remember this rhetoric from then President of the United States, George W. Bush in response to the September 11 attacks. It chills us that France and Europe may repeat this grave, relatively recent mistake. We feel no safer due to action taken by America and its allies in Iraq in the “War on Terror”. In fact, one of the reasons France was targeted is its military presence in Libya and Syria, and bombing of Raqqa. After the Paris attacks it just continues, hurting not only some of the Daech members and supporters but also many civilians. Instead of a ‘war against terrorism’, France and European Countries could use the good old tools of foreign policy and refuse to support countries who are known to finance Daech, or to give money to Turkey, which breaks down on the only people efficiently fighting ISIS on the territory it manages. . Spreading the sense of being at war is dangerous Since Friday night, Parisians have faced closed public utilities, shops, parks, a nominal ‘curfew’ and increased checks before entering buildings. Soldiers are increasingly visible on the streets, adding to the heightened sense of being under siege. This may have reinforced the feeling that people were right to be afraid, as several movements of panic in the streets have shown. At the same time, all these ‘visible actions’ may potentially divert the necessary human means of more useful actions, linked to surveillance of select people, and coordination and cooperation with other countries. And here lies the next threat: that of democracies being the real and open enemies of civil liberties and – because of the so-called anti-terrorism legislations – developing arsenals of surveillance of all civilians that go beyond the surveillance necessary to stop real terrorist threats. Hollande is already proposing to amend the French constitution to allow for a State of Emergency to be declared in new situations and more power to be delegated to the armies. Terrorists are a not powerful army generated by ISIS Home-born terrorists turned trained fighters by ISIS is a threat widely discussed and known. Reports suggests that most of Nov 13 attackers were born in France, as are those who have claimed the action from ISIS-managed territory. In the middle East, ISIS is facing defeats on the territory it manages inflicted by relatively small and badly supported groups such as the Kurds. If they take the matter seriously, it seems not out-of-reach for powerful, wealthy countries to find the right way to defeat the home-based cells and individuals. It may require using new forms of actions, which are not all armed ones, such as addressing the population in danger of radicalisation on its territory and finding the right way to manage them if/when they return. Closing borders Some of the attackers were French citizens, residing in Belgium who drove to Paris in a rented car. On its surface, this would seem to justify increased borders controls between European countries. However, controls do not mean that the threat is well taken into account. Some of the Charlie Hebdo attackers had been subjected to police controls controlled a few days before the attacks, without any further action being taken. Some of the alleged attackers of Paris on November 13 have been controlled by police in France on Sunday November 14 in the morning without further action being taken. This suggests that beyond ‘controlling’ and closing borders, some other type of action – that are more connected with the efficiency of the special intelligence services – should be taken. If we need something today it is probably more Europe and a better interconnection between countries, working together on the same threat and challenges rather than one more action going in the direction of dismantling Europe and its strong advantages, linked to the free movement of people and things. Giving up these things is doing the work of the terrorists for them. The rise of patriotism, the use of the French flag, and the relative silence about bomb attacks in other countries When tragedy strikes, it is not surprising that people want to express solidarity. Still, the widespread use of a national symbol to show solidarity with victims of many different nationalities, as well as a flag that, much like many national flags, is associated with a complicated history seems to exclude the victims of violence and terrorism across the globe. If the idea is to show support to the victims we choose from among…
New campaign launches, calling on ECB’s quantitative easing programme to “serve the people”
European Alternatives is proud to be a part of this new campaign: New campaign launches, calling on ECB’s quantitative easing programme to “serve the people” A coalition of eurozone campaigners, civil society organisations and economists is today calling on the European Central Bank (ECB) to radically change its approach to the current Quantitative Easing (QE) programme. Launching a major campaign across the continent, ‘Quantitative Easing for People’ brings together groups including Social Justice Ireland, Collectif Roosevelt (France), World Future Council (Germany), FairFin (Belgium), European Alternatives and Basic Income Europe. The campaign is also supported by organisations from Italy, Greece, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands (see the full list here). QE began in the eurozone earlier this year, the ECB is currently creating 60 billion Euros each month. The ECB is set to decide next week if it wants to increase QE even further. The eurozone needs a more direct and efficient stimulus.The ECB needs new tools Eric Lonergan, macro fund manager who has written extensively on the topic said: ‘This campaign reflects the growing consensus that monetary policy isn’t working. The ECB needs new tools to combat deflation and achieve its mandate. Countries in the eurozone need to stimulate their economies without increasing public and private debt, without increasing inequality, and without creating bubbles. Cash transfers to households, or QE for People would do just that.’ ‘In fact, QE for People is likely to be so effective that only a fraction of the €60 billion currently being created through QE each month would be necessary under a QE for People program.’ said Bruno Lamour, President of Collectif Roosevelt. The campaign will focus on raising awareness of the failures of the current QE programme, building political momentum around alternative monetary policies and fostering further research. People can signup to the campaign by visiting www.qe4people.eu
This is Sweden, but not as we know it.
Sweden is far from perfect. Since the 1990s and particularly under the previous Alliansen government –made up of the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Centre Party and the Liberal People’s Party– more and more of Sweden’s welfare state has been privatised. Education is suffering as Sweden’s PISA result drops, the privatisation of ambulance services is being criticised in the media for taking profit based decisions on sending emergency-care and Sweden has been undergoing the biggest increase in inequality of any OECD country over the past 25 years. Support for the Sweden Democrats (SD) –a former white supremacist and neo-nazi party that now runs on an anti-immigration platform– has also been growing, with the party reaching 13% in the last election. For all that, Sweden until now had not taken the path of its neighbours in Denmark, Norway and Finland in accepting the far right. All the parliamentary parties in Sweden took a stance of shunning the Sweden Democrats, leading to the extraordinary decision last year of the opposition and government making a pact –the so called December Agreement– to not vote down each other’s budgets for the next eight years (two parliaments) to prevent the Sweden Democrats from having a deciding vote in which budget is approved. Sweden has also taken an almost unique approach to migration. A long-standing consensus has existed amongst all parliamentary political parties, except the Swedish Democrats, that migration into Sweden is positive. And Sweden has long had a generous asylum policy, announcing in 2013 under the centre-right government that all Syrians entering Sweden would be offered permanent residency. However, that is not to say that the conditions for those arriving are ideal – the 2013 riots in Stockholm threw a spotlight on the segregation experienced by some immigrants in Sweden. Things, though, are changing rapidly in Sweden and the consensus which made Sweden special is changing. In September of this year, Sweden put pressure on Denmark to accept asylum claims under Dublin rules, leading to the (very anti-immigration) Danish government closing its borders with Germany. In October, the Christian Democrats, swiftly followed by the Moderate and Liberal People’s Party, announced that they no longer supported the December Agreement, potentially opening the door for the inclusion of the Swedish Democrats, who polling suggests could now have around 20% of the vote, as kingmakers in budget votes. Two weeks ago the government announced it would institute border controls – only allowing those with valid ID cards or passports to enter Sweden. And just two days ago, the Social Democrat-Green government announced a range of measures to restrict asylum for the next three years. This includes rolling back Sweden’s asylum acceptance rules to EU minimum standards, ID checks on all transportation entering Sweden and severe restrictions on family reunification. The leader of the Green Party became visibly upset at a policy that goes against the Green party platform, but she neither resigned nor brought down the government, and marked a departure from the words of the Swedish Foreign Minister, who only in September stated: “We have to show that we are capable of dealing with these numbers…We’ve done it before, in the 1990s with the Balkans. It will be a strain on our systems — education, housing — but we can do it with help. If we shared responsibility between 28 [EU] countries, it would not be a strain.” The policy shift is being framed as a response to overwhelmed immigration authorities: An estimated 190,000 asylum seekers are expected to arrive in Sweden this year, to be absorbed into the existing population of 10 million. However, the total number of asylum seekers in Sweden only breached historical highs this autumn. The previous highest year was 1992, during the breakup for the former Yugoslavia. And while undoubtedly Sweden has stood as an exception in the EU in welcoming refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war and before, and has accepted a vastly higher number of refugees per capita than any other European country, it is also uniquely placed as a country where acceptance of immigration amongst the public is high, and where asylum claims in high numbers have been processed efficiently for decades. The reasons for these changes can perhaps be more closely attributed to a capitulation to the demands of the Sweden Democrats, as seen by the Moderate party’s seeming desire to occupy the far right’s position on refugees and the failure of the Social Democrats and Green Party to make a compelling case for Sweden to endure as a progressive force for a fairer world and to challenge the anti-immigrant narrative. The results of this decision are likely to be felt in two important ways not only for Sweden, but also for the rest of Europe. Firstly, Sweden’s model has served as a check on the more extremist tendencies of other European states. The example that Sweden had shown on the official level in keeping its doors open to refugees and working within the spirit of the Refugee Convention put pressure on other European countries to do the same. Whether this worked or not, the counter-pressure in Sweden restricting asylum is likely to intensify the pressure on Merkel to adopt an ever more restrictive asylum policy in Germany, the only other EU state willing to accept a large number of refugees relative to other EU countries. Recently, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia closed their borders to those who don’t have Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan documents, or who look likely to have come from one of those countries. Hungary has erected a fence, and other countries have threatened to follow suit. It is likely that any change in German asylum policy would create a huge backlog in Greece, which is already under immense financial pressure from the Troika and further push from EU member states for a Turkish solution, to force refugees to remain in camps on the Turkey-Syria border. Secondly, this move is likely to strengthen the rise of the SD. The decision of the Alliansen parties…
Six years of a legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights in the EU: fear, amnesia, revival?
Six years ago today the Lisbon Treaty came into force. And with it the first supranational fundamental rights guarantee – guaranteeing both human and citizen rights. The Development of the Charter of Fundamental Rights can be divided into three major time spans: the time of fear, where certain governments feared the charter to be more progressive and to contain more protections than their national legislation; the time of amnesia, when none of those fears of the governments came true and the charter seemed lost and forgotten in a crisis-shaken Europe and a time of revival, where the European Court of Justice (ECJ) appears to have remembered the charter again. Fear In the wake of negotiating the Nice Treaty in 2000, the European heads of state also agreed to signing a convention of fundamental rights in the EU. This convention, in 2004, played a significant role in the “Constitution for Europe” where it would have been placed prominently in Chapter II. Then, however, the UK and soon thereafter Poland (and even later but unsuccessfully the Czech Republic) got cold feet and opted-out of the charter because they feared they would have to amend their national legislation where it does not meet the EU’s criteria, thus perhaps admitting their fundamental right standards might not be as high as the fundamental rights proclaimed by the EU. Of special concern to the UK were labour rights such as the right to strike and fair working conditions. But the charter was furthermore seen as quite progressive, given the right to protect one’s personal data and bioethics outlined in it, causing hesitation on the part of the UK government. Although it was still a convention without legally binding status back in 2000, the Tories – who were the opposition to Tony Blair’s then Labour Government – were still anxious that it could influence British law making. The opt-out for the UK and Poland was outlined in Protocol 30, which stated that the EU’s competences cannot be extended by the use of the charter and that it does not create “justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom”. In practice, however, the ECJ did not need to “expand” or “create” the power to do this, as it had already ruled on fundamental rights cases and in this way judgments on this issue were already part of the acquis communautaire. It is remarkable that the charter was seen as something so powerful that governments feared national laws would have to be changed, that it was seen as so intruding that the UK and Poland (and the Czech Republic) wanted their national legislation to be “safe” from it. But where was the charter when Victor Orbán decided to limit press freedom? How did it prevent Roma from being deported from France? Amnesia Not much attention has been given to the charter of Fundamental Rights since it was made legally binding in 2009, but relegated to an annex of the Lisbon Treaty. To be fair, the EU has been through a tough phase: a failed constitution, sinking approval among citizens, a watered-down Lisbon treaty and last but not least a financial crisis that had its biggest outbreak in 2008, although the Netherlands for example were under pressure even before that. But when if not in times of crisis would you need fundamental rights to protect you against governmental (both national and EU) decisions? One could put forward the question whether the temporary-employment scheme implemented by Germany to overcome the crisis could still be labelled “fair working conditions”. So the question is: Has this fearsome charter proved to be much less frightening than some might have hoped and others expected? Why, for almost a decade, was the charter was lost and forgotten at the bottom of a treaty that should have been a constitution? Revival All good things come to those who wait. Lately there are signs that the charter may yet be revived. Maybe it is because of a reignited interest in EU affairs – at least if you take TTIP and migration to Europe as EU affairs – that the ECJ remembered the charter. Or maybe it is that legal issues just take time at a supranational level. Be that as it may, in 2015 the ECJ did something extraordinary: it overruled the safe harbor agreement with the United States – arguing that it is not compatible with the right to protect one’s personal data as outlined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. That is quite a controversial ruling on a very controversial topic and it comes at a time where rights in general are being discussed again throughout Europe – be it the right to asylum (Articles 18 and 19) in the wake of so many who had to flee their homes and now seek shelter and a new home in the EU, or the right to protect one’s data (Article 8), which could be under threat by the trade agreement with the US. It is time that the national governments and the EU itself start to fear the Charter of Fundamental Rights once more. It is time that we remind the national governments and the EU of the fundamental rights they have granted us six years ago and it is time we stand up and claim our rights. Not just for us but for everyone in Europe whether they are EU citizens or have just arrived. Six years after they were made legally binding, it is about time we made use of our rights. Read more: Citizen Rights, TTIP and the right to protect personal data, by Keno Franke Picture by: Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier (CC BY-SA 2.0)
WoMidan Declaration
We call out to women’s activists, both men and women, everywhere to join networks and speak up and out with confidence to promote women’s rights and equality. Our work and participation is essential for social change, and that places us in a position of strength. The Midan gave birth to many movements that have already achieved a deep shift in attitudes towards greater equality for women, and this legacy must be built upon even in periods of political upheaval, war or oppression. We call out to women’s activists, both men and women, everywhere to join networks and speak up and out with confidence to promote women’s rights and equality. Our work and participation is essential for social change, and that places us in a position of strength. Finally, we would like to dedicate this declaration to all the women activists who lost their lives, are in detention or are suffering whilst fighting in the Midan. Your voices have been heard, and we are dedicated to amplifying them. Stockholm – 2 December 2015 We, the participants at the WoMidan seminar, come together from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Ukraine, France, Italy, Greece, Sweden, and other European countries as young activists for women’s rights and empowerment. We are women and men from different backgrounds, religions, professions, and with diverging political views, but we all share the belief that the empowerment of women is a precondition for sustainable change and progress. While we come from diverse contexts, our societies face serious challenges in regards to gender equality and equal political, economic and social participation and opportunities. Recent experiences in the Midans (“Squares”), of our cities have shown that women, when they participate and speak out, are particularly subject to physical, sexual and psychological violence; to disempowering stereotypes; to hate speech and other forms of abuse. We have come together to identify priorities and actions for women’s activism, among which: Establishing a secure environment for women to be engaged in spurring social and political change It is imperative for civil society, media and in particular governments to take action to ensure that women are safe when they raise their voices or exercise their political rights. Governments should be put under pressure to ensure accountability for any use of violence or threats of violence targeted against women by the police, military, other agents of the state, by armed groups and by individuals. Civil society and international community should constantly monitor and report violence against women to build pressure for concerted action. Education Formal and informal – is a crucial vector for changing attitudes and gender misperceptions in order to provide all with skills, confidence and opportunities to be fully engaged in public life. Media practitioners Media practitioners have a particularly important responsibility in combatting gender stereotypes in both language and images, and ensuring a plural and diverse public sphere. Gender equality and reducing gender gaps are in the interests of everyone The issues of work-life balance, different career choices and sexual freedom are ever more important issues of our times for both men and women. Civil society organisations, social movements and individual activists have a responsibility to come together In and beyond the Midan – to share experiences, build solidarity, organize themselves politically and work together to ensure an empowering environment for women.
How to combat radicalisation and terrorism
The roundtable on ‘Counter narratives and community-based approaches to preventing and combatting radicalisation’ was celebrated at the Conference of North South Centre and Council of Europe.
Ensuring a fair digital single market
The European Commission is about to open to a revision of the Audiovisual Directive, the European law setting minimum media standards.
#StateofSolidarity: the call of activists around Europe
Almost 30 activists from Greece, Western Balkans and the rest of Europe are calling to groups and individuals to mobilise next December 18th to support all the millions of refugees.
Nuova politica spagnola: cambiamento in comune.
Naomi Klein on COP21: “Our leaders have failed us; the leadership has to come from below”
We spoke with Naomi Klein at the red line of the climate march in Paris during the COP21. She believes that leadership to confront global warming has to come from the citizens.
Naomi Klein at the COP21 Global Climate Summit
Transeuropa Festival 2015
Interview with Katja Kippimg (Die Linke)
Teresa Forcades in conversation with Sandro Mezzadra
Jerome Roos (ROAR Magazine) in conversation with Katerina Anastasiou (Transform!)
Julien Bayou (Europe Ecologie – Les Verts)
Caroline Lucas: Another Europe beyond Brexit
¿PlanB para Europa? Miguel Urbán y Lorenzo Marsili
Civil Society Forum of the Western Balkans
Il Forum della Società Civile del Western Balkans Summit Series riunisce più di 100 attivisti e rappresentanti della società civile dell’Unione Europea e dei Balcani occidentali per formulare raccomandazioni per il futuro del progetto europeo e per l’integrazione dei paesi dei Balcani occidentali.
Talk Real London « Exit Europe?
DiEM25 a Roma con Yanis Varoufakis
Democracy in Europe: DiEM25 in Rome with Yanis Varoufakis
La sinistra e l’Europa
Sandro Mezzadra about DiEM25
MARGINALIA
Luca Casarini in the launching event of DiEM25
Social Movements in the Balkans: From Protests to Plenums
Annual General Meeting of European Alternatives!
Environmental racism in Eastern Europe
LIVE Streaming: First European Commons Assembly
Building a Platform for Facilitating and Regenerating the Commons. European Parliament, Brussels. November 16, 2016 Co-hosted by MEPs: Marisa Matias (GUE/NGL), Dario Tamburrano (EFDD), Ernest Urtasun (Greens/EFA), Sergio Cofferati (S&D) Board’s members of the Working Group on Common Goods within the Intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services & in collaboration with Julia Reda, Monika Vana (Greens/EFA) and Ignazio Corrao (EFDD) Streaming (EN, IT): https://youtu.be/0wEB1FQLNJE The meeting is co-organised by the Working Group on Common Goods and the participants of the European Commons Assembly. The aims are to give visibility to the commons movement and to launch a platform for commoners to share experiences, practices, and policy proposals, and to exchange with MEPs engaged in bringing the commons perspective at the institutional level. The platform will make concrete proposals and promote direct participation in the EU institutions. The assembly intends to be a collaborative and participatory process. PROGRAM 14.00 Accreditation 14.30 -14.45 Welcome and framing of European Commons Assembly Marisa Matias, president of the Intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services 14:45 -15.00 Who are the commoners of Europe? Introductions of groups working on the commons coming from across Europe 15:00 -15.45 Sharing examples and testimonies Stories on how commons-based thinking influenced policy 15.45 -15.55 Video messages from well-known commons leaders 15.55 -16.20 Debating policy proposals on commons from commoners (Part 1) Selected proposals from the European Commons Assembly 16:20 -16.30 Coffee break 16:30 -16.50 Debating policy proposals on commons from commoners (Part 2) Selected proposals from the European Commons Assembly 16.50 -17.30 Building a platform for facilitating and regenerating the commons Dialogue on how commons-based policy and networks can contribute to effective policy-making in the EU, starting from the example of the communication “A European agenda for collaborative economy”, currently under discussion in the EP 17:30 -18.00 Closing Remarks 18:00 End of Session – Reception at Mundo-b, Rue d’Edimbourg 26, Ixelles
#AlternativesNow: Change Europe with us
The last years have been very challenging one for Europe. From the financial and euro crisis, the rise of far-right political forces all around Europe, the war in Ukraine, to the self-made refugee ‘crisis’, Brexit and the authoritarian repression in Turkey, many of us are now experiencing the Europe we do not want to live in. All those trends are toxic to democracy and human rights and, as they are becoming the norm, we need a transnational response reclaiming Europe and pushing for #alternativesnow. Support us and help us fight back and push for alternatives Over the past 10 years, together with our partners and members, we have brought thousands of activists and civil society actors together to learn from each other and inspire news ideas of programs and campaigns for change. Only cooperation and organising beyond borders, connecting the local to the transnational, can shift power to the people in European and succeed over the rise of the far-right and the powers of neo-liberalism. In the run up of our 10th anniversary, we demand #alternativesnow. By supporting European Alternatives, its partners and members, you are giving us the chance to shape the Europe we want to live in: Citizen-led and open European political institutions, parties and other forms of governance connecting the local to the transnational Creative cultures and alternative media that questions politics as usual Inclusive European citizenship guaranteeing fundamental human rights Alternative, anti-oppressive and socially inclusive economic models promoting solidarity, mutual care and responsibility. Without your help, no transnational action is possible. Donate any amount to support our community and demand #alternativesnow
Civil Society Forum Skopje: 24 – 26 November
CSF Skopje: “Reclaiming Democracy, Europe and Social Justice” The Civil Society Forum of the Western Balkans Summit Series brings together more than 100 activists and representatives of civil society from the European Union and the Western Balkans to formulate recommendations for the future of the European project, and the integration of the Western Balkans countries. November 24th – 26th 2016 The CSF Skopje will take place from 24-26 November 2016 in Skopje, Macedonia gathering over 100 civil society members from across the region to discuss the following issues: What kind of re-claiming of hijacked terms (Democracy, Europe, Social Justice) do we need and how can we achieve it? Do the alternatives exist only in theory or they can become vital sources of change in the societies in the region? We see emancipatory potential in the region of Southeastern Europe taking into account the social movements and the civic activism visible in the past two years across the region. With this Forum we also wish to encourage a culture of constructive dialogue with all stakeholders including the ones from the governmental institutions. The CSF Skopje hopes to unite fellow citizens in thinking, in providing food-for-thought and motivation for action by collaborating and creating new networks, in raising awareness for major concerns and in creating and effectively communicating a new Vision of Democracy in Southeast Europe. The Civil Society Forum series is focused on establishing a sustainable and relevant second-track platform in the Berlin Process which creates impulses for both decision-makers and wider European debates. Finally, the Civil Society Forums have to be recognized as a relevant segment for the governments and politicians in the region and to continuously create the urge to maintain closer cooperation with the civil society in the future. The Civil Society Forum Skopje is organized under the umbrella of the Civil Society Forum of the Western Balkans Summit Series as a joint initiative of the European Fund for the Balkans, ERSTE Foundation, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and European Alternatives. The local partners of the Civil Society Forum Skopje are the Macedonian Centre for European Training, JEF Macedonia and the Youth Educational Forum.
New World Embassy: Rojava
The New World Embassy: Rojava is a temporary embassy that will be constructed in Oslo, and which represents, through cultural means, the ideals of “stateless democracy” developed by the communities of the autonomous region of Rojava, northern-Syria The Embassy will operate for two consecutive days, bringing representatives from Rojava together with international politicians, diplomats, academics, journalists, students, artists, and more. The New World Embassy: Rojava is a temporary embassy that will be constructed in Oslo, and which represents, through cultural means, the ideals of “stateless democracy” developed by the communities of the autonomous region of Rojava, northern-Syria. The embassy will consist of a large-scale oval shaped architectural structure, designed as an “ideological planetarium.” The Embassy will operate for two consecutive days, bringing representatives from Rojava together with international politicians, diplomats, academics, journalists, students, artists, and more. Lorenzo Marsili, co-director of European Alternatives, will speak at the closing event about the need to create the spaces to do politics, to rethink power and to open the way to new political institutions. We must immediately take a firm stand and support the right to self-determination of people. Rojava is the symbol of this. Through open deliberation and public discussion the New World Embassy: Rojava proposes a platform to build new transnational relationships and explore alternative models of people’s diplomacy. This includes an analysis of the history, ideals, and implementation of stateless democracy; of the successes of Rojava in building a new civil society in a war-torn region; and finally the alternative that Rojava proposes in order to confront the crises of democracy seen on a global scale. Download here the program The New World Embassy: Rojava is a collaboration between Studio Jonas Staal and the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava. The project is part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016, After Belonging: A Triennale In Residence, On Residence and the Ways We Stay in Transit, and funded and co-produced by KORO, Public Art Norway (URO).
No to the Europe of Walls: Building Together the European Democracy
We intend to act to make sure that on March 25, 2017 a public space on the future of the Union is opened, in the context of a broader constituent process, involving local and regional communities, social stakeholders and civil society organisations, together with the citizens’ representatives at the national and European level. Democratic Europe will survive if its citizens will foster its change. For all these reasons, we commit to involve citizens, territories, and movements in a resounding popular initiative on March 25, 2017. Transeuropa 2013 – Building walls photo by Eurpean Alternatives The idea of overcoming the division of Europe between sovereign States was born in the most dramatic moment of the “sleep of Reason”, when most of the continent was occupied by the Nazi Army. This idea was summarised in the “Ventotene Manifesto”, in which the thought of a Federal State is matched with the action for European democracy, peace, and fight against inequality. The European integration process took shape and substance on March 25, 1957 through gradual common achievements. The latter have realised the original idea of European unity only in part, but have simultaneously extended to new policies and countries. For most Europeans, they represent an irreversible movement, and they have developed in an increasing number of citizens a European political conscience as guarantee of peace, rights, and progress. This political conscience belongs to us all and we fully identify in the idea that the development of European society and the role of the Union as tool of peace and international cooperation in a globalised world can be guaranteed only through a democratically shared sovereignty. To this original idea are connected values such as human dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity and justice, recognised by the Charter of Fundamental Rights that bounds the Union and the Member States. In the last ten years, the progressive lack of European solutions to problems such as social exclusion, unemployment – in particular of youth and women –, poverty, and citizens’ safety – together with economic policies that violated the values recognised in the Charter of fundamental rights – has created a concrete and shared dissent, a feeling of frustration towards the European Union project. The financial crisis management (of which mainly national governments have been in charge) and the wrongful economic policies of Member States slowed down the investments in the real economy that are necessary to achieve sustainable development and have exacerbated income inequality. The imposition of austerity measures has produced risks for and impoverishment of the European social model, while inclusive policies to foster the creation of a pluralist society have not been implemented. National logics prevailed over the search for common interests and the intergovernmental decision making – the one in which governments alone are entrusted with decisions and that lacks substantial democratic legitimacy – had paralysing, unequal, and non-transparent effects. Walls have been built using national egoism as bricks; racism and reactionary movements grew in strength, while the dream of a common European home – that was so close in the night of November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell – risks now to disintegrate. The realisation of political unity is the necessary condition to change European policies: to end austerity, to scrap the fiscal compact, to implement European initiatives in the fields of employment, environment and common goods as lever for development, to initiate long term social investments focused in particular on education, culture, training and research, to achieve a “no-carbon” economy together with a harsh fight against climate change, to introduce European loans and mortgages. The realisation of political unity is the necessary condition for the creation of a basic income based on citizenship and a European Civil Service, to establish a European insurance scheme against unemployment, a common Asylum and immigration policy endowed with adequate resources and humanitarian channels allowing a safe arrival and the social integration of those escaping from war, hunger and environmental disasters, a unique voice on foreign policy that overcomes the intergovernmental decision-making, a serious plan on development cooperation and aid and a neighborhood policy to build a Mediterranean area of peace, democracy, co-existence, and free movement. We are also convinced that it is necessary and urgent to act to allow European citizens to benefit from the value of interdependence and from a shared sovereignty by creating the constitutional conditions to grant them an active role in the decision-making process. We are convinced that it is necessary to take human rights as a starting point, and that the first right is the one to a European democracy where sovereignty belongs to citizens; this, in order to establish a community capable to provide them with those common goods that would otherwise be subjugated to the fight between contrasting national interests. For all these reasons, we intend to act to make sure that on March 25, 2017 a public space on the future of the Union is opened, in the context of a broader constituent process, involving local and regional communities, social stakeholders and civil society organisations, together with the citizens’ representatives at the national and European level. Democratic Europe will survive if its citizens will foster its change. For all these reasons, we commit to involve citizens, territories, and movements in a resounding popular initiative on March 25, 2017. LIST OF SIGNATORIES 1. MOVIMENTO EUROPEO-ITALIA 2. ALTERNATIVA EUROPEA 3. ASSOCIAZIONE DEI GIORNALISTI EUROPEI (AGE) 4. ASSOCIAZIONE DELLE AGENZIE DELLA DEMOCRAZIA LOCALE (ALDA) 5. ASSOCIAZIONE EUROPEA DEGLI INSEGNANTI (AEDE) 6. ASSOCIAZIONE INTERNAZIONALE EX-COMUNITARI EUROPEI (AIACE) 7. ASSOCIAZIONE ITALIANA DEL CONSIGLIO DEI COMUNI E DELLE REGIONI D’EUROPA (AICCRE) 8. ASSOCIAZIONE MONDIALE SCUOLA STRUMENTO DI PACE (E.I.P) 9. ASSOCIAZIONE NAZIONALE DONNE ELETTRICI (ANDE) 10. ASSOCIAZIONE PUBBLICI CITTADINI 11. ASSOCIAZIONE UNIVERSITARIA DI STUDI EUROPEI (AUSE) 12. ASSOCIAZIONI CRISTIANE LAVORATORI ITALIANI (ACLI) 13. CENTRO EINSTEIN DI STUDI INTERNAZIONALI (CESI) 14. CesUE 15. COLLEGIO NAZIONALE DEGLI AGROTECNICI E DEGLI AGROTE CNICI LAUREATI 16. CONFERENZA DEI PRESIDENTI DELLE ASSEMBLEE LEGISLATIVE DELLE REGIONI E DELLE PROVINCE AUTONOME 17. FEDERAZIONE ITALIANA DEGLI ENTI E SCUOLE DI ISTRUZIONE E FORMAZIONE (FIDEF) 18. FEDERAZIONE NAZIONALE DEGLI INSEGNANTI (FNISM) 19. FONDAZIONE ROMA EUROPEA 20. FORUM TUNISINO PER LA CITTADINANZA MEDITERRANEA 21. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND LEADERSHIP SCHOOL (ICLS) 22. ISTITUTO…
Back to the Colourful Revolution
European Activism: What grassroots alternatives are growing across Europe?
The Best of European Alternatives in 2016
If you have followed us throughout 2016, you have seen that, together with our network of activists and partners, we have contributed to shift power to the people. In 2016, we have achieved a lot together, and we want to continue doing it next year both at the grassroots and the institutional level. What we have achieved this year? 1. Strategizing for a more open, equal and democratic Europe At the end of August, together with 80 activists from all over Europe, we strategized and planned actions to build transnational alternatives to politics as usual at the Campus of European Alternatives. From artists to city representatives, and from journalists to activist networkers, we have developed new collaborations and showed that transnational cooperation is key to overcome the challenges we face in Europe. 2. Talk Real: political and activist voices made visible Throughout the year, we have brought together political and civil society voices to debate on burning issues in Europe and organised talks at major alternative events. We have run more than 10 episodes and dozens of interviews, covering a range of topics such as Brexit or activism in the Balkans. We also were present at high level events such as the launch of DiEM25 in Berlin and in Rome and gave visibility to major drivers of change in Europe. Besides, at the end of 2016 we launched a new format for the talk-show that we will continue developing along 2017. 3. Empowering Western Balkans activists and civil society We have co-organised the EU-Western Balkans Civil Society Forum in Paris and Skopje for more than 100 activists and civil society organisations to have a say in the debate on the future of the Western Balkans. Together they made strong policy recommendations for the future of Europe and for the region which were taken to decision makers. 4. On the way to a network of “rebel” cities in Europe We have offered our experience of networking throughout Europe to discuss the establishment of an active network of cities with alternative and progressive governments and municipal movements. A cooperation that operates establishing a permanent exchange between innovative local experiences as a mutual learning ground – for instance on recuperating public control over essential services-; and increasing political pressure on national governments and European institutions. To do so, during the last months we have been establishing contacts and bringing together some of these inspiring experiences in a series of public events in Messina, Rome, or Marghera. Before the year ends, we want to thank all those who have been with us cooperating, defending and constructing our idea of European citizenship, alternative media platforms, open institutions, and an economy based on the commons. 2017 will arrive with new opportunities to experiment on new spaces and with new narratives, different practices of plurality. We need to take a step forward, think and act on a plurality of impulses for a possible transformation. This can be the year, join us!
Ten Years of European Alternatives
‘Europe: An unfinished adventure’ is the title of a book by Zygmunt Bauman that was formative for European Alternatives, and one of the reasons we invited him to give the opening lecture of our very first activity – the London Festival of Europe – in March 2007. Almost 10 years later, and a couple of days from the passing away of Bauman, we can also say (with a tone of humility) ‘European Alternatives: an unfinished adventure’. The opening lecture by Zygmunt Bauman for the London Festival of Europe in 2007 launched European Alternatives One of our concerns in launching European Alternatives was to contribute to reenergise a continent we felt was at risk of slumbering into irrelevance, incapable of finding the cultural and political resources to renew itself. A cursory glance over the past ten years suggests that at the level of the political institutions and elites this energy for renewal has indeed been lacking; but at the same time, a grass-roots politics of contestation and civic invention has been spreading across the continent, and European Alternatives has been networking the dispersed elements of this renewal whilst acting as a trailblazer of a radical transnational European citizenship. At the beginning of 2017, where so much seems in peril and we might be inclined to become defensive, it is vital to keep in mind that Europe is at its best where it is experimental, audacious and adventurous; that the fortune of Europe is to be unfinishable, open, permeable and curious. This is the Europa that generates enthusiasm, inspiration and opens a space for alternatives to emerge. At the beginning of 2017, where so much seems in peril and we might be inclined to become defensive, it is vital to keep in mind that Europe is at its best where it is experimental, audacious and adventurous; that the fortune of Europe is to be unfinishable, open, permeable and curious. This is the Europa that generates enthusiasm, inspiration and opens a space for alternatives to emerge. 10 years ago, the first physical space that European Alternatives opened to work was a disused warehouse just off Brick Lane in London. With no heating and highly unreliable internet, a first team of people coming from all over the world worked from one of the most cosmopolitan streets of one of the most cosmopolitan cities to call for an alternative path for a Europe of democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state. We did not think that the nation-state had already vanished: we thought precisely that in the twilight of the national world there would be manifold attempts to resurrect it, but that it would be resurrected as a monster; that any hopeful, positive politics in our century and in this part of the world must be at least European in scope and imagination. 10 years later, we have seen some of those monsters resurrected, whether it be in Orban’s Hungary, Kazynscki’s Poland, May’s Brexit Britain or elsewhere. 10 years on from our first activities at the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, for the at the 60th anniversary, we will organise major events in Rome and elsewhere and work fervently to call together a coalition of citizens and organisations to at once imagine, demand and enact an alternative for Europe. Over the decade, European Alternatives has extended its membership, network and activity across the length and breadth of the continent and beyond, and has offices in several cities (with heating!) 10 years on from our first activities at the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, for the 60th anniversary, we will organise major events in Rome and elsewhere and work fervently to call together a coalition of citizens and organisations to at once imagine, demand and enact an alternative for Europe. We know it can be done; indeed, it is the only realistic option for a liveable future. The status-quo cannot and must not hold, and regressive nationalist fantasies offer no solutions. Working together with you, in the spirit of camaraderie that comes with adventure, over the next decade we will work for a Europe lives up to its promise as a transformative force for peace, reconciliation and democracy in the world. Niccolò Milanese, Chair of European Alternatives
Positions on Corruption
Re-Build Refuge Europe, a new project to counteract the discourses of crisis
European Alternatives leads Re-Build Refuge Europe, a project that brings together partners from the UK, Sweden, Spain, Finland and Germany, and Greece. It aims to counteract the dominant discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘threat’ by using art, culture and innovative practices allowing European citizens and refugees to learn from each other as equals. Activities of the project include storytelling, training and workshops for participants and the digital arts. The results of these collective practices, will be shaped into an exhibition format and presented to the public as part of the Athens Biennale 2017 and published as a book. In the next stage, they will travel to the TRANSEUROPA Festival 2017 in Madrid. The recent influx of refugees in Europe, mostly from the Middle East and Northern African countries, is widely interpreted in media and political discourse as a crisis and a threat. In several national elections the extreme right and openly xenophobic parties have gained substantive support. Re-build Refuge Europe’s objective is to counteract this discourse and beliefs. It builds on creative cultural proposals and offers spaces for processes of co-creation to be developed, in which refugees and migrants are considered as a constitutive part of the remaking of European communities. Actions to support the recent newcomers are mushrooming all over Europe, often focusing by necessity on aid, social and economic support. We believe that it is the cultural role and duty of Europe to welcome refugees properly and to allow for cultural hybridisation to happen. We believe that only by fully realising the potential of cultural hybridisation and by being a welcoming and supportive area will Europe build a secure society for its future, inside and outside its borders. The project Re-build Refuge Europe provides the space to link up cultural actors and societal actors mobilised in different corners of Europe to exchange and build new practices. This project produces innovative practices that allow European citizens and refugees to work together on equal footing and learn from each other. It also uses a creative mix of mediums to raise European citizens’ knowledge of issues at stake for refugees and in making Europe a place of Refuge where all people can feel safe. The Creative Europe programme funds activities that recognise and celebrate the contribution refugees and migrants make to cultural diversity in Europe. Culture can be a means for refugees and migrants to meet, communicate with and become part of existing communities. All the information about the project activities, deadlines and details on how to participate, will be soon published.
The commons as a renewed political force for Europe
The European Commons Assembly continue exploring how commoners can bring the advent of political alternatives from the local to the European level, and articulate joint demands for urgent political issues. The commons are emerging and developing to become a political force with the strength to contract neoliberalism. The first European Commons Assembly, launched in November 2016 with approximately 150 commoners at various spaces around Brussels and the European Parliament, can be understood as the evidence of the aspirations and discourse of the commons becoming a renewed political force. The on-going nature of the ECA, aims to lay the foundations for a united and strong European commons movement based on a twofold goal: 1) support the decentralised activities of commoners and their engagement in concrete, collaborative and bottom-up actions and 2) give a voice to the commons and campaign at the European level, including in the institutions, to build a flourishing European political civil-society movement for the commons. The ECA continue exploring how we can bring the advent of creative institutions and political alternatives from the local to the European level, and articulate joint demands for urgent political issues, including: Empowering community renewable energy. Internet infrastructures as a commons Territories of commons as reservoirs of sustainable food production, biodiversity, cultural heritage, climate change resilience Open research and science with citizen participation for social and environmental objectives. Copyright reform for access to knowledge and information Transparency and direct citizen participation in political institutions. Supporting and financing urban commons for culture, co-housing, transport, food production. Sustainable and democratic management of natural resources and biodiversity. As the European institutions are losing efficiency and credibility in tackling most urgent issues of our times, the commons movements are claiming to go beyond borders and serve as the ground to start implementing new policies to address the “democratic deficit”. Throughout Europe, European citizens are increasingly aware of the need for a different model of globalisation. From those resisting the privatisation of resources to the occupation of public spaces against neoliberalism, the commons movement aims to be the political expression of European citizens.
Refusing to choose between the establishment and nationalism
The year 2016 has made clear that now, more than ever, is the right time for citizens to reclaim the future of Europe. The year 2016 has made clear that now, more than ever, is the right time for citizens to reclaim the future of Europe. The far-right movements across Europe and beyond are channeling the fear, anger and despair against the most vulnerable, the refugees, the migrants and the unemployed. This is not our vision of Europe. The Eurosceptics are seeking for more influence in the European Union in the year of Brexit, Trump and populism; in the year in which referendums in the United Kingdom, Italy and the Netherlands, were clear signs of rejection to the establishment. At European Alternatives we refuse to choose between the establishment and nationalism: we believe there are alternative ways to construct a different narrative for our continent. At European Alternatives we refuse to choose between the establishment and nationalism: we believe there are alternative ways to construct a different narrative for our continent. The status-quo will not be reversed until citizens feel empowered to be the owners of their destiny with the strength enough to imagine, demand and enact the Europe they want and not the one that is being imposed. Back in 2007, we started defending the need for a structural counter proposal to the establishment and a reinvention of the European democracy. This proposal can only come out of alliances and synergies from social movements, civil society organisations, trade unions, activists, artists, citizens and political representatives from the local to the transnational level. After one decade of existence, our position remains unchanged: only re-imagining, redefining and re-telling the meaning of Europe, and who are its people, can shift the feeling of disengagement and distrust, dangerously prevalent among young generations. In our effort to bring Europe closer to the citizens, we have worked in 2016 mobilising our members, partners and citizens via debates, open events, international seminars, online and offline articles, video productions, social media campaigns, and more, aiming to reverse the European apathy and fight nationalism. In this report, you can find out more about the projects, publications, events and campaigns we have led together with our partners and networks in 2016. You can also read about what objectives we set for the coming year and ways to engage with us.
Youth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe
Youth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe Europe House – London, 20th February at 17:00 In the year in which the Erasmus programme turns 30, Brexit will be officially triggered by UK Government. This means that in the next few years, British young people will most likely lose their European citizenship rights of freedom of movement in the EU: it seems politically inevitable that some or all restrictions on free movement of people between the UK and other EU member states will be imposed once the UK formally leaves the EU. As the free movement of people remains uncertain, so does access to Erasmus+ and other European mobility and volunteering programmes for UK nationals. How will this affect youth mobility? What will the impact be for people with fewer opportunities? And will the Erasmus+ programme continue to be accessible for British youth? These are some of the questions that will be discussed at the event “Youth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe”, organised by Volonteurope, Volunteering Matters and European Alternatives. The event will reflect upon and draw from the learning of the Erasmus+ funded project EVS4ALL, which was aimed at highlighting the need to make European Voluntary Service (EVS) more inclusive and accessible to young people with fewer opportunities. A set of Policy Recommendations aimed at improving the access to EVS for disadvantaged youth will be presented and discussed during the event, while young people, who have experienced cross-border mobility through EVS and other European mobility programmes and opportunities, will join speakers from European policy networks to discuss the future of youth mobility in post-Brexit Europe.
For an international peace movement for Syria
Six years ago the citizens of Syria rose up to call for freedom and social justice. The legitimate interests of these citizens should be kept at the center for any plan to resolve the conflict. Unilateral military intervention in Syria will not pave the way to peace. European countries acting as cheerleaders for such a move is shortsighted and shameful, as is continuing to sell weapons to countries in the Golf suppressing their own citizens or those of neighbouring countries. As the situation in Syria continues to degenerate, as the Assad regime continues to show its disdain for its own citizens, and as the lives of Syrians are taken hostage by geopolitics, we call for civil society groups and organisations from throughout the Middle East, Europe, the USA and elsewhere to join into a peace movement demanding a ceasefire, negotiations, humanitarian corridors and a humane program for refugees fleeing the conflict. Peaceful civil society groups should be included in an international summit to plan a multilateral resolution to the Syria conflict alongside state actors and the belligerents. Such an international summit ultimately needs to include the USA, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, the EU, representatives of the different factions at war in Syria, the Kurds from Rojava, and civil society groups. The people of Syria need to be given their right to decide the future of their country by peaceful means, and it is time for citizens internationally to stand alongside them, before we are all pulled even further into global conflict that can only escalate and spread. We call for an immediate halt and investigation into war crimes in Syria and for a no-fly zone to be imposed in Syria to stop bombing of innocent civilians.
On the Road to Rome
Over the past decade, European Alternatives has extended its membership, network and activity across the length and breadth of the continent and beyond. Today, 10 years on from our first activities at the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, for the 60th anniversary, we are joining and co-organising major events and initiatives in the city of Rome and work fervently to call together a coalition of citizens and organisations to at once imagine, demand and enact an alternative for Europe. We know it can be done; indeed, it is the only realistic option for a liveable future. The status-quo cannot and must not hold, and regressive nationalist fantasies offer no solutions. CALL FROM La Nostra Europa: “We are coming together to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in the full knowledge that we must change Europe, to stop it from falling apart, to avoid a social and environmental catastrophe and to keep authoritarianism at bay. Our common heritage, built on victories and progress in the area of rights and democracy, together with our welfare state, is being eroded, as are our hopes and aspirations. In recent years, because of unfair treaties, austerity, the predominance of finance, the rollback of entitlements, increasing job insecurity and discrimination against young people and women, Europe has also experienced an increase in inequality and poverty. Today we stand at a crossroads and must choose: between saving human lives and saving banking and finance; between fully guaranteeing and gradually eroding human rights; between peaceful coexistence and war; between democracy and dictatorship. Mistrust, fear and social insecurity are increasing, while racism, reactionary nationalism, walls, borders, and barbed wire are on the rise. Another Europe is necessary, urgent and possible, and it is up to us to create it. We must denounce policies that threaten Europe’s very existence; demand supranational democratic institutions that truly have a popular mandate, and are adequately resourced; respect the rights enshrined in the European Charter of Human Rights; defend positive achievements; propose alternatives and fight to make them a reality whether in the Mediterranean area or beyond Europe’s borders. We need an innovative and courageous plan for European unity: a plan that guarantees a viable future for everyone based on democracy and freedom, rights and equality, a willingness to embrace gender issues, social and climate justice, dignity for people and the work they do, solidarity and openness, peace and environmental sustainability. Instead of putting the Italians, French or English first, we must put everyone first: northern, southern, eastern and western Europeans; people born here and migrants alike; men and women. Let Rome be a wellspring of solidarity and unity that allows us to create a framework that transcends our differences and equips us for the challenges facing us on our continent and all over the world. We invite you to respond to this call, to promote, within this common framework, other upcoming events and gatherings in Italy and all over Europe, and to come to Rome on 23, 24 and 25 March, to engage in initiatives, meetings, actions and activities that will allow us to stand together, in solidarity.” For subscriptions and info: nostraeuropa2017@gmail.com CALL FROM The March For Europe: “For 60 years the European Communities and then the European Union have helped ensure Europe’s peace, prosperity and progress. Europe has guaranteed peace and the rule of law after centuries of wars. Europe has been the driver of democracy for European countries escaping dictatorships and totalitarianism. Europe has been crucial for the economic and social progress of European countries over the decades. Europe has inspired other regions of the world in their search for unity and modernity. Yet, Europe remains an incomplete construction at risk of collapsing if not completed without delay. Faced with a struggling economy and fading influence in a globalised world dominated by continental powers, we Europeans cannot close ourselves within national borders hoping to fence problems off. European states will have no future if they remain divided and compete with each other instead of standing united. Going back to nationalism will weaken us all. We can stand up to European challenges only together, by completing Europe’s political unity. We call on the Heads of State and Government meeting in Rome on 25th March 2017 to approve a roadmap to relaunch and complete Europe’s economic and political unity. As the European Union has a single currency, the Euro, there should be a European economic policy with European own resources to modernise and relaunch the European economy. As the European Union has a common external border, it should be managed jointly by a European border force. As wars and instability afflict the regions around Europe, European defence forces should protect Europe, help to pacify our neighbourhood and contribute to managing international crises and conflicts. As threats of international terrorism and international crime increase, they should be prevented and combated through European cooperation and with European support. As national democracies can’t govern political and economic forces beyond national borders, only a European government and a truly European democracy would allow European citizens to control their own destiny. For those who believe in a strong, united and democratic Europe, it is time to stand up. Against nationalism and populism. For a Europe of unity against divisions and new walls. For a united Europe that delivers on its promises of peace, freedom, security, prosperity. For a Europe of solidarity and shared responsibility. For a Europe that protects European interests and values in the world. For a Europe of democracy that empowers European citizens. For a Europe of hope, against a Europe of fear. For a plan to relaunch and complete European political unity.”
Re-Build Refuge Europe
Re-Build Refuge Europe è stato un progetto che mirava a contrastare i discorsi dominanti di “crisi” e “minaccia” utilizzando l’arte, la cultura e le pratiche innovative che permettono ai cittadini europei e ai rifugiati di imparare gli uni dagli altri come pari.
One step further to an inclusive Europe
After more than 30 years of mobility programmes within the EU, the benefits of cross-border mobility of young people in terms of solidarity are remarkable. However, the accessibility of the these programmes must be questioned: programmes should be accessible for all young people, regardless of their educational and social background, and at this juncture of Euro-scepticism and increasing social inequality, it is important to strengthen inclusive approaches. European Voluntary Service for All (EVS4ALL) is an such an initiative that aims to make European Voluntary Service (EVS) more inclusive for young people with fewer opportunities. This two-year project is right now in the last stage of the whole process, that implies the Conference “Volunteering for Social Change” next week. Since the beginning in 2015 two big efforts have been realised: (1) to showcase the necessity for an inclusive European Voluntary Service and the corresponding policy recommendations (2) to show how mobility programmes can be supported by digital learning formats in order to provide an asset for the engagement of the concerned group of young people. ‘Towards a More Inclusive Europe: The European Voluntary Service for All’ The original financial crisis implies consequences for the public spending that are visible in numbers of people that find themselves in precarious and vulnerable situations, especially young people. The limits of access for excluded young people have been shown in several European reports (e.g. the Policy Agenda for Volunteering in Europe). To counteract neo-liberal patterns and far-right’s movements within Europe, social inclusion must be fostered by civil societies organization’s commitment. In the EVS4ALL consortium fourteen partners were discussing and proposing suggestions for policy implementations in order to enable the inclusion of people with disadvantaged backgrounds. The partners carried out national studies to assess the different and multiple barriers to mobility for this precarious group of young people. Improvements concern the European and the national level, in a wide range of areas: quality and accessibility (e.g. facilitating the accreditation process for small size CSOs), communication sharing and networking (e.g. creating toolkits to be available on the unified website), promotion and dissemination (e.g. Europe-wide campaign reaching the local level), support (e.g. extra fund for special mentorship), and flexibility (e.g. in terms of profiles). For the detailed proposal, download here the report. ‘Blended Mobilities’ Discovering Digital Learning The other objective was to show how European mobility can combine and benefit from digital learning, especially regarding to young people with fewer opportunities. The idea was to experiment with different digital platforms based on the idea of “blended mobility”: ”The process of learning where digital technology is used alongside more traditional learning methods such as classroom, face-to-face mentoring, print materials.” For the understanding and the communicating of suggested tools (Padlet, Powtoon, Learning Badges, Erasmus+, Online Linguistic Support) there have been workshops in Germany and Romania. Five cases have been carried out last year with 20 volunteers and these results, amongst others: “digital tools training reported improved knowledge and new competences; tools encouraged and allowed collaboration; tools were a valuable addition to more traditional methods of communication, such as Skype and emails; greatest impact has been reported in relation to young people with fewer opportunities and in particular those lacking communication skills or having additional needs; most organisations feel they are not enough equipped and up-to-speed with technology and would need more specific IT training to be able to communicate and support young people” pp.16-17. For further details, you can download the report here. This project was initiated by the Allianz Cultural Foundation, implemented in cooperation with Volonteurope and Itinéraire International, and coordinated by IKAB-Bildungswerk. Several partners from France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom have been represented in the consortium, including foundations and organisations from civil society and the fields of European youth and voluntary work.
Dutch elections: Hope for Europe?
By Lydia Berneburg After Brexit and Trump, the elections in the Netherlands were eagerly awaited across Europe due to the expectation that they may point to the way ahead. While many are interpreting the defeat of Wilders’ PVV as a general defeat for the right-wing populists across the continent, the strong dominance within the election campaign of the PVV and their new position as the second most powerful party can’t be easily neglected. Source: THE GUARDIAN On Wednesday, March 15th, European Alternatives and euro|topics – hosted by the taz Café – discussed with Berliners – including a number of Dutch citizens – the election results and their potential consequences for Europe. The evening started with some fun facts about the campaign (including looking at the app Kamergotchi) followed by a broader discussion on the elections, including comments from Juurd Eijsvoogel, journalist of NRC Handelsblad and Tobias Müller, foreign correspondent of the taz. The focus of the discussion was the increasing influence of populism and nationalism in the Netherlands, which is clearly striking when looking at the results of the elections, even if the xenophobic party PVV received less votes than expected. The feeling of uncertainty, economically as well as culturally, is widespread in the Netherlands and the emotional appeal of the populists gained momentum in the country. People admitted that they support Wilders despite the fact that they don’t believe he is telling the truth, and violating basic laws. From the media side, there were a lot of uncertainties on how to present and report about Wilders while left-wing media stuggle to break through in the Netherlands. Overall, the right-wing parties won the largest number of seats. Even if the Conservative party of Mark Rutte, VVD, lost a few seats, it remains way ahead of the other parties. The results were however a big disappointment for the Labour party (PvdA, -29 seats), which traditional supporters most probably turned themselves to other left-wing parties. The GreenLeft, led by Jesse Klaver, indeed achieved a remarkable win (GroenLinks, +10 seats). The challenges of the PvdA can be explained by an unfavourable turnover of the leadership of the party. In Germany, we can see something related happening at the moment, with the remarkable influence of the chairperson of the party – in this case Schulz – giving hope for the Social Democrats. Even though the Dutch campaign was criticised as boring, the turnout was strikingly high (80,2%). The discussions about the coalitions will take some time, as it is the case usually in the Netherlands, but all main parties have vowed not to collaborate with Wilders. European Alternatives will continue discussing the upcoming elections in the broader European perspective – the next will be the French elections in April/June.
Right to the City
Juan Carlos Monedero (interview with the co-founder of Podemos)
The Voice of the Majority: an example for political change in Germany
Ahead of the German elections, we are co-organising a series of events together with DiEM25, ATTAC Germany and the Institut Solidarische Moderne (ISM) to discuss the possibilities of a Left majority for the country. What is the European dimension of the Bundestag elections? What would we want to change, if we had a Red-Red-Green government? The event series The Voice of the Majority wants to be an example, an example of how the desire for political change can be articulated beyond established political routines. Three events can’t change the world. That’s why our idea is based on the fact that these ideas are already circulating in different places and in different organisations and on the premise that people are doing the same thing in other locations. 1. Social Modernity: How do we want to live? 6th May 2017, 7.00 pm, Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Am Schloßplatz 2 With: Eva von Redecker, Philosopher. Bernd Riexinger, Chairperson DIE LINKE. Ceren Türkmen, Activist and Sociologist. Daniel Loick, Philosopher. Moderated by Thomas Seibert Political change is dependent on revolution in our everyday lives, thought, lifestyles and collective identities. Behind personal choices there are always social structures: rights, resources and security, for all. Conditions for an open society are currently under attack: Our way of life and diversity as the legacy of 1968 is under question today and right-wing populists are fighting a cultural war against the idea of the “dirty left-red-green 68er German”. The left has difficulties answering, but nevertheless has posed the question: how do we want to live? And how are demands for individual freedom and societal security compatible? Discover more 2. Social Europe: Where are we living? 23rd June 2017, 20:00, Frankfurt, Goethe-Universität. With: Imran Ayata, Author. Ulrich Brand, Political Researcher. Daphne Büllesbach, European. Terry Reintke (MEP Green, TBC). Moderated by Sonja Buckel Europe has to become, at a minimum, a social union. Germany is a central player in European politics: Austerity, low-wages and export surpluses – Made in Germany – is destroying the livelihoods of a whole generation. The European Union today seems to be no more than the enforcer of brutal austerity politics: an opaque, bureaucratic monster. But Europe is more than the EU. In the shadow of neo-liberal structural reforms in the south of Europe, new approaches to democracy and solidarity are emerging. These approaches could become the paradigm of a new, political idea. What role can and should Germany play in a peaceful, democratic and social Europe. How can Europe become a place of global justice? What is the European dimension of the Bundestag elections? Discover more 3. A society of migration and solidarity: Who are we actually? 4th September 2017, 20:00, Berlin With Gesine Schwan, SPD. Stephan Lessenich, Chair, German Sociology Society. Katja Kipping, Chair, DIE LINKE. Jürgen Trittin, Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen (angefragt) Social justice is more than just a question today. Our society is a part of a global economy and at the same time the world is part of our economy. A new, left, social politics will also have to prove itself in the field of migration. The summer of migration once again brought to our attention that justice is not only a question of how much, but also of who. When global and national inequality meet, then new political constellations emerge and our coordinated systems are challenged. This is all the more striking as the question of “social justice” may be crucial for this election, as well as whether a potential progressive government actually deserves that name. Who are we actually? What does social justice mean today: a sanction-free minimum social assistance for every German citizen or for everyone that’s here? Discover more
Nationalism and Populism beyond the European Union
New Book out – Shifting Baselines of Europe
With contributions by Etienne Balibar, Ulrike Guérot, Gesine Schwan, Renata Avila, Barbara Spinelli, Andreas Karitzis, Lorenzo Marsili, Jonas Staal, among others, and interviews with city governors from Madrid to Naples. What if another Europe already exists? The new book of European Alternatives follows this question and explores a Europe beyond Neoliberalism and Nationalism. Etienne Balibar opens the book, asking for “Our European incapacity”. In her reply Ulrike Guérot reflects on what “Our European capacities” could be. Together they tackle the fundamental crisis underlying the European integration process, the missed opportunity to become a Union of Citizens by giving up on national sovereignty. The publication is inspired by a meeting of 80 activists, researchers and artists from across the continent which took place in 2016. European Alternatives invited them to its biannual Campus to develop strategies for an open and democratic Europe. Many of the projects presented at the Campus are to be found in the book: from the municipal level to the level of transnational media, from technology and counter-surveillance to a concrete proposal to revive the European refugee policy. The book proves that a shift towards a new way of thinking and doing politics is not only possible, but actually already happening. CONTENT “The ideas and projects presented in this book are exactly what the debate on Europe needs right now.” Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University 1 – Shifting Cities “Cities could be places of radical innovation in politics, spaces of actual reinvention of democracy”, argues Giuseppe Caccia, scholar in History of Political thought, in his essay opening the chapter. It is often the city, the space of social and cultural condensation, that provides the breeding ground for new ideas and formations, where many of these movements have started from. In Spain we have seen major cities being taken over by platforms emerging from the square occupations. Putting the citizen back into politics was the recipe to their success: what answers to the crisis of representation can we take from there? City-makers, commoners, urban social movements, mayors, councillors, and activists that are helping to create, promote and develop new urban experiences come together in this chapter. Contributions e.g: Gesine Schwan: “The cities want them in. For a revised common European refugee policy to revive the European Union Interview with Luigi de Magistris, Mayor of Naples: “Rebel cities are not utopia” 2 – Shifting Media Shifts in media technologies have been at the centre of the debates about the latest shifts in politics. While new media are now referred to as one of the main underlying factors for the era of post-truth and the rise of populists, some years ago they were celebrated for enabling horizontal communication which would pave the way for horizontal power structures. In a time of post-truth, how can we combat the rise of a false reality?Which media infrastructure is necessary for alternative narratives that bring a transnational agenda to the citizens? What can be learned from existing alternative media platforms in this regard? Is social media still offering resources for new ways of protest? And how do we deal with the new power of algorithms when for most of us they are blackboxes? Contributions e.g: Jan Rohgalf: “The populist Challenge 2.0. How populists profit from social media” Robin Mansell: “Our digitally mediated society” 3 – Shifting Alliances All of the latest major events in European politics have had a twofold implication. Wherever the challenges grew, the potential for a progressive European civil society also became visible. From austerity politics to free trade negotiations, from the refugee movement to Brexit, from nationalist governments to the rise of far right movements: in all these cases European citizens organised themselves and stood up for a Europe of openness, tolerance and solidarity. But despite these signs of hope, the overall political situation undoubtedly requires much more in terms of coordinated answers from a progressive left. Therefore the main question of this chapter is: how can existing actors and networks improve their cooperation in order to build capacity and gain political influence? In order to reclaim discourses, streets, parliaments and governments, liberal civil society has to “get out of its comfort zone” as Pia Eberhardt from the Anti-TTIP protests puts it. Contributions e.g: Andreas Karitzis, former Syriza central committee member : “Learning from Syriza” Interview with Pia Eberhardt, Anti-TTIP coordination: “Instructions for building a pan-European movement” PROJECTS & ORGANISATIONS PRESENTED IN THE BOOK European Democracy Lab is a Berlin based think-tank working towards a more social, politically equal and democratic European future.// Barcelona en Comú is a citizens platform and political coalition in the city of Barcelona. //Marea Atlántica is a citizens platform and political coalition in the city of A Coruña. // P2P Foundation is an organisation with the aim of studying the impact of peer to peer technology and thought on society. //Ahora Madrid is a citizens platform and political coalition in the city of Madrid.// Cambiamo Messina dal Basso is a grass roots movements and citizens platform in the city of Messina. //Ne davimo Beograd (Don’t let Belgrade d(r)own) is a right-to-the-city initiative in Serbia resisting massive redevelopment plans in the centre of Belgrade as well as government corruption. // Human Rights Institute Bratislava, Slovakia is a NGO ghting for civil liberties and rights in Slovakia and the region. // openDemocracy is an independent global media platform covering world a airs, ideas and culture which seeks to challenge power and encourage democratic debate across the world. // Krytyka Polityczna is a network of Polish left-wing institutions and intel- lectuals that works on the elds of social sciences, culture and politics to have an impact against economic and social exclusion. // Eldiario.es is a Spanish online newspaper founded in 2012. / Abwab is the first Arabic newspaper in Germany launched in 2015. // DiEM25 is a pan-European, cross-border movement of democrats that works as an infrastructure to democratise Europe before 2025. // Syriza is left-wing political party in Greece, founded in 2004. // The Commons Network is a civil society initiative and think-tank working on a local, national and European level promoting access to knowledge and other social and ecological causes from the perspective of the commons. // European Commons Assembly is a process that started in in May 2016 gathering diverse commons activists from 21 countries across Europe par- ticipating to develop a shared agenda for the commons. // Stop TTIP is an alliance of more than 500 European…
Fearless Cities, a first appointment before TRANSEUROPA
In 2016 Daphne Büllesbach spoke with Gerardo Pisarello, Barcelona deputy Mayor, about the experience of social movements taking power in Barcelona and about the possibility of a European network of cities for change. One year after that conversation, Barcelona en Comú is organising the Fearless Cities Summit, a moment in Barcelona that will help municipalist movements from all across Europe to build global networks of solidarity and hope in the face of hate, walls and borders. The rally will bring together mayors and councillors to share their vision of what it means to be a “fearless city”, from resisting state authoritarianism and combatting the far right to fighting speculation and guaranteeing the right to the city. We are glad to contribute with a side event in the Fearless Cities Summit together with the European Commons Assembly, coordinated by Stacco Troncoso, Ana Méndez de Andés, Giuseppe Caccia, Marcelo Exposito, and Daphne Büllesbach. The event is a combined proposal by representatives of the European Commons Assembly (ECA) and the organisers of Transeuropa which will take place in Madrid end of October (25th to 29th) 2017. What examples do we witness in urban contexts around Europe that should be part of such an open exchange in Madrid? Which cities have transformed politics to re-invent and to re-enact democracy from below, experiencing concrete projects able to inspire new ways of social cooperation around commons, thus also preventing the threat of far-right growth? What are the problems and successes of these initiatives, which tools and strategies have been developed in response, and what do they teach us about supporting and scaling commons? We want to invite everyone interested at this side-event as a moment of a process in which, starting from Fearless Cities meeting, the Madrid event could be one of the next steps in exchanging, discussing, socializing and wide-spreading real alternatives to current “state of affairs” in Europe.
Maria Hlavajova: Art and social change in Eastern Europe
Different European ways of volunteering for and with refugees
Migration has ever been and will remain in Europe. No fences, walls or other regulations will change that. But still refugees are one of the most vulnerable segments in Europe’s society. In case that there is not sufficient or adequate institutional support from the public, volunteer work can be an import contribution in supporting refugees. On the other hand in many cases refugees themselves have resources and skills to contribute to the society and may use volunteering to contribute something to the society – especially if they can’t enjoy access to the labour market. The way how countries or cities are affected and deal with refugees differ strongly across Europe. Therefore, European Alternatives in cooperation with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung organizes an event in Lisbon on the 9th of June (14h00-18h30) in order to show different examples in Europe concerning the topic. Different situations – such as in Lisbon and Berlin – will be reflected. The discussion will be about the role of cities in volunteering work, about the current challenges in different cities, about the role of volunteering initiatives about bottom-up strategies to empower refugees. Further, the debate will discuss possible paths from humanitarian help to integration. At the event there will be a space where the participants can discuss throughout a creative method different aspects of the topic and their own experiences and concerns. We are glad to have this transnational space and the possibility to exchange different experiences in the field of volunteering for and with refugees with the aim to learn from different perspectives across Europe. Seminário Internacional “Como apoiar pessoas refugiadas” Friday, 9th of June 14h00 – 18h30 Goethe-Institut Portugal Campo dos Martires da Pátria 37, 1169-016 Lisbon
Apply for our Act4FreeMovement Training Series
European Alternatives is collaborating with Krytyka Polityczna and European Citizens Action Service (ECAS) to train citizens and activists to defend freedom of movement and fight the increasing insecurity in the rights of citizens in the EU. You will be provided with training from experts in EU citizen rights, in campaigning and in project management and tasked with conceptualising, developing, and rolling out a campaign against restrictions to freedom of movement for European citizens. Across the EU, citizens face increasing insecurity in their rights, attacks against their persons and even threats of deportation. The nature and the consequences of this insecurity and the drivers of hostility can be different, in particular between Western and Eastern Europe, and so it is vital to address this issue by being active across Europe and advocate for mobile citizens rights. Over the last few years, we have seen attacks on EU citizens in some member states, deportations in others and difficulties for EU citizens to access the rights they are entitled to in a number of countries. Brexit has highlighted in many ways the difficulties EU citizens can face, but should not be seen in isolation, with EU citizens facing problems in realising their right to move, and to move with their families, in many countries, from Belgium to Sweden, Germany to Romania. European Alternatives is collaborating with Krytyka Polityczna and European Citizens Action Service (ECAS) to build a group of activists to fight this. You’ll be provided with training from experts in EU citizen rights, in campaigning and in project management and tasked with conceptualising, developing, and rolling out a campaign against restrictions to freedom of movement for European citizens. Trainings will take place in Warsaw in September 2017, Madrid in October 2017 and London in January 2018 and will focus on: > Understanding the drivers for hostile or ignorant attitudes to mobile European citizens and addressing practices of discrimination. > Learning how to influence decision-making processes and complaints mechanisms at the EU level. > Developing and running campaigns and projects ideas advocating for the protection of freedom of movement and of EU citizens rights. > Identifying and networking with effective partner organisations as well as with grassroots activists from across Europe for continuous collaboration. Following the trainings, activists will be provided with the opportunity to apply for small grants to carry out their campaign in their countries/cities/localities. For this, we’ll not only provide you with the money, but we’ll be there to support you throughout the process – helping with campaigning planning and design, communicating your project and financial planning amongst others. These campaigns will last up to six months and will be presented at the Campus of European Alternatives in the summer of 2018 in Florence. Sounds interesting? Who can participate? We’re looking for dynamic, enthusiastic people starting out in their career or getting involved in European political action who can commit to coming to all trainings and carrying out a campaign. Still interested? We have a few requirements – you should be: > Resident in one of the 28 EU-Member States. > Proficient in English. > Some knowledge of the issues of freedom of movement, EU mobile citizens rights and migrants right and some experience with advocacy, campaigning or policy influencing would be useful. > Deeply committed to organizing a campaign or action during the training. We’re looking also to represent the diversity of people living in Europe. We are particularly committed to enable the participation of people from racial and ethnic minorities, people from LGBTQI+ communities, people with disabilities and people who identify with disadvantaged economic classes. If you don’t identify as one of these groups, we still want you to apply – but if you know of an awesome person who does, encourage them to apply as well! Apply for the training by filling out our online form before Sunday, July 2nd at midnight. The registration fee to attend the training series is of 150€ and includes travel costs, food and accommodation costs and training materials. If you cannot or partially can pay the registration fee, please let us know at the end of the form, we will get in touch. Any questions? If you have any questions regarding the Act4FreeMovement training series and application process, please do not hesitate to contact citizenrights@euroalter.com. The training series is supported by the European Programme for Integration and Migration (EPIM), a collaborative initiative of the Network of European Foundations and is led by European Alternatives, the European Citizens Action Service (ECAS) and Krytyka Polityczna
Tania Bruguera: Feminist art is for me a conversation about power
Marcelo Expósito – Barcelona en Comú
Cities for Change as Global Alternatives
Transformative and fearless experiences, remunicipalisation and urban citizenship Workshop organised by Interventionistische Linke (Hamburg), Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), European Alternatives (London, Paris, Berlin, Rome) with the participation of Sonia Farré (Barcelona en Comú – member of Spanish Parliament), Anh-Thy Nguyen, Anne-Lavinia Steinfort, Beppe Caccia, Sol Trumbo Vila and many others. Wednesday, July 5, 3-5 p.m. in the ‘Barmbek BASCH’, Multifunktionsraum 2 (Wohldorfer Str. 30, 22081 Hamburg) Cities have always been a site of struggles for rights. But, since 2011 “square movements”, urban spaces became even more places for reappropriation and reinvention of a real and solidarity democracy. The workshop will introduce and explore interactively three concepts of urban struggles – fearless and transformative cities, remunicipalisation in public services and urban citizenship. The goal is to conclude by identifying further possible common steps, defining new democratic practices „from below“ in cities as one of the concrete alternatives on global scale. The Summit of G20 symbolizes a decision making process based on interrelations between nation States’ rule, that is far from normal people’s daily life and reach. For many of us it seems hard to get a glimpse of what is being decided and how we can influence it. Moreover actual politics are more and more shifting towards anti-democratic neoliberal processes. In recent years, starting with the global movement of “squares occupation” in 2011, a renewed interest by urban social movements for local governing dimensions have emerged. Cities, that have always had a history of struggles for rights, have become places where meaningful steps towards the idea of real democracy have been taken. In our workshop we will introduce and discuss three different concepts of urban struggles – fearless cities, remunicipalisation and urban citizenship. Fearless cities is an idea developed by Barcelona en Comú, starting from the experiences of many municipalist movements and citizenship platforms that have gathered social movements, active citizenship, old and new political forces of the Left, and in some cases have conquered even the city government. They are trying to radically change the national and European austerity policies, that affect the city budget, the privatisation policies, that hit commons and public services, the border closure policies against migrants and refugees. (European Alternatives, London-Paris-Berlin-Rome) Remunicipalisation: these recently formed people-led local governments present innovative practices that tackle corporate power and increase access to common goods like water, energy, housing.and health care. In other words Cities are returning essential services to public, democratic and social control. The Transformative Cities project launched by the Transnational Institute (TNI) is an opportunity for cities and citizens to share and popularise their experiences and build social, economic and environmental alternatives. (Transnational Institute, Amsterdam) 04Urban citizenship is – as an alternative to the nation-State citizenship – a concept that claims citizen rights for all the people living in an urban area or city regardless of origin, papers, work allowance or social status. It would mean establishing a formal status based on residence rather than nationality, strengthening the local self-government and redefining the right to the city, boundaries and cosmopolitan democracy. (Interventionist Left, Hamburg).
Transeuropa Open: organise events for the opening of our biannual festival
Transeuropa Open (#TEF2017Open) calls for motivated organisers to run decentralized opening events of Transeuropa, the bi-annual artistic, cultural and political event organised by European Alternatives since 2007. The events will take place on Saturday, October 21st. You will be provided with financial and advisory support to develop the events on the three main themes of Transeuropa: Europe as a democracy from below, Europe as commons and Europe as a place for refuge. Apply now with your proposal until August 14th. Transeuropa is an unusual artistic, cultural and political event organised by European Alternatives since 2007. Transeuropa attracts thousands of attendees and active participants through a decentralised event structure in over a dozen European cities and a high profile moment in one city. For the 2017 edition, Transeuropa, under the motto “Convergent spaces”, will take place on October 25-29th in Madrid, with official support by the city hall. To bring a translocal dimension to Transeuropa, we plan decentralised events in different cities across Europe for the opening of the festival on Saturday, October 21st. And you can make it happen! Transeuropa unique approach aims to set a transnational, open and innovative cultural and political space, make grassroots and civic alternatives to political institutions visible, and foster network cooperation and mutual support. It serves as a point of convergence to exchange ideas, concepts and alternatives for a Europe in turmoil. In particular, we focus on three thematics, which will be at the core of Transeuropa Open: > The city and democracy from below: all across Europe, we observe new forms of democratic governance at the local and city level (Ahora Madrid, Barcelona en Comù, the city of Naples, etc.). We believe that active citizenship empowers activists to run for city governments’ elections and enables to connect to institutional realities and influence national governments and European institutions. How do cities and citizens platforms reinvent democracy in Europe? What are the recipes for success? > Europe as commons: we believe in the right to the commons. Commoning relates to network-based cooperation and localised bottom-up initiatives that create self-managed systems satisfying important needs. These systems often work outside markets and institutions while pioneering new hybrid structures. How do the commons shape our communities today and invent new ways of reclaiming our autonomy over the decisions that affect our lives? > Europe as a place of refuge: in the public discourse migrants and refugees are represented as a “threat” or “welfare abuser” and the “refugee crisis” is used as an excuse to hide a crisis of politics. We want to reclaim Europe as a place of sanctuary for refugees and of human rights protection both inside and at its borders. How to create opportunities of exchange between newcomers and the general public and how to create safe spaces that critically address xenophobia and racism? Sounds interesting! How to participate? The Transeuropa Open activities should take place during the day and evening of Saturday, October 21st and relate to one or several of the three thematics of Transeuropa. The formats of the event can be diverse and can range from workshops and debates to performances, exhibitions and concerts. We will give priority to activities which: > relate to one or several of the themes of Transeuropa above. > inspire people that local initiatives or movements cross borders and have a transeuropean dimensions. > are participatory or have innovative forms of artistic expressions. > engage a coordinating team of at least two persons with whom we can follow up the organisation of the activity until the day of the event. European Alternatives provides support to design the event, find potential partners and speakers, support the communication and dissemination of the event until October 21st. We also will make available for each applicant team up to a maximum of 500€ to support the event, depending on the activity, the location and the already available resources of the coordinating team (number of people involved, free venue, etc.) The call is open to all who share our vision, mission and values, e.g. members of European Alternatives Hubs, individual members and partner organisations of European Alternatives motivated to organise the decentralised events. To submit your proposal, you need to: Submit your proposal using the online form before Sunday, August 14th at midnight The selected ideas will be announced by mid-July and further support will be provided. Timeline and deadlines Thursday, June 22nd at midnight: the call for proposals opens Sunday, August 14th: the call for proposals closes Mid-August: announcement of the selected proposals; the organisers will be contacted individually and will be asked to develop a detailed program August-October: preparations for the events and support from European Alternatives Any questions? If you have any questions regarding the organisation of the opening events of Transeuropa, please do not hesitate to contact events@euroalter.com.
Transeuropa 2017 – Convergent Spaces
Transeuropa Festival is an unusual artistic, cultural and political event organised by European Alternatives since 2007. Transeuropa attracts attendees and active participants from across Europe through a decentralised event in one city. For the 2017 edition, Convergent Spaces, the city is Madrid. Discover more about the program in the new Festival’s website. A glance over the past ten years suggests that, at the level of political institutions, the energy for renewal has been lacking. We have witnessed how the democratic crisis at European level is a counterpart of the democratic erosion that is presented at the national level: state political institutions do not have the capacity to address the economic, political, social and cultural issues that we face, either because they have voluntarily renounced a certain sovereignty in the process of European integration, or because in a globalised world, they no longer have the capacity to influence the global trends that affect people’s lives. At the same time, a grass-roots politics of contestation and civic invention has been spreading across the continent. European Alternatives has been at the centre of it, networking the dispersed elements of this renewal. TRANSEUROPA’s unique approach establishes a temporal transnational space for making these dispersed elements visible across Europe. These elements work daily at the local level to imagine and to put into practice new forms of doing politics and art at a transnational level. The main goals of TRANSEUROPA are to provide an innovative, transnational and open format of cultural and political debate; foster exchange, cooperation and mutual support between the participants, and serve as a point of convergence for political, artistic and civil society actors. It runs over five days and covers three main thematic (Europe as a refuge, Cities of Change and the Commons) through a mix of formatsranging from lectures, participative workshops, artistic interventions, performance, cinema, music and political debates. We think it is time to open spaces for dialogue and exchange for the creation and improvement of the social, political and artistic reality that is being built in Europe. There are many new dynamics at the local level that work to produce political change outside and inside the continent borders. Movements that from the cities and towns, from the citizens initiatives and platforms, the feminist and LGTBIQ + groups, are working to reach the Europe of tomorrow, and that demonstrate that a real change can only happen through a renewed political vision beyond national boundaries.
Power Coalitions (Talk Real in Rijeka)
13th September: Day of Action for EU citizens in the UK & British Citizens in EU
On Wednesday 13 September, citizens groups the3million and British in Europe in partnership with Another Europe is Possible (Global Justice Now), European Alternatives, Migrants Rights Network and UNISON are organising A DAY OF ACTION to celebrate the lives of the 3 million EU citizens living in the UK and the 1.2 million British citizens living in Europe. The day of action will include an e-lobby, a mass lobby of parliament, a rally in Trafalgar Square and an open letter to the British Government and the European Union. How to get involved? 1. The e-lobby / Mass Lobby British in Europe and the3million are inviting you to an e-lobby / mass lobby of Parliament to give you the opportunity to make your voice heard and ask MPs to fully protect our rights after Brexit so we can stay in the countries we love. The mass lobby is a day where EU citizens and their British family and friends, along with UK voters living in other EU countries, will arrange to meet with their MP in Parliament to raise their concerns and tell their own story. We are not asking for special treatment – just that the rules of the game are not changed after the match has started. More information: https://www.the3million.org.uk/masslobby 2. The Rally The rally will offer the opportunity for EU and UK citizens to proudly get together in this iconic British square and stand up for #citizensrights in the Brexit negotiations. We’ve invited London mayor Sadiq Khan to address the crowd, as well as NHS EU nurses, scientists, eminent brits living in Europe and citizens just like you. At 7pm, various EU London choirs will ask you to join them in singing Ode to Joy. The rally is part of a wider day of action for #citizensrights, featuring a mass lobby of the UK Parliament and the publication of an open letter to the British Government and the European Union asking to protect all existing citizens rights for our lifetime. We expect at least 5,000 people to come together in support of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in Europe, with significant media coverage. More information: https://www.the3million.org.uk/rally 3. The Open Letter On our Day of Action for Citizens, we will publish an open letter to the British Government and the European Union signed by businesses, public sector organisations, trade unions, universities and charities asking for citizens’ rights to be protected. This comes after a survey of 2,000 EU citizens by consultancy firm KPMG revealed that up to 1 million EU citizens could be leaving the UK after Brexit, reducing the UK’s workforce by 3.1%, thus creating a skill gap crisis of unprecedented scale (i). In order to make the maximum impact, we need as many signatories as possible and we’re asking you to contact your employer to ask the Managing Director or CEO to support the non-partisan campaign of the3million and British in Europe to protect the existing rights of EU Citizens in the UK and British Citizens in Europe. Your support is important as it would provide a much needed relief among a general feeling of not feeling welcome anymore. More information: https://www.the3million.org.uk/open-letter
Open Call for Artists: Voice of______ at Transeuropa
Are you an artist, writer or producer living abroad? You participate in the cultural life and economy of the country of residence? Are you puzzled by the fact that you cannot take part in the decision-making processes of that country? Do you feel like sharing your perspective on this paradoxical experience? If your answer is YES, maybe you should contact us and take part in our growing collection of narratives considering this topic! THE VOICE OF_________ Collection of electoral materials designed by the artists who have no right to vote Today, a great amount of amazing artists are living and moving all over Europe. Multiple travel, education and working opportunities have allowed for relatively networked artist communities to grow, sometimes without interactions with local political realities or spaces. However, these artists still have limited or no set of rights to participation and collective decision-making locally, which can impact identities, sense of belonging and perceptions of/by local cultural contexts. The minds and sensibilities of artists are regularly exposed to transnational, national and local political messages, especially at the occasion of electoral elections, to which they often cannot participate, no matter that they actively participate in the economies and cultural life of the countries they live in. We want to explore how artists, who have no voting rights in their country of residence, would react if they imagine themselves being in charge of formulating and designing election campaigns. How would they use their democratic right of free aesthetic expression, in an hostile context regarding their rights? How would they react, which message would they send when invited to comment on these circumstances through an aesthetic form? With this exhibition, we want to draw the public attention to the paradoxes that are surrounding this issue. Exhibition is curated by Vladimir Palibrk, in collaboration with European Alternatives Our first edition that was presented in Paris in June 2017 as a comment on French elections that were going on at that time, included the works of following artists: ŽARKO ALEKSIĆ, Serbia/Austria GEORGE BODOCAN, Romania/France BARBARA MOURA, Portugal/Austria DZAIZKU, Serbia/France KATARZYNA PIASECKA /PIA COLLAGES, Poland/France MARIE-ANDREE PELLERIN, Canada/Austria GOLNAR KAT, Iran/Germany VLADIMIR PALIBRK, Serbia/France HOW TO GET INVOLVED? At this year’s TRANSEUROPA festival that will take place in Madrid, Spain, between 25th and 29th of October, the exhibition will include also a number of works collected through an ongoing open call. In order to apply send your resume and concept proposal to thevoiceofexpo@gmail.com, and our curatorial team will get back to you soon, thank you! In general, we aim for posters of standard size up to 60×70 cm, but we would not say no to a good proposal in domain of video, flyers, installations, performances..hit us up! DEADLINE? It’s quite flexible, but end of September 2017 sounds perfect for us.
Acting for Freedom of Movement in Poland
Across the EU, citizens face increasing insecurity in their rights, attacks against their persons and even threats of deportation. The nature and the consequences of this insecurity and the drivers of hostility can be different, in particular between Western and Eastern Europe: it has never been so urgent to address this issue by being active across Europe and advocate for mobile citizens rights. This is what 17 freedom of movement activists from all over Europe started doing on September 18-20th in Warsaw for the kick-off training of the ACT4FreeMovement series, led by European Alternatives, the European Citizens Action Service (ECAS) and Krytyka Polityczna. The series is part of the ACT4FreeMovement program, supported by the European Program on Integration and Migration, and aims to increase the capacity of EU citizens to effectively secure access to their and build public awareness and political support for freedom of movement in the EU, through advocacy, campaigning and trainings. After three intense 3 days, the participants – students, activists, NGO practitioners, lawyers – broadened their knowledge of European Citizenship and its associated freedom of movement rights and learnt about the tools to defend those rights from the local to the transnational level. They also experimented with participatory approaches to develop their own campaigns to defend EU mobile citizens rights on a variety of issues, from entry and residence rights, discrimination against marginalised EU citizens or political participation in elections. The days were also the occasion to share their own vision of freedom of movement and the current challenges ahead with Polish activists and migrants rights organisations, from the rise of nationalism and far-right movements to the development of the best supporting narrative for mobility in Europe. In the next months, the participants will continue to develop their campaigns ideas further and continue to exchange and discuss about the values and narratives that need to be brought forward to successfully defend an open, democratic and equal Europe. European Alternatives’ TRANSEUROPA Festival, taking place on October 25-29th in Madrid, will be the next milestone of the training series, and an important one, as hundreds of activists will come together to shape a Europe of progressive alternatives. As EU citizens rights are increasingly violated all around the continent, we will need creative narratives and innovative actions to inspire new generations of activists to act for freedom of movement. The time is now!
TRANSEUROPA 2017 in Madrid from 25th-29th October
By Daphne Buellesbach Picture the moon for a moment. If we talk about fostering a politics beyond the nation state, we do not mean the nation state will be gone tomorrow. But we consider it very worthwhile to explore what lies beyond it; it is just like looking beyond the moon, it won’t make the moon disappear. Exploring the possibilities of going beyond the nation state happens at many levels and indeed ever since we have invented the nation state just a few hundred years ago. The arts, culture but also visionary politicians have long been advocates for alliances and networking beyond nation-state. Today it goes without saying that nation state politics cannot tackle the global challenges of climate change, migration, technology, economic interdependence and social justice on its own. And yet, putting a particular country’s interest first and above others has helped win elections and referenda – even if precisely those interests cannot find satisfaction within the old and increasingly ineffective national logic. Going beyond the nation state must not mean simply emphasising the transnational level: on the contrary it can mean renewed autonomy at local level, for cities, municipalities, for citizens. These days, democracy itself seems to have turned into a farce in places like Hungary or Poland – to use examples close to home, countries priding themselves to be illiberal democracies. In a situation where liberal democracy is under such threat, what does it mean to stand up for democracy? How can we act democratically if we speak from our private niches? Have we reached a point in which we understand democracy as a system that guarantees us rights but doesn’t call on us to take over responsibility – and I want to add, solidarity? Hannah Arendt wrote no activity can become excellent if the world does not provide a proper space for its exercise. There must be more spaces for exploration, experimentation and for togetherness. Not for comforting us in our own thoughts but for challenging each other to be less comfortable democrats with an understanding for the inequalities that disenfranchise us. Hannah Arendt wrote no activity can become excellent if the world does not provide a proper space for its exercise. There must be more spaces for exploration, experimentation and for togetherness. Not for comforting us in our own thoughts but for challenging each other to be less comfortable democrats with an understanding for the inequalities that disenfranchise us. We, at European Alternatives, have worked to open these spaces of exchange and debate for many years and Transeuropa has been our prime way of doing it, in a transnational manner, across Europe in now more than 30 cities. We want to converge these conversations in Madrid this year, as this city has seen an amazing process of citizens mobilisations from back in 2011 to the city hall take over by the citizens platform Ahora Madrid in 2015. Starting from decentralised activities in more than 11 cities on October 21st we will open Transeuropa on Oct 25th in Madrid. After two days of workshops and debates that go deeper into the issues we will end on a high note with a public conference in partnership with the Kiev Biennale: THE NEW INTERNATIONALE: BELOW AND ABOVE THE NATION. The partnership with a Ukrainian cultural initiative underscores at least another element of our conception of Europe: namely that Europe cannot be bordered, and that it goes well beyond the institutional space of the European Union. The 2017 edition of TRANSEUROPA’ unfolds from three central themes, that help reflect on the levels of below, above and beyond the nation state. 1) Europe as a Refuge?: Reclaiming Europe as a place of sanctuary for refugees and migrants and of human rights protection both inside and at its borders Solutions are often found at the local level, this is why we invited the cities of Palermo, Naples, Gdansk and Madrid and former German presidential candidate Gesine Schwan to debate the role of municipalities in offering shelter to newcomers. The Union of Street Vendors will host a workshop about migrant workers self-organisation and artists such as Oliver Ressler and the collective of ‘Artists-at-Risk’ will show their works and visions. We are particularly pleased to be able to showcase the powerful multi-media performance Idrissa by Metromuster with Nakany Kanté and premiere the documentary ‘When Paul came over the Sea’ in Spain that has already won awards from film festivals in Germany, Austria, Ukraine and China. 2) The Commons: Furthering the thinking of a commons-based society through analysis, knowledge-sharing and exchange In collaboration with the European Commons Assembly, a network of Commons activists established in 2016, we discuss experiences of managing commons to advance both the processes and tools as well as the narrative of commoning in our communities. The focus is on urban commons and public policy-making in the city halls of Spain and beyond; as the programme is mainly workshop based a public assembly with city governors from across Europe will allow for a larger group reflection. Through several site visits around Madrid participants are able to visit local practices of commoning and engage and learn from these projects. On Saturday, Ugo Mattei together with Commoners from across the field will debate how the commons offer a political vision for a democracy beyond the nation state. 3) Cities of change and new municipalism: giving visibility to citizens organising in social movements trailblazing new participatory practices In a situation of vanishing sovereignty at nation state level, citizens have taken control over local institutions, working to transform their cities into cities of shelter, solidarity and social justice. How can we fund the cooperative city? What digital tools help us to participate and be informed citizens? How can we contribute to radical urban policy making? These are just some of the questions we will address. We will also present a collectively developed open source mapping platform of cities of change’ from around Europe and introduce ways to get engaged. There are many new dynamics at the…
What Europe Does Ukraine need? A Statement on the European International
Europe needs a Re-Union. The current model of the EU has to be renewed and expanded to deal with new global political challenges and to apply its principles and rules on the whole European continent.
Convergent Spaces: the Journal of TRANSEUROPA Festival
The 2017 edition of Transeuropa’ unfolded from three central themes that help reflect on the levels of below, above, and beyond the nation state: Europe as a Refuge, for reclaiming Europe as a place of sanctuary for refugees and migrants and of human rights protection both inside and at its borders. The Commons for furthering the thinking of a commons-based society through analysis, knowledge-sharing and exchange. In collaboration with the European Commons Assembly, we discussed experiences of managing commons to advance both the processes and tools, as well as the narrative of commoning in our communities. Cities of change and new municipalism for giving visibility to citizens organising in social movements trailblazing new participatory political practices. We published the Journal of the Festival to provide further content and reflexions on this three themes ahead of the five days of TRANSEUROPA in Madrid. The aim of the Journal of TRANSEUROPA is to give visibility to the new dynamics at the local level which are working for political change, inside and beyond our continent. Movements from cities and municipalities, citizens’ initiatives and platforms, feminist and LGTBIQ+ collectives that are all working towards the Europe of tomorrow, to prove that the change happening can only take place through a renewed political vision occurs simultaneously below and beyond the national borders. Any change that takes place at a local level has to be connected to a European dimension, so as to consolidate the break and reconfiguration of power relations. Without that dimension, the actions stay isolated and blurred, losing symbolic power and the strength of a collective effort. Going beyond the nation state must not mean simply emphasising the transnational level: on the contrary it can mean renewed autonomy at local level, for cities, municipalities, for citizens.
Call for candidates to the board of European Alternatives
In European Alternatives we are opening two new seats on our transnational board and we are looking for dedicated candidates that will be elected by European Alternatives’ members online in December. Deadline to apply is December 1st. These two new board members will be elected for a two-year term (renewable). Last year Rasha Shabaan and Rui Tavares were elected for two years. Their term comes to an end in one year, at which point there will be new elections for two new board members. The board of European Alternatives is composed of up to eight trustees and four observers. Four board members are directly elected by members of European Alternatives, and up to four are co-opted by the board to represent member organisations or bring additional capacities and skills to the organisation. Catherine Fieschi, Srecko Horvat and Tony Venables are stepping down from the board of current trustees having completed their mandates. The roles of the board members are: To attend three to four weekend meetings each year, and to dedicate an hour or two each week to European Alternatives keeping themselves up to date on activities and contributing to ongoing work; To guide the strategy of European Alternatives ensuring it continues to work towards more democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state; To establish and maintain key partnerships and alliances, including fundraising; To speak or write on behalf of the organisation; To guarantee the legal compliance of European Alternatives and responsible use of funds and the accountability and good governance of the organisation. Electronic applications should be submitted no later than Friday, December 1st, at midnight (CET) by sending an e-mail to m.pairet@euroalter.com and include: A short video presentation (maximum of 3 minutes, sent by WeTransfer or another file transfer service), stating your experience, addressing members of European Alternatives and indicating the areas in which you would particularly like to contribute to the work of the Board. You are welcome to also express your views on current positions of European Alternatives and on the work program for the coming year; The endorsement, in writing, by 2 individual or organisational members of European Alternatives, directly addressed to m.pairet@euroalter.com; A photo (separate .jpg file) Incomplete applications will not be considered. The presentation videos will be published on our website before and during the voting period, for members of European Alternatives to get to know the candidates and ask any questions before making their choice. If you have questions about the board roles and the elections, please contact m.pairet@euroalter.com We look forward to receiving your applications.
Feminism in Belarus: What is Make Out?
Marina Garcés y Santiago Alba Rico: ¿el retorno de los nacionalismos?
The parable of the nation state
From the city to Europe, bypassing the State
The path forwards with Miguel Urban and Lorenzo Marsili
Presentation with Oliver Ressler: What’s after the nation state?
Meet the candidates for the election of two EA board members
European Alternatives presents the 5 candidates who have applied to join the transnational board. On October 29th, the current board members Catherine Fieschi, Srecko Horvat and Tony Venables have stood down from the board after a two-year term. The transnational board is composed of a maximum of 8 members, with 4 elected by members of European Alternatives, and up to 4 co-opted by the board itself to build relationships with member organisations or to bring additional capacities to the organisation. New elections are called every year to renew 2 board positions, for a 2-year term. Members of European Alternatives will vote from Friday December 8th, from 10am to Sunday, December 17th, midnight to elect the two new board members. The voting will be online, password protected and anonymous. You can ask any questions directly to the candidates this week before and during the voting on our Facebook page or by sending an e-mail to Martin, m.pairet@euroalter.com, who will forward them. CANDIDATES FOR THE BOARD SUZANA CARP Suzana lives in Brussels where she leads on the EU engagement work of a London based climate policy think tank Sandbag. She holds an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, awarded with Distinctions, a second Masters degree in European Studies from the College of Europe in Warsaw. She completed her University degree in the United States, where she specialised in political science and international affairs. She worked on a number of migration related projects, including working on a project investigating migration in the media across different countries, completing a comprehensive study of refugee support across the EU, etc. Her interests cover also democratic theory, having founded the project Act 4 Democracy, which strives to offer education for democracy through theatre to youth from underprivileged backgrounds and remote areas. ANDREJ BERETA Andrej Bereta is a curator, art historian and cultural entrepreneur. He is the Co-founder of ARTIKAL, Belgrade, since 2008. Since 2011 he is investing his strengths on the Project About and around curating/Kustosiranje (co-author with Srdjan Tunic), an educative and research curatorial project, based on the idea of lifelong learning, designed for professionals and students from the fields of arts and culture and open for general public. The mission of the project includes: developing toolbox and required skills, working on curatorial practices and on the technologies of preparation and realisation of independent exhibition project, education and supporting proactive attitude of young and future art curators, team work, developing entrepreneurship in the field of culture, spreading share culture. Developed as a public program, it is strongly oriented on regional cooperation. This is an academic course for master studies at University of Belgrade in partnership with University of Vilnius and in cooperation with European Universities. Since 2014 he is curator of Arts Kozara: international AiR, Art Laboratory in nature on mountain Kozara (BiH). In 2013 he was the director (with Srdjan Tunic) of Mikser Festival 2013 for Visual arts. In 2008 he co-created the Project ARTUR- Cultural tour for disabled persons. Andrej is co-creator and participant of Creative Mentorship. Finally, he is a lecturer on Visual Arts at Independent University of Banja Luka (BiH). ALBERTO ALEMANNO Alberto Alemanno is an academic, civic advocate and public interest lawyer. He’s Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris and Global Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. Due to his commitment to bridge the gap between academic research and policy action, Alberto pioneered innovative forms of civic engagement over the last decade and championed pro bono services. Both his scholarship and public interest work on openness, transparency and civic engagement has considerably shaped EU institutional setting and practice. His free-access MOOC Understanding Europe: Why It Matters and What It Can Offer You reached and empowered more than 200,000 participants across the EU and beyond. The EU Public Interest Clinic, which he runs from Paris, trained hundreds of public interest lawyers and served dozens of NGOs promoting the EU public interest. Today Alberto runs The Good Lobby, the first advocacy skill-sharing community aimed at connecting people with expertise with civil society organizations who need them in pursuit of the public interest and training campaigners all across Europe through free workshops. Alberto is a regular contributor to Le Monde, Politico Europe, and Bloomberg, and his scholarly and public interest work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, Science, and the Financial Times. His last book, ‘Lobbying for Change: Find Your Voice to Create a Better Society’ (Iconbooks, 2017), provides a timely analysis and guide to levelling the democratic playing field by empowering ordinary citizens to speak up and inform policy decisions at local, national and international level. ESTELLE NABEYRAT Estelle is a German French curator and art critic mostly based between Paris and Lisbon. She curated several exhibitions projects at Neuer Aachner Kunstverein, Museu da Répùblicà in Rio de Janeiro, at galerie Emmanuel Hervé (Paris), Espace Khiasma (les Lilas), Scaramouche Gallery NY, Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and many more. She worked at the Bildende Kunst Akademie in Vienna as assistant of Ute Meta Bauer and then then joined the School of Fine arts Lyon (ENSBA) School of Art & design Reims (Esad) and at the Art center Le Magasin as Head of the curatorial program. She also worked for Performa Biennal NYC (2015), Orange Rouge (2013-14) and is now assisting artist Pier Paolo Calzolari. In 2009, she received a fellowship from the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston before being hosted as curator-in-residency at Palais de Tokyo (2010-11) and Capacete Brazil (2011). In 2012, she received a fellowship by the Cnap for a research on anthropophagia. She also worked on historial re-enactment in contemporary art (to be published at PUR), history and forms of violence in a decolonizing perspective. Related to that, she has been working on a documentation project around the work of independentist journalist Henri Alleg during the algerian war. Her texts have been published in several reviews and newspapers (South as a mind, L’art même, Zérodeux, Kaleidoscope, La belle revue…) and catalogues. She co-directed the book Réalité du commissariat at beaux arts de Paris publisher. She runs in…
Best of European Alternatives in 2017
What we have achieved this year? As 2017 comes to end, we want to take a look back and see what we have achieved this year with our members and partners, both at the grassroots and the institutional level. In our effort to bring Europe closer to the citizens, we have worked in 2017 mobilising citizens across the continent via debates, open events, international seminars, online and offline articles, video productions, social media campaigns, and specially, TRANSEUROPA Festival 2017 aiming to reverse the European apathy. 2017 has been especially important for us because we celebrated our 10th anniversary in Rome at the MAXXI museum over a day of debates and actions around the idea of Europe. 1. TRANSEUROPA 2017: Convergent Spaces At the end of October, together with over 150 activists from all over Europe, we organised TRANSEUROPA Festival 2017 under the title “Convergent Spaces” together with our friends and partners from Zemos98. In the past decade, TRANSEUROPA has attracted thousands of participants through a decentralised event structure in over a dozen European cities and a high profile moment in one city. For the 2017 edition, Convergent Spaces, the main city for TRANSEUROPA was Madrid and it counted with the official support of the city council. The Festival ran over five days in October covering three main thematics: Europe as a refuge, Cities of Change and the Commons, through a mix of formats ranging from lectures, participative workshops, artistic interventions, performance, cinema, music and political debates. 2.Art Real: shifting discourses about migration through art and culture In 2017 Talk Real launched ‘Talk Real – Art Real’, a series of episodes about artistic projects and social practices from grassroots movements that aim to counteract the dominant discourses of crisis and threat in the so-called “refugee crisis”. Art Real counted with the moderation of Maragarita Tsomou, and with the participation of key speakers such as Oliver Ressler, Lucila Rodriguez Alarcon, or Navine G. Khan-Dossos. The series of episodes was part of our new project ‘Re-Build Refuge Europe’, a project that has brought together partners from the UK, Sweden, Spain, Finland and Germany, and Greece. The project has worked to produce innovative practices that could allow European citizens and refugees to work together on equal footing and learn from each other. 3. Cooperating with the Western Balkans activists and civil society We have been part of the Democratic Left 2018, a process coordinated by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Our role included editing the Manifesto of DL18 and producing Talk Real video discussions to make visible key challenges in the Western Balkans nowadays. Together we have made strong policy recommendations for the future of the region which will be taken to decision makers. 4. Shifting Baselines of Europe What if another Europe already exists? This year we also published a new book following this question and exploring a Europe beyond Neoliberalism and Nationalism. Shifting Baselines of Europe is build upon interviews and essays with contributors like Etienne Balibar, Ulrike Guérot, Gesine Schwan, Renata Avila, Barbara Spinelli, Andreas Karitzis, among others, and interviews with city governors from Madrid to Naples. Experiences from the municipal level to the level of transnational media, from technology and counter-surveillance, to a concrete proposal to revive the European refugee policy. The book proves that a shift towards a new way of thinking and doing politics is not only possible, but actually already happening. You can download the book for free here. 5. PoliticalCritique.org This year we decided to join forces with our friends from Krytyka Polityczna in order to develop a transnational media network able to speak beyond European borders. With our magazine PoliticalCritique.org, we offer an online space and community for a more connected generation of active citizens that engage with current events and social issues. This new alliance directly connects with our common objective of connecting the already existing audiences at the national level towards a shared European agenda setting, knowledge and imagination. 6. Hundreds of activists mobilised across Europe With Transeuropa Open, multiple debates and workshops as well as election parties, members of European Alternatives organised more than 30 local events in different cities and carried out actions to raise awareness that a transnational civic space exists as well as alternatives to politics as usual.
Suzana Carp and Alberto Alemanno, new members of the Board
Over the last week, members of European Alternatives were called to vote for the election of two new members to the transnational board. The transnational board is composed of a maximum of 8 members, with 4 elected by members of European Alternatives, and up to 4 co-opted by the board itself to build relationships with member organisations or to bring additional capacities to the organisation. Meet the two freshly elected board members below! Suzana Carp and Alberto Alemanno, new members of the Board Suzana Carp and Alberto Alemanno are joining the transnational Board of European Alternatives. Congratulations! The new board of European Alternatives, currently composed of 7 members, will meet in the winter this year. Suzana lives in Brussels where she leads on the EU engagement work of a London based climate policy think tank Sandbag. She worked on a number of migration related projects, including working on a project investigating migration in the media across different countries, completing a comprehensive study of refugee support across the EU, etc. She founded the project Act 4 Democracy, which strives to offer education for democracy through theatre to youth from underprivileged backgrounds and remote areas. Get to know her by watching her video statement. Alberto is an academic, civic advocate and public interest lawyer. He’s Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris and Global Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He runs The Good Lobby, the first advocacy skill-sharing community aimed at connecting people with expertise with CSOs who need them in pursuit of the public interest. His last book, ‘Lobbying for Change: Find Your Voice to Create a Better Society’ provides analysis and guidance to empower citizens to speak up and inform policy decisions from the local to the international level. Get to know him by watching his video statement.
Erkan Özgen: Kurdish artist
Black Lives Matter Denmark: interview with Bwalya Sørensen
Marina Garcés: Vivimos una crisis de soberanía más que un combate entre identidades
Rise of far right: The EU needs to do much more to fight against it
Migration crisis: The EU is part of this problem
SOS Racismo Madrid – (entrevista a Moha Gerehou)
Gesine Schwan | Refugees relocation: Cities should be independent from central governments
European politics: how can we make an impact from grassroots’ movements?
¿Feminizar la política o despatriarcalizar nuestra sociedad?
Brexit: People who identify as black in the UK voted for remain
Strategies for the Right to the City and Culture
Talk Real Sarajevo: Strategies for the Right to the City and Culture
What are the main challenges that activists in Sarajevo are facing? What are the possible strategies to engage citizens for the right to the city and the defense of cultural institutions in Bosnia Herzegovina? Is it the right moment to create new political parties that support alternatives? In our new Talk Real episode of our Balkans series, we asked two grassroots activists to give us a sense of the latest social and cultural struggles in Sarajevo and what alternatives there are to fight further.
Joan Subirats: Cities are spaces where things can change for better
Real representation as Europeans
OUR PETITION Candidates running for the European Parliament in upcoming elections should be accountable to all EU citizens, and not only to their national electorate. Time has come to elect Members of Parliament no longer based on their country of origin and to allow them to run across Europe. Make the necessary changes to ensure this happens! WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? A bold proposal to revolutionise European elections was just announced. The European Parliament (EP) will have to decide whether to take it forward or reject it this Wednesday. [1] Right now, many of our representatives are immersed in a daily battlefield to defend the interests of their country, when they should be thinking about our common future as Europeans. Instead of win-win solutions, politics in the EP often end up in a zero sum game. But this new proposal, known as ‘transnational lists’, can change that. By having at least some parliamentarians (MEPs) accountable to all Europeans, the EP can become more of a forum to plan our common future as Europeans. It’s possible, but not easy. Already an significant number of MEPs favour this idea. But many are still undecided and we’ve just learnt which ones are trying to block the proposal by heavily lobbying their colleagues. As their electors, we can pressure them and voice our message for a stronger democracy. If candidates in the next EP elections could run as part of a truly international and European party – not just as part of a conglomerate of national parties, they could be free from conflicting national agendas. We would still vote for national MEPs, but we would also vote for a candidate on a joint European list. And that candidate wouldn’t need to be from our own country. They would be better placed to bear in mind everyone’s interests – our interests as Europeans, and not just the interests of people who share their passport. Let’s take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – an outcry from a movement of mobilised Europeans can mark the difference between a parliament that searches for win-win solutions or a battlefield over petty nationalistic interests! Joint European lists would breathe new life into the debates in Parliament, force political parties to put forward their vision for Europe and possibly stimulate greater voter turnout! We need to influence both parliamentarians and our national leaders for this to happen. After the vote in Parliament it’s the countries of the EU that will be calling the shots on the future of the proposal. It’ll be their time to decide. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Malta and Greece already favour the proposal. [2] We have a tangible chance to make this happen: but we still need to shift key players like Germany. References 1. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20180123IPR92301/eu-elections-2019-meps-pave-way-for-pan-european-constituency-post-brexit 2. https://primeminister.gr/en/2018/01/11/19195 In partnership with
What’s coming up in 2018 in EA?
In our effort to bring Europe closer to the citizens this year 2018 we want to continue mobilising citizens across the continent via debates, open events, international seminars, online and offline articles, video productions, and campaigns aiming to reverse the European apathy. TransSol documentary coming out in Spring 2018-2008. Looking back at ten years of economic and political crisis, Europe might appear like a continent pulling itself apart: North versus South, East versus West, citizens versus institutions. And yet, these years have also shown the hidden vitality and the radical imagination of European citizens acting across borders. Our new documentary coming out in Spring this year as part of the Horizon 2020 research project TransSol, proposes a journey across Europe to meet the makers of tomorrow’s society. Ken Loach, Yanis Varoufakis and Gesine Schwan are some of the key figures featuring the documentary. Summer Campus in Florence As every two years, the Campus of European Alternatives will bring together activists and researchers from different parts of Europe to exchange, reflect and strategise together on how to build transnational alternatives to politics as usual. What makes the Campus of European Alternatives relevant is its capacity to help activists exchange, reflect and strategise how transnational activisms looks like. More details about the Campus in Florence coming out soon! Training against far right and xenophobia In recent years, the increase of hate speech throughout Europe has contributed to electoral victories of nationalist parties and the radicalisation of far-right movements, fueling hate crimes and violence towards marginalised groups. From forcible evictions of Roma people to stigmatisation and attacks of LGBTQI+ and minority faith communities, the hate narrative gradually weakened the social cohesion between communities. Besides, it challenged democracy, equality and the rule of law across the continent. To counteract those trends, European Alternatives, in collabaration with the Foundation Responsability Remembrance and Future and supported by the Guerrilla Foundation, is running a series of two trainings in March and May 2018, bringing together activists and citizens willing to stand against hate speech and far-right radicalism in Central and Eastern Europe. New content in PoliticalCritique.org Last year we decided to join forces with our friends from Krytyka Polityczna in order to develop a transnational media network able to speak beyond European borders. With our PoliticalCritique.org, we offer an online space and community for a more connected generation of active citizens that engage with current events and social issues. This year we want to develop forwards this alliance that directly connects with our common objective of connecting the already existing audiences at the national level towards a shared European agenda setting, knowledge and imagination. Mapping cities of change European Alternatives has long been committed to supporting social dynamics, citizens’ platforms and local governments in the construction of transnational networks and exchanges. This is why we hope that these ideas will be placed at the centre of the initiative of other European cities, movements and institutions. Cities are pioneering new forms of participatory governance throughout Europe. For more than five years, we have been supported city representatives and citizens initiatives across Europe in sharing their experiences and innovative democratic practices. We have organised different encounters and events in cities like Rome or Messina, with the mayors of cities like Naples or Barcelona, to promote the exchange of best-practices between governments and activists, and raise awareness of the importance that cities play an effective role in the international arena. This year we are part of the editorial team of researchers that will launch in May 2018 a map that will illustrate the municipal and urban grassroots experiences spreading across Europe.
Gesine Schwan in Solidarity with Mimmo Lucano
Open call to participate in our solidarity contest for students!
Are you between 14 and 20 years old? Do you care about solidarity in Europe and would like to represent its future through an artistic output? Then read through this call and get ready to participate in our new contest for students! Deadline 7th March The economic crisis in Europe has placed solidarity at the top of public and policy agendas. But how strong is solidarity amongst Europeans, after almost 60 years of European integration? What is the perception of transnational solidarity that young people have? What is their vision for the future of solidarity in Europe? European Alternatives, together with their partner from the TransSOL project consortium, asked these and other open questions in a contest for school students, asking young people aged between 14 and 20 to give voice to their opinion on the future of solidarity through creative artistic products. A jury composed of 5 members from different fields, from youth to academia, will evaluate the creative products receive and will award three proposals based on the criteria of diversity of means, quality, geographic representation and relevance to the topic. The winners will have the opportunity to win a trip to Brussels in mid-may to present their work at the final conference of the project and to enjoy the European capital. Other entries received will also be shown at the conference through an exhibition. Get your creativity going! Deadline is on 15th March at midnight and you can submit your proposal and questions to solidaritycontest@euroalter.com Find out more on how to participate here! The call is available in English | Italiano | Français | Dansk | ελληνικά | Polski | Deutsch
Act4Free Movement
Con ACT4FreeMovement abbiamo condotto una campagna per la libertà di movimento con i cittadini dell’UE.
CARE
CARE (Citizen Assemblies for Renewing Engagement) provides practical and research-based evidence of how citizens can most effectively engage in any debates about the future of Europe, and influence the EU policy agenda.
Labour Games
LABOURGAMES è stato un progetto di ricerca artistica triennale. Metteva in discussione il rapporto tra lavoro e gioco e creava prospettive innovative sull’attuale sistema del lavoro in Europa – producendo giochi su questo tema.
Political Critique
Political Critique è una rivista online paneuropea per la democrazia, l’uguaglianza e la cultura al di là dello Stato-nazione. La rivista si concentra sui fenomeni e le tendenze più importanti della politica, della cultura e della società di oggi.
Our Transnational School of politics made it to the shortlist of Advocate Europe
We made it to the shortlist of Advocate Europe with our idea of a Transnational School of politics along with 30 other ideas to promote European democracy. Thank you for the opportunity!
A new report, backed by key Corbyn supporters proposes “remain and reform”
‘The Corbyn moment and Europe’ report argues that the likely election of a Corbyn-led Labour government presents an opportunity to renew and reform the EU, and use its institutions to lead the fight against climate change, global conflict, tax avoidance and inequality. Jeremy Corbyn – phot0 by Garry Knigh – public domain The authors of the new report, published today and written by Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance at the LSE John Palmer, former Political Director of the European Policy Centre Luke Cooper, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Anglia Ruskin University, and Niccolò Milanese, Director of European Alternatives, argue that only if the UK remains in the EU can Corbyn have the necessary influence to achieve these changes, and that there is widespread public support – especially among Labour voters – for Labour to keep Britain in. The report identifies a number of key areas where a Labour government could transform EU policy. These include: Taxing multinationals, including harmonising corporation tax rules and clamping down on tax avoidance. Regulating banks, including with a new financial transaction tax Protecting migrant workers’ rights and strengthening trade unions Digital Rights, where Labour has already played a leading role in the global debate Climate change, using its weight shift EU institutions and overcome big business lobbies Addressing global conflicts, prioritising the security of people, rather than the interests of states, on a humanitarian basis Ending fortress Europe, by radically altering the discourse, opening up legal routes for entry, and treating the refugee crisis as a humanitarian issue, not a security one Reforming the Eurozone, by playing a supportive role and example for progressive anti-austerity parties inside it “The EU is at a crossroads, and the Labour party as Europe’s largest socialist party could have a decisive role in moving the whole continent towards progress, greater democracy and equality. Labour’s sister parties are in crisis and in need of renewal, and many of their members along with civic movements across Europe look to Corbyn to provide leadership. It is a once in a generation opportunity to affect change internationally, and a fearless engagement with Europe from the Labour party could achieve it.” Niccolò Milanese
Meet the winners of our solidarity contest!
We have three winners of our solidarity contest! We are happy to announce that the awarded participants, coming from Denmark and Montenegro, will come to present their work at the final conference of the TransSol project on the 15th of May in Brussels. We also want to thank all the applicants who submitted creative and inspiring works! The economic crisis in Europe has placed solidarity at the top of public and policy agendas. But how strong is solidarity amongst Europeans, after almost 60 years of European integration? What is the perception of transnational solidarity that young people have? What is their vision for the future of solidarity in Europe? European Alternatives, together with their partner from the TransSOL project consortium, asked these and other open questions in a contest for school students, asking young people aged between 14 and 20 to give voice to their opinion on the future of solidarity through creative artistic products. Among the entries submitted, a jury composed of 6 people evaluated and awarded 3 projects that they thought were creative, communicative and could speak of solidarity in different ways, looking at its present, past and future. The jury was composed of Christian Lahusen, from the University of Siegen, professor of comparative cultural sociology and political sociology in Europe; Maria Grasso, professor at the Department of Politics of the University of Sheffield; Rosa Lechuga, research assistant at Science Po; Rasha Shaaban, coordinator of the Anna Lindh Foundation Network in Sweden and Member of the Board of Trustees in European Alternatives, Lasse Sjobeck, Board Member of the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU) and Marta Cillero Manzano, Communication Officer in European Alternatives. Having conducted an evaluation based on relevance to the topic, quality of the content and originality of the work, the Jury is happy to announce that the winners are: Asta Selchau Trans international tegneserie DENMARK Description by the applicant: “I have drawn a comic, Paper Walls, that is meant to symbolise the trans international and Danish solidarity right now with the refugee crisis. I think that it is truly one of the places we have lost our solidarity. The Danish politicians and their policies have damaged both people, the Danish reputation and my faith in them. We have covered our self with lies and fabricated stories to support our beliefs. In all this I think we have forgotten that there are real people that suffer. My hope is that we can get together inside our countries not politicians, but we as people. To break down the walls and see each other in the eyes.” Stijović Radisav Building solidarity MONTENEGRO Description by the applicant: “While thinking about the theme, I thought about the historical aspect of solidarity in Europe. I decided that I would convey my idea in the best way in the visual form of comic, because of the merging of visual arts and storytelling,characteristic for this art form. Materials I used are watercolor and ink, with digitaly added text. Four panels are symbolic displays of present,past and message/main idea. The main idea behind the artwork is that we have to look at solidarity as a moral duty in one sense, in our contemporary world. We owe qualities of our time to the people of the past, and therefore we are also obliged to build and fix bridges for the future generations.” Gimnazija 30.septembar Rožaje Open your hearts MONTENEGRO
Act4FreeMovement: Participatory democracy already exists beyond the nation-state
The European Parliament opened its doors to the French president Macron last week to hear his vision for the European Union: a more integrated Europe to safeguard freedom and democracy against the perils of nationalism, illiberalism and authoritarianism at home and abroad; a European sovereignty to complement the national ones. This plea came on the back of his previous suggestions to reboot democracy in and of the EU, with a series of “democratic conventions” – intended to give citizens a voice in a new transnational conversation about the future of Europe – as the most resounding. However, as a closer look at this apparently citizen-friendly innovation shows, it is questionable to what extent genuine progress towards a democratic renewal of the Union can be made via an executive fiat, no matter how well intentioned. Macron’s is a top-down approach concealed under a thin layer of citizen legitimation. Given the obvious fact that the elusive European citizen can only be (self)realised bottom-up, by virtue of her own struggle for rights’ and identity recognition, is there something already existing within the institutional arsenal of the EU that can serve as a channel for participation? Working together Preceding Macron’s speech by one week, one other important event for the future of democratic politics of the EU that might provide an answer to the question above went largely unnoticed. The ECI Day is an annual event hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in collaboration with civil society organizations actively working on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI). This year’s theme, Working Together, underlined the value of cooperation and the shared responsibility for promoting active citizenship by EU citizens and institutions alike. It took place amid the long overdue process to revise the Regulation with the European Commission legislative proposal for a new regulation on the ECI setting the stage for discussions. The ECI is the first transnational instrument of participatory democracy allowing one million citizens to invite the Commission to initiate legislation on a matter those citizens deem important. It was suggested for the first time by civil society during another convention, that ‘On the Future of Europe’ in 2002 and found its way to the Lisbon Treaty after surviving the failure of the constitutional treaty in 2005. First launched in 2012, it was ripe for reform already in 2015, but the Commission sat on ituntil very recently thus fuelling suspicions that its support for the inclusion of EU citizens into the Union decision-making was merely declarative. To date, almost 70 ECIs have been launched, but only 5 managed to pass the threshold of collecting one million signatures. While the Commission has managed to overcome some of its unwarranted initial fears and has gradually loosened its Draconian interpretation of the admissibility criteria for incoming initiatives under the pressure of all other stakeholders concerned, there is still a sense of urgency to adopt the new regulation in order to address a plethora of issues that impede the ECI from becoming a more widespread tool of citizen participation. All parties agree on the technical improvements to be made, ranging, for example, from signature collection to personal data protection simplification. The key stumbling block is far more political: how to ensure a timely and comprehensive legislative follow-up (of the five successful ECIs, the EC delivered on two). Members of EA marching in Europe on the 10th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome – photo by Marco Casino The right to have rights Against this backdrop, one of the workshops, entitled ECItizen: Building synergies to promote European citizenship, gathered organizers of recent ECIs that tackled EU citizenship rights – from those of UK nationals threatened by Brexit to civic education for Europeans. The discussion was rooted in the basic assumption that every citizenship is about rights, participation and belonging. It yielded important conclusions to guide future citizenship policy and ECI institutional change. Firstly, in the words of Hannah Arendt, rather than any particular right, citizenship is ‘the right to have rights’. We often tend to think of European citizenship as little more than an assemblage of civic rights that are triggered once we cross the border in order to, for example, work or study in another member state. Thus construed, it is reduced to the facilitator of free movement of people, a passive status rather than an active practice, to an economy-enabling, curtailed political bundle of rights rather than a transnational active pursuit of freedom. On the contrary, if the European citizen is to be empowered, political rights ought to move from the penumbra of EU citizenship to its core dimension.The ECI is the latest and least known addition to the catalogue of such rights. If rendered effective, it could become the vehicle through which we can not only safeguard existing, but claim new rights at the European level. But the awareness of these rights must be widespread. This month, the Commission launched an ambitious three-year long campaign to inform citizens on the benefits of ECIs. Long overdue. Secondly, European citizenship should be about transnational participation. The Stop TTIP ECI sets a great example: when rejected by the Commission back in 2015, the organisers proceeded to collect signatures anyway, amounting to over 3 million statements of support against the now deceased Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Furthermore, they won a case in front of the Court of Justice of the EU proving them right to ask the EC to stop legislating on a treaty rather than just being allowed to ask to legislate. Despite all odds, in this case European citizenship was enacted through participation across the EU. The newly established online collaborative platform will now allow likeminded citizens around the Union to identify issues to place on the EU decision-making agenda and connect much easier and earlier than before. Finally, once EU rights are assured through sustained participation, the last component of citizenship – a sense of belonging and allegiance to the Union so often bemoaned as lacking – will be free to emerge. It took Brexit for the ‘remainers’ in the UK to realize the value of an ECI as a tool for claiming their rights and protecting the European dimension of their identity. Launching initiatives on other citizenship-related…
‘DEMOS’, a documentary to meet the makers of tomorrow’s society
DEMOS: Solidarity in Europe is our new documentary directed by the Italian director Berardo Carboni, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme. Ken Loach, Yanis Varoufakis, Mary Kaldor and Gesine Schwan are some of the key figures featuring the documentary. 1. The Movie 2008-2018. Looking back at ten years of economic and political crisis, Europe might appear like a continent pulling itself apart. North versus South, East versus West, citizens versus institutions. And yet, these years have also shown the hidden vitality of European citizens acting across borders. The new documentary of European Alternatives is presented as a real-life journey of the main character, Lorenzo Marsili, who has been active for over ten years in the promotion of a political and active Europe bottom-up. The story unfolds following the main character in his trip, showing hopeful instances of transnational actions cross Europe. The documentary portrays mobilisations that come from the years of experience of the main character on one hand, and from the results of the academic research ‘TransSOL’ (funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme) on the other. Synopsis The inaction of European nation-states and institutions to the social and economic problems that European citizens suffer since 2009, drive the main character of this movie, Lorenzo Marsili, to travel across Europe and meet the bottom-up initiatives that are bringing social solutions where the states are failing. The contradiction between the institutions and the self organised actions of European citizens will be presented throughout the documentary and the eyes of the main character in his trip across the continent. The documentary will not merely show what is happening on the ground, but bring and propose concrete solutions for a genuine pan-European approach. There are three main areas of citizens organisations and mobilisations that the documentary will look at that are also part of the TransSOL research: migration, disability and unemployment. Treatment The whole documentary is based on two key ideas: that of the necessity of building a European demos, and that of its current absence. The story is built around the journey of two people: Lorenzo Marsili, mentioned above, and Morjana Alaoui, a Moroccan film star. They are two real flaneurs of this century, whose objective is not that of Baudelaire or Benjamin of becoming pavement botanists, or discovering new metropolitan secrets and their singularity, but is rather to find out whether Europe really can be considered a city on its own, if a common demos exists. Lorenzo does this in dialogue with different scholars, politicians, artists and activists who – in their different fields – have faced these topics, trying to trace connections, observing practices, and listening to different people met by chance or appointment. The paths of ‘the ghost’ (Alaoui) and those of Marsili will continuously cross throughout the documentary, creating a surreal but evocative atmosphere, able to convey the manifesto of a Europe which is not based on fixed borders of the countries which are part of the Union, which has the ambition to share not only a system of economic rules, but rather a vision of the world based on solidarity. Contact us Do you have any questions about the project? Please send an email to m.cillero@euroalter.com This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649435.
Vardiya #2 Future of Childhood: a workshop in the Venice Biennale
rom the 4th June until the 10th we are in the 2018 Venice Biennale co-hosting a workshop on urbanism, architecture education and children’s impact on urban design. Eduardo A. Ponce. Sevilla, abril, 2018. Some Rights Reserved. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) In 1960 French historian Philippe Aries argued in his book Centuries of Childhood that childhood is a concept created by modern society. Based on his study of paintings, gravestones, furniture, he argued that before 17th century, children were thought of and represented as mini-adults. Since Aries’ book, childhood is an important debate in social sciences. However, when it comes to architecture education, the child is usually invisible, perhaps because it is classified as a ‘domestic’ or ‘less-than-professional’ subject. And even though children make up close to 30% of growing metropolises with an average population of 4.5 million in an average-15-million city, children’s impact on urban design is questionable. Future of Childhood workshop operates within Urban95 framework. Urban95 is a program initiated by Bernard van Leer Foundation and asks a simple and bold question to designers, architects, planners and innovators: If you could experience a city from 95 cm – the height of a 3-year-old – what would you change? The Future of Childhood will take on a speculative and futuristic perspective to this question. If as Wigley and Colomina argued in the 2nd Istanbul Design Biennial ‘the inevitable role of the designer is the design of the human,’ this role is perhaps the most pronounced when designing for the child as designing for the child almost always implies the design of the future human. So where do we see the child of the future? What does its surroundings look like? What does the child play? What is its nationality, its sex, its language? Thinking creatively about the future of childhood, we will think of what kind of future and city we want to help shape today. Team Rana Irmak Aksoy, Serkan Ateş, Ayşe Duygu Çancı, Ekin Erar, Memed Erdener, Selcen Fidan, Selva Gürdoğan, Ahmet Can Karakadılar, Seyit Koyuncu, Ségolène Pruvot (European Alternatives), Gregers Tang Thomsen, Matthias Simon Wechsler. in the context of
We invite five EA members to help us shaping this year’s Open Assembly in Berlin!
Are you a member of European Alternatives? Do you want to participate in our next Open Assembly in Berlin? Tell us why before Friday 15th June! Europe, we need to talk! We are very excited to announce that we are extending an invitation to five members of European Alternatives (it is also your chance to sign up now to become a member!) to come to Berlin and shape this year’s Open Assembly that will happen on Sunday September 16th. There is a lot to talk about! We want to discuss the priorities you see coming up for the next two years for civil society in Europe and look in particular how we position ourselves towards the upcoming European Parliament elections in May 2019. Are there already common actions we could join? What issues do we want to see in the campaigns of the political parties? What can we do to stop the shift towards right-wing populism and nationalism? The day before, on September 15th, we also organise the Congress What comes after the nation-state? in cooperation with the international literature festival in Berlin, and we would be glad to have you there! The weekend of intense debating on Europe’s future will kick off on Friday evening with an informal gathering with music and drinks. Members of EA at the Festival TRANSEUROPA in Madrid 2017 – photo by Elisa Sanchez Fernandez – creative commons Sounds great, right? If you want to participate, you need to be a member of European Alternatives, fill out our online form OR send a 1-minute video or audio answering the question “What kind of action do you think European Alternatives should do ahead of the European Elections 2019?” via email to m.pairet@euroalter.com with the subject “Open Assembly Berlin” before Friday 15th June. The invitation covers the flight (up to 200 EUR) and two nights accommodation from Friday 14th September to Sunday 16th September (subsistence and local transportation cannot be covered). We look forward to your thoughts and to welcome you in Berlin!
How is the EU responding to the shrinking civic space?
Across the globe, governments are shutting down spaces for civic engagement. The closing of civic space is not just about people’s right to organize or protest in individual countries. Civic spaces are an extension of the civil society, and when they function freely, they serve as a platform for our public social and political lives. If they function properly and without restrictions, they can be the settings where social change happens. According to CIVICUS definition, the civic space is the set of conditions that allow civil society and individuals to organise, participate and communicate freely and without discrimination, and in doing so, influence the political and social structures around them. On Friday 22nd June, Civil Society Europe released the results of a survey on the current status of civic space in Europe. The survey shows a general confidence of CSOs in the European Economic Area in the freedom of association, assembly and of expression, which is particularly striking if compared to candidate countries in the European neighbourhood. However, there is a widespread perception of lack of progress and deterioration. This trend is particularly strong in EU Eastern and Southern countries. photo by: Georgijev. Colourful revolution in Skopje – Macedonia What main factors raise concern? National differences emerged within each geographical group. For example, Portugal and Latvia had generally more positive responses than respectively Southern and Eastern countries. Belgium and the United Kingdom had more negative answers than other Western countries. At the same time, the comments in open questions also showed similar trans-European themes. Among factors that raised concern about the shrinking of civic space is the decline of rule of law and transparency, and the emergence of forms of managed participation in countries traditionally supportive of civil society. Also worrying is the rise of right-wing populism and the spread of hate speech which give more visibility to extreme voices and contributes to the creation of informal barriers and discourages people, especially those belonging to vulnerable groups, from joining the political debate. Neoliberal policies, austerity, and lack of understanding of the specificity of civil society are also source of anxiety. For these reasons, the report calls for the European institutions to act more proactively on the shrinking civic space. Several respondents found greater recognition at the European level than nationally, and showed desire to engage with European institutions. This same respondents stressed that barriers such as lack of structured dialogue, decreased funding, and differing interest make this potential process of engagement inaccessible. Generally, there is a desire for the European Union to play a greater role in upholding democratic principles and setting guidelines to ensure an enabling environment for civil society. When institutions failed to carry out a convincing and effective action to condemn and sanction breaches of EU values in a country, this had a negative resonance among civil society beyond that country. For example, among candidate countries, EU conditionality is regarded as strong leverage to work on a more open civic space. Nevertheless, the fear is that once the negotiation chapters are closed, the EU will become complacent with breaches to EU values.
Art and Culture at the forefront of World Refugee Day
In a world where violence forces thousands of people to flee for their lives each day, the time is now to send a message to governments and civil society that we must work together and do our fair share for refugees migration. On World Refugee Day, held every year on June 20th, we want to praise the strength and courage of millions of refugees and to show support for families forced to flee. At European Alternatives, this year is especially important for us as it closes one of our most esteemed projects: Re-Build Refuge Europe. With this project we have worked for almost two years with AthensSYN, Zemos98, Perpetuum Mobile, and Världskulturmuseet, to counteract the dominant discourses of ‘crisis’ and ‘threat’ in the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ by using art and culture. Activities of this project included storytelling, trainings and workshops. In this framework we co-produced a series of three Talk Real episodes under the title ‘Art Real’ filmed in three key places in the debate about the arrival of migrants in European cities: Madrid, Stockholm and Athens. Three cities that in different ways have been involved in the conversations about arrival of migrants to European borders. Athens is the capital of a country where more than 60,000 asylum seekers are stuck due to closed borders and the EU-Turkey accord on refugees. In Madrid the local institutions are working to give responses to the block of the national government to accept refugees in the country; and in Stockholm, refugees and local citizens hold a sit-down strike for over a month, protesting deportations to Afghanistan. Europe is conceived as a space in which several influences mix to create something new, a political unit based on solidarity and on the willingness of common construction, to which all those who wish so, have the right and the possibility to be part of. It needs to be a space for inspiration, improvement and reinvention for all. We believe that it is the cultural role and duty of Europe to welcome refugees properly and to allow for cultural hybridisation to happen. It is only by fully realising the potential offered by culture and arts to become welcoming and supportive place, Europe will build a resilient and creative society for its future, inside and outside its borders. Digital storytelling – iHopP in Gothenburg iHopP is a creative project led by the National Museums of World Culture with the aim to create an intercultural dialogue platform to facilitate integration of newcomers and local community members. The word “iHopP” is a mash-up of the Swedish words “ihop” (together) and “hopp” (hope). In iHopP, we used digital storytelling for the voices to get heard and to give meaning and context to the participants’ experiences. We filmed more than 20 stories in Gothenburg in 2017. Each story is one minute long. Workshop curator: Linda Tedsdotter (Visual artist, organizer and teacher). Storytelling workshop with expert Jerk Elmen. iHopp was selected among 8 best practices on facilitating integration and presented at Global Compact on Migration on 18 May at UN Headquarters.
Resistance, movement and invention: ready for the Campus of EA
The Campus of European Alternatives 2018 Resistance, movement and invention will take place alongside the summer school organised by the Centre for Social Movement Studies of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Florence on youth political participation in times of austerity. Young scholars from around the world will present their research results and join workshops with activists from across Europe to work together and imagine how to build resistance and be creative in a political moment with an extraordinarily strong and dangerous nationalist far-right narrative. General description While the mainstream struggles to defend the European Union, the far-right is very clear who its enemy is. This is not by accident: elements of the European Union, including free movement, anti-discrimination, protection of fundamental and human rights and the whole idea of transnational cooperation, go directly against a fascist worldview. Indeed, the European Union from its origins was openly an anti-fascist project. From far-right governments in Hungary and Poland, to the new Eurosceptic government in Italy, no European nation is immune to this trend and it has to be questioned how much the European Union institutions are doing to confront these trends today. We, as active citizens in Europe, also need to each ask ourselves this question. Our futures are under attack: under attack from austerity, under attack from borders and under attack from the far-right. At the same time, challenges have been met locally with value-based, creative interventions, from social movements to local campaigns and community projects. How do we continue to resist and how do we invent hopeful alternatives, drawing from the diversity of interventions against fascism across Europe? How do we mobilise a larger number of people to get active transnationally, and act together with migrants and marginalised groups to make of Europe a place for all? The Campus of European Alternatives 2018 opens a space for exchange, reflection and action for both the participants of the summer school and of our training programs in 2017 and 2018: ACT4FreeMovement and Countering Hate and Far Right Radicalism in Central and Eastern Europe. It aims to be the first step to build a transnational community of activists and researchers which reflects on new political trends, shares experiences and strategies, explores what transnational activism is and plans next steps for cooperation, campaigns and actions for a joint response to counter the far-right in Europe and beyond. In addition to the action workshops, keynote lectures will be given by Donatella Della Porta, leading expert on social movement studies; Jennifer Earl, expert on youth movements in America, and Philippe Van Parijs, expert on social justice. EA Campus 2016 – pic by Marco Casino Background After a first successful campus #FixEurope in October 2014, and a second edition in 2016 Shifting Baselines, we, at European Alternatives would like to go forward redefining practices, narratives and imaginaries for a more progressive, democratic and open transnational Europe. In the past year, we have published two books, one of them directly inspired by the EA Campus: Shifting Baselines of Europe, and one published recently: Citizens of Nowhere. We have also organised the Transeuropa Festival, last edition in Madrid in cooperation with the City Council, and have run several transnational campaigns on fundamental rights and migrant rights. Apart of our capacity building trainings (ACT4FreeMovement and Countering Hate and Far Right Radicalism in Central and Eastern Europe), we are also co-running our online magazine PoliticalCritique.org together with Krytyka Polityczna, bring progressive voices to debate and informing Europeans on burning issues across the continent. General objectives of the Campus To establish and reinforce networks with and among the participants To find best paths to combat to rise of the far-right right, xenophobia and nationalism in Europe To share and exchange best practices to create transnational movements of resistance against far-right right Program Download the program here. When? The Campus starts on the evening of the 19th of July and finishes in the afternoon of the 22nd. You can follow all the updates on social media with the hashtag #EACampus18 Where? Centro Studi CISL near Florence (Italy). Contact For general info about the Campus, please contact m.pairet@euroalter.com ***We will be running an Online Course on Countering Hate Speech in Europe in 2018. For this, we look for online facilitators to lead groups of learners taking part in the course. Apply by August, 5th. ALL INFO HERE*** For more details about our trainings, please contact m.pairet@euroalter.com
Reconciliation in the Balkans: A Call to Support the Prespes Agreement
The historic Agreement of June 17 2018 signed in the Prespes lakes between Greece and the (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) brings to an end an international dispute which had been festering for the last 25 years. It defines the political, historical and cultural boundaries between classical Greek Macedonia and as of now, North Macedonia, by making it clear that the Macedonian identity can be shared between people who endow it with different meanings. It respects the dignity and the right to self-determination of the two peoples and confirms the desire of both countries for peaceful coexistence. To achieve this, each side has had to address the concerns of the other side. For Greece, the geographical designation in the compound new name (“North Macedonia”), its application both domestically and internationally (erga omnes), and the requirement that the constitution of FYROM be amended accordingly. For North Macedonia, acceptance of the existence of a Macedonian language as part of the Slavic family of languages (a fact long recognized by the UN and Greece) the designation of the nationality as Macedonian/Citizens of North Macedonia, and crucially, the promise of starting accession negotiations to NATO and the EU. When completed, this legally binding international agreement will have resolved an issue of contested political identity, so common in multicultural societies, and will offer a model for future resolution of other protracted conflicts. But the agreement still faces major hurdles in both countries where the hard liners and extremists are mobilizing against it. The government of North Macedonia in particular desperately needs for all parties to fulfill their promise if it is to win the ratifying referendum in the autumn. In these critical times, when Europe faces the rise of extreme right-wing nationalism and racism, and when dangerous revisionisms are resurfacing in the Balkans and Europe dividing people into “traitors” and “patriots”, it is more important than ever to support those who take risks for reconciliation. We support this fair agreement and call on all parties to fulfill their end of the bargain. SIGNATORIES Kalypso Nicolaïdis, University of Oxford Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck, University of London, Βουλευτης Etienne Balibar, Université de Paris-Ouest, Kingston University London Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley Jean Luc Nancy, philosopher, Strasbourg Toni Negri, philosopher, Paris Barbara Spinelli, Member of the European Parliament Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck, University of London Mary Kaldor, University of London Luciana Castellina, Rome Frieder Otto Wolf, Freie Universität Berlin Catherine Malabou, Kingston University Claude Calame, EHESS, Paris Bo Stråth, University of Helsinki Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Sandro Mezzadra, University of Bologna Patrice Maniglier, Université Paris Nanterre Elsa Stamatopoulou, Columbia University Niccolo Milanese, European Alternatives Giacomo Marramao, Roma Tre University in Rome Edouard Delruelle, Université de Liège Peter Schöttler, Freie Universität Berlin Guérot, Danube University Krems, Austria Ahmet Insel, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Université Galatasaray Philippe Büttgen, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Yves Sintomer, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis, CSU-CRESPPA Emily Apter, New York University Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Birkbeck, University of London Albena Azmanova, University of Kent Louis Wolcher, University of Washington Jean-Numa Ducange, University of Rouen Michal Kozlowski, University of Warsaw José luis Villacañas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Gilles Manceron, historian, Paris Diogo Sardinia, Paris University Bertrand Ogilvie, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis Yves Sintomer, Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis Franck Fischbach, Univesite de Strasbourg Teresa Pullano, University of Basel\ Matthieu de Nanteuil, University of Louvain Pietro de Matteis, University of Cambridge Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc, Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis Stefan Jonsson Linköping University Manuela Bojadzijev, University of Berlin Rada Rada Ivekovic College International de Philosophie
‘What comes after the nation state?’ A congress to imagine a future beyond the nation state
Thoughts for a future beyond the nation state on the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers 10:30h-22:00h – Haus der Berliner Festspiele DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM Speakers profiles The Congress is open to all! No registration is necessary! Ten years have past since the collapse of Lehman Brothers ushered in the great Western financial crisis. Since that day, history has returned with a vengeance. From ongoing economic stagnation in large parts of the West to rising extremism, from threats of an end of liberal democracy to challenges to neoliberal globalisation, the world appears in a state of flux. The moment of crisis, interregnum, continues to this day. But while events are racing forwards, can the same be said of ideas? Our conceptual toolkit appears tragically unable to describe our present and shape our future. Why is that? And what are some of the categories that we should radically re-interpret today? We hold that today only the vision of a radically alternative organisation of our world will enable us to recuperate agency over our future. In varying debates as well as artistic formats and with experts from all over Europe, such as Ulrike Guérot, Gesine Schwan, Manuela Bojadzijev, Sivan Ben Yishai, Ann Pettifor, Mehdi Moradpour, Brett Scott, Harald Schumann, Tithi Bhattacharya and many more, the one-day Congress deals with these questions and challenges. A poster printing workshop enables visitors to conceive their own visuals for campaigns, assisted by the initiative This town needs posters! The Congress is taking place on the closing day of the International Literature Festival of Berlin (ILB). The event is also linked with the Open Assembly of European Alternatives on Sunday September 16th where we will gather to work on concrete ideas and actions in workshops and smaller groups. For more information about the Congress, please contact Daphne Büllesbach, d.buellesbach@euroalter.com DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM The event is co-funded by the Europe for Citizens Programme of the European Union:
Can co-creation help reach (more) social justice in the city? A research workshop preliminary to the Saint Denis Case Study
Creativity and (In)justice in Saint-Denis: Can co-creation help reach (more) social justice in the city? A research workshop preliminary to the Saint Denis Case Study in Saint Denis Dates: 20-22 September From the 20th – 22nd September we are running a workshop with the objective of co-create a mapping of spaces of creation and co-creation in Saint Denis, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, from a researchers’ point of view. The mapping will be continued by inhabitants during the October workshops (22-26 Oct) and then it will be reflected upon within the case study (a potential Case Study Kick Off would take place in January/February 2019). Co-Creation workshop – photo by European Alternatives – creative commons Activities of the workshop • Reflect about the topic of creativity and social justice. • Discuss and Exchange on definitions creativity in the city • Discuss how co-creation seem to apply to the territory of Saint Denis • Learn about/ Discover/Identify spaces/locations linked to creativity and social justice (first mapping exercise). For instance: institutional spaces, occupied spaces, socio-education centres, some street corners, underground spaces… • Identify existing co-creation activities and assess their relationship to social justice. • Understand what makes co-creation participate to the goal of ensuring social justice in the city. (define the steps that ensure that a co-creation activity participates to social justice) • Meeting of Academics, Walks within the city, possibly meetings with local NGOs // creative spaces managers // local decision makers (in the making) For whom? We welcome researchers from partner universities of the co-creation project and beyond (researchers interested in the topic of co-creation and in the topic of creativity in less advantaged areas of the city). We expect the researchers to contribute to the whole research after the workshop either by writing a blog post with their observations for the co-creation blog or by planning a mobility based on their research interests to work on a possible chapter to the case study. The workshop will run in French and English. Venue Saint Denis – exact location to be confirmed Case Study: Saint Denis – Towards a just creative city? Can arts and co-creation contribute to building a just city? Investigating creativity and its potential social impact: The case study of Saint Denis, France Authors such as Kagan and Kirchberg (2013), Ratiu (2013), Boren and Young (2013) have proposed to investigate how the concept of creativity can be rethought to plan for sustainable cities, taking into account all dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. Can creativity and social justice be combined? What mechanisms could make the ‘creative city’ more just? The Saint-Denis case study will investigate how the notion of creativity is articulated with that of social impact of the arts by actors involved in the making and financing of art activities (artists, art venues programme directors, political decision makers, audience). The case study will propose a mapping of spaces and locations of creativity in Saint-Denis by diverse actors (academics, inhabitants, public servants). It will also focus on how and under which conditions arts and creativity can have a social impact and contribute to social justice. What are the key element a creative process should have to become a vector of social justice? The main questions for the case study are: 1/ what do the actors who plan and practice creativity expect from their activities? 2/ where do they practice creative activities? 3/ Are these spaces/ activities on the map of public policy? What are the relationships with the public actors and financers? The case study focuses on the city of Saint-Denis, one of the poorer cities in the first belt around Paris. The city – led by a communist mayor – has an active creative city policy, with ‘districts of creation and culture’ and is part of the Innovation Arc, recently launched in and around Paris.
European Citizenship?
Meet the EU citizens fighting for free movement
The rule seems quite simple. “Freedom of movement allows citizens of the European Union (EU) to move to, live in, and in certain circumstances access the welfare system of the EU country to which they have moved. Freedom of movement is one of the founding principles of the EU.” Freedom of movement and residence for EU nationals and non-EU family members is a fundamental right, the most cherished across the continent.But there is more to it: “Any EU citizen can move to and remain in another EU country for up to three months. EU citizens who are students may remain for the duration of their studies, but must show that they have sufficient financial support for their period of study. Other EU citizens who wish to stay longer than three months must have comprehensive health insurance and prove that they have financial resources to support themselves.” But to what extent are these words close to reality? While a cross border move goes smoothly for many, there is still a large number of EU citizens that report facing significant difficulties when trying to exercise their free movement rights. Across Europe there are also citizens and activists who are taking an active role in campaigning, advocating and defending freedom of movement. For instance, ACT4FreeMovement stands for Advocacy, Complaints, Trainings for Freedom of Movement. The program was run by European Alternatives with a support from ECAS and EPIM from September 2017 until October 2018. With a goal to increase the capacity of EU citizens to effectively secure access to and knowledge of their rights, the group of activists campaigned for public awareness and political support for mobile citizen rights and provided support for citizen-led grassroots campaigns on mobile citizen rights. One example is the campaign Crossing borders, creating futures, which aims at raising awareness of public authorities, schools and students in Eastern Austria on the issue of border controls and differentiated access to education for Hungarian pupils crossing the border to attend schools in the region. The campaign mobilised students and teachers to lobby the regional government for equality of access to education and discontinuation of border controls. There are other reports of violations as well. The publication ‘Living in another Member State: barriers to EU citizens’ full enjoyment of their rights‘ more thoroughly shows concrete obstacles country by country. In a video interview Teresa Buczkowska speaks about the campaign Bloody Foreigners while Dominik Schlett shares his experiences about the Dare2Move campaign, both part of the Act4FreeMovement project. Another campaign, run by Eleonora Nestola ACTing4FreeMovement aims to transpose the legal cases of the European Court of Justice on freedom of movement to theatre and acting, while Phoebe Cullingworth coordinates Learning for Change. The campaign prioritises disadvantaged migrant groups, specifically those with low levels of English, recent arrivals, mothers, Black and Minority Ethnic people, low income or unemployed people. “We had migrants coming together for our courses, English lessons aimed at supporting them with language and learning about concepts like ‘xenophobia’ and ‘hate crime’.” They also worked on real life issues, using examples of situations they witnessed or experienced that made them feel unsafe, to learn how to respond to that situations in English. The objective: to gain confidence in a foreign language and stand up against hate crime. Following the ACT4FreeMovement training series, one can see the achievements of sixteen European activists working to build public awareness and political support for EU and non EU citizens across different European countries. From Italy to Poland, from Austria to Hungary. Countries that now seems to legislate and govern in line with nationalistic and racist slogans where ‘the other’ appears as a threat, someone who wants to ‘occupy our lands’. Countries where threats to democracy and the rule of law are becoming the norm, where recent political developments of the far right are increasingly violating basic human rights, including freedom of movement, but also freedom of expression and in some cases even physical integrity. The most important challenges of our times escape the borders of nation states. Racism, xenophobia and hate crimes do not understand national barriers and their impact surpasses state borders. The same is true of multinational tax evasion, climate change, financial flows and people flows. European and non European citizens are already inhabiting a cross borders world. In a period in which it is becoming more and more complicated to escape national borders, European citizens need to mobilise transnationally, starting from their local realities, from the violation of human rights they witness in their neighbourhoods and communities. Acting to secure access to knowledge of their rights, building public awareness and supporting citizen rights. We need a transnational coordination able to sum up the plurality of citizen forces, capable of campaigning and organising over all those issues that require European-level action.
Join our Online Course on Countering Hate Speech in Europe
While exchanging ideas with peers on the course themes and topics, this Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange will take participants on an interactive, action-oriented journey on Countering Hate Speech in Europe. Read our detailed call for applications for more information (the deadline for application has been extended to October 28th): the course is for activists, students and passionate citizens from all over Europe and the Southern Mediterranean who want to get a deep insight into hate speech. Based on a human rights perspective, the course explores these questions and the actions that can be undertaken to effectively counter hate and promote open societies. In recent years, the normalization of hate speech throughout Europe has contributed to the radicalization of individuals and collectives against the Other, fueling hate crimes towards marginalized groups. From everyday discrimination and stigmatization to direct attacks on women, LGBTQI+, Roma, migrants, and minority faith communities on social media, the hate narrative gradually translated into violence, weakening the social cohesion between communities and further threatening democracy, equality and the rule of law across the continent. What are the various forms hate speech is taking? What are the causes and consequences of hate speech at the individual and societal level? How is hate speech regulated in Europe? How does hate speech impact human rights and democracy? What can be done to fight against hate? Through Virtual Exchange, participants will put their own experiences, values, and challenges in the forefront as a primary source for learning and application about hate speech in Europe. Read our call for applications and apply through this online form before October 28th, 2018 Training series The course is of special interest for activists, students and passionate citizens from all over Europe and the Southern Mediterranean who want to get a deep insight into hate speech. Based on a human rights perspective, the course explores these questions and the actions that can be undertaken to effectively counter hate and promote open societies. Requirements Before applying, here’s what you need to know. The course is open to anyone between 18 and 30, and residing in one of the Erasmus+ programme countries or Southern Mediterranean countries. In addition, you need to fulfil the following criteria: > Interested in learning about hate speech, open to intercultural exchange with a group of peers, and ready to take action against hate in your community > Are proficient in English (reading, listening, writing and talking) • Have access to a computer with a webcam and microphone to participate in the online sessions > Availability for the same 2-hours throughout the whole duration of this 6-week course, to participate in online sessions • > Have 1-2 hours to invest in various assignments that support you explore the weekly topic As there are limited spaces, please note that we reserve the right to select participants based on their motivation and availability for the course. Read our call carefully and apply online here. The deadline for applications is midnight on October 28th, 2018. Any questions? If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch at chs@sharingperspectivesfoundation.com Support The participants of the course are engaging with expert content developed by European Alternatives, with the support of the Foundation Remembrance Responsibility Future (EVZ) and the Mott Foundation, and co-funded by the Europe for Citizens Programme of the European Union. While exchanging ideas with peers on the course themes and topics, this Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange will take participants on an interactive, action-oriented journey on Countering Hate Speech in Europe.
What happened after the referendum in Macedonia?
Palermo shouts! Collective public action for the life and freedom of migrants in Libya
On the occasion of the International Conference on Libya, to be held in Palermo on 12 and 13 November, Stalker invites the City of Palermo, its inhabitants and civil society organizations to participate in a collective public performance aimed at amplifying the shout for life and freedom of the hundreds of thousands of migrants now trapped and at risk of violence, torture and slavery in Libya. The City is invited to spread and amplify, using every possible means – from houses, bars and cafes, from cars in circulation and from public spaces – the desperate appeals of migrants voiced in the documentary, “Exodus,escape from Libia” by Michelangelo Severgnini and Piero Messina. By participating in this public performance, the City of Palermo, which gave its name to the International Human Mobility Charter, will make clear to the Heads of State and Government gathered for the international conference the urgent need for action to rescue hundreds of thousands of men, women and children stranded in Libya. The diffusion of the audio testimonies of migrants on line from Libya will begin at 8 pm on November 12th, when 10 orange maritime rescue ladders will be thrown from the windows of the roofless church of Spasimo. The ladders were originally made by Stalker / On with the Pakistani crew of the ship Spirit II, which was impounded in the port of Naples for months in 2004. In solidarity with Palermo Shouts!, the ladders have been restored in the alleys of the Calabrian town of Riace by it’s local and migrants inhabitants , many of whom now face de facto expulsion from the town celebrated around the world as a model of integration. The project is done in collaboration with: Comune di Palermo Prima Circoscrizione, Palermo Fondazione Orestiadi,Gibellina Macro Asilo, Roma. And supported by: Noantri Cittadini Planetari Archivio Memorie Migranti Comitato Verità e Giustizia per i Nuovi Desaparecidos Associazione Diritti e Frontiere – Adif Il Villaggio Globale, Riace Cemea del Mezzogiorno Forum Antirazzista, Palermo Moltivolti, Palermo Arci Porco Rosso,Palermo Mare Memoria Viva, Palermo Nation25
Citizens Choose an EU Citizens Assembly to Renew EU Democracy
This year the project CARE for the Future of Europe has developed and evaluated an EU appropriate form of deliberative assembly. Over two weekends, groups of citizens in Berlin, Rome, Cluj and Budapest met to discuss how to make Europe a more citizen-led democracy. The project gave citizens space to deliberate on the future of the EU in a structured, informed process, and to decide on a single policy recommendation for a more democratic Europe. The majority of the 123 participants voted to establish an EU Citizens’ Assembly. The next step is to raise awareness of the citizens’ recommendation. First at an event at the European Parliament on 27th November and then at the conference Citizens Assemblies: Time to Renew European Democracy in Liverpool on 5th December. We will present the findings from the project and citizen recommendations, and we will discuss how best to implement an EU citizens’ assemblies. For event details and to register, please click links. Our ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ Model The deliberative approach in the CARE project is innovative for two reasons. It is applied for the first time at EU level using a decentralised, Member State focussed method. Secondly, it combines online citizen participation with representative, offline citizens’ assemblies. Citizens had the opportunity to understand, discuss, challenge and develop ideas that relate to the common question: how can we increase effective citizen engagement in debates about the future of Europe, and influence EU policy? Citizens learnt about and discussed five options to develop EU citizen engagement – legislative crowdsourcing, referendums, citizens’ assemblies, enhanced consultations and citizen lobbying – and voted for their preferred option. The choice made was to establish an EU Citizens’ Assembly. What we achieved The project has shown that there is a real appetite for ‘doing politics differently’. Citizens want to participate in the complex questions facing Europe in a balanced and constructive way. Our innovative approach to citizen participation is an excellent new way of providing spaces for flexible, inter-societal engagement in EU policy-making and treaty conventions. An approach that works in a geographically and culturally diverse polity such as the EU. The CARE project was a strong collaboration between academic and civil society partners: University of Liverpool, WeMove.EU, European Alternatives Italy, Asociatia Efectul Fluture (de-clic initiative) in Romania, DemNet in Hungary, and the ECI Campaign. Please click CARE for more information about the project or contact james.organ@liverpool.ac.uk.
Case Study: Saint Denis – Towards a just creative city?
Can arts and co-creation contribute to building a just city? Investigating creativity and its potential social impact: The case of Saint Denis, France Authors such as Kagan and Kirchberg (2013), Ratiu (2013), Boren and Young (2013) have proposed to investigate how the concept of creativity can be rethought to plan for sustainable cities, taking into account all dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. Can creativity and social justice be combined? What mechanisms could make the ‘creative city’ more just? The Saint-Denis case study will investigate how the notion of creativity is articulated with that of social impact of the arts by actors involved in the making and financing of art activities (artists, art venues programme directors, political decision makers, audience). The case study will propose a mapping of spaces and locations of creativity in Saint-Denis by diverse actors (academics, inhabitants, public servants). It will also focus on how and under which conditions arts and creativity can have a social impact and contribute to social justice. What are the key element a creative process should have to become a vector of social justice? The main questions for the case study are: 1/ what do the actors who plan and practice creativity expect from their activities? 2/ where do they practice creative activities? 3/ Are these spaces/ activities on the map of public policy? What are the relationships with the public actors and financers? The case study focuses on the city of Saint-Denis, one of the poorer cities in the first belt around Paris. The city – led by a communist mayor – has an active creative city policy, with ‘districts of creation and culture’ and is part of the Innovation Arc, recently launched in and around Paris. The case-study is designed in ‘chapters’ so that each researcher, coming with his / her own interests, can contribute to the overall result and provide a particular angle of approach, on the theme of creativity, culture and co-creation. on the territory of Saint-Denis. Alternatives Européennes will assist researchers coming for secondment frame their research to contribute to the overall objective and get in touch with relevant partners and organisations on the ground. When? Date: 23-26 January 2019 DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES OF THE KICK OFF WEEK Research seminar Exchange between researchers on ongoing research within the co-creation project Increased understanding of the territory and its actors Advancement of the research plan and research visits of the partner researchers – identification of the contribution of each researcher to the research. Public events Public launch of research with local stakeholders Allow local actors to present their actions and actions to international researchers Production A map of co-creation and creativity in Saint-Denis carried out in a participatory way through workshops with various audiences, which could be the basis of the creation of an alternative visit of places of creativity and co-creation and creation in Saint Denis A repertoire of definitions of creation and creativity and expectations as regards to social impact of artistic activities. For who? The research seminar is mainly intended for researchers and partners of the project but is open to all. The public event is open to all, in the direction of local stakeholders interested in the issue of co-creation. Saturday 26 – Cartography Workshops The workshop of January 26 is realized in partnership with the association Coïncide and aims to offer young people followed by the association a professional co-creation activity. Objective: Identify, give and communicate a multiple vision of creativity Talk about creativity Talk about the practices and places of creativity identified by the inhabitants Identify places and locate them Result: a participative map of creativity in the neighbourhood concerned, which will be integrated in the research program on co-creation in Saint Denis, ie a large participatory online general map. THE CO-CREATION PROJECT The aim of the co-creation project is to understand how co-creation processes, which bring together different actors, through participatory artistic methods, can establish new dynamics of exchange between the actors of a territory and fight against various forms of social exclusion and stigmatization. The project is funded by the European Union. The project ends in 2020. It brings together the Universities of Bath and Oxford Brookes (Great Britain), PUC-Rio (Brazil) and UNAM (Mexico), and the City-Mined, Tesserae and European Alternatives associations. VISIT THE WEBSITE Local partners Coïncide Network of Libraries of Saint-Denis – The cartography workshop will be realised within the network of Libraries of Saint-Denis, with local residents, during the winter 2019. IUT Saint Denis (TBC) – IUT Saint Denis has hosted the first workshop of co-creation Saint Denis. We hope to develop further cooperation with the students and research team. Contact: Ségolène Pruvot, Cultural Director at European Alternatives: s.pruvot@euroalter.com
Biannual report 2017-2018: Connecting struggles across borders
With the end of 2018 we are publishing our biannual report of the past two years of European Alternatives. Two years full of actions, trainings, campaigns, and mobilisations to contest the rise of far right, racism and xenophobia. Two years of demonstrations and collective initiatives in different European cities. Two years of claims for freedom of movement, against racism and in defense of human rights. But overall, two years of connecting struggles across borders. At European Alternatives we believe that only by linking struggles from North to South, from East to West, working from what we have in common and refusing the imposed narratives for our future, the citizens of Europe will feel empowered to define the continent where they want to live. With the strength enough to imagine, demand and enact the Europe they want and not the one that is being imposed. In this report, you can find out more about the projects, publications, events and campaigns we have led together with our partners and networks in the past two years. DOWNLOAD IT HERE
Talk Real in Lisbon: Voices for the right to the city
(Im)possible complicities: Co-production, co-creation, co-optation
As part of our project Co-Creation, our partners from Tesserae, are organising a conference to look at practices and reflections which may help to understand and critically study community-based co-production and co-creation. The conference will look at a number of fields related to activism in housing, public space development, employment, migration, energy efficiency, climate change, food and waste management. Participative approaches in local policy are evergreen prescriptions, undisputed receipt for any intervention aimed at spatial development, social cohesion and cultural empowerment. Creativity is the natural seasoning of initiatives aimed at social and spatial development in distressed territories. Artists and designers search the complicity of citizens and local communities to legitimate their production with the blessing of the collectivity. In return, their language and skills may empower the communication and organisation capacity of local communities. They can support reflexive capacity and give voice to local struggles, or engender in the most successful cases solidarity. There is quite a rich literature on examples of innovation at micro level, but the local scale alone cannot be where all problems are created, understood and solved. While the localist discourse is often used to veil receding public support and let local communities to compete alone for survival and resiliency, creativity fostering social innovation finds itself distorted into palliatives, if not mere cosmetic practices. The purpose of producing benefits for local communities and dispossessed subjects easily may turn into producing visibility for the creative players themselves. Artists and social workers mediating co-productive processes end up more or less consciously into serving vested interests. Greenwashing, art washing, gentrification, are some of the words employed to spell the cooptation of creative forces into subordination to the dominant players and economic forces. We welcome papers and artworks which address questions regarding: The meaning of co-creation, co-production, co-optation Co-creation and community engagement for what and for whom The role of art in addressing political agency at different scales The issues of ownership/authorship in co-creation processes Time and engagement, the limits and advantages of short-terms vs long-terms (Im)possible Complicities conference looks for ideas that come from practice and concrete engagement in distresses territorial contexts. We want to discuss the potential and pitfalls of cocreative projects with activists, artists and academics that share a constructive as much as critical view on the topic. The conference is part of the CoCreation- EU Marie Curie Rise project involving academic and non-academic partners from Europe and Latin America. The conference will have a practice-oriented multidisciplinary approach. We encourage non strictly academic formats and interactive presentations. A session will be dedicated to film screening or presentations based on audio-visual works (max 20 min.). Please send abstracts to Dr Laura Colini laura@tesserae.eu . Abstracts should be prepared in a word processing document and include the following: Title Five keywords Affiliation Max 300 words abstract Max 100 words biography Film submissions should be sent to Dr. Lorenzo Tripodi lorenzo@tesserae.eu in the same format of the paper presentations including a link and password to access the film. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 15th February 2019 The selection will be communicated by 25th March 2019
António Brito Guterres | The Invisible City of Lisbon
What are our plans for 2019?
Time flies! We can’t believe that 2018 is already over. A year where we have worked hard in front of a global rise of the extreme right based on fear and hate, trying to bring credible responses from the grassroots-based on the protection of human rights and solidarity. It hasn’t been an easy task. We’ve seen the far right taking over Brazil, marching over Hungary with a cultural and political blitzkrieg, entering different Parliaments across Europe, and governing in coalition in Italy and Austria. 2019 doesn’t seem to get any easier, but we here we are, continuing to resist and ready to form an alternative. We are full of hope and eager to show the new projects we have coming up this year. 2019 will be a very important one for us with the upcoming elections for the European Parliament, the production of a new documentary on youth and democracy, new content on our online magazine Political Critique, our Transeuropa Festival coming up in Palermo at the end of the year, a new School of Transnational Activism, and the return of one of our dearest projects: Transeuropa Caravans, where six vans will be traveling across Europe ahead of the European elections. Our world needs an economic and political revolution. There has never been a greater disconnect between our political leaders and the needs of Europe and its citizens. 2019 might be the year that sees the change we need. It depends on us which direction to take. Get ready!
Transeuropa Caravans: the roads to European democracy
European Alternatives, in cooperation with Krytyka Polityczna and ECIT Foundation, is organising Transeuropa Caravans., where five different caravan on five different routes will be reaching 15 European countries in Spring and Autumn 2019. The call for applications is now closed. Check out the website of the project and stay tuned and follow our social media and hashtag #transeuropacaravans! www.transeuropacaravans.eu Activists of Transeuropa caravans travelling ahead of the European elections 2014 Why Transeuropa Caravans? With “TRANSEUROPA CARAVANS: The roads to democracy” we aim to inspire EU and non-EU citizens throughout Europe to become more active in the democratic life of their place of residence. Ahead of the EU Parliament Elections, we believe that together with activists, engaged citizens and local authorities should connect and give visibility to our common struggles and solutions. The idea of the Caravans is based on the concept of mobility, on hitting the road and settling down deeply in a new place, even if temporarily. Within the Caravans a group of activists will be travelling throughout fifteen European countries on board of five cars or caravans reaching out to European citizens at their sites of struggle, resistance and mobilization, meeting directly where they live, promoting citizens’ rights (eg. electoral), stimulating social engagement, and creating the new narratives of underrepresented citizens, such as EU mobile citizens, young people, women, minority groups. etc. The aim of taking up this travel is to throw the light on initiatives from below that contribute to advancing fundamental rights in Europe (migrants, environmental, …), organise events in collaboration with them, and to highlight challenges and good practices in the field of EU mobile citizens political rights. What are the Transeuropa Caravans? Five Caravans will be on the routes agreed by the teams, local hosts and the EA’s Project Manager. Each of them will be composed of 4-5 core team members who will travel through 3 countries during a period of 10-12 days. Each Caravan will have stops in a minimum of 15 locations on their way, small or big cities. Travelling with the caravans is a symbolic term – based on practical aspects, such as the availability of team members to drive caravans long distances, these vehicles may be replaced with cars. Routes of the Caravans In May 2019 (Spring routes): 1. Central Eastern route: Germany, Austria, Hungary 2. Western route: France, Spain, Portugal 3. Visegrad route: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia (team of this Caravan will be selected separately) 4. Baltic route: Sweden, Finland and Estonia In October/November 2019 (Autumn route): 5. Mediterranean route: Italy, Slovenia, Croatia Each of the Caravans will define its own main theme of the route. There are suggested themes, such as: Central Eastern route (DE, AT, HU): shrinking civic space, antifascism; Western route (FR, ES, PT): municipalism and cities, Visegrad route (PL, CzR, SL): culture; Baltic route (SWE, FIN, EST): climate change and sustainability; Mediterranean route (IT, SI, CR): migration, borders – all themes will be confirmed with the Caravans’ teams. The thematic scope will be worked out together by the Caravans’ team during the face-to-face trainings in March and April. The exact routes including the schedule of stops of each Caravan’s route will be confirmed by matching participants’ and local hosts’ availability but they should preferably start around May 1, and end around May 22. Activities 1. Caravan’s routes which are around 12 days long: 10 days of activities + 2 days for a break in-between. Each route should preferably take place between May 1 and May 22. 2. Face-to-face training in Warsaw, 21-24 March (4 days): where participants will meet the rest of the team, and start planning the route, defining activities to be run at the Caravans. The teams will acquire knowledge on EU mobile citizens’ rights, learn and share forms to stimulate democratic engagement. They are going to network and learn from almost 60 activists who will gather in this transnational mobilization workshop in Warsaw on behalf of Transeuropa Caravans, as well as European May and School of Transnational Activism – all being run by the European Alternatives. 3. Face-to-face training in Berlin, 12-14 April (3 days): where the teams will further map interesting initiatives that may become stops on the routes, and where they will advance in developing innovative forms of formats if engagement of citizens to be used as part of the Caravans. 4. Online training in Autumn 2019, exact date to be confirmed (1 day): the training will deepen the team knowledge of EU mobile citizens rights, including obstacles, avenues and best practices for citizens participation. 5. A gathering with all the activists and participants who travelled across Europe along the different routes, coming together at Transeuropa Festival in Palermo: beginning of November, exact date to be confirmed (2 days). The Transeuropa Festival will present results of our common efforts taken throughout the whole project. The teams In each Caravan, we are composing teams of 4-5 people who will take one of the following roles: – Coordinator – this person will be the main point of contact for the Project Manager in European Alternatives, as well the lead spokesperson for the media. Their task will also be to lead and coordinate team of Caravan participants. This person should be able to communicate clearly and efficiently in order to address group dynamics, eg. misunderstandings. – Logistics officer – this person will be responsible for confirming accommodation and the route (schedule of stops) of the Caravan. Their role will be to keep track of the Caravan’s expenses, and receipts that have to be later handed over to the Project Manager. This person should be able to plan ahead and mitigate any risk related to logistics. The main driver of the Caravan. – Communications officer – this person will be the main point of contact for the Communications Manager in the European Alternatives, providing content (texts, photos and short videos) for the Social Media on regular basis. This person should be able to manage social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) in coordination with a the communication manager of Transeuropa Caravans; work with other communication officers on branding the Caravans and organise the production of the material needed; work with…
TransSOL
TransSOL è un progetto di ricerca transnazionale dedicato a fornire conoscenze sistematiche e pratiche sulla solidarietà europea in tempi di crisi. Riunisce ricercatori e operatori della società civile di otto paesi europei: Danimarca, Francia, Germania, Grecia, Italia, Italia, Polonia, Svizzera e Regno Unito. La crisi economica in Europa ha posto la solidarietà in cima alle agende pubbliche e politiche. Ma quanto è forte la solidarietà tra gli europei, dopo quasi 60 anni di integrazione europea? Cosa sappiamo dei fattori positivi e negativi? E cosa si dovrebbe fare per salvaguardare o rafforzare la solidarietà europea a livello di cittadini, organizzazioni non governative e politiche? Queste e altre domande sono al centro della Transsol.
Urban Alternatives
Urban Alternatives è un progetto di mappatura che cerca di comprendere e mappare quelle iniziative che stanno emergendo dai molti movimenti sociali urbani che rivendicano il diritto alla città, occupano lo spazio urbano, chiedono giustizia sociale, partecipazione democratica, spazi culturali e trasformazioni economiche.
ArtGora Forum
ArtGora Forum è una piattaforma regionale per attivisti d’arte e professionisti della cultura che lavorano per aumentare la consapevolezza sulle disuguaglianze di genere per una società più giusta nella regione del Mar Baltico e nei paesi del partenariato orientale, in particolare Georgia e Ucraina.
DECiDe
L’obiettivo del progetto di ricerca “DECiDe” è quello di sviluppare e testare un prototipo tecnico che combina RSV e identità digitale per promuovere la democrazia transnazionale.
Transeuropa Caravans 2019: The road to the European elections
Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, a group of young activists will be travelling throughout fifteen European countries on board of five caravans reaching out to European citizens at their sites of struggle, resistance and mobilization, meeting directly where they live and create the new narratives for our future. www.transeuropacaravans.eu Activists of Transeuropa caravans travelling ahead of the European elections 2014 On the road to the European elections From 23 to 26 May 2019, European citizens are called to vote for the next European Parliament. By voting in the European elections, people living in the EU will get to choose the 705 members that will represent them in the European Parliament until 2024. However, statistic shows that the voter turnout during the European Parliament Elections is decreasing every year, or maintaining on a little more than 40% on the last elections. There has never been a greater disconnect between our political leaders and the needs of Europe and its citizens. We need to connect our struggles and solutions. Starting from below: Who are the citizens of Europe? The past decade in Europe is at one level that of a decadent, unimaginative and sometimes mendacious elite unable to fully understand and address multiplying crises. This is the history from above of the European Union. But there is also another story which has largely been outside of the interest of the media: a story of political invention amongst the citizens, sometimes for progressive and sometimes for reactionary purposes. This is the history ‘from below’ of Europe. The last decade has not only seen crisis, but also citizens mobilising to address them. We have had solidarity actions with and inside Greece and refugee-welcome initiatives, ‘blockupy’ mobilisations against the policies of the European central bank, the launching of NGO boats to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean, Amazon and Deliveroo strikes in the gig-economy, mobilisations to protect or advance women’s rights to abortion in Poland and Ireland, or the rights of LGBT couples in Romania, protests for freedom of the press and against corruption in Romania, Slovakia, Malta and elsewhere. Five caravans connecting struggles, building alternatives On a Baltic Route, one across Central Eastern Europe, on the Visegrad region, all through the Western countries and around the Mediterranean: the many initiatives that the five Transeuropa Caravans will visit, will tell the stories of common struggles and victories. Initiatives that share a sense of community, spirit of solidarity; from resistance to fascism to innovative ways of local participation at municipalists experiences. From the protection of the environment, to the opening of walls and welcoming initiatives for migrants. It is that growing network of interactions across borders, which is motivating people to find alternative ways for building a just and sustainable responses for Europe. Looking across the many different cities and initiatives encountered by the Transeuropa Caravans, there is a clear drive to open spaces together that respond to people’s needs, give freedom to the imagination, and enable new ways to prosper despite cuts to the social system. Our world needs the people that are already changing Europe to join us in our road trip to meet the maker of tomorrow’s society. We want 2019 to be the year that sees the change we need; it depends on us which direction to take. Are you ready?
Call for applications for the School of Transnational Activism open!
Debates about populism, the crisis of democracy and the backlash against globalisation are all raging. But very few people seem to be asking two essential groups of questions: in what ways is the nation-state changing and in what ways has it been surpassed? And what are the most effective political forms to find civic agency in this new context?
May is getting closer, what’s out there to do?
The EU Elections are getting closer, but it’s not only about voting. From 23 to 26 May 2019, European citizens are called to vote for the next European Parliament.
Urban Alternatives: mapping cities of resistance, innovation and alternatives
After long months of work, today we are finally launching Urban Alternatives is an online map that has emerged from the cooperation between independent activists and researchers, and a number of different organizations, including European Alternatives, Transnational Institute, Habitat International Coalition and the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute. The map is still ongoing and open for new content, so if you know about initiatives that should be added, do not hesitate to contact us. Cities are a scene of resistance, innovation and alternatives: the place where social protests erupt and mutual cooperation unfolds, where street mobilisations, cultural creation and productive innovations emerge. The Urban Alternatives map website should act both as a participative platform, and as a communication tool to work on transnational alliances of local actors and initiatives. The map currently contains over 40 cases. For their selection, we have paid attention to geographical distribution, and the mapping process is ongoing. Last year we were able to observe many different mappings of Europe, like the Transformative cities map by Transnational Institute and the Fearless cities map by Barcelona En Comú. It seems that the dynamic visualization of civil society processes is increasingly becoming an interesting source of information for activists, scientists and the public. The map is user-friendly, accessible and open for external collaboration and inputs. The Urban Alternatives map website should act both as a participative platform, and as a communication tool to work on transnational alliances of local actors and initiatives. The map currently contains over 40 cases. For example, since October 2018, homeless people have faced prison in Hungary after a tough new law was passed. One of the initiatives mapped is A Varos Mindenkie – “The city is for all” – a homeless and non-homeless activist group of grassroots volunteers in Budapest and Pécs that works towards an equal and just urban society. Its purpose is to stand up for the dignity of homeless people and to fight for the right to housing. In all the activities of the organization – from decision-making to organizing actions – people living in homelessness and housing poverty play a leading role. EWS ElektrizitätsWerke Schönau is another example. This initiative is established as a citizens-led energy utility that now sells clean electricity to more than 170 000 households in Germany. After the catastrophe of Chernobyl (UA), a citizens’ initiative was founded in Schönau (DE), in order to tackle topics like saving energy and producing clean electricity together. From its very beginning, the Urban Alternatives initiative was a collaborative project. The main challenge was how to find the best way to put all the data together, discuss it, analyse and visualise to make it interesting, comprehensive and useful. We split into several thematic working groups that will continuously work on the information gathered, help to inform the rest of the group, debate and provide different overviews on each case. To make it more concrete, the aforementioned working groups will discuss within their members and decide if an initiative would be included in the map, under which theme and under which tags to make it accessible and easy to navigate. The themes on the map are: Citizen Participation Mechanism Inclusive Housing & Public Space Democratic Remunicipalization Migration & Citizenship Rights Social & Solidarity Economy Socio-Ecological Transformation We welcome the submission of new cases, so do not hesitate to contact us! This article was first published on URBACT blog.
Charta 2020: A Charter of European Public Goods
Charta 2020 is a vision for a democratic and egalitarian European Union and a demand to recognize 20 European public goods that would get us there. Charta 2020 is promoted by Agora Europe and has been collectively written by several dozen international activists and academics. It outlines the conditions for European integration across 20 public goods that we Europeans should endorse to make Europe a better and safer place for all citizens and residents. Do you want to play a key role in enhancing democracy in the EU? Do you want to actively contribute to shaping the European political space of the future? Then take charge yourself! Endorse Charta 2020! #ShapeYourFuture #DoMore! Endorse #Charta2020 Who endorsed Charta 2020? We, the citizens of Europe, believe that our European unity and our citizenship are intertwined and do not rest solely on fundamental individual rights nor on treaties between democratic states, but on some more basic and concrete public goods, which ask to be defined, declared and protected. This has been the very purpose of the European Union since its inception: to create and sustain through time some vital public goods and promote them globally. By definition, a public good is a good that eludes both rivalry and exclusion; a good made available to everyone so that their enjoyment does not rest on competition and does not involve exclusion. Public goods are predicated on the principles of non-exclusion and non-rivalry. This amounts to saying that even those parts of a society that have not directly participated in the definition and actualization of these public goods can benefit from them. Charta 2020 defines some of the main European public goods. We believe they are at the heart of Europe’s purpose and its commitments towards its citizens. We think they should become an object of debate at all levels of society in Europe. This Charter offers a new frame of discussion to elaborate and propose a new agenda for the EU in the next decade. It advocates a renewed EU commitment by enabling its citizens to collectively create and sustain those public goods that underpin their commitment to the European project. An essence of self-government, public goods could through time become objects of our political desire. Today, this aspiration is stifled by technocratic governance from above and by ethno-nationalism from below. Against both agendas we believe that the discussion on the European public goods belongs to the arena of politics. It belongs to the EU political space and to us citizens as its primary actors. ENDORSE CHARTA 2020 Your First Name:* Your Last Name:* Your Email: Your Country: (optional) Organisation: (optional) *(required)
A new European Politics must start today
1. The results of the European Elections 2019 show us that after a decade of crisis in Europe, politics is now resolutely European. The 50 per cent turnout is just one indication. The future of Europe and the European Union is now a central political topic in all countries. This does not mean that the elections were fought and won on European rather than domestic issues, rather it means that domestic and European issues are now deeply interwoven. Likewise, this does not mean there are only several competing visions of how Europe should look, rather this is the birth of a Europe of many visions. 2.The nationalist, xenophobic and chauvinist far-right may not have done as well as they and some journalists anticipated, but their presence and the presence of their ideas must not be underestimated. The strong results for the Brexit Party in the UK, the Lega in Italy, Rassemblement National in France, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Fidesz in Hungary and Law and Justice in Poland amongst others are deeply concerning. These results will have immediate implications for vulnerable people in these countries, undermine European values and pose a threat to European democracy. Their presence in the European parliament must not be normalised, just as their presence in national government must not be normalised. These parties are part of different European groupings for the time being, but this does not prevent them working together and feeding collectively from the hate each of them sows. 3. The era of the grand coalition of PPE and PES is finished, and the technocratic politics it facilitated must also end. The coming weeks will see the re-organisation of the political groups in Parliament, new alliances and negotiations with the Council on the new European Commission. In this process, European progressives, leftists, ecologists and democrats should be insisting on a common commitment to the values of anti-austerity, social justice, ecological transition, gender equality, the rule of law and anti-corruption, media freedom, and migrant rights and welcome. There is sufficient agreement between the Socialists, Liberals and Greens around these values to work together: unity in diversity is our strength. We must not allow the right and far-right to paralyze the European institutions, block European solutions to common problems, or undermine social, human and ecological rights. 4. Too many leftist parties have become stuck because of dogmatic opinions concerning the European Union and an outmoded model of nationalised economies. Trapped by the idea that the European Union is necessarily and unchangeably neoliberal, too many leftist parties have surrendered their emancipatory ambitions to change the world at a time when the vision and lives of citizens crosses borders. Conversely, ecological and Green parties have succeeded in appealing to those concerned about the deleterious effects of capitalism by embracing the European Union as a strong actor to change this. 5. These European elections have shown that citizens can influence the future of politics on a continental scale in other ways than voting. Climate activism, Fridays for Future, the Extinction Rebellion and an extensive network of NGOs have all contributed to the green wave in Europe, not just in the unprecedented score for Green parties, but also in the commitment to green politics shown by many parties. This was achieved by a new generation working across borders. We need to continue to shape climate politics in this way, and also learn to do the same when it comes to social justice, migrant rights, women and LGBT rights and reforming the economy so it works for people and planet not financialised capital. 6. The European elections have become genuinely European despite the outdated nationalised form of the elections themselves. Transnational lists for the next parliamentary elections must become a key demand for all those who believe in European democracy. Extending the right to vote to 16 year olds across Europe now has renewed justification, as does welcoming civil society into the European opinion-forming and decision-making process between elections. 7. Over the coming 5 years progressive, leftist, radical and ecological Europeans should work together across borders to shape a new common agenda for the European Union, both inside and outside the European institutions. European Alternatives will continue to work in this direction with our partners, and through the School of Transnational Activism we aim to share learning amongst a new generation of activists to do this. Let the 2019 elections be a beginning of a new form of European politics.
We are recruiting an intern in Berlin
We are looking for an Intern or a Student Assistant (“Studentische Hilfskraft”) to join our dynamic and creative transnational team in August in Berlin. Intern / Student Assistant (Berlin Office) European Alternatives is a transnational non-profit, civil society organisation based in London, Paris, Rome and Berlin. We work to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state and imagine, demand and enact alternatives for a viable future for Europe. European Alternatives organises a wealth of activities that range from building new media formats to digital journalism platforms, from activist and research publications to cross-border campaigns, from local events to transnational political and cultural festivals, from citizen roundtables to year-long training series. Our projects are carried out across Europe often in partnership with other organisations and our members in Europe and the rest of the world. To support our team in Berlin, we are looking for an Intern for 3 months or a Student Assistant (“Studentische Hilfskraft”) for 6-12 months (depending on funding), starting August 12th, 2019. Tasks include: Communications and organisational support for the Transeuropa Festival, our biennial festival of arts, politics and culture taking place on November 7-10 in Palermo, and for the School of Transnational Activism, our new space to train a new generation of transnational activists for an open, equitable and sustainable Europe. Research materials and support the development of the curriculum of the School of Transnational Activism. Communications and organisational support for Berlin-based events, e.g. a larger event in collaboration with the International Literature Festival Berlin in September and the Open Assembly of Members of European Alternatives. Supporting the fundraising for our work program, in particular support with the writing of project proposals targeted at German foundations and other funding institutions. Support to our team for the day-to-day tasks of the Berlin office: social media and website management, translations, database maintenance, etc. How to apply? Please send us in one single document a CV and a one page maximum motivation letter to info@euroalter.com using the heading: Intern/Student Assistant Autumn 2019. Please apply by latest Tuesday, June 11th at midnight. The internship is paid. We are looking for you if you are a strong team player and creative communicator who takes initiative and wants to bring in new ideas; always wanted to know how European-wide civil society networks and movements operate and what activism across borders looks like; are fluent in English and German; have a strong interest for engaging new and young audiences; have some experience in one or more of the following areas: project management, event organisation, journalism, social media and website management; have made some experiences in activists and civil society networks; want to stand up against increasing nationalism in Europe and share our belief of democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. We are particularly committed to hire people from racial and ethnic minorities, people from LGBTQI+ communities, people with disabilities and people who identify with disadvantaged economic classes. If you don’t identify as one of these groups, we still want you to apply – but if you know of an awesome person who does, encourage them to apply as well! We look forward to your application!
The dawn of a Europe of many visions: an accessible guide to the European party manifestos
On the first day of the European Parliament elections, in collaboration with the London School of Economics, we launch an accessible guide to the European Party manifestos. The dawn of a Europe of many visions is a new report mapping the different European Parliamentary election programmes of the major European political families competing in the vote. Whilst these European Political Parties remain largely aggregations of national parties, and in each country candidates will be running on national manifestos, there are at least seven arguments for saying that 2019 marks the coming of age of European politics. Luke Cooper and Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz, academics based at the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit of the London School of Economics, togther with Niccolò Milanese, have produced a detailed report of what to expect from this weekend’s European elections. The report shows European politics is more polarised than ever with migration and economic inequality dominating the debate. “Europe is moving through a profound moment of change. The period of bipartisan cooperation between the European centre-right and centre-left is coming to a close. European institutions may experience paralysis – an inability to pass new laws – if no agreements can be struck, but new alignments on the left and right may also take advantage of this fractured landscape to build new coalitions for change” Luke Cooper, an associate researcher at the LSE. DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE With the growing salience of European issues in national domestic politics, we use the manifestos as a framing device to understand what achievements of the EU to date are most appreciated by today’s politicians, as well as what values and ideologies drive political party machines. We also look into what threats and opportunities lie ahead for the version of the European project they promote. This report can be taken as an accessible guide to the European party manifestos and how European politics work. It suggests that Europe is more polarised than ever. The rise of far-right ideologies is evidence of this, but so is the growing momentum behind progressive proposals for European reform. Ultimately, we are witnessing that European issues have finally entered national politics en par with domestic issues, and that electors have a choice between very different visions for the future of the European Union. “The first challenge for the new parliament will be imposing its choice for President of the European Commission on a reticent European council. If it can do that, and its candidate has a vision that can command a strong majority on either the right or the left, then we could see a shift in the balance of power towards the parliament and the most politicised EU for decades.” Niccolò Milanese, Director of European Alternatives. Event in Berlin organised by European Alternatives to discuss with candidates to the European Parliament – 2019 photo by Ulf Wrede
Welcome to the Online Course on Countering Hate Speech in Europe!
Transeuropa Caravans: Where have we been so far?
Four of the five Transeuropa Caravans have already arrived home, after an intense and thrilling couple of weeks on the road (the final caravan is hitting the road this autumn.) On the way, they visited cities and towns, met up with activists, NGOs and local authorities, interviewed politicians and ordinary people, supported campaigns and helped spread the word about the rights that come with EU citizenship. First one to head off was the Visegrad Caravan. Their mission: to speak to migrant workers and the communities that welcome them in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia. Eastern Europe has a reputation for being conservative and culturally homogeneous, and not always open to newcomers – but recent years have brought an influx of immigration and, with it, economic and social changes. To explore these phenomena, and the realities of living and working as a foreigner in the Visegrad region, they met Ukrainian bus drivers in Wałbrzych and Skoda factory workers in Mlada Boleslav. They sang traditional songs at a picnic with the local government of Wałbrzych and danced at the old bazaar in Prague to remind passers-by about the European elections. They organised dance and theatre workshops for children and adults, using body movement to communicate hopes and dreams about the future. Finally, they interviewed organisations and institutions that help migrants settle in their new chosen homes in Eastern Europe. The Baltic Caravan set off soon after to explore green Scandinavia with a focus on sustainability and climate change. This year has seen an explosion of climate mobilisations, from the school strikes with Fridays for Future to Extinction Rebellion protests – and the planet is finally becoming a major topic of political debate, as was visible during the recent parliamentary election in Finland. On the way, the team interviewed a number of environmental campaigners and raised awareness of green issues – but soon discovered that they were an excellent starting point to wider conversations about Europe, the upcoming elections and the necessity to work together across borders. From Green Drinks at a local bar to a Wheel of Fortune with quiz questions about the EU and the climate, they found creative ways of engaging with the public on these crucial topics. They also took part in events – from the Hässleholm Europaforum to Europe Day in Turku and a festival hosted at the European Commission office in Helsinki – talking about their trip and mission. Last but not least, they paid a visit to Helsinki’s free, community-run sauna and even bumped into MEP candidates who were DJing at a party in Tallinn. The Central Eastern Caravan had as its aim engaging with the theme of civic space. The question of freedom of speech and democratic rights, as well as crushing voter apathy, is once again becoming urgent in the age of the rising far right – whether that’s in the form fascist street movements, like seen for example with the growth of Pegida in Germany, or radical right parties entering government, like in Hungary and Austria. They started their route with a packed room at a screening of Spanish documentary The Silence of Others and discussion about the uses and abuses of history in political debate, organised together with Wake Up Europe festival. In Saxony, considered a far-right stronghold, they gave workshops about mobile citizens’ rights and tried to find out in what way the local community thinks about the EU. In Austria and Hungary, the caravan met with those resisting the right and fighting for democracy, whether that’s on a national or local scale: from Salzburg’s Grannies Against the Right to NGOs in Budapest standing up for civic rights under the authoritarian rule of Viktor Orban. They also commemorated liberation from the Nazis on May 8 by taping antifascist slogans on the pavement – and they reenacted Sophie and Hans Scholl’s act of rebellion by throwing leaflets off a balcony at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat. Such symbolic actions can serve as a reminder about the lessons we should have learned from history: that fascism, hate and attacks on democracy can never be tolerated. Finally, the Western Caravan route, across Spain, France and Portugal, centred around cities as scenes of innovation, democracy and resistance. The potential of local and urban politics is something Europe is only beginning to rediscover: from the municipalist experiments in Spain, where grassroots movements took power in a number of local governments, to feminist marches seeking to reclaim women’s right to public space; from local initiatives to welcome and support migrants to collectives promoting radical history through actions such as history walks. The Western caravan team was particularly interested in efforts to make cities and local democracy more inclusive. That’s why they met with groups like O Avó Veio Trabalhar, promoting creativity among elderly people, or the pro-migrant group Humans Before Borders, with whom they made a toolkit for challenging hate speech. In Porto, they presented the Caravans’ vision for a European Feminist Utopia, with equal rights and opportunities for all, and a roadmap to get there. They organised a discussion with feminist collectives in Barcelona, and took part in an LGBTQI history walk, celebrating queer resistance under the Franco regime. They also paid a visit to A Coruña, a city that in 2015 elected the municipalist movement Marea Atlántica to lead its local council, with the promise of reviving and strengthening local democracy. What has the radical council achieved so far? Read the interview here. What next? We are hoping to turn these experiences into lasting relationships and lessons we can learn from and pass on to others. See you at the Transeuropa Festival in Palermo! Meanwhile, you can find more photos and videos from the journeys by looking up #TranseuropaCaravans on social media.
How has protest changed in the face of climate change?
On the day of German-wide climate protests, in cooperation with the international literature festival berlin and activists of Extinction Rebellion, we will discuss the dynamics of the recent protests with contributors of the Extinction Rebellion Handbook Germany “Wann wenn nicht wir*” (S. Fischer, 2019) and a Green Party MEP. Join us on September 20 at 19:30h at the CHB – Collegium Hungaricum in Berlin The climate question has re-emerged as the defining question of our era. Climate justice movements have made the call for system change acceptable again through new ways of mobilising on the streets. Has activism changed in the time of climate change? What strategies work best for reaching the needed influence into effective policy for the socio-ecological transformation? With Sina Kamala Kauffmann (Extinction Rebellion Germany), Magid Magid (Green Party MEP), Ulrike von Pilar (Ärzte ohne Grenzen). Moderation: Daphne Büllesbach (European Alternatives). After the conversation, at 21:00, everyone is invited to have drinks and exchange at the venue. FACEBOOK EVENT The event is supported by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Civic Education Agency). It will take place in English. Free admission.
The Right to Truth
Stories and conversations about women associated with the movement for women’s liberation and emancipation and different works that embodied the struggle for women’s liberation. A joined publication with the Visual Culture Research Centre Kiev.
Transeuropa Festival: 6th – 10th November in Palermo
Transeuropa is one of Europe’s longest running transnational artistic and political festivals. Established in 2007 in London, Transeuropa takes place every two years in a different European city. After Belgrade (2015) and Madrid (2017), the 2019 edition will land in Palermo in cooperation with BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo. The new edition of Transeuropa takes place in the context of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (9 November 1989-2019) in Palermo and presents a rich program of exhibitions, public lectures, live music and concerts, involving a significant number of historical spaces of the city and world-class artists and speakers. If Italy has recently distinguished itself for its nationalist impulses, the city of Palermo tells instead a story of openness to global challenges. And it is to this story that the Festival will connect. Palermo is the city of those who save lives at sea, the port of Mediterranea and the capital of hospitality. Transeuropa will bring here the new play of the award-winning Swiss director Milo Rau, “The New Gospel”. In collaboration with Matera European Capital of Culture and the Teatro Argentina in Rome, the first “Black Jesus” will be staged, in the person of the activist Yvan Sagnet, along with twelve apostles from the ghettos of migrant laborers in Southern Italy. Palermo, with its close relations to the new municipalist wave, is also a representative of the new international protagonism of Southern Italy. It will be in this framework that Transeuropa will organise a meeting between the mayor Leoluca Orlando and Tunç Soyer, mayor of Izmir, Turkish metropolis of over four million inhabitants, and a leader in the front row of the opposition to the Erdogan regime. Just as the UN is discussing plans for a “Green New Deal”, a theme that has been picked up by the new Italian government too, Transeuropa will bring to Palermo the first international congress in Italy dedicated the subject, through a collaboration between the London School of Economics and the University of Palermo. While, finally, the discussion on differentiated autonomy risks splitting Italy in two, Palermo will instead talk about democratic confederalism, inviting for a site-specific exhibition the Dutch director Jonas Staal, former architect of the Parliament of Rojava, the first “non-national” parliament in the autonomous Kurdish region in Syria. THE THEME Every city is a community in its own right, wrote Aristotle, thus revealing one of the great tensions that still accompany us today: that between the universalism of notions such as humanity and justice and the often shunning nature of the polis, defined by contrast with those who do not have right of citizenship. But is it possible to found a political community on encroachment? Is it possible to resolve what Zygmunt Bauman considered the challenge of the moment, namely “to plan – for the first time in human history – an integration that is no longer founded on separation”? We already find this condition pulsing strongly today in a plural city like Palermo: at the centre of the Mediterranean, a cultural and political hub between continents, with a strong sense of transcultural vocation. Through art, the BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo re-interprets and unites the iconic places of the polis linking past and present towards a perspective of continuous change and inclusion, which as the philosopher Walter Benjamin has taught us, should increasingly lead us to “render the strange familiar and render the familiar strange”. VISIT TRANSEUROPA FESTIVAL WEBSITE
Apply to the School of Palermo on transnational democracy at the Transeuropa Festival
Transeuropa Festival is a transnational festival of arts, culture and politics organised by European Alternatives since 2007. On November 6-10th, the 2019 edition of Transeuropa Festival, under the title ‘ÜberMauer’ (‘Beyond the Wall – Oltremuro) will land in Palermo in cooperation with BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo, Fondazione Merz and the City of Palermo. In the context of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (9th November 1989-2019), the Festival presents a rich program of exhibitions, public lectures, live music and concerts, involving a significant number of historical spaces of the city and world-class artists and speakers. Within this year’s festival, we invite 30 participants, from Palermo and Europe, to participate in the School of Palermo, an academy on transnational politics bringing together local students and international activists from different disciplines, to explore contemporary European challenges and imagine a world beyond the nation-state. There is no fee to participate, and selected students will have travel costs to Palermo covered (max €200). The School includes master classes and workshops on three main thematic areas: Green New Deal: the Green New Deal is the most comprehensive plan to pull Europe out of the twin crises of austerity and environmental breakdown. How can it be financed and promoted as a global solution for climate change? European Democracy: at times when citizens do not feel adequately represented and global commons insufficiently protected, a reform of the European democracy is necessary to tackle global challenges while engaging citizens beyond borders in the decisions that affect their lives. What new model of democracy can Europe introduce to the world and how can it promote and secure global goods? Free Movement: the right to freedom of movement is a human right, a right for all. But how can we imagine a future beyond the nation-state, an open borders world? And what are the possible ways of resistance to ensure that the right to protection, to work, to livelihood and to social rights are guaranteed wherever a person settles? It also includes the participation to the Europe for the Many conference, organized in collaboration with the University of Palermo, a public dialogue gathering academics, journalists, intellectuals, civil society campaigners, politicians and the general public to create new, innovative and practical solutions to the major challenges facing Europe in the twenty-first century. Our International Faculty in Palermo The sessions include a wide range of speakers, including Ann Pettifor (Prime Economics), Mary Kaldor (London School of Economics), Kalypso Nicolaidis (Oxford University), Daniele Archibugi (National Research Council of Italy), David Adler (Green New Deal for Europe), Yvan Sagnet (No Cap), Clelia Bartoli (University of Palermo) and many more as part of the Europe for the Many conference. The Requirements The call is open to members and non-members of European Alternatives who: Have a strong interest in the themes of the School of Palermo (Green New Deal, European democracy, Free Movement) and in connecting with others Are proficient in English Participate in all the activities proposed (except Sunday), incl. the Europe for the Many conference Be able to cover the costs of staying and living in Palermo during the time of the School (we cover travel costs) Have an interest in discovering more about Palermo and Transeuropa Festival! How to apply The applications to the School of Palermo are now closed. Any questions? If you have any questions regarding the School of Palermo, please do not hesitate to contact Martin Pairet, Network and Capacity Building Manager, at m.pairet@euroalter.com The School of Transnational Activism is co-funded by the Europe for Citizens Programme of the European Union:
Art and politics beyond the Wall: 5 days of Transeuropa in Palermo
From the 6th until the 10th of November the team of European Alternatives has been in Palermo to organise and celebrate the 2019 edition of our Transeuropa Festival, under the title ÜberMauer – Oltremuro – Beyond the Wall. Hundreds of people from Palermo and across the globe came together on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall with a message of open borders, freedom of movement and exchange of cultures. Palermo may be imperfect, but it is a beautiful city where magic can happen. There is openness, welcome and union, which are some of the central themes around which this edition of Transeuropa was conceived and unfolded. The Garibaldi Theatre hosted the opening of Transeuropa with an international symposium organised in collaboration with the Warsaw Biennale and the Kiev Biennale tracing the possible refractions and unions between the southern and eastern periphery of Europe. The symposium was opened by Orexis an artistic performance that took place within the installation New Unions by the artist Jonas Staal, presenting an improvisation inspired by the themes of Transeuropa 2019, which the dancer and choreographer Silvia Giuffrè created ad hoc for the space together with the composer Giovanni di Giandomenico. In cooperation with the University of Palermo, Europe’s Future’s Program of IWM, ERSTE Foundation, London School of Economics, Green European Journal, and Another Europe is Possible, we hosted the second “Europe for the Many” conference with the aim to set out a vision and strategy for the democratic transformation of Europe. Some of the key speakers on the day were Ann Pettifor, Mary Kaldor, Philippe Pochet, and Marco Cappato, among others. Within the context of the conference, the mayor of Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, and the mayor of Izmir, Tunc Soyer, participated in a conversation moderated by Lorenzo Marsili about the role of cities in facing the migratory, climatic and social challenges of our time. The conference was followed by a literary aperitif and the books presentation of “A Vision for Europe” (ed. David Adler & Preethi Nallu), “Exodus, Reconing, Sacrifice: Three meanings of Brexit” by Kalypso Nicolaidis, and “The Case for a Green New Deal” by Ann Pettifor. A festival of arts, politics, culture, but also music! We counted with the presence of Heiner Goebbels, one of the most important exponents of contemporary music and theatre scene. He gave a lecture for the students at the Conservatory Alessandro Scarlatti in Palermo and performed on Friday in front of more than 400 people at the Church Santissimo Salvatore the musical project The Mayfield with the participation of Camille Émaille, Gianni Gebbia, Cecile Lartigau, Léo Maurel, Nicolas Perrin, and Willi Bopp. From Thursday to Saturday at the Cre.Zi.Plus we organised the School of Palermo, an academy on transnational politics bringing together local students and international activists from different disciplines, to explore contemporary European challenges and imagine a world beyond the nation-state. The School included master classes and workshops as well as the participation to the Europe for the Many conference, on three main thematic areas: Green New Deal, European Democracy and Free Movement. It was very inspiring to be part of a public dialogue gathering academics, journalists, intellectuals and civil society campaigners to create innovative and practical solutions to the major challenges that Europe is facing. Apart of the installation New Unions by Jonas Staal at the Garibaldi Theatre, we also had the pleasure to co-host the first edition of Transhumance, an exhibition series for the public space curated by Izabela Anna Moren, which opened with the double project People of Tamba and Senegal/Sicily. The third exhibition co-hosted by Transeuropa has been Tentacles in Sicily / Scratching the Surface, curated by N38E13 and produced by the Berlin duo Kg Augenstern exploring abandoned Sicilian places, understood as spaces for the transformation of the landscape, scratch the sensitive “surface” with their “Tentacles” detecting the specific sound. The Mediterranean route of Transeuropa Caravans also joined Transeuropa Festival for their last actions on the road. The team coordinated two major performances, one at Teatro Garibaldi with the Visegrad route under the title ManufActurist, about the lives of men and women working in factories in CEE; and a musical and theatrical performance near the seaside in cooperation with the local organisation Maghweb. The performance, called Oltre i muri was designed and created by Gianluca Badon and it proposed a piano concert with the most significant pieces of the album “The Wall” by Pink Floyd interchanging with the reading of poems and writings of some of the most important authors of our time. Finally on Sunday, with The New Gospel, the celebrated playwright and director Milo Rau and his team returned to their origins by staging the Gospel as the passion of an entire civilisation. The well-known activist Yvan Sagnet played the first Black Jesus, and the twelve apostles were played by migrants who work in the fields and live in the ghettos of Southern Italy. After the crucifixion in Matera and the resurrection in Rome – the centre of political and religious power – the new Jesus and his apostles set off on their “first mission” to Palermo for the closing day of Transeuropa 2019. The programme of Transeuropa has been produced in synergy with the wider program of the BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo, an example of virtuous cooperation and transcendence of borders. You can already find some photos of the first days of Transeuropa on our open folder, read online our Transeuropa Journal produced in collaboration with Arts of the Working Class, check the press coverage, or watch some of the video trailers by the Palermitan organisation Maghweb. Our actions in Palermo are not over yet: TransHumance is still present across the city in different locations, installed outdoors in the historic center and peripheries of Palermo; but also at the Teatro Garibaldi we continue to co-host a series of talks about art, migration, borders and culture that are part of the “Gravitas” programme by the local organisation KAD – Kalsa Art District. This was just a part of Transeuropa 2019 in Palermo, we invite you to discover the city beyond the wall.
Beyond the jungle, another Europe of solidarity and justice exists
The last few years have been challenging times for Europe. a dysfunctional democratic system combined with a lack of vision and political imagination, have led many people back to nationalism. And we know this only makes the problem worse. Without challenging neo-liberal capitalism and bigotry across borders, too much wealth stays in too few hands, damage to the climate will be irreversible, people’s rights, from clean air and free movement, are taken away. All those trends are toxic to democracy and human rights and need a transnational response! Join European Alternatives for as little as 5€ / month and help create spaces to fight back and push for alternatives >> Beyond the jungle, we know that people are already developing answers. For over 12 years, we brought thousands of them together, citizens, activists and civil society actors, to learn from each other and inspire new ideas, campaign for change, or reflect and strategize for new alternatives in Europe. Together, we are pioneering new forms of participating in democracy and are challenging European institutions through transnational solidarity actions. More than ever, we need your support! Our plan is to: Produce and share knowledge that can inspire and support alternatives to emerge, locally and transnationally. further develop a School of European Alternatives to build organizing capacity and power of people to campaign for a just, open and sustainable world. lead more innovative civic and cultural projects like Transeuropa Festival that can shift narratives and imaginations to strengthen fundamental rights in Europe and the world. Your membership fee is important in making this happen and give us freedom to shape the sustainable exchange platform that we need, less dependent on short-term funding. Join European Alternatives for 5€/month and help us be stronger and independent >> Acting transnationally is not an easy task. But we are a large network of activists and civil society, aware that solutions to our problems are to be found both on the local level and beyond borders. Let’s build our power and create the Europe we want to live in!
Conference: Youth Doing Politics
The Euryka project is an EU-funded cross-national research project which provides knowledge about how inequalities mediate youth political participation. It intends to reach a better understanding of the conditions, processes, and mechanisms underpinning how young people do politics: how do they form opinions and take actions to bring about social and political change? After three years of research on the new forms of political participation of the European youth, we are ready to share our results with you! 3 PANELS will explore the main dimensions of the Euryka project, but also give a voice to youth organizations and policy-makers, around 3 topics : Youth political representation Youth political participation Youth and inequalities 1 DOCUMENTARY, produced by European Alternatives, lead by Valerio Nicolosi, Daniele Napolitano and Giulia Salvatori. It will be screened after lunch. Come and meet Giulia Salvatori! OUR OBJECTIVES To provide systematic evidence on how inequalities are experienced and mediated by young people, exploring the coping mechanisms which are embedded in how they do politics. To advance knowledge on the conditions and causes underpinning youth political participation. To make various, novel suggestions to strengthen democratic life in Europe, with particular emphasis on those that are more inclusive for young people – and especially those with fewer opportunities.
Transeuropa Festival 2019
We have achieved a lot in 2019: let’s do more next year!
2019 has been one of the most intense and successful years in the history of European Alternatives. Not every year we can say that we have organised 5 days of events in cooperation with an international Biennale in Palermo, set the basis for a new School of Transnational Activism and coordinated the travel of 20 activists across Europe on board of 5 caravans on the year of the European elections. It is a privilege to work and cooperate with thousands of people engaging in dozens of activities and ambitious projects across countries. European Alternatives is a machine that runs on dreams: the dreams of all those who want to move from a failed democracy, captured by financial interests, to an inclusive, radically democratic Europe able to tackle the climate and social crisis of our century. Thank you for your energy and your support this year! These have been some of the main outcomes out of this year’s efforts: Transeuropa 2019 In November, European Alternatives was in Palermo to organise and celebrate the 2019 edition of our Transeuropa Festival entitled ÜberMauer – Oltremuro – Beyond the Wall. Hundreds of people from Palermo and across the globe came together on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall with a message of open borders, freedom of movement and exchange of cultures. Join European Alternatives for 5€/month and create transnational moments bringing people together for solidarity and democracy >> Transeuropa Caravans In May, with the motto “Connecting struggles, building alternatives”, a group of young activists travelled throughout 12 European countries on board of four caravans. They reached out in places of struggle and resistance to promote and defend our social and political rights. Their actions helped to emphasize that politics don’t begin and end at the ballot box but happen every day, in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our cultural centers and in the streets. It is our task to engage together with communities to act to change the social realities that surround us. Contribute 5€/month to support innovative projects that create narratives of an open and solidary Europe >> School of Transnational Activism Climate activism, Fridays for Future, the organised riders, the feminist movement and an extensive network of NGOs have all contributed to the new wave of transnational movements that have been shaking Europe in 2019. European Alternatives opened this summer, the doors of the School of Transnational Activism. The aim is to organise the exchange of knowledge and tools amongst a new generation of activists to learn from past and contemporary challenges and to better organize transnationally. For 2020, we want to continue working with citizens, activists and organised civil society that is shaping the social and political agenda for Europe. Join European Alternatives for 5€/month and help build the capacity of citizens and activists to organize beyond borders >> Books, journals, and magazines On the first day of the European Parliament elections, in collaboration with the London School of Economics, we published a guide to the European Party manifestos. The dawn of a Europe of many visions is a report mapping the different European Parliamentary election programs of the major European political families that were competing in the vote. This year we have also published the German edition of Citizens of Nowhere (Marsili, Milanese) by Suhrkamp titled ‘Wir heimatlosen Weltbürger’, and a book on art and feminism in cooperation with the Visual Research and Culture Centre, The Right to Truth: Conversations on art and feminism. Urban Alternatives In 2019 we also launched Urban Alternatives, an online map that has emerged from the cooperation between independent activists, researchers, and a number of different organizations, including European Alternatives, Transnational Institute, Habitat International Coalition and the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute. The map is still ongoing and open for new content, so if you know about initiatives that should be added, do not hesitate to contact us. For the new year, more than ever, we need the support of everyone to be more independent and create new opportunities for members and partners alike. That is why we need you to give as little as 5€/month to help us continue to fight for democracy beyond borders. Join European Alternatives for 5€/month and help us be stronger and independent >>
Projects
Publications
Our publications are carefully produced, designed and curated by our team and we include original content but also existing, commissioned, and independent research, essays, interviews, and other creative and critical content that continues to shift the narrative and explore the intersections of climate, politics, and the future of Europe, among many other topics.
News
Videos
Our videos include promotional, divulgative and journalistic productions by European Alternatives and materials that are part of Talk Real, our audiovisual platform for the diffusion of innovative ideas and for the promotion of grassroots organisations and the individuals behind them.
The most ‘European’ Europeans? The politically invisible 17 million EU citizens
On 1nd April 2020, HEC Paris (Chair Jean Monnet), European Alternatives and Groupes d’études géopolitiques (GEG) in partnership with Europe’s Futures Program of IWM Vienna, are convening an international interdisciplinary conference in Paris to address, for the first time, the emerging and yet overlooked phenomenon of the “invisible” 17 million mobile citizens. Under the title “The most ‘European’ Europeans? The politically invisible 17 million EU citizens” the conference aims to bring ideas for reflection of the realities of Europe and its citizens. There are at least 17 million EU citizens who live today in another EU member state, including the 3.7 million living in the UK. In the last decade they have doubled in number and today represent 4% of the EU working-age population. They epitomise a growing, yet unnoticed Europeanisation of our societies, further accelerated by job precarity and the fallout of the 2008 Financial Crisis. In addition, at least 2 million citizens commute daily across borders, and hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers move across the continent to take up low-wage jobs. Together, there are 20 million EU citizens spread across the continent. Together, there are 20 million EU citizens spread across the continent. Many of them don’t see the need to register when changing residence and often live in an administrative limbo between countries. This geographical dispersal, engendered by decades of free movement and open borders, renders their count imperfect. Many of them don’t see the need to register when changing residence and often live in an administrative limbo between countries. The collective imagination portrays them as a European elite, the happy few who, perhaps having benefited from the Erasmus study programme, criss-cross the continent in search of self-improvement. A look at the actual data reveals a clearer picture. On average, the mobile EU citizens find it easier to get a job in another EU country than in their country of origin, regardless of their skills. This likelihood is even greater in the case of female workers. People who stopped school after primary and people who went on to university are both significant groups amongst mobile EU citizens. Europeans a moving for work, study, love, curiosity and more reasons. They are much more diverse than they’re generally portrayed as being. While they are not yet a self-aware, established community, they contribute a huge amount, economically, socially and culturally, to the regions where they live as well as to those they come from. Yet, they are deprived of the right to political representation in their new country of residence, with one exception: they can vote in local elections. This reveals a bitter truth. Those citizens whose lives are arguably the most “European” are the least politically represented. At a time when the European Parliament is more fragmented than ever, the policies of the European Union are increasingly contested in national public debates, but where each country is becoming more Europeanised in myriad ways, investigating the lack of political voice of those citizens who move between countries and contexts is a way of understanding the current predicament of European democracy and its possible evolutions. Those citizens whose lives are arguably the most “European” are the least politically represented. Understanding the predicament of the community of 17 million mobile Europeans, and a comparison of this group with the more settled European population as well as a the mobile non-European population, are important starting points for a reflection and a re-discussion of the realities of Europe and its citizens: this conference aims to set out a research agenda on this theme and bring together a community of scholars and practitioners for future work. Are you interested in the topic? Send us your abstract paper and participate in the conference! For this occasion we are launching an open call for papers on the topic that will be published in a special issue of Le Grand Continent and, potentially, in an edited volume. Abstracts should be submitted to 17millionconference@gmail.com by 31st January 2020. Abstracts should be 250 words maximum in length. They should be titled and have all requisite bibliographic citations. Along with the abstract, please include a detailed, recent curriculum vitae/resume (no longer than 3 pages). Abstracts will be evaluated according to the following categories: originality of theme clear data and methodology clarity relevance of the proposal to the conference theme If your abstract is selected, you will be notified by 10th February 2020. If your abstract is selected, you should submit a draft of the paper to be circulated to discussants by 1st March 2020. The final papers should be 5000 words maximum The authors of the most promising abstracts will be invited to present their work to the conference in Paris.
‘Political Youth’: A web-documentary to reinvent democracy in Europe
The last decade in Europe has seen young people on the front lines of social and political changes. Unwilling to accept the status-quo, many young people are now inventing a new politics across borders, in the name of social justice and a livable future. For over one year, a team of video-makers have been travelling across Europe to tell the stories of young people who are at the forefront of political change, despite living in contexts of social inequalities. We have focused on five main topics which are representative of the issues of democracy, power, politics, policy-making, social and political participation. CHECK THE WEB-DOCUMENTARY Chapter 1: RIDERS The first chapter of the documentary illustrates the reality of the gig economy through the eyes and stories of the riders and their grassroots associations in Milan, Bologna, Berlin, Madrid, and other cities where this phenomenon is on the rise. Chapter 2: MIGRANTS The topic of migration is one of the most burning issues in Europe. Faced with an increasingly large group of people that position themselves against solidarity and integration, hundreds of organizations and individuals throughout the continent are fighting for the rights of migrants. The second chapter of the documentary focusses on bottom-up activism, which seems to be one of the few instruments able to address the problems that come from political failure. Chapter 3: ELECTIONS In this chapter we follow the Western and Central Eastern European routes of Transeuropa Caravans on the search for new forms of political engagement and youth mobilisation across Europe. Chapter 4: CLIMATE The global movement Fridays For Future, demands an end to the age of fossil fuels and climate justice for everyone. This chapter follows Greta Thunberg in her first visit to Rome and the direct action techniques of the Ende Gelaende Stop Coal Movement in Lusatia. Chapter 5: SPORTS Community gyms are a practical and effective reaction to the problem, as well as being a driver for active citizenship. Through simple boxing or dance courses, people discover a new connection with their territory and new ways of social participation. They get involved, they organise, and they work together to build a service for their community, to make it a better place to live in.
Board
Advisory board The advisory board includes leading thinkers, artists and activists from throughout europe and beyond, who advise the organisation on its message, its strategy, on formats of activities, on partners and potential stakeholders. Transnational Board of Trustees The board of trustees is legally empowered to oversee the running of the organization, set its strategy and approve its work program. It does so in dialogue with members and partners through regular surveys, questionnaires and forums to understand the priorities and interests of the organization. Trustees
For a Conference on a Future on Europe open to civil society
Time has come to invest into our own European democracy! We call for a Conference on the Future of Europe open to civil society and in close cooperation to those citizens who invest their lives in our common future. Dear President of the European Parliament, President of the Council of the EU and President of the European Commission, As you meet at the Jean Monnet House in Bazoches, France, to discuss Europe’s political challenges and the Conference on the future of Europe, we would like to share with you and your closest advisors some reflections on this forthcoming major democratic exercise. We are a community of academics coming from different disciplines united by our commitment to constructively contribute to the European project and its future. Having not only personally witnessed, but also closely studied and contributed to previous (failed) institutional attempts (including the 2002-03 Convention, the 2006-7 European Citizens Consultations, the 2009-10 Reflection group) to rethink the EU institutional asset, we take the liberty to express our deepest concerns about the many unintended consequences stemming from the imminent launch of the Conference on the future of Europe. There is a tangible risk that by raising expectations it cannot easily deliver on, the Conference may erode citizens’ trust at a time when the demand for public engagement is at record highs across the continent. Europe and your political leadership can hardly afford that. Due to its top-down approach, the proposed blueprint of the Conference defies its own purpose: to be “a bottom-up exercise where European citizens are listened to and their voices contribute to the debates on the future of Europe”. Here is why: First, neither the blueprint put forward by the Parliament nor that proposed by the Commission foresee the participation of civil society organizations with the only exception of the European trade unions and the employers’ BusinessEurope. Yet without unleashing the mobilizing potential of European civil society the Conference will never be owned and felt by citizens. This goes quite against the positive experience of involving civil society organisations in promoting turnout in the European elections: if the European institutions think that civil society will be happy only to act as promoters of a Conference they have no say in, the institutions risk an unpleasant surprise. Second, the only participatory dimension of the Conference comes from six citizens’ assemblies – called agoras in the Parliament’s proposal – which will deliberate on a set of predefined policy areas, from the climate crisis the digital revolution to the redrafting of EU electoral law. It remains unclear how the agoras – which have been downgraded to citizen’s dialogues in the Commission’s blueprint – will actually be run and moderated, and, more importantly, how their conclusions will feed into the work and final conclusions of the Conference, and crucially how feedback between decision-makers and citizens participating in the assemblies actually takes place, and how disagreements are resolved. Moreover, in this approach citizens are not involved in agenda setting. Third, although in the Parliament proposal young people are given a dedicated agora, there is a danger that this is perceived as ‘youth-washing’ and treating young people as an accessory rather than empowering young people as the future of the European Union. Fourth, the methodological vagueness and improvisation characterizing the first blueprints of the Conference contrasts with the countless and well-established democratic innovations already taking shape across the continent, from the Irish citizens’ Constitutional Convention, which reviewed the constitution, to the Ostbelgien Citizens’ Council in the German-speaking community in eastern Belgium – a permanent mechanism and the first of its kind, letting randomly chosen ordinary citizens take part with parliamentarians in developing recommendations for the local parliament. Even the EU’s own democratic innovation in the form of Citizens’ Initiatives is not included in the blueprint. Fifth, there is a thriving literature on the state of European democracy and some of its possible fixes. Yet the current proposals for – and debate surrounding – the Conference seem to blissfully neglect such a wealth of analysis. No democratic construction will succeed in the absence of an architecture informed and designed by its best constitutional architects and experienced carpenters. Sixth, the ultimate success of the Conference will be defined by its durability. Europe needs to devise an effective mechanism capable of capturing the most relevant and promising proposals coming from the citizens and turn it into a permanent method feeding the day-to-day EU decision-making. Citizen participation needs institutionalization, not on-off or ad hoc processes. Time has come to invest into our own European democracy, far from the day-to-day political bickering, through close cooperation with those citizens who invest their lives, as activists and advocates in our common future. Europe, and your new, yet already contested, political leadership can hardly afford to be associated with an initiative that might soon be perceived as top-down, unauthentic, outdated and out-of-touch with EU citizens’ daily lives. For the Conference to succeed, the three most powerful EU institutions should lead by example, by stepping back and carving out a meaningful and effective role for citizens’ input within the forthcoming Conference so as to be able to constantly co-create the future the EU deserves. Specifically, following from the deficiencies of the current models discussed, our concrete recommendations would be: Give civil society a leading role in the Conference, by giving it a voting seat at the plenary table, alongside the social partners. Ensure that the process is built in such a way that real deliberation can take place between citizens, and between citizens and elected decision makers and governments: this means enabling citizens to set the agenda on equal terms to governments (as it is the case within the Open Government Partnership), and allowing contradictory debate and compromise to take place over the course of the democratic exercise. Give young people a decisive role in the Conference, by empowering them in the plenary, and ensuring young people are in the Presidium or other governing bodies of the Conference itself. Take the time to involve…
La nostra storia
Nel 2007, European Alternatives ha trasformato una stanza in un magazzino appena fuori Brick Lane a Londra nel nostro primo ufficio. Con sopra un club di arti marziali brasiliano, un cameriere italiano, un ragazzo che importa parmigiano, e un falegname intorno. Eravamo in incognito e gettavamo le lettere che ricevevamo lontano dall’ufficio, perché non dovevamo essere lì. Senza riscaldamento e con internet inaffidabile, un team internazionale di persone si è riunito in una delle strade più cosmopolite di una città molto cosmopolita per cercare alternative europee. Democrazia, uguaglianza e cultura al di là dello Stato-nazione. A due passi dal centro finanziario mondiale e accanto a uno dei quartieri più degradati d’Europa, questo spazio del paradosso, un magazzino dove nessuno avrebbe dovuto vivere, è stato un luogo per immaginare un futuro possibile. Non pensavamo che lo Stato-nazione fosse ancora scomparso. Pensavamo che al crepuscolo ci sarebbero stati molteplici tentativi di tenerlo in vita, ma lo vedevamo come un mostro che vacillava. In questo stato di transizione, credevamo che l’Europa potesse essere un laboratorio di invenzioni politiche e di progresso con implicazioni globali, ma solo se avessimo cambiato radicalmente rotta. Sentivamo che l’attuale regime europeo stava minando le sue stesse rivendicazioni di diritti universali, democrazia e giustizia. Rifiutavamo l’idea di dover scegliere tra lo status quo e il nazionalismo: ritenevamo che l’Europa dovesse essere recuperata e reinventata, resa ospitale agli altri e ad altre idee. Allo stesso tempo, sapevamo che l’Europa aveva le risorse per reinventarsi: una storia di invenzione democratica, di diritti umani e di responsabilità, di arte e di impegno intellettuale, di dissidenza, di resistenza e di azione utopica. Questo paradosso della creatività e della distruzione, della bellezza e della violenza, dell’universalità e del colonialismo, dei diritti e dell’espropriazione, della democrazia e dell’esclusione, è il destino dell’Europa. Solo attraverso un attivo impegno politico, sociale e culturale è possibile piegare l’arco di questo destino verso la giustizia. Abbiamo iniziato in piccolo nel 2007, un gruppo di persone che la pensano come noi e che non hanno quasi nessuna risorsa materiale, solo la nostra energia, le nostre idee e i nostri account di posta elettronica, ma è diventato rapidamente chiaro che c’era bisogno di un’organizzazione, una struttura, un’istituzione, un mezzo, per dare la possibilità a una nuova generazione di europei di agire per un futuro diverso in molteplici modi. Rifiutiamo l’idea che ci debba essere una divisione tra “élite metropolitane” e “gente comune”. La vita di tutti noi è determinata politicamente e socialmente da forze che attraversano i confini, e possiamo solo cercare di avere un’agenzia politica agendo in modo transnazionale in solidarietà con altri che possono essere fisicamente lontani ma in circostanze simili. La divisione politica rilevante è tra le élite che traggono profitto dallo sfruttamento e dal monopolio del potere e dell’influenza, e quelli di noi che credono che un futuro alternativo sia possibile. Il compito di European Alternatives è quello di contribuire a educare, organizzare e responsabilizzare queste persone al di là delle frontiere, agendo a livello locale. IL NOSTRO LOGO Come ogni tentativo di definirla o di limitarla ha dimostrato il suo fallimento, l’Europa non è innanzitutto uno spazio geografico: è un processo e una ricerca. Prima che l’Europa fosse uno spazio geografico, era un mito: il mito della dea Europa rapita da Zeus, che si travestiva da toro e portava via la bella Europa. Come racconta il mito di Apollodoro, Europa era la figlia di Agenor e Telephassa e aveva tre fratelli: Cadmo, Fenice e Cilice. Dopo il suo rapimento, Agenor mandò i tre fratelli a cercare Europa, dicendo loro di non tornare finché non l’avessero trovata. Partirono in tre direzioni diverse, e quando non riuscirono a trovare Europa, fondarono città da cui continuare la ricerca. Fenice si stabilì in Fenicia, che è l’attuale Libano, Siria, Israele e Palestina; la Cilicia si stabilì in Cilicia, che è l’attuale Anatolia; e Cadmo si stabilì in Tracia (oggi Grecia, Bulgaria, Turchia) e fondò la città di Taso, conosciuta più tardi come Tebe. Ma l’importanza di questo mito non è la particolare geografia delle città e dei paesi (anche se serve a ricordarci che “l’Europa” è stata pensata fin dall’inizio come più grande di quanto non sia oggi tipicamente intesa), ma l’idea che l’Europa sia una ricerca – non è mai dove sei, è qualcosa a cui aspirare. Il logo di European Alternatives, letto dall’interno verso l’esterno, rappresenta le tre strade dei fratelli di Europa. Il centro del logo non è un luogo particolare: è il luogo da cui parte l’inseguimento. I tre percorsi divergenti ci ricordano che non c’è un solo modo di perseguire l’Europa; non c’è un solo modo di essere europei. Il logo di European Alternatives può essere letto anche dall’esterno verso l’interno. L’Europa non è una cultura o uno spazio che può essere definito indipendentemente da tutte le altre culture e spazi. L’Europa è sempre stata un luogo di scambio e di contro-influenza culturale, e questi sono i processi che la definiscono. I tentativi di imporre valori europei agli altri sono necessariamente autolesionistici per questo motivo: L’Europa è necessariamente una molteplicità che include e coinvolge gli altri. Dall’esterno, nel logo di European Alternatives sono rappresentate le tre influenze culturali dominanti in Europa: l’influenza dell’Asia da est, l’influenza dell’Africa da sud e l’influenza delle Americhe e del mare da ovest. L’Europa si trova in quell’incrocio. timeline 2007 Festival di Europa Nel 2007, oltre alle celebrazioni “ufficiali” a Berlino e a Roma del 50° anniversario dell’Unione Europea, nel mese di marzo, Londra ha visto la prima “Festa dell’Europa”, organizzata da Lorenzo Marsili e Niccolò Milanese, avviata dalla società civile. Una conferenza inaugurale di Zygmunt Bauman ha dato il via a un Festival concepito come un ciclo di dibattiti pubblici e mostre d’arte. I dibattiti hanno coinvolto tutti i paesi dell’Unione Europea allargata e hanno riguardato l’ambiente, l’arte dell’Europa dell’Est, il modello sociale europeo, la Turchia e l’Unione Europea, le tradizioni filosofiche. 2008 European Feminist Summit L’European Feminist Summit, che fa parte del London Festival of Europe 2008, è stato un…
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EU observer: Eurobonds and democracy must go together
The Myth of Europa – January 2009
With articles by Alfredo Jaar, Josefina Alcazar, Paul Gilroy, Sandro Mezzadra, and more.
The Myth of Europa – March 2009
With articles by Samir Amin, Boyan Manchev, Carlos Vergara, Rasheed Araeen, and more.
The Myth of Europa – May 2009
With articles by Etienne Balibar, Rosi Braidotti, Immanuel Wallerstein, Oliver Charnin and more.
The Myth of Europa – October 2009
With articles by Saskia Sassen, Sandro Mezzadra, Nikos Papastergiadis, Umut Erel, and more.
The State of the Media in Italy: A European Problem
European Alternatives published a Dossier on the state of media freedom and pluralism in Italy, concluding that ongoing intimidation and censorship in the country constitutes a European problem
Manifesto of the Appalled Economists
The Manifesto of the Appalled economists offers a critical presentation of ten premises that still inspire decisions of public authorities all over Europe every day, despite the fierce denial brought by the financial crisis and its aftermath. These are pseudo “obvious facts” which are in fact unfair and ineffective measures, against which we propose twenty-two counterproposals.
European Elections Guide 2009
A a guide to the manifestos of the European-level parties and groupings standing in the elections. We believe that the only way a democratic Europe will be built is with informed voters who hold their elected representatives to account on their election policies.
Transeuropa Festival 2011
The 2011 edition of the Transeuropa Festival journal. Includes interview with artists and speakers and the full programme of the Festival happening in different cities.
Transnational Dialogues Journal 2011-2012
First edition of the TD journal with interviews, research and analysis coming the artistic residencies in Brazil and China.
Towards a transnational democracy for Europe
A policy report analysing the possibilities of a transnational democracy for Europe through a participative constitutional process.
Transeuropa Journal 2012
This new edition of the Transeuropa journal address three main themes: the economic crisis and the possibility of alternatives to austerity measures; the new forms of political mobilisation and their potential for rethinking democracy; and migration and movements as an essence of Europe.
Transeuropa Festival Journal 2013
This edition of the journal brings interviews, essays and articles reflecting on the three word slogan: Imagine, Demand, Enact of the 2013 Festival edition.
Citizens Manifesto for the 2014 European elections
The Citizens Pact is a bottom-up effort to bridge the infamous democratic deficit in Europe. This process empowers citizens to take action, to participate in the development of a European political sphere, and to ensure the 2014 European Parliament elections are truly transeuropean, rather than a sum of national logics.
Transnational Dialogues 2014
What is the role of the creative forces in questioning the present? How are social, economic and cultural contradictions situated in our global cities, and what creative strategies are being developed to address them? The 2014 edition of the TD journal poses these questions while reflecting on the perspective of artists based in China and Brazil.
Transeuropa Caravans 2014
What does ‘the Europe from below’ look like? What are the issues that people in Europe organise and rise up for? Following a three-year participatory process, we collected citizen-led policy proposals at EU level for a Citizens Manifesto.
The Charter of Lampedusa
“The Charter of Lampedusa” and the quest for alternative citizenship and migration policies at the EU level.
A State of Democracy: Towards Citizen Rights Protection
A policy report published along with the European Civic Forum that includes a number of practical recommendations to the European institutions to face the threats to fundamental rights in the EU.
Shifting Baselines of Europe
This book opens the often narrow discourse on the future of Europe and criticises the false dichotomy between nationalism on the one hand and a neoliberal version of Europe on the other.
Transnational Dialogues Journal 2016
2016 edition of our TD journal. Includes interviews, articles and research conclusions from the artistic residencies in Brazil and China.
Civil Society of the Western Balkans Summit Series
A report with the political recommendations for EU leaders and representatives after the Civil Society Forum celebrated in Paris around the topics of migration, climate change, bilateral disputes, youth cooperation and democratic governance.
Ten Years of European Alternatives
A book to tell the story of the first decade of European Alternatives. How everything started? How to imagine a future beyond the nation state?
Transeuropa Journal 2017
The journal of the 2017 edition of Transeuropa Festival Convergent Spaces, brings interviews and articles by Rosi Braidotti, Gesine Schwan, Carmen Castro and Ann Marie Utrate, among many other.
The Myth of Europa
On the occassion of the 10th anniversary of European Alternatives we publish a compilation of all the issues of The Myth of Europa, the first magazine by European Alternatives for a new transnational thought and culture.
The Right to Truth
Stories and conversations about women associated with the movement for women’s liberation and emancipation and different works that embodied the struggle for women’s liberation. A joined publication with the Visual Culture Research Centre Kiev.
The down of a Europe of many visions
What the European election manifestos tell us about the conflict, paralysis, and progress ahead? Published in cooperation with the London School of Economics.
The Guardian: “As the European elections approach, it’s time to stop the politics of cowardice”
eldiario.es: “El único plan B para cambiar Europa es reconstruir el poder”
LeftEast: Talk Real London
La7: Sul’accordo di Bruxelles sui migranti
BNR Radio: “Barriers to refugees only exacerbates the problem”
Il Fatto Quotidiano: “La Gabbia, il Paragone non regge se a parlare di diritti delle donne sono gli uomini”
Radio3 Rai: “Al muro del Brennero”
Independent: After Brexit, nobody is speaking up for Europeans – and it’s a problem for the whole of Europe
Repubblica: “A un anno dall’Oxi, non rifugiamoci nei nazionalismi. Un’Europa democratica è possibile”
Corriere della Sera: “De Magistris-Colau, prove di Podemos in Italia”
MicroMega: “La Polonia fra social-nazionalismo e nuova sinistra”
Corriere della Sera: De Magistris e Colau a Marghera raccontano le loro «Città ribelli»
Left: Il futuro in comune: A Messina un focus sul municipalismo
CafeBabel: “La UE y los Balcanes: ni contigo ni sin ti”
NeusDeutchlans: “Reflections after regional elections in Germany”
Huffington Post: “Per chi suona la campana del Meclemburgo”
Il Fatto Quotidiano: “Ue: ‘Talk real’, il programma sul web per avvicinare i cittadini ai suoi politici”
LeftEast: Combating environmental racism in Eastern Europe
openDemocracy: “Implementing the commons in Europe”
El País: “Una tercera vía entre el ‘establishment’ y los nacionalismos”
Sme.sk: “Our political system has not always been exclusively a matter for the political parties.”
Deutschlandfunk: “Young Europeans call for direct election of the EU Parliament President”
Political Youth Documentary 2020
TRANSEUROPA 2019: ÜberMauer – Oltremuro – Beyond the Wall
Transeuropa Festival 2017
TRANSEUROPA 2017: ¿Qué hay después del estado nación? (Spanish video)
EUROPEAN COMMONS FORUM #TF17 (part 4) with ECA. The Commons offering a renewed vision for Europe?
TRAILER TRANSEUROPA 2017 and ECA ~ Convergent Spaces ~
Yanis Varoufakis (DiEM25) and Luigi de Magistris (mayor of Naples) meet in Rome
Transeuropa Festival 2015
The Campus of European Alternatives – 1st Edition #FixEurope
Transeuropa Caravans: connecting local alternative voices
The Citizens Manifesto: our demands for Europe
Common Struggles: A journey with European movements for the commons
Voices for a diverse Europe
Wavelength documentary
Citizens of Nowhere: How Europe can be saved from itself
This book is at once a narrative of the experience of activism and a manifesto for change. Through analysing the ways in which neoliberalism, nationalism and borders intertwine, Lorenzo Marsili and Niccolò Milanese – co-founders of European Alternatives – argue that we are in the middle of a great global transformation, by which we have all become citizens of nowhere.
Wir Heimatlosen Weltburger
Citizens of Nowhere (German edition). Lorenzo Marsili und Niccolò Milanese stellen Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten vor, in deren Handeln Alternativen zum Status quo aufscheinen. Sie analysieren, wie Neoliberalismus und Globalisierung die Menschen zu ohnmächtigen Bürgern machen, in denen das Gefühl wächst, nirgendwo mehr zu Hause zu sein, und die sich daher verstärkt nationalistischen Positionen zuwenden.
openDemocracy: Back to the Colourful Revolution
Aljazeera: “Now Italy needs a new deal – and new politics”
Deutschlandfunk: “The crisis in Europe”
BBC News World: Interview with Lorenzo Marsili
Aljazeera: “It’s high time for a new, multipolar world order”
Aljazeera: “Italian elections and the crisis of European democracy”
The Guardian: “Two anti-elite parties have divided Italy between them. What now?”
The Guardian: “Italy’s belligerent new coalition is bad news for the EU”
Washington Post: “Italy’s thwarted populists may have their revenge on Europe”
France 24: “A recurrent theme in the Italian election campaign was the EU abandoned us”
Aljazeera: “Italy’s crisis is about to get much worse”
The Nation: “If We Don’t Understand Class Struggle, We Don’t Understand Anything”
Aljazeera: “The far-right has a utopia. What’s ours?”
La7: “Salvini-Di Maio, sfiorare o sforare il 3 per cento?”
Aljazeera: “National-populism: a new global model is born”
Jungle World: “The nation state must be overcome”
Phoenix TV: “Will the EU stop Italy’s household escapades?”
Publico.pt: “Houve um falhanço para explicar o que significa a Europa”
BBC: “The EU: Saviour or oppressor?”
The Guardian: “We call on Labour to back remain”
Red Pepper: “What Europe Wants”
The Carnegie Europe: Democratizing Europe’s economy
Deutschlandfunk Kultur: “Antifascism does not belong in the left corner”
La7: “Paese spaccato in due, unica soluzione un’estensione lunga”
Neus Deutschland: “The Senate must become more radical”
DerStandard: “The loud adieu to the idea of the nation”
KUECHENSTUD.IO: re:publica 2019 | tl;dr | Stage 2 – Day 2
Deutschlandfunk Kultur: “Plea for a transnational party”
What would a feminist Europe look like?
The EU has been increasingly politicised in recent years. Gone is the old assumption that only technocracy rules on the stage of European governance. Today numerous movements, initiatives and political forces across the continent make changing the EU key to their efforts. Women have been at the centre of this new politicisation. But while new grassroots movements and networks have ignited hopes for transformational change in the position and rights of women across Europe, in many countries a new far right has emerged that wants to turn the clock back. Patriarchal views of family, kin and nation are resurgent; from attacks on abortion rights, the sexual freedoms women, and so-called ‘pro-fertility policies, which combine anti-migrant and traditionalist sentiments, women are on the front line of the resistance. At this moment of trepidation, fragmentation, fear and hope in Europe, we ask what would a feminist Europe be like? How can we develop transnational solidarities? How do we build an open Europe and a truly intersectional feminism? What should our next practical steps be? Join us for a live audience event. And take part in the podcast yourself! With: Saboura Naqshband (migrants rights activist, Berlin) Daphne Büllesbach (vice-president of European Alternatives Berlin) Prune Antoine (co-founder and editor-in-chief of Sisters of Europe) Hosts: Zoe Williams (Guardian) and Luke Cooper (Another Europe)What would a feminist Europe look like?
How has protest changed in the face of climate change?
On the day of German-wide climate protests, in cooperation with the international literature festival berlin and activists of Extinction Rebellion, we will discuss the dynamics of the recent protests with contributors of the Extinction Rebellion Handbook Germany “Wann wenn nicht wir*” (S. Fischer, 2019) and a Green Party MEP. The climate question has re-emerged as the defining question of our era. Climate justice movements have made the call for system change acceptable again through new ways of mobilising on the streets. Has activism changed in the time of climate change? What strategies work best for reaching the needed influence into effective policy for the socio-ecological transformation? With Sina Kamala Kauffmann (Extinction Rebellion Germany), Magid Magid (Green Party MEP), Ulrike von Pilar (Ärzte ohne Grenzen). Moderation: Daphne Büllesbach (European Alternatives). After the conversation, at 21:00, everyone is invited to have drinks and exchange at the venue.
Eumans2020: how citizens can change Europe
Manipulation of elections. Growing C02 emissions, for free. Agreements with Turkey and Libya to stop migrants at the price of violating human rights. Suppression of free media in Hungary, governmental control of judges in Poland, erosion of the Rule of Law all around Europe. Prohibition of genome editing and embryonic stem cell research. Inaction before China’s escalating political and technological supremacy, pursued also through general surveillance and repression of dissent. Weakness of common European social rights, and much more. All this is not primarily EU’s fault. National Governments are responsible for the most. Stil, it is time now for the EU to act as a whole. It would be naive to keep waiting for Governments, Parliaments and national political parties agreeing to take urgent decisions at European level to fight against Global Warming, counter digital monopolies and promote a Civic Artificial Intelligence; to defend the Rule of Law and abandon Prohibitionism on Scientific Research, and to promote Participatory Democracy. Action is needed regardless the short-sighting of national electoral politics. Citizens, activists, NGOs can join efforts in a common mobilization to bring bottom-up Democracy at the heart of Europe. Citizens from different countries and backgrounds are taking the streets and connecting with others throughout Europe to find a common ground for nonviolent, democratic, political initiatives. European Citizens Initiatives have been launched on issues such as Rule of Law, Carbon Pricing, Aviation Fuel, Genome Editing and more are to come. A Europe-wide citizens mobilization on shared policy goals may be able to ignite a bottom-up wide reform of European policies. How can it work? We are meeting in Brussels on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 December for a two days long gathering of activists, experts, nonviolent leaders, associations sharing views, experience and ideas. EUMANS call individuals, NGOs, MEPs, scientists, journalists, students, workers, businessmen, citizens from any background to join. We will discuss about how a pan-European democratic, nonviolent citizens mobilization can work and what relevant goals can be achieved together. We’re also planning to go the streets on Thursday evening campaigning for ongoing European Citizens Initiatives.
The Right to Truth: conversations sur l’art et féminisme
How can feminist art be a driver to social change? What does it mean to be a feminist contemporary artist in France and Ukraine? What can we learn about inclusive, feminist and postcolonial Europe from modern feminist artistic movements? If these are the questions that make your heartbeat a little faster, then we have good news. In Paris there will be a presentation of the book “The Right to Truth: Conversations on Art and Feminism”, edited by Oksana Briukhovetska and Lesia Kulchynska, published by Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv) in collaboration with European Alternatives (Paris). The book is a compilation of conversations between artists and cultural actresses about contemporary art, feminism, which goes beyond the feminist discourse centered on Western Europe. It questions the reality of feminist art in a post-Soviet space, particularly in Ukraine and Belarus. At the presentation you will meet Oksana Brukhovetska, Ukrainian feminist artist and activist, Geneviève Fraisse, philosopher and historian of feminist thought, Ophélie Latil, feminist activist, and Ségolène Pruvot, cultural director of European Alternatives. The book presentation will be followed by a workshop-discussion on art, feminism and social change in post-Soviet contemporary art, in comparison with France. After the workshop, European Alternatives is willing to integrate the suggestions of the participants in the conception and the development of our School of Transnational Activism.
Human Rights Workshop
“Invasion or Human Rights violation”? People in forced displacement and the role of Media. Join us in exploring the journey of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees from Africa and Western Europe to Italy and towards Europe, where they are perceived as “invaders”, an army entering by force the so-called civilized countries. We want to explore furthermore how all media – newspapers, tv, radio, internet – have participated in shaping a new denigratory language and negative narrative about the worst displacement of people of the last centuries. In collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University and its Dept of Human Rights and Modern Slavery, Migration Matters Festival Sheffield, Qisetna Talking Syria London and the extraordinary pictures of Francesco Malavolta, Unchr and IOM photographer, we will cross boundaries, travel through the good practices and the bad policies, meet people, hear their voices, see their faces.
Open Meeting Point #1EuropaFürAlle Demonstration
On May 19, tens of thousands of peoole will join the Ein Europa Für Alle demonstration in Berlin and all over Europe to stand against nationalism and for an open, equitable and sustainable Europe. You want to join in Berlin but do not know yet where and with whom? Join European May and European Alternatives at the demonstration in front of the Karstadt (Alexanderstr. 9). We will gather as progressive and anti-fascist European activists that connect and collaborate across geographic and cultural borders. >> We will gather around the pink European May flag and the red European Alternatives flag! << Another Europe is in the Making and it’s time for people in Europe to stand up for each other, no matter what we look like and where we live. When we come together this May we can make Europe a place where politics and communities care for everyone, without exceptions. For this to happen, come on the streets and vote for anti-fascist, solidary and progressive candidates!
A new cosmopolitanism for our era
European elections are approaching: what’s the alternative to nationalism? We take the book presentation of Suhrkamp’s “Wir Heimatlosen Weltbürger” (Marsili/ Milanese) as a point of departure to launch a debate on the shortcomings of the nation state and on possible transnational alliances after the elections. The global crisis of our time sees a complex of economic, ecological, technological and migratory challenges that no nation is any longer able to control. The result is an extraordinary provincialisation of our politics with respect to the new planetary powers confronting humanity. We need a new internationalism and a new political and cultural vision to reclaim and liberate our world. Together with Suhrkamp Verlag, HAU presents the new book “Wir Heimatlosen Weltburger”. The author Lorenzo Marsili discusses the meaning of a new cosmopolitanism for our era with social scientist Naika Foroutan and philosopher and European Parliament candidate Srećko Horvat, moderated by Margarita Tsomou. The event will also see the first public presentation of the new “Hirschmann Group for a future beyond the nation state” by Daphne Büllesbach. The discussion will be held in English. The event will be followed by a party.
Building Feminist Networks in Europe
Aim of the meeting: To exchange experiences and promote new cooperation frameworks, together with the European feminist and/or fundamental rights movements, to strengthen joint action – in the frame of EP2019 elections – for making the violation of women’s human rights in Europe visible, as well as for joining forces to influence the future political agenda of the EU.
GehtAuchAnders # 6 – Interview with European election candidates
From May 23 to 26, 2019, citizens of the European Union can elect the European Parliament for the ninth time. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the election will take place on May 26. The focus of the debate is on a common migration and asylum policy, a social Europe, tax justice and answers to the climate crisis. Where do the parties stand and what do they want to move in parliament? Also goes differently and European Alternativeshave invited candidates with promising list positions from larger and smaller parties. Clear positions instead of BlaBla – the politicians initially answer behind a shadow wall, not the people or the party, but the position is in the foreground. Also present: Erik Marquardt (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) Maja Wallstein (SPD) Susanne Zels (CDU) Martina Michels (DIE LINKE) Dani Platsch (Democracy in Europe – DiEM) Helmer Krane (FDP) The event will be moderated by PR Cantata (Musician) and Jakob Preuss (filmmaker) In the subsequent panel discussion, representatives of civil society initiatives, the artists of Geht Also Anders and the audience deeply examine the candidate. We expect clear answers to specific questions. Invited initiatives and their representatives: Daphne Büllesbach ( European Alternatives ) Reinhild Benning and Eva Schmid ( Germanwatch eV ) Meike Riebau ( Save the Children Germany ) #GehtAuchAnders # Europawahl2019 A joint event by Geht Also Anders and European Alternatives – with the support ofFederal Center for Political Education (bpb)
May Day – Solidarity with Migrant Workers
Join activists from Another Europe, Labour for a Socialist Europe and Lambeth UNISON to raise solidarity for migrant workers and defend free movement this May Day. We will meet outside the Horseshoe pub (24 Clerkenwell Close, EC1R 0AG) at 11.30 am to hand out leaflets at the start of the main march. We’ll then head over Brixton for 1.30 to support Lambeth UNISON’s recruitment stall at Elis Laundry, 125 Acre Lane, where Momentum national organiser and MEP candidate Laura Parker will be joining us to talk about the importance of organising migrant workers. Afterwards, we’ll be heading to Declare a Climate Emergency Now – Demonstration and join climate activists to demand a Green New Deal and radical action on the environment.
Agora Europe #17 Charta 2020 Official Presentation
After the presentations at the European Parliament and the Italian Parliament Charta 2020 will be presented by Studio Europa at Maastricht University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (Mirror Room, 1.003) on Monday April 29th from 3pm to 4:30 pm by David Adler, Caterina Di Fazio, Catalina Goanta, Kai Heidemann, Petar Markovic, Darian Meacham, John Parkinson, Cristian Surubaru, Miriam Urlings. You will also be able to read #Charta2020 in multiple languages and endorse it at our stand @ the Live Viewing Party of the #maastrichtdebate @ Vrijthof from 5pm to 11pm. Come join us! Info and accreditation: agoraeupoliticalspace@gmail.com Charta 2020 is a vision for a democratic and egalitarian European Union and a demand to recognize 20 European public goods that would get us there. Charta 2020 is promoted by Agora Europe and Maastricht Working On Europe and has been collectively written by several international activists and academics. Do you want Europe to be a better and safer place for all citizens and residents? Are you ready to play a key role in enhancing democracy in the EU? Would you like to join us in actively contributing to shape the European political space of the future? Then take charge yourself! Endorse Charta 2020! #ShapeYourFuture #DoMore 👉🏾 Endorse #Charta2020 Agora Europe Maastricht Working on Europe
Labourgames – work and play – GAME JAM & Final Presentation
How can the Creative Industry, Culture and Game Design contribute to alternative solutions of labour issues in Europe? LABOURGAMES is a European network project dealing with the future of working processes and the current labour system in a playful way. The core element of the project is a series of five GAME JAMS in the participating countries focussing on various issues and facets of work and labour. After GAME JAMS in Berlin, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Athens the final event will be held in Rome, at the premises of the VIGAMUS Video Game Museum.
Panic! Don’t panic! // F(EU)ture Festival
In pro-European activist circles and slowly also in the media the upcoming elections for the European Parliament are rising the tempers. Some announce a far-right takeover and lament the low mobilisation rate of a progressive, pro-European electorate. Some see Steve Bannon as the mastermind behind the to be expected far-right gains. Clearly, the far right has gathered lots of attention recently. What is happening on the pro-European front? What initiatives are out there that speak about the democratic, open-minded, egalitarian and transnational Europe? This session is about presenting existing projects (like Transeuropa Caravans) about plans that go beyond the Elections (like the School of Transnational Activism) and about gathering energy for what is happening in this city, Berlin, in the next weeks until end of May (like the #EuropeanMay, 19th of May demonstration and more). If we are more, we can be many!
Seminario formativo: Gaming e Gamification
Il seminario si rivolge a tutti coloro che si occupano di gaming e gamification nei settori culturali ed educativi, a operatori culturali e a creativi impiegati in musei, teatri, biblioteche e centri culturali, a giornalisti, educatori, insegnanti, pedagoghi e impiegati presso istituzioni culturali che si occupano di offerte pedagogiche. Da anni la rivoluzione digitale sta trasformando la nostra società, generando nuove forme di comunicazione e mediazione tra le quali spicca il “gaming”. Non si può parlare di concorrenza nei confronti di altre forme di comunicazione, ma piuttosto di un’interfaccia tra spazio analogico e spazio digitale. Sempre più istituzioni culturali ed educative come musei, biblioteche, archivi, teatri e scuole vogliono usare il gaming e la gamification. È tuttavia importante chiarire cosa si intende veramente con questi termini. Come si possono usare concretamente il gaming e la gamification? Oggigiorno il gioco è visto anche come contenuto culturale e artistico, ma qual è il significato del gaming per il presente e il futuro della formazione culturale? Cosa può dare il gaming alla diffusione culturale, ad esempio, nelle biblioteche e nei musei? Queste sono solo alcune delle questioni affrontate nel seminario. L’evento sarà suddiviso in due parti ed è volto a informare i partecipanti su questo argomento attraverso presentazioni e contributi sulle possibilità e le sfide del gaming e della gamification, puntando a sensibilizzare il pubblico su alcuni aspetti in particolare. La prima parte vedrà protagonisti una serie di relatori europei che racconteranno i loro progetti. Un contributo verterà tra l’altro sulle possibilità di finanziamento all’interno dell’UE. Per la seconda parte abbiamo chiesto ad alcune università romane – Sapienza Università di Roma, Università degli Studi Roma Tre e Link Campus University – di presentare i loro progetti, le loro esperienze e il loro punto di vista sul tema.
Reclaim Europe! – Urban perspectives, Transnational strategies
Cities throughout Europe are the stage of social and political struggles and, at the same time, of pioneering solutions. It is at the city level where citizens face the issues that directly affect their communities, but also have a cross-border impact. It is in this intersection between the local and the transnational where we can find effective solutions for the most pressing matters of our times, from the managing of decent housing to climate change and to the arrival of newcomers in our cities. ⚡️What Europe would we like to live in and what does that mean for the struggles in our cities? ⚡What must change if the European Union is to gain in democratic legitimacy from the grassroots level? ⚡️How can we evaluate the existing instruments of civil society influence on the decisions of EU institutions? ⚡️What plans for a Europe that we experience in common – not only through the institutions – already exist and how can they be strengthened? “Reclaim Europe! – Urban perspectives, transnational strategies’’ is a one day event that aims to exchange opinions and experiences from the city level that critically question the one-sided configuring of European integration by elites and European institutions. The event is the next step of “Reclaim Europe – A Project for the Participation of Civil Society in a Common Europe” by Friedrich Ebert Foundation Portugal that has brought together civil society organisations to discuss the European dimensions of their struggles and to identify claims and proposals for a jointly shaped Europe.
The Routinisation of Administrative Detention of Migrants and Free Movement of Citizens
In the context of a renewed concern and involvement by citizens across Europe in the issue of migrants’ rights, the review of the “Returns Directive” as well as the run-up to the European Elections, the conference brings together representatives of national governments, the European Parliament and civil society in order to explore ways in which the detention of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees can be prevented at the European level. We will present best practices of activism from key civil society campaigns (Italy, France, UK, Spain) and share concerns about current regularisation programmes for undocumented migrants, whilst also seeking political alternatives to the practice of detention and establishing clear standards for liberty and freedom of movement.
Tax evasion and financial criminality in Europe: new forms of fraud, new social struggles
This event is part of the project ‘Tackling Illegal Economy (TIE)’ which is aimed at promoting confiscation and recovery of the proceeds of crime, as one of the most important transnational tools for the fight against financial and economic crime. Therefore, it brings together partner civil society organisations to jointly identify, promote and disseminate best practices on the re-use of illicit assets. The seminar is open to all and free of charge. Places are limited and reservation is highly recommended, before July 8th. To register, please write to paris@euroalter.com (please kindly let us know if you speak English, French or both).
Transnational Dialogues @MAXXI
SATURDAY 15 NOVEMBER 15:00-16:00 @ Gallery 2/3 “Who is…”, Performance by Zhou Bin (artist, Chengdu) 16:00-17:00 @ Gallery 2 “Change Utopia!”, Presentation of the Transnational Dialogues Journal 2014 with Luigi Galimberti (coordinator, Transnational Dialogues) “Festina Lente”, Performance-Dialogue with You Mi (curator, Cologne) & Lorenzo Marsili (director, European Alternatives, Rome) 17:00-18:30 @ Gallery 2 “Hong Kong: Art and Protests”, Discussion with Rachel Marsden (curator, Birmingham), Simone Pieranni (journalist and founder of China Files, Rome/Beijing) and Wang Dong (curator, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen). Moderator: Lorenzo Marsili (director, European Alternatives, Rome) 18:30-20:00 @ Gallery 2 “De Rerum Natura. Field recordings from the Amazon”, Performance-Dialogue with Luca Forcucci (composer and artist, Berlin) 21.00-22:30 @ Gallery 2 ‘”Performance Art from China”, Screening of Chinese performance art with Petra Pölzl (curator, Berlin) SUNDAY 16 NOVEMBER Morning – Outside MAXXI Museum “Open Museum”, Performance with Bel Falleiros (artist, Sao Paulo), Robin Resch (artist and curator, Berlin) and Lorenzo Romito (Stalker, Rome) 15:00-18:00 @ Gallery 2 ‘”Open City”, Discussion with Bel Falleiros (artist, Sao Paulo), Robin Resch (artist and curator, Berlin) and Lorenzo Romito (Stalker, Rome). Moderator: Luigi Galimberti (coordinator, Transnational Dialogues) “Curating the Metropolis”, Performance-Dialogue with Marta Mestre (Curator, MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro) & Wang Dong (curator, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen) 18:00-19.00 @ Gallery 1 Performance “ROLO” by Wellington Dias (artist, Macapá, Brazil)
Democracy in Europe
As Europeans we are too often told that we must choose between reverting to the nation state or maintaining the crisis status quo. We reject this dichotomy because we know that alternative paths exist. In Rome we will speak about Europe, its crises, and the way forwards. Presenting DiEM25 in Italy and launching its first campaign, Transparency Europe Now! With Yanis Varoufakis, Lorenzo Marsili, Marisa Matias, Julian Assange, Jorge Moruno (Podemos), Marisa Matias (bloco de esquerda, Portogallo), Srecko Horvat, Luciana Castellina, Igiaba Scego, Valentina Orazzini, Marica di Pierri, Cecilia Strada.
The Future of Unions: the power of citizens and the UK – EU Referendum
The UK referendum on membership of the European Union will potentially have momentous implications for the future of the United Kingdom, but also for the future of the European Union. Not just the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ result, but the majority of that result, the geographical distribution of the vote, and what conclusions are drawn by political leaders in the UK, Scotland and throughout the EU will set a course for future politics. One week before the referendum we gather a transnational group of thinkers, activists and artists from throughout Europe to reflect on the referendum itself and its implications, the current state of democracy and the place and power of the citizen and non-citizens in Europe. With the participation of: Jo Shaw (Edinburgh Law School) Igor Stiks (Edinburgh College of Art at the University of Edinburgh) Pietro Saitta (Università degli Studi di Messina) Penny Travlou (Edinburgh College of Art) Peter Vermeersch (University of Leuven) Camille Louis (Paris 8 University / @Kom.post) Maria Kakogianni (University of Paris 8) Niccolo Milanese (European Alternatives) In association with the New Metropolitan
Rebel Cities: with Ada Colau, Luigi De Magistris, Lorenzo Marsili, Gianfranco Bettin
The recent and catastrophic result of the UK referendum on the Brexit shows that we cannot go on like this: the austerity policies led by national and European élites over the years of the crisis, have brought fragmentation and inequalities. Throughout the continent they are boosting a dangerous growth of egoisms and enclosure, facing the risk of giving the destiny of millions of citizens to authoritarian and racist forces. On the other hand, throughout Europe, experiences of completely different nature have been developing: local movements and institutions which, claiming social and civil rights, are trying to build up an alternative able to ensure better life conditions for everyone. One year of “government of change” in Barcelona, after the mayoral election won by Ada Colau, and Luigi De Magistris’ recent reappointment as mayor of Naples, are among the most well-known and advanced experiences of “rebel cities” in Europe. These are cities constantly in open dialogue with initiatives “from below” that try to question the apparently unchangeable national and European power forcers in order to open up new spaces to find solutions. To learn directly about the experiences in Barcelona and Naples and to discuss with them the need of a network of “cities of change”, Marghera Municipality and European Alternatives invite you to the public event with Ada Colau (mayor of Barcelona), Luigi De Magistris (mayor of Naples), Gianfranco Bettin (president of Maghera Municipality) and Lorenzo Marsili (co-founder of European Alternatives), moderated by Giacomo Russo Spena (journalist and author of “Ada Conau. La città in comune (The city in common)”. Find out more about the project of rebel cities and the path promoting the development of a transnational network of cities and municipalities of change here.
The Future of Democracy in Europe | Film screening and discussion
As the aftermath of the Brexit vote begins to unfold and nationalism continues to be on the rise all across Europe, it is more important than ever to animate our hopes in the possibility of transnational democracy. At this timely moment, European Alternatives invites you to a free screening and discussion of David Bernet’s fascinating film ‘Democracy’. A film about hope, persistence and power that provides both, an aesthetic and educational insight into topical debates around data protection and transnational politics alike. The entrance is free but spaces are limited, RESERVE YOUR TICKET following the URL in this event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/european-democracy-in-the-making-film-screening-and-discussion-tickets-26887057914 The event is organised by our active member Antje Scharenberg, who will be in the film screening and participating during the discussion. If you are interested in knowing more about EA or want to find out what you can do in your community with our support, don’t hesitate to join the event and speak to her! If you want more information about what it means to be an active member of European Alternatives, you can also contact directly our Network Manager Martin Pairet: https://euroalter.com/who-we-are/our-organisation/our-staff You can bring your own food and drinks to share and have mini picnic after the film!
Youth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe
In the year in which the Erasmus programme turns 30, Brexit will be officially triggered by UK Government. This means that in the next few years, British young people will most likely lose their European citizenship rights of freedom of movement in the EU: it seems politically inevitable that some or all restrictions on free movement of people between the UK and other EU member states will be imposed once the UK formally leaves the EU. As the free movement of people remains uncertain, so does access to Erasmus+ and other European mobility and volunteering programmes for UK nationals. How will this affect youth mobility? What will the impact be for people with fewer opportunities? And will the Erasmus+ programme continue to be accessible for British youth? These are some of the questions that will be discussed at the event “Youth and Mobility in Post Brexit Europe”, organised by Volonteurope, Volunteering Matters and European Alternatives. The event will reflect upon and draw from the learning of the Erasmus+ funded project EVS4ALL, which was aimed at highlighting the need to make European Voluntary Service (EVS) more inclusive and accessible to young people with fewer opportunities. A set of Policy Recommendations aimed at improving the access to EVS for disadvantaged youth will be presented and discussed during the event, while young people, who have experienced cross-border mobility through EVS and other European mobility programmes and opportunities, will join speakers from European policy networks to discuss the future of youth mobility in post-Brexit Europe.
Conference “Volunteering for Social Change”
„How can we strengthen social cohesion and create a more inclusive Europe?” Many committed Europeans have been asking themselves this question in light of increasing Euro-scepticism and national egotisms 60 years after the execution of the Treaties of Rome. In particular growing social inequality is creating divides amongst communities and societies so that ever more people – among them many young people – are acutely endangered by occupational and social exclusion. Concurrently, for the past 30 years, the Erasmus+ programme has been successfully putting European exchange and learning experiences for young people into action. Programmes like the European Voluntary Service (EVS), new mobility initiatives like the European Solidarity Corps and a range of national mobility programmes are not only popular, but more urgently needed than ever before to make Europe more perceptible, a truly lived experience. And yet, these offers are made use of only by a minority of people! How can EVS and other mobility programmes be made more accessible for young people, regardless of their educational background and social status? What are possible approaches to a European renewal process that promises a socially just and inclusive Europe, above all for young people? These and other questions will be discussed at the European conference “Volunteering for Social Change” which will be held by the Allianz Cultural Foundation and its partners at the Allianz Forum in Berlin on 20 and 21 March. The conference will be opened with an evening event on 20 March during which i.a. Daniel Cohn-Bendit and MEP Brando Benifei will discuss which measures must be taken in order to create a socially just and inclusive Europe for young people. On Tuesday, the results of the European cooperation project “European Voluntary Service for All” (EVS4ALL) will be presented. By analysing concrete voluntary services fourteen organisations from the fields of European youth and voluntary work as well as foundations from Germany, France, Great Britain, Poland, Spain and Romania have developed European policy recommendations for an inclusive voluntary service which will be discussed with i.a. representatives of the European Commission. The project is funded by the Erasmus+ programme. The conference will be translated into English and German. Admission is free. Registration is required.
10th Anniversary European Alternatives: Terzo tempo / Overtime
What comes after the nation state?
🔑 WHAT COMES AFTER THE NATION STATE? 🔑 ‘Thoughts for a future beyond the nation state on the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers’ 👉no need for pre-registraion and free of charge! ▶in collaboration with the International literature festival Berlin ▶supported by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Heinrich Böll Foundation and the EACEA Programme of the European Comission ▶organised by European Alternatives ⌦⌦ https://euroalter.com/2018/ea-congress-berlin ⌫⌫ Ten years have passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers ushered in the great Western financial crisis. Since that day, history has returned with a vengeance. From ongoing economic stagnation in large parts of the West to rising extremism, from threats of an end to liberal democracy to challenges to neoliberal globalization, the world appears in a state of flux. But while events are racing forwards, can the same be said of ideas? Our conceptual toolkit appears tragically unable to describe our present and shape our future. Why is that? And what are some of the categories that we should radically re-interpret today? In the context of the international literature festival berlin, the civil society network European Alternatives seeks to explore these questions with activists, artists, and intellectuals from around the world. ✨PROGRAMME✨ ▶10.30 Welcome ▶10.45 Intro to What Comes After the Nation State? By Daphne Büllesbach (European Alternatives) [D] Welcome words by Thomas Krüger (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) [D] ▶11:00 – Panel: On Democracy Beyond the Nation State With: Ulrike Guérot (European Democracy Lab)[D], Maya Goodfellow (Journalist/SOAS University)[GB], Niccolo Milanese (European Alternatives) [FR/GB] ▶12.45 Live-text-sound-video. Nicoletta Esinencu [Moldova] Staged reading of the text »F. .ck You Eu.ro.pa« by Selin Kavak (D) with sound design by Milena Kipfmüller (D) and video by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Lesotho/D) ▶13:00 Panel: Solidarity and Cities of Change With: Mimmo Lucano (Mayor of Riace) [I], Gesine Schwan (Humboldt Viadrina Governance Platform)[D], Raúl Sánchez Cedillo (Fundación de los Comunes, Madrid) [E], Manuela Bojadzijev (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)[D] ▶15:00 Live-text-sound-video. Sivan Ben Yishai (Israel/D) Staged reading of an excerpt of ‘Daddy loves you’ by Sivan Ben Yishai with sound design by Milena Kipfmüller and video by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese. ▶15:15 Lecture: Movements Beyond the Nation State: The International Women’s Strike by Tithi Bhattacharya [USA] ▶16:30 Live-text-sound-video. Lehman Brothers and Ariel Nil Levy [Israel/D] Staged reading by Ariel Nil Levy of Lehman Brothers protocols of the night of September 15, 2008, with sound design by Milena Kipfmüller and video by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese ▶16.45 Panel: 10 Years of Lehman Brothers Collapse — O Brother, Where Art Thou? With: NN (…) , Brett Scott (Author) [GB / South Africa], Ann Pettifor (Prime Economics) [GB], Harald Schuman (Tagesspiegel) [D] ▶18:45 Lecture Performance “Live together, die alone” – by Felipe G. Gil [E] Felipe G. Gil shares a personal and biographical journey using a new AV format conceived by the Sevillan cultural collective ZEMOS98, called the Audiovisual Source Code. ▶20:00 Live-text-sound-video. Maren Kames (D), Katharina Schultens (D) and Mehdi Moradpour (D) Staged reading of the text »die katastrophenberichte häufen sich, ich fühl sie nicht« with sound design by Milena Kipfmüller and video by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese ▶20:15 Panel: What’s More Extreme Than the Center? With: Ellen Überschär (Heinrich Böll Foundation) [D], Alberto Alemanno [I/E], Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives) [I] Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk (Razem)[P] ▶22:00 Closing performance by Babylon Berlin Orchestra with Adrien Braud : Clarinet (France), Michael Glucksmann: Guitar (Israel), Muhammad Rafat: Percussion (Syria) and Wesam Karema: Accordeon (Syria) ▶In Parallel — throughout the day »Wir gehen schon mal vor« — Project exhibition of European Alternatives for a future beyond the nation state »Print for Politics!« — Drop-in poster-printing workshop with the collective “This Town Needs Posters” from Croatia (between 1 – 5pm). To deepen these conversations and to further exchange, on September 16th we will gather to work on concrete ideas and actions in workshops and smaller groups. https://www.facebook.com/events/1993046047584657 👉The entrance is free and registration is not needed.
The Citizens’ Rally
On Wednesday 13 September, join The Citizens’ Rally in Trafalgar Square to celebrate the lives of all EU Citizens living in the UK & British Citizens in Europe and support their simple ask to keep their current rights unchanged after Brexit. They are our friends, our colleagues, our spouses or our neighbours and they deserves better than being treated like Bargaining Chips in the Brexit negotiations. The rally is organised by citizens groups the3million and British in Europe, in partnership with Another Europe is Possible, European Alternatives, Migrants Rights Network and UNISON.
Contemporary & Feminist Art as a response to social change
Revolutions, war: the last 10 years have been a period of strong social changes in Ukraine. Politics are back on stage: with, on one side, the strengthening the extreme right discourse and on the other side the development of feminism, of the LGBT movement and of civil society. Since the first revolution in 2004 contemporary art in Ukraine has become socially and politically engaged. After Maidan revolution (2013) now with the war, art actively reacts to traumatic social experiences. The questions of women and migrants rights, in particular, are exacerbated. Lesia Kulchynska will speak about artistic strategies emerging in response to the difficult social reality and will explain how violence and censorship intervenes into the cultural sphere. Oksana Briukhovetska will contextualize feminist and gender topicalities in the art field and society in general, providing a comparative perspective on the current Ukrainian situation together with other post-Soviet and Eastern European countries. The debate will be in English. The Visual Research and Culture Centre of Kiev is one of the first independent cultural and artistic centers in Kiev, it is the organizer of the Kiev Biennale in 2015. It has organized several openly feminist exhibitions since its opening in 2008. This workshop is organized in partnership with the Visual Research and Culture Center and Alternatives Européennes, a transnational association that advocates for ‘equality, democracy and culture in Europe’, which aims to bring together citizens, artists, curators, Intellectuals across Europe to create a democratic and open Europe. The association organizes artistic, cultural and political events including the biannual TRANSEUROPA festival in the European Union and beyond
Seminário Internacional “Como apoiar pessoas refugiadas”
Refugees are one of the most vulnerable segments of the population, and therefore need safe and professional care and support. Volunteers’ contribution can be an important part of this as it is the collective work of people all around the world that can eventually make a difference if public institutions are not able and/or not willing to respond to the challenge. Volunteers support refugees in different ways. On the other hand, many of the refugees themselves have free time and skills which they can use to help their communities, and they may use volunteering as a step towards integration and paid employment. The ways of how countries and cities across Europe are affected and deal with refugees differ greatly. This event addresses examples of volunteering for and with refugees, including how to recruit volunteers, the types of activities volunteers can undertake, the provision of adequate training and support to volunteers, and how to help refugees’ integration in our societies. At the spotlight will be reports from activities from the three cities Lisbon, Barcelona and Berlin about experiences with spontaneous ad-hoc and creative helping, self-organized or central coordinated initiatives, and protests for taking in more refugees. Activists, specialists, researchers, refugees and volunteers will have different answers to the questions at stake: What are visions and obstacles for volunteer work? How to come from humanitarian support to integration of refugees into society?
Solidarity Europe: where do we live?
Europe must become a social union, at least. And Germany is a central arena for European politics: austerity, low wages and export surpluses made in Germany destroy the livelihoods of entire generations. Today the European Union seems to be nothing more than the iron shell of brutal austerity policy: an opaque bureaucratic monster. But Europe is more than the EU. In the shadow of neoliberal structural adjustments, innovative approaches to democratic and solidarity policies are emerging in southern Europe. They could become a paradigm for a new political idea. What role can and must Germany play in a peaceful, solidary and democratic Europe? How can Europe become a place of global justice? What is the European dimension of the federal election?
Solidarity starts with us
On the evening of Saturday, April 25 over 30 people including activists, journalists and academics convened for a workshop to discuss what it means for Londoners to identify and engage with our European neighbours, as well as those beyond. Participants were given cards and asked to imagine individually and then collectively what the UK and London would be like if the UK left the EU. Pauline de Zeeuw led us through the exercise, which is being developed into a bigger project to engage Londoners in imagining the city if the UK leaves the EU and how this will impact the city and their lives. EA Trustee Board member, Noel Hatch; Indra Adnan of Soft Power Network and Floris de Witte of the LSE then led an interactive discussion on London and the EU. Key points discussed included: the need to broaden the pro-EU arguments beyond the purely economic and to recognise that London would not be the microcosm of the world it is without freedom of movement and migration in both colonial and post-colonial times. The evening was capped off with live political comedy by Tiernan Douieb, Ahir Shah, Chris Coltrane and MC-ed by Sarah Campbell.
Stand Up for Another #EUMigration Policy
June 20th is World Refugee Day. On and around that day, across Europe, citizens, civil society organisations and activists are calling for demonstration and solidarity events. Here you can find information and updates from across Europe. In 2000, the United Nations declared June 20th World Refugee Day. Since then, conflicts and other life-threatening occurrences drove up to 2,5 millions people per year out of their countries (UNHCR, 2013). Europe has responded to this by strengthening its borders and its policies, with disastrous consequences. At least 20.000 people are estimated to have died trying to reach european territories since 1988. But still, member states find it easier to agree on the newly initiated ‘war on smugglers’, than on a common plan to resettle a mere 20.000 refugees in 28 countries in 2015. Europe can’t be allowed to continue on that path.
Hack (y)our Border projects
Over the weekend of 13-14 June, the Hack (y)our Borders Workshop took place in London. Thanks to the support of the Herne Hill Community Forum, a not-for-profit organisation that runs activities for the Herne Hill community of South London, the workshop was staged in the square just outside the Herne Hill railway station, making it a very public event. Despite the chilly weather, attendance was high with around 50 people taking part. In addition to two participants from Brazil and China who are currently doing mobility activities in London with Transnational Dialogues, around ten more people from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Vilnius and Warsaw participated in the workshop. The aim of the event was to tackle the two main issues addressed by Transnational Dialogues (i.e., unsustainable youth unemployment and youth at risk of social marginalisation): a) through raising awareness of social barriers in the public space of Herne Hill, London, and confronting them with comparable experiences from Brazil, China and other parts of Europe; b) sharing tools and skills in furniture building and design with all the young participants and youth workers who were present over the weekend. A full report on the workshop’s activities will follow on the Public Space Makers blog, edited by European Alternatives’ board member, Noel Hatch. The workshop was organised by European Alternatives within the scope of the Transnational Dialogues and Hack (y)our Border projects, in collaboration with radarq and Laimikis, and with the support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and of the Idea Camp programme of the European Cultural Foundation. A talk on artistic interventions in public spaces, featuring two of the workshop participants, Andressa Vianna and Biin Shen, will take place at the Bartlett School of Planning, at the University College London, on Thursday June 18.
Illusory Rights on EU migrants
Nino Baidauri | Women of Georgia
Gabriele Labanauskaite: Lithuanian Music and Theatre director
Oksana Briukhovetska | The Right to Truth
Verena Spilker | Transnational Queer Underground
Joanna Bednarczyk | Demakijaż – Women’s Film Festival
Transeuropa Caravans 2019 Trailer
Campus of European Alternatives – Shifting Baselines
Citizens Pact for European Democracy
The Citizens Manifesto: our demands for Europe
Media freedom and pluralism in Europe
Open Access to Detention Centres
Artists against crisis (Art Real I ATHENS)
Art against crisis and hate speech (Art Real II MADRID )
Artists against crisis and hate speech (Art Real III Gothenburg )
Air Time
Transnational Dialogues | Soterramento (Burial): A Performance by Jota Mombaça
Interview with Dai Hua 代化
Interview with Guo Rui 郭睿
Interview with Julijana Nicha
Interview with Jota Mombaça
Interview with Zhou Zishu 周子书
A conversation with Vinicius Braz Rocha – Netweaver
Transnational Dialogues Trailer
Transeuropa Caravans 2019: Best practices and recommendations
Together they tell us a story which shows that inclusive Europe is possible when civil society, local authorities and the EU institutions join their forces together.
Transeuropa 2019: ÜBERMAUER / BEYOND THE WALL
In 2019, TRANSEUROPA Festival joins hands with BAM – Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo, a powerful new initiative launched in 2017 by the City of Palermo. The journal brings interviews and articles with some of the key speakers and artists participating in the Festival. Published in cooperation with Arts of the Working Class.
Rejuvenating Europe’s Democracy
The policy report ‘Rejuvenating Europe’s democracy’ comes at the end of a significant three year transnational study of the way young people do politics in Europe today, in a context of rising inequalities: EURYKA.
Lorenzo Marsili with Yanis Varoufakis, Marisa Matias, S. Sierakowski, V. Orazzini
Talk Real in Madrid | New Spanish politics: beyond the ballot box
Sports (Political Youth 2020)
Elections (Political Youth 2020)
Migration (Political Youth 2020)
Riders (Political Youth 2020)
Climate (Political Youth 2020)
Mary Kaldor: Cosmopolitan democracy
Ann Pettifor (Green New Deal for Europe)
Launch of the first European citizens initiative on media pluralism
On February 7th, a pan-European coalition of citizens and nearly one hundred media groups, professional bodies, Independent Journalists and Civil Society Organisations from across the continent will launch the online collection of signatures for the first European Citizens’ Initiative targeting media freedom and pluralism. The European Citizens’ Initiative is a new tool of participatory democracy allowing citizens to collect at least one million signatures online or offline to present a legislative proposal directly to the European Commission, thereby changing EU law. The situation of media freedom and pluralism in the European Union is worsening. Some countries, notably Hungary, suffer from a significant interference of political power seeking to control and direct the media. Some, notably the UK, suffer from problems of excessive concentration leading to undue influence of certain economic groups over political processes, notably Murdoch’s media empire. Others, particularly in the case of Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania, experience a dangerous overlap of economical, media, and political interests in the hands of the same people. European institutions have, so far, refrained from taking a strong stance against individual Member States for such deterioration.
First Meeting of the Council on Participatory Democracy
19-20 MARCH 2020 – Bruxelles A call for European citizens and organisations that put at the center of their daily action the full adoption of democratic instruments and the view of a democratic and sustainable Europe. Register here for joining online and offline and to take part in the preparation of the event https://eumans.typeform.com/to/LDKi0n European citizens and civil society organisations call on the 19th and 20th of March for a first public meeting in Bruxelles to actively act on the definition of the mandate of the Conference on the Future of Europe and use the opportunity of the Conference to start a long-term shared process to ensure the strengthening and recognition of participatory democracy in the European Union. The 1st Council on Participatory Democracy is conceived as an open forum where individuals, organisations and networks can share their own objectives and ongoing proposals. The meeting in Bruxelles is meant to be the kick-off of a long-term process. And together we can plan future appointments and actions to be carried on across the EU. DRAFT FOR A COLLABORATIVE AGENDA FOR THE 19th and 20th OF MARCH These are the three areas upon which the 1st Meeting of the Council on Participatory Democracy will be called on the 19th and 20th of March in Bruxelles. THURSDAY 19th of MARCH – AFTERNOON First Session: The mandate of the Conference on the future of Europe and the role of the citizens in shaping the Conference process Second Session: Participatory Democracy: strengthening existing instruments and ensure democratic innovation FRIDAY 20th of MARCH – MORNING Third Session: Democratising the EU: from the reform of the Treaties to the reforms that can guarantee an EU more democratic, more sustainable and more free.
Challenging Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Conference
Co-Creation has become increasingly popular in recent years as a concept, method and policy tool. A key factor in the rise of Co-Creation is its potential in breaking down boundaries, between different parts of the city, between different groups within cities, between different parts of the world, between disciplines and between different practices. At the same time Co-Creation has been increasingly questioned in terms of encouraging co-option by the state and cultural imperialism. To mark the end of a four year EU project on Co-Creation in marginalised urban areas, the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University is organising a two-day interdisciplinary conference bringing together academics, community representatives, NGOs and urban and cultural practitioners to explore the possibilities and limitations of Co-Creation in challenging such boundaries. The conference is free to attend. The organisers will support the travel and accommodation of one early career researcher and one community-based artist or urban practitioner. If you would like to be considered for one of these bursaries, please indicate this in your submission. This is the final conference of the Co-Creation project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734770.
Call for Contributions for the final conference of Co-Creation
Call for Contributions for the final conference of Co-Creation! We welcome contributions in a variety of formats, including papers, presentations, videos, performances, workshops and alternative formats. Co-Creation has become increasingly popular in recent years as a concept, method and policy tool. A key factor in the rise of Co-Creation is its potential in breaking down boundaries, between different parts of the city, between different groups within cities, between different parts of the world, between disciplines and between different practices. At the same time Co-Creation has been increasingly questioned in terms of encouraging co-option by the state and cultural imperialism. To mark the end of a four year EU project on Co-Creation in marginalised urban areas, the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University is organising a two-day interdisciplinary conference bringing together academics, community representatives, NGOs and urban and cultural practitioners to explore the possibilities and limitations of Co-Creation in challenging such boundaries. We are looking for contributions which explore the varied and contested aspects of Co-Creation. Suggested themes are included below. However we would also welcome contributions on other topics. Defining and Redefining Co-Creation Using Co-Creation to challenge barriers of stigmatisation and marginalisation in cities Co-Creation; Co-option or Empowerment? Co-Creation in the global ‘North’ and ‘South’ Co-Creation Inside and Outside the State Co-Creation and research; challenging university/community boundaries “Postcards from….” City and Community Stories on Co-Creation (Co)-Creative methods and practices We welcome contributions in a variety of formats, including papers, presentations, videos, performances, workshops and alternative formats. Please submit your abstract to sbrownill@brookes.ac.uk to include the following: Title Author and affiliation Contact information Abstract (max 300 words) Up to 5 key words The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 17th April 2020. A review of abstracts will be completed by the end of April 2020. The conference is free to attend. The organisers will support the travel and accommodation of one early career researcher and one community-based artist or urban practitioner. If you would like to be considered for one of these bursaries, please indicate this in your submission. This is the final conference of the Co-Creation project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734770.
17 milioni: gli europei più “europei”?
Questa conferenza internazionale di due giorni a Parigi mira a lanciare una ricerca e un’agenda attiva per comprendere e responsabilizzare politicamente i 17 milioni di cittadini mobili dell’UE.
Il Consiglio Civico sulla Democrazia Europea ti cerca!
Il Consiglio Civico sulla Democrazia Europea organizza la sua prima sessione tra i cittadini europei di Palermo. Se siete interessati alla democrazia partecipativa europea, questo appello è per voi
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Documents may be copied for personal use only on the condition that copyright and source indications are also copied, no modifications are made and the document is copied entirely. However, some documents and photos have been published on this site with the permission of the relevant copyright owners (who are not European Alternatives). All rights are reserved on these documents and permission to copy them must…
Offerte di lavoro e stage
Qui puoi trovare i nostri posti vacanti, ma al momento non ci sono posizioni aperte. Che stiamo assumendo o meno, vorremmo ancora metterti in contatto con te, quindi non esitare a inviare una domanda spontanea: info@euroalter.com Non possiamo promettere di rispondere immediatamente, ma ti contatteremo se riteniamo che il tuo profilo sia adatto alle nostre attività lavorative. Tieniti aggiornato iscrivendoti alla nostra newsletter, diventa un membro di European Alternatives o seguici su Twitter, Instagram o Facebook.
Unisciti a European Alternatives
European Alternatives è un’organizzazione transnazionale della società civile basata sulla missione e l’adesione che promuove la democrazia, l’uguaglianza e la cultura al di là dello stato nazionale. L’adesione è aperta a tutti coloro che condividono la nostra missione e i nostri valori e pagano un contributo minimo di 2€/mese (o 24€/anno). Qualsiasi contributo ci aiuta ad essere più forti e indipendenti! Insieme, stabiliamo la strategia e il programma di lavoro di European Alternatives, in modo democratico e partecipativo, e stiamo costruendo lo spazio per una comunità transnazionale di persone che si impegna in nuove forme di impegno politico e culturale per trasformare radicalmente l’Europa. Con l’iscrizione, tu: Rimani in contatto con gli altri membri e ricevere la newsletter di European Alternatives due volte al mese per avere le ultime notizie e saperne di più sulle opportunità di impegnarsi con noi e con i nostri membri. Diffondi informazioni su attività ed eventi che vorresti condividere con il network, attraverso la nostra newsletter, i nostri social media e il nostro sito web, in coordinamento con lo staff. Potrai votare per eleggere i rappresentanti al consiglio ogni 2 anni e suggerire le priorità per il nostro programma di lavoro annuale e la strategia generale. Informativa sulla privacy Noi di European Alternatives vogliamo essere completamente trasparenti sul perché abbiamo bisogno dei dati personali che richiediamo quando ci supportate e su come li useremo. Potete dare un’occhiata alla nostra politica sulla privacy completa qui. Qualche domanda? Si prega di inviare un’e-mail a info@euroalter.com per uno scambio su come impegnarsi insieme a European Alternatives o per porre domande sulla vostra donazione.
Missione e valori
MISsIONE European Alternatives lavora per promuovere la democrazia, l’uguaglianza e la cultura al di là dello Stato-nazione e immaginare, chiedere e mettere in atto alternative per un futuro sostenibile per l’Europa. Lo stiamo facendo attraverso: Articolare una visione radicale e a lungo termine della politica, della società e della cultura democratica, giusta e culturalmente aperta, al di là dello Stato-nazione per l’Europa e per il mondo. Sperimentare forme di azione che contribuiscano a trasformare le istituzioni politiche, la società, l’economia e l’immaginazione. Costruire la capacità, la consapevolezza reciproca e la connessione di membri, attivisti e organizzazioni che lavorano in linea con i nostri valori. Difendere i diritti umani, fondamentali, civili, democratici e sociali oltre i confini nazionali VALORI I nostri valori guidano il modo in cui lavoriamo per perseguire la nostra missione: Transnazionale e locale: crediamo che le iniziative locali e regionali traggano beneficio dall’andare oltre i confini e gli interessi nazionali Transdisciplinare: crediamo che le alternative si generino all’intersezione delle discipline e si arricchiscano di competenze e prospettive diverse Creativo e sperimentale: crediamo nel potere delle arti e della cultura di sbloccare gli immaginari e nella necessità di agire e di imparare attraverso la sperimentazione Aperta, inclusiva e femminista: crediamo in una società culturalmente aperta e nella diversità come precondizione per far emergere alternative sostenibili Responsabilizzazione e partecipazione: offriamo ai cittadini lo spazio per fare rete e facciamo in modo che le nostre attività e i nostri eventi diano spazio alla co-creazione e alla partecipazione Anti-eurocentrico: crediamo che coinvolgere altre parti del mondo nelle nostre riflessioni e attività sia necessario per far emergere nuove alternative
Strategia
Andare oltre lo stato-nazione è una condizione per promuovere una società più democratica, equa e culturalmente aperta, e l’Europa, come idea e spazio politico, offre la possibilità di farlo. Questa è la visione delle alternative europee. Un’Europa alternativa includerebbe e da cui emergerebbe: Culture creative che mettono in discussione e oltrepassano i confini La consapevolezza critica dei legami dell’Europa con il resto del mondo, del suo ruolo globale e della sua storia coloniale Pubblici transnazionali informati e critici impegnati nel cambiamento sistemico Pratiche di attivismo politico, sociale e culturale che tengono conto dei modi in cui le questioni chiave attraversano i confini geografici e combattono l’ingiustizia sociale. I modelli economici alternativi, socialmente inclusivi, decoloniali e antioppressivi, non creano disuguaglianze e promuovono la solidarietà, la cura reciproca e la responsabilità. Istituzioni politiche transnazionali, partiti politici e forme di governance guidate dai cittadini, incentrate sul bene comune, che consentono la partecipazione e l’espressione di tutte le parti della società una cittadinanza politica europea, il rispetto dei diritti umani, dei diritti fondamentali e dello spazio civico, una vera e propria libertà di circolazione e un impegno critico nei confronti dei principi e delle norme giuridiche e della loro sospensione o violazione. Sforzandoci di raggiungere questa visione, ogni anno fissiamo le priorità organizzative per l’anno a venire, in consultazione con il nostro personale, i nostri consulenti e i fiduciari. Queste priorità servono a focalizzare il nostro lavoro e a orientare l’attuazione del nostro programma di lavoro. Abbiamo fissato le seguenti priorità per il 2020 – 2021: ISPIRARE I NOSTRI MEMBRI, I NOSTRI PARTNER E IL PUBBLICO A CREARE UN IMMAGINARIO ARTISTICO E UNA CULTURA ARTISTICA EUROPEA ALTERNATIVA Il nostro programma culturale e artistico mira a creare una nuova narrazione per l’Europa che includa una prospettiva decoloniale da parte dei paesi extracomunitari che promuovono la solidarietà, la cura reciproca e la responsabilità. Nel 2020 lavoreremo per il nostro fiore all’occhiello, il Transeuropa, che si svolgerà nel 2021. Organizzeremo anche altri eventi artistici, attività e processi che mirano a influenzare l’opinione pubblica e ad invitare più persone ad unirsi a noi per promuovere una cultura e una visione artistica transnazionale europea basata sui nostri valori. Come lo facciamo? Attraverso formati innovativi, transnazionali e aperti per dibattiti culturali, artistici e politici. Funzionando come punto di convergenza per gli attori politici e della società civile per scambiare idee, concetti e alternative per la cultura europea. Coinvolgendo e lavorando a stretto contatto con artisti e istituzioni artistiche internazionali nella causa di un nuovo immaginario europeo transnazionale. Attività correlate nel programma di lavoro: Transeuropa Our publications COSTRUIRE LA CAPACITÀ DEI NOSTRI MEMBRI PER NUOVE FORME DI ATTIVISMO TRANSNAZIONALE Vogliamo migliorare e aumentare le conoscenze e le competenze dei cittadini, dei movimenti sociali e degli attivisti che già agiscono oltre i confini. Attraverso lezioni, corsi partecipativi, spazi aperti ed eventi pubblici, mescoliamo l’input degli esperti e la riflessione teorica con l’esperienza pratica, l’apprendimento peer-to-peer e la condivisione di strategie ed esempi concreti di iniziative transnazionali innovative. COME LO FACCIAMO? Sviluppare la nostra strategia di sviluppo delle capacità, compresa la creazione della prima generazione di studenti della nostra Scuola di Attivismo Transnazionale. Basandoci sul pilota delle prime tre sessioni della Scuola ad Atene, Varsavia e Palermo, al fine di sviluppare un programma di studi più approfondito per le prossime generazioni di studenti. Istituire una facoltà transnazionale di consulenti in grado di supervisionare i processi di apprendimento della Scuola e dei suoi studenti. Innovare con nuove forme, strumenti e piattaforme per l’apprendimento, con particolare attenzione al potenziamento delle iniziative e dei movimenti esistenti. Attività correlate nel programma di lavoro: Scuola di attivismo transnazionale Corsi di formazione online e MOOC ESPANDERE E CONDIVIDERE LE CONOSCENZE SULLE TENDENZE TRANSNAZIONALI CRUCIALI Vogliamo far sentire la nostra voce e le nostre idee in un momento cruciale in cui la rinazionalizzazione, la xenofobia e la negazione dei cambiamenti climatici rischiano di mettere in ombra il nostro appello per un’Europa rinnovata, solidale e giusta. Come lo facciamo? Sviluppando ulteriormente la nostra capacità e la nostra reputazione per la ricerca accademica. Assicurando una strategia di PR in parallelo a tutte le nostre attività nel programma di lavoro. Dedicando il tempo organizzativo alla produzione di analisi scritte, libri, pubblicazioni, interviste e articoli da proporre alla stampa e ad altre piattaforme mediatiche. Organizzando eventi promozionali in diverse città europee per presentare e diffondere il nostro lavoro. Attività correlate nel programma di lavoro: Euryka Scuola di attivismo transnazionale Incoraggiamo la nostra responsabilità e la valutazione dell’impatto attraverso indicatori misurabili. Sviluppiamo il nostro MEL (Monitoring, Learning, Evaluation) annuale per misurare il nostro successo, e sviluppiamo i nostri rapporti semestrali per presentare il nostro impatto. Scarica il nostro volantino
Struttura e Finanze
La nostra struttura legale e la nostra responsabilità European Alternatives è un esperimento in corso per la creazione di un’organizzazione transnazionale di base, che si impegna a partecipare e a funzionare in modo democratico, dando ai suoi membri la possibilità sia di influenzare il processo decisionale interno, sia di prendere l’iniziativa di proporre e gestire nuove attività. La struttura di European Alternatives è composta da diversi gruppi che lavorano in coordinamento per garantire la strategia e la missione complessiva dell’organizzazione: Il Consiglio di Amministrazione Transnazionale è legalmente autorizzato a supervisionare il funzionamento dell’organizzazione, a stabilire la sua strategia e ad approvare il suo programma di lavoro. Lo fa in dialogo con i membri individuali e dell’organizzazione, i gruppi locali e i nostri partner attraverso sondaggi, questionari e forum regolari per comprendere le priorità e gli interessi dell’organizzazione. L’Advisory Board comprende pensatori, artisti e attivisti di primo piano provenienti da tutta Europa e non solo, che consigliano l’organizzazione sul suo messaggio, sulla sua strategia, sui formati delle attività, sui partner e sui potenziali stakeholder. Il Collettivo è composto da rappresentanti dei nostri partner strategici e da membri che lavorano con noi su progetti specifici. Il Collettivo è uno spazio innovativo e organico che lavora per garantire che Alternative Europee crei sinergie di trasformazione tra organizzazioni e individui in tutta Europa e oltre. Il comitato direttivo si riunisce ogni mese e coinvolge il consiglio di amministrazione, i rappresentanti del collettivo e il personale per dare una direzione alle attuali attività di European Alternatives. I membri dello staff dell’organizzazione sono responsabili dell’attuazione del programma di lavoro, della sua comunicazione e del coordinamento continuo dei membri. European Alternatives ha registrazioni legali in Francia, Italia, Germania e Regno Unito. Le diverse entità legali di European Alternatives collaborano quotidianamente per realizzare le nostre attività. Ogni entità giuridica è responsabile nei confronti del Consiglio di amministrazione transnazionale, dei nostri membri e delle autorità nazionali. European Alternatives si impegna a garantire la trasparenza, ad essere reattiva nei confronti delle parti interessate e a utilizzare i finanziamenti nel modo più responsabile per un impatto a lungo termine. Le informazioni sulla governance e le informazioni finanziarie per ogni entità sono disponibili qui: Alternatives Européennes, Association loi 1901 in Francia ConstitutionFinancials 2018 Financials 2019 Alternative Europee, Association in Italia ConstitutionFinancials European Alternatives Berlin, association Germania ConstitutionFinancials European Alternatives Limited, non-profit company, UK ConstitutionFinancials i nostri finanziatori Come siamo finanziati (2019) Codice di condotta In European Alternatives ci impegniamo a garantire i valori dell’inclusività, dell’empowerment e del rispetto nel nostro lavoro. Per saperne di più sulla tutela e il rispetto dei diritti umani e delle minoranze presso European Alternatives potete scaricare il nostro codice di condotta.
Donare
European Alternatives supporta: Istituzioni e partiti politici europei aperti e guidati dai cittadini Culture e media alternativi che mettono in discussione la politica Una cittadinanza europea inclusiva che garantisca i diritti umani fondamentali Modelli economici innovativi basati sulla solidarietà e sul bene comune Sostieni i nostri progetti, campagne e azioni: Puoi usare il nostro modulo di donazione, trasferire direttamente sul nostro conto bancario o tramite PayPal: European Alternatives Berlin e.V.IBAN DE70430609671142512700BIC GENODEM1GLSGLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG Informativa sulla privacyNoi di European Alternatives vogliamo essere completamente trasparenti sul perché abbiamo bisogno dei dati personali che richiediamo quando ci supportate e su come li useremo. Potete dare un’occhiata alla nostra politica sulla privacy completa qui. Avete domande?Si prega di inviare un’e-mail a info@euroalter.com per chiedere sulla vostra donazione.
Assemblea aperta
Assemblea aperta 2020 La prossima assemblea aperta è in fase di progettazione. Avrà una dimensione online più grande che in passato. Assemblea aperta 2019 L’Assemblea aperta 2019 si è svolta il 21 settembre 2019 al Museum des Kapitalismus di Berlino. Il 21 settembre, il giorno dopo il terzo sciopero del clima in Germania e in tutto il mondo, abbiamo aperto lo spazio per condividere gli aggiornamenti sui piani di Alternative europee per il 2019-20, approfondire le relazioni e le strategie di scambio per la giustizia sociale e climatica a Berlino e altrove. La crisi climatica ha spinto le giovani e le vecchie generazioni a organizzare le persone in nuovi modi per sostenere la trasformazione socio-economica del nostro mondo, prima che si arrivi al punto di svolta irreversibile. Abbiamo esplorato il modo in cui facciamo in modo che le nostre lotte rispondano alle questioni sociali e di giustizia climatica, e abbiamo condiviso pensieri, strategie e strumenti per farlo a Berlino e a livello transnazionale. Assemblea aperta 2018 L’Assemblea Aperta 2018 si è svolta il 16 settembre 2018 presso la sede di Wikimedia a Berlino, accanto al nostro congresso What Comes After the Nation-State? In uno spazio aperto e collaborativo, abbiamo discusso le priorità che i membri hanno visto emergere in vista delle elezioni europee del 2019. Ci sono già azioni comuni a cui potremmo unirci o opportunità da cogliere? Quali sono i temi che vogliamo vedere nelle campagne dei partiti politici? Cosa possiamo fare per fermare il passaggio al populismo di destra e al nazionalismo? Prima dell’Assemblea, raccoglieremo idee da membri e amici che non possono essere fisicamente presenti a Berlino. Assemblea aperta 2017 L’Assemblea Aperta 2017 si è svolta il 29 ottobre 2017 a Matadero a Madrid, nell’ambito del Festival TRANSEUROPA 2017 | Spazi Convergenti. Potete scaricare qui i principali risultati dell’Assemblea di quest’anno. L’Assemblea di quest’anno è stata aperta a tutti (soci e pubblico) e rivolta a: informare i partecipanti sugli ultimi sviluppi, le priorità e la strategia delle alternative europee; riflettere e raccogliere input sul nostro programma di lavoro, come le Strutture associative e la partecipazione, il prossimo Festival TRANSEUROPA 2019 o la potenziale creazione di una Scuola Europea dell’Attivismo nei prossimi anni. Assemblea aperta 2016 L’Assemblea aperta 2016 si è svolta il 27 agosto 2016 presso la neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) di Berlino. Potete guardare il livestream dell’Open Assembly o scaricare il verbale dell’evento. L’Assemblea di quest’anno era aperta a tutti (membri e pubblico in generale) e rivolta a: informare i partecipanti sugli ultimi sviluppi, le priorità e la strategia delle alternative europee; fornire l’opportunità ai singoli membri e alle organizzazioni associate di votare sui conti, incontrare i candidati per due nuove posizioni nel consiglio di amministrazione, contribuire con risoluzioni e modifiche alla tabella di marcia strategica per il 2017; consentire ai membri che non possono essere presenti di seguire l’Assemblea Generale attraverso livestream. Tutti i membri hanno votato online gli orientamenti strategici e due nuovi membri del consiglio dopo l’Assemblea da venerdì 2 settembre a mezzanotte, fino a domenica 11 settembre a mezzanotte. L’Assemblea è stata seguita dalla festa di chiusura di European Alternatives nella stessa sede, aperta a tutti, con un programma entusiasmante nel pomeriggio e alla sera.
Partner
Steering committee
Co-Creation
Il progetto “Co-Creation” è un progetto di ricerca quadriennale che mira ad affrontare lo svantaggio urbano e la stigmatizzazione del territorio, riunendo diversi attori come ricercatori, politici, residenti e artisti, per “co-creare” la comprensione dei quartieri emarginati e per affrontare lo svantaggio.
Countering Hate Speech and Far Right Radicalism in CEE – Training Series
Una serie di due formazioni che riuniscono attivisti e cittadini che vogliono opporsi ai discorsi di odio e al radicalismo di estrema destra nell’Europa centrale e orientale.
Euryka
EURYKA si propone di studiare le relazioni tra le disuguaglianze e i modi di fare politica dei giovani e di avanzare scenari per i futuri modelli democratici e sistemi politici in Europa che siano più inclusivi per i giovani.
Scuola di Attivismo Politico
La Scuola di Attivismo Transnazionale è uno spazio riflessivo e orientato all’azione, sia fisico che digitale, che riunisce cittadini e attivisti di diverse discipline per imparare ed esplorare come collaborare al di là dello Stato-nazione.
Transeuropa Caravans
In vista delle elezioni del Parlamento europeo del 2019, un gruppo di giovani attivisti ha viaggiato in quindici paesi europei a bordo di cinque carovane, raggiungendo luoghi di lotta e resistenza, in difesa dei diritti fondamentali oltre i confini.
Transeuropa Festival
Transeuropa è uno dei festival artistici e politici transnazionali più longevi d’Europa. Fondato nel 2007 a Londra, Transeuropa si svolge ogni due anni in una città europea diversa.
URBACT
La missione di URBACT è quella di consentire alle città di lavorare insieme e di sviluppare soluzioni integrate alle sfide urbane comuni, facendo rete, imparando dalle esperienze reciproche, traendo lezioni e identificando buone pratiche per migliorare le politiche urbane.
Media Enquiries
Per richieste di informazioni da parte dei media o di interviste si prega di contattare m.cillero@euroalter.com
Ricerca su EA
European Alternatives costituisce un’organizzazione unica nel suo genere, in quanto combina progetti politici, sociali e artistici che si svolgono contemporaneamente in molte città diverse e con diversi formati. Il modello unico dell’organizzazione rappresenta un esperimento di democrazia transnazionale dal basso verso l’alto e di partecipazione che riunisce tutti i membri dell’EA per plasmare collettivamente l’organizzazione nelle sue posizioni politiche, culturali e sociali. Per questo motivo, diversi accademici, università e istituzioni educative hanno condotto le loro ricerche sul caso unico di European Alternatives. In questa pagina, è possibile leggere e scaricare studi di ricerca su European Alternatives. NGO isierung der EU-Politik? LUISA MARIA SCHWEIZER Humboldt Universität So die Forderung der EU-Kommission hinsichtlich der zukünftigen Gestaltung europäischer Politik aus dem Weißbuch Europäisches Regieren, das im Frühjahr 2001 vorgelegt wurde. Als Akteure dieser geforderten Rückkoppelungen und Netzwerke gelten unter anderem nichtstaatliche Organisationen (NGOs), die sich vermeintlich EU-unabhängig mit europaspezifschen Fragestellungen beschäftigen. Scarica A Political Sociology of European “Anti-Politics” and Dissent PAUL BLOKKER Rivista sulle trasformazioni sociali – CAMBIO Abstract: The democratic nature of the European integration project is contested, and contestation and dissent seem to be on the increase, or at least becoming more visible, with the current economic crisis. A European project confined to transnational market-making is found wanting in terms of social competence as well as civic-democratic enablement. It seems undeniable that the attempts by the European Union (EU) to enhance its democratic standing have so far had limited success. For a political sociology of European democracy, an increasing gap between a European society and the formal-political world of the EU raises a host of significant and interesting questions. The article will tie in with some of the recent sociological studies that focus on European democracy, civil society, and social movements, and will contribute to the delineation of a specifically political-sociological approach to European democracy. The approach will link political theory with sociological insights, the latter in particular taken from the sociology of critical capacity as developed by Boltanski and Thévenot and others. Such an approach seems particularly useful in terms of the sociological exploration of different forms of critique and various repertoires of justification regarding the European polity, not least those expressed by “anti-political” and dissenting movements. Keywords: Anti-politics; Democratic deficit; Dissent; EU; Political Sociology; Social Movements. Scarica Identities in the Narratives of a European Civic Organisation FRANCO ZAPPETTINI Royal Holloway, University of London Drawing on a study conducted with an association of citizens operating in the European public sphere and applying the Discourse Historical Approach, this paper investigates how the organisation’s members construct their transnational citizenship and how they negotiate it vis-à-vis European, national, and local identities. The analysis reveals that informants often claim their transnational identities as membership of an expanded community of relevance, through the transportability of their civic engagement and through meta-narratives of spatiality and progress whereby cosmopolitan scenarios are often reterritorialised within the European space. These arguments are frequently realised through the metaphorical scenario of ‘spatial dynamics’ which makes sense of identities as emergent from unbounded social interaction, and through the indexicality of transnational narratives as specific discourses of socio-historical transformation of nationhood. Key words: transnationalism, European identity, active citizenship, European public sphere, cosmopolitanism, Discourse Historical Approach. Scarica Culture for Europe: struggles for contemporary meanings&social understandings of Europe. Dunin-Wąsowicz, Roch London School of Economics and Politics This thesis investigates struggles for meanings and social understandings of Europe taking place through cultural institutions, festival sites, and art projects. I claim that culture is a social field where meanings of Europe are made. I argue that meanings of Europe that emerge in these cultural sites are not prior or given, but are a result of struggles between the actors involved. They These meanings are to different degrees particular and autonomous, depending on the proximity of a given cultural site to the political structures of the state and the EU. This research identifies that actors who construct Europe’s meaning do so according to common patterns. Europe’s meanings evoke notions of unity – it is a symbol of coming together. At the same time, what different actors mean by Europe is an articulation of their particular ideals circumstances and aspirations, rooted in their direct contexts. Key words: Culture for Europe: struggles for contemporary meanings and social understandings of Europe through cultural institutions, festivals, and art projects. Download Trans*Europa*LublinThoughts on queer-feminist art, activism and political critique in the Polish context Katarzyna Winiecka Springerin A research about the free festival, run by the organisation European Alternatives and a transnational network of European activists, seeks to establish a shared political and cultural space to foster democracy, equality and culture outside the nation-state framework. Download (Re)constructing national and supranational identities Aleksandar Brkić Goldsmiths University of London This research aims to connect the direct and indirect experiences of the author from former Yugoslavia (an attempt at supranational union) (Volcic, 2007) with the experiences of the European Union, both conceived as abstract concepts with permanent or occasional identity crises. Download Time to go beyond interstate federalism – orsomething different? Dieter Plehwe, Werner Krämer, Moritz Neujeffski, Alexander Meland, Ulrike Guérot. Econstor The European financial and economic crisis has shaken traditional beliefs and confidence in a one-directional move towards an ever closer union. Discussions regarding “Grexit” and the public vote in favor of “Brexit” have signaled strong anti-EU sentiment far beyond previous instances of dissatisfaction expressed by popular votes in France and the Netherlands opposing the European constitution, for example. Mainstream European integration scholars have started to seriously address disintegration theory; once a preserve of Marxist critiques of mainstream integration scholarship. European right-wing parties, foundations and think tanks openly advocate (partial) disintegration and, in particular, aim to interrupt centrist Social Democratic, Green, Liberal and Conservative cooperation in the European Parliament. Download The discursive construction of Europeanness : a transnational perspective Franco Zappettini Birkbeck, University of London. This thesis examines the construction of ‘European identity’ in the discourses of members of European Alternatives (EA), an association of citizens which characterizes itself as committed to the grassroots construction of a better society ‘beyond the nation-state’. By taking bottom-up…
Eventi
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Impatto
Di conseguenza, European Alternatives non limita la sua azione a un solo tema, argomento o area geografica, ma si sforza di essere generalista e transnazionale. Lavorando attraverso i nostri vari uffici, European Alternatives ha sviluppato negli ultimi anni approcci innovativi per promuovere la cittadinanza europea e i diritti fondamentali, organizzando gruppi di cittadini, campagne, festival e conferenze, utilizzando metodi online innovativi (siti web multilingue, radio online, social network, video online, riviste, documentari web) e coinvolgendo i gruppi esclusi in attività con un focus europeo (gruppi di migranti, gruppi di democrazia locale, gruppi giovanili, organizzazioni artistiche). La misurazione dell’impatto del nostro lavoro e dei nostri sforzi è sempre stata una priorità dell’organizzazione. Per impatto intendiamo l’effetto che il nostro lavoro ha su un segmento specifico della società, ma anche come influenza i diversi processi che sono in linea con la nostra missione e i nostri valori. Il nostro impatto nel 2019 il nostro impatto ANNUAL REPORTS Annual report 2012 – 2013 Annual report 2014 – 2015 Annual report 2016 Annual report 2017 – 2018
AlJazeera: The coronavirus pandemic can empower us to demand change
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ImmaginaRichiediAgisci European Alternatives lavora per promuovere la democrazia, l’uguaglianza e la cultura oltre lo stato-nazione e immaginare, chiedere e attuare alternative per un futuro realizzabile.
È tempo per la solidarietà transnazionale
Alla luce della rapida crescita del COVID-19 che ci obbliga a rimanere a casa, in European Alternatives vogliamo condividere alcune risorse che potrebbero essere d’aiuto in questa straordinaria occasione.
ATHENSYN
ATHENSYN è un’iniziativa di un gruppo di artisti, curatori e agenti culturali, che costruisce un’infrastruttura e una rete per promuovere la presentazione dell’arte contemporanea greca a livello internazionale.
European Citizens Action Service (ECAS)
L’European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) è un’organizzazione internazionale, con sede a Bruxelles, senza scopo di lucro, che mette in grado i cittadini di creare un’Unione Europea più inclusiva e più forte.
Agora Europe
Agora Europe lavora per creare opportunità di dibattito pubblico per riflettere su come riorganizzare lo spazio politico europeo e reintegrarsi al suo interno.
Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft (HIIG)
L’Istituto Alexander von Humboldt per Internet e la società (HIIG) si occupa dello sviluppo di Internet dal punto di vista della società.
Another Europe is Possible
Another Europe is Possible è un’alleanza di sinistra e di progressisti che si battono per un’alternativa a Brexit.
ARCI
L’ARCI è l’organizzazione dell’Italia, attiva in tutto il Paese in oltre 4000 capitoli che si occupano di solidarietà, pace e giustizia.
Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo (BAM)
La Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo (BAM) è un Festival di teatro, musica e arti visive dedicato alla popolazione e alle culture dell’area del Mediterraneo, con l’obiettivo di sostenere e promuovere la comunicazione tra di loro.
Café Babel
Centre for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD)
Citizens for Europe
Civil Society Europe (CSE)
Commons Network
Democratic Left in Southeast Europe (SEE)
DiEM25
ECIT Foundation
EU Rights Clinic
European Civic Forum
European Democracy Lab
European May
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Dialogue Southeast Europe
Green New Deal for Europe
international literature festival berlin
Internazionale
Kettos Merce
Krytyka Polityczna
Krytyka Polityczna è la più grande rete di istituzioni e attivisti liberali dell’Europa centrale e orientale. È stata fondata nel 2002 a seguito della pubblicazione di una lettera aperta intitolata “La lettera aperta all’opinione pubblica europea”, che chiedeva alle élite polacche una politica europea più aperta e integrata. Krytyka Polityczna è composta dal “Dziennik Opinii” (Opinion Daily) online, una rivista trimestrale, una casa editrice, centri culturali a Varsavia, Łódź, Danzica e Cieszyn, club di attivisti in una dozzina di città in tutta la Polonia così come a Kiev e Berlino e un centro di ricerca: l’Istituto per gli studi avanzati di Varsavia. Impiega oltre sessanta persone e lavora con alcune centinaia di volontari. Krytyka Polityczna organizza ogni anno circa 1.500 eventi e azioni. Krytyka Polityczna è l’erede contemporaneo delle tradizioni dell’Europa centrale e orientale di un’intellighenzia impegnata che rappresenta un ethos dell’attività pubblica e crea un “collante sociale” attraverso l’uso dei movimenti sociali. Questa tradizione risale alla fine del XIX secolo, quando i movimenti furono incaricati di modernizzare e sviluppare la società e fu poi ripresa negli anni Settanta e Ottanta attraverso movimenti dissidenti, che cercavano di rafforzare la società contro il dominio autoritario e di ripristinare la democrazia, l’uguaglianza e le libertà personali. Tutti questi movimenti si sono incentrati sulla costruzione di istituzioni indipendenti, sull’orientamento verso progressivi cambiamenti sociali e sul desiderio di mantenere un approccio fortemente etico.
London School of Economics
La London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) è una delle principali università di scienze sociali del mondo. La LSE ha aperto le sue porte nel 1895 con tre aule e 200 studenti. Oggi più di 11.000 studenti studiano per la laurea nel nostro campus centrale di Londra, mentre più di 40.000 altri studiano nel campus o a distanza. Ma mentre molto è cambiato, una cosa rimane costante: il loro impegno per la visione originale della LSE, come “una comunità di persone e idee, fondata per conoscere le cause delle cose, per il miglioramento della società”.
Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN)
Zemos 98
Wemove.eu
Visual Research Culture Centre (VCRC)
The Good Lobby
Perpetuum Mobile
Ministry of Space (Ministarstvo Prostora)
openDemocracy
openDemocracy è un sito web politico con sede nel Regno Unito. Fondato nel 2001, openDemocracy sostiene che attraverso il reporting e l’analisi delle questioni sociali e politiche, cerca di “sfidare il potere e incoraggiare il dibattito democratico” in tutto il mondo. Il sito web ha attirato circa 8 milioni di visite all’anno.
Museum of World Culture
L’UE può farlo! Firma la nostra petizione al Parlamento europeo sul Covid19
Firma la nostra petizione al Parlamento europeo su COVID-19. La crisi sociale, economica e climatica.
Resist 2020
The virtual conference Resist2020 will be kicking off at 14h (CET). Joined by a range of excellent speakers – experts, politicians, campaigners, international guests – from the comfort of our homes we will be discussing some of the biggest battles facing the left in the era of Brexit and the Covid-19 crisis. Hundreds of people have already registered to take part. Sign up to receive your Zoom link and tune in: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_HbM9H-3HSPGYEPg5EwOeNw 14h-15:15 – Covid-19: How should the internationalist left respond? The coronavirus pandemic is a human tragedy and a public health crisis, but it is also a crisis of capitalism and our entire political system. We will be bringing together experts and campaigners to discuss cross-border responses to the virus, and how we can fight back against anti-migrant politics. Featuring: John McDonnell MP Paul Mason, journalist Elly Schlein, Vice President of Emilia-Romagna and former MEP Zoe Gardner, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants Ana Oppenheim, Another Europe is Possible 15:30-16:30 – Right to Stay: Defending EU nationals European nationals were promised that their full rights would be protected after Brexit but the reality is different. The Settled Status scheme is a mess, and the coronavirus crisis means that many migrants who need help with their applications can’t access support. How do we prevent hundreds of thousands becoming criminalised? Join this session to learn about our new campaign for the Right to Stay. Featuring: Alena Ivanova, Another Europe is Possible Ilse Mogensen, the3million Caitlin Boswell Jones, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants 17h – 18h – Trade deals: Why do they matter and what can we do? For the leaders of the Leave campaign, having ‘full control’ over trade policy was always an essential aspect of Brexit. The reason is clear: trade deals can help radically restructure economies, handing vast new powers to international corporations and eroding our rights and protections. Find out why trade deals are important, what’s likely to be in a US trade deal – and what we can do to protect our rights and our NHS. Featuring: Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now Gay Lee, Keep our NHS Public Helmut Scholz, German MEP, Die Linke Sabrina Huck, Another Europe is Possible
Lettera aperta ad Angela Merkel
La pandemia ha determinato un’emergenza imprevista che richiede il medesimo dialogo solidale nell’interesse di tutti coloro che ne sono colpiti.
Environmental rights are health rights
We will emerge from the current coronavirus pandemic with a very different view of the social and environmental needs of resilient public services, resilient individuals and resilient communities.
La crisi Covid-19. Un punto di svolta per il progetto europeo
400 docenti e ricercatori di tutta Europa chiedono una solidarietà europea
Workers Without Borders
Workers without Border advocates for the European institutions to do more to protect the rights of workers who move.
Il Riformista: “I parlamentari di centrosinistra contro decreto porti chiusi: “Va ritirato””
Neoliberalism, Democracy and Covid-19 in the Global South
No area of the world will be left untouched by coronavirus. All over the world, politics is changing in dangerous and unprecedented ways, as authoritarians, neo-liberals, big business and the nationalist right seek to exploit the crisis. Europe has been regarded by WHO as the epicentre of the pandemic so far, and has been the main focus of attention. But the vast majority of the world’s population lives in the Global South, where health systems are least able to cope and conditions for contagion worse. This week, we will look at what the coronavirus pandemic is doing to the Global South: what are the dangers for democracy, and social and economic justice? How is the opposition and the left responding – with what ideas and demands, and what prospects of success? And what does the coronavirus crisis tell us about the relationship between the West and the Global South, and the continuing role of the West in exploitation and extraction of wealth? SPEAKERS Trevor Ngwane, South African socialist and anti-apartheid activist Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, author of ‘What if Latin America Ruled the World?’ An activist from Egypt Julia Blunck, Brazilian writer and activist
Polish Parliament Must Reject Regressive Proposals on Sexual and Reproductive Rights
We call on Members of Poland’s Parliament to reject these regressive legislative proposals.
‘Neoliberalism, Democracy and Covid-19 in the Global South’: New exclusive content for EA members
Join European Alternatives today for 1 euro / month and you will access the exclusive content we are producing.
Open Letter to EU Health Ministers
We demand that EU Member States’ Health Ministers accept and follow the guidelines published by the EU Commission to ensure a strategic, coordinated response to this pandemic and Europe’s subsequent recovery.
Workers Without Borders
Worker without Borders chiediamo alle istituzioni europee di fare di più per proteggere i diritti dei lavoratori che si spostano. In particolare, invita l’Autorità europea del lavoro, di recente istituzione, a prendere l’iniziativa per proteggere i diritti dei giovani lavoratori e delle persone in forme di lavoro precario.
Moving forward – With or Without Germany
“The Eurogroup decision on support for Southern Europe on April 9 may have incidentally anticipated some of the dramatic implications that would otherwise have attended the outcome of the European Council’s meeting on 23 April” – an article by Alvaro Vasconcellos
Citizens Take Over Europe – online festival
On the 9th of May, Citizens Take Over Europe are organising a marathon of online events taking place across Europe and in different languages. PROGRAMME FOR THE DAY 11:00 “Setting the Scene: What has the crisis done to us” by European Democracy Lab 12:00 “Towards a Green Card for Europe: How an EU Green Card can help secure the rights of European citizens and third-country nationals post the corona crisis” by New Europeans 13:00 “EU Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis and the Future of Europe” by The Good Lobby 15:00 “How would it look like a European Citizens Assembly?” by CIVICO Europa 16:00 “The Future Must Be Different from the Past: Lessons learned from the crisis Europe Future.” by European Civic Forum 16:00 “What happens when we start to get out of this?” by Volonteurope 17:00 “Launch of Appeal for an International Conference: “The European Union after Coronavirus” by New Europeans 18:00 “A dialogue on the Future of Europe” by CIVICO Europa 18:00 “A conversation with Adam Tooze” by Another Europe Is Possible See the full programme here https://citizenstakeover.eu/
Citizens Take Over Europe: Calling for a Conference on the Future of Europe
The “Citizens Take Over Europe” initiative aims to create a fundamental and bottom-up energy to reimagine our European project at a moment when top-down governance is threatening the European values of unity and solidarity.
This May Day call for rights for workers without borders
Trade unions, workers’ organisations and civil society in general must make the connections between the need to transform the global economy to become safe, fair and democratic, and the need to transform the economy to become ecologically sustainable.
Vox Europ: ‘We want a Europe that cares and is taken care of’
Linkiesta: Il 9 maggio cittadini e associazioni si organizzano la loro conferenza sul futuro dell’Unione
Rai Radio: 70 anni da europei
The Guardian: Elites have failed us. It is time to create a European republic
Covid-19, democratic ownership and the future of the economy
In 2008, the state bailed out the banks. In 2020, it is bailing out the whole of capitalism. State intervention and public borrowing are at their highest level in peacetime history. Some have described this as “a Tory government implementing Labour policies”, but is all state economic intervention intrinsically progressive? Here in the UK, the government is underwriting 80% of many workers’ wages, but at employers’ discretion. While many workers and benefit claimants have been left in dire straits, many businesses are able to claim bailout money while paying out big dividends or continuing to exploit tax havens. The crisis also poses questions about whose priorities and whose leadership should govern economic activity. NHS staff have criticised the government’s strategy; postal workers have walked off the job refusing to risk exposure delivering junk mail; and American workers at General Electric have demanded that their factories build ventilators not jet engines. So in this session, we will explore what coronavirus means for the future of public ownership and economic democracy. Will the big state stick around, and is that what we want? What would a democratic economy look like? And what should the left be saying and doing to get there?
School of Resistance: This Madness has to stop
On April 20th, 2020, the oil price dipped below zero for the first time in history. It wasn’t the only world record caused by Covid-19. In no more than a few months, a nasty virus was able to pull off what worldwide protest marches and general strikes couldn’t do: slowing down our planet. Correction: slowing down all human activities on this planet. Suddenly, as a society, we remember the meaning of ‘economy’ as a way to support life and not to make profit at whatever cost. But how can we shape the future of our planet, without falling back into old damaging patterns? To solve the problems we are facing today and to come up with valuable alternatives for the future, the biweekly livestream School of Resistance creates a platform of experts of change around the world: artists, activists, politics and philosophers. The first episode This madness has to stop is live-streamed this Saturday, May 16, 18:00 (CET) and is realised in the context of and with the support of the Wiener Festwochen. With a speech by Kay Sara (Brazil), followed by a discussion with Tania Bruguera (Cuba) and Milo Rau (Belgium), moderated by Lara Staal (Netherlands). Next guest on Thursday, 28 May, 17:00 (CET): Vandana Shiva (India) and Vanessa Nakate (Uganda). A project by IIPM and NTGent, in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Medico International, Merve Verlag and funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes). The opening speech “This Madness Has to Stop” is realised in the context of and with the support of the Wiener Festwochen. First Episode: T̳H̳I̳S̳ M̳A̳D̳N̳E̳S̳S̳ H̳A̳S̳ T̳O̳ S̳T̳O̳P̳ Live-streamed on ntgent.be or our Facebookpage, or the platforms of our partners. Opening speech of Wiener Festwochen by Kay Sara Followed by a debate with Tania Bruguera & Milo Rau, moderated by Lara Staal. The online series School of Resistance starts off with a speech by the indigenous artist and activist Kay Sara. Her speech should have opened the Wiener Festwochen live on the stage of the Burgtheater Vienna. But Covid-19 decided differently and Kay Sara sends a video from the Amazon. Her message is clear: today’s turbo-capitalist system poses an irreversible threat to the Amazon, the planet’s green lung, and therefore has to be stopped. An accusation, an outcry, a wake-up call. Following the speech, the Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera, the Swiss director Milo Rau, and the Dutch curator and moderator of the talk Lara Staal engage in a dialogue about forms of activism in the arts today. Another meeting that should have happened live during the Wiener Festwochen, but inevitably takes place from the artists’ homes instead. Kᴀʏ Sᴀʀᴀ, an indigenous artist and activist, grew up in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and is committed to the adequate representation of indigenous people and the preservation of their environment against the threat of mining companies and the agribusiness. She will play the role of Antigone in Milo Rau’s production of Sophocles’ Antigone in the Amazon. Tᴀɴɪᴀ Bʀᴜɢᴜᴇʀᴀ is a Cuban performance artist and activist and uses her artistic work to examine political power structures and their effect on society’s most vulnerable people. Her work has been represented in leading collections of MoMA and Tate Modern among other places. Mɪʟᴏ Rᴀᴜ is director, author and the artistic director of NTGent (Belgium). Since 2002, he has created and published more than 50 stage plays, films, books and political interventions and has been rewarded with several honours and prices such as the European Theatre Prize in 2018.
The New York Times: “A Director Asks, Would Jesus Stand With Today’s Migrants?”
eldiario.es: “Las élites nos han fallado: es la hora de construir una república europea”
“Il fondo comune europeo: così si salva l’unione”
Rizoma: un nuovo istituto a Palermo
Mentre l’istituzione sarà formalmente istituita solo nell’estate del 2020, abbiamo deciso di realizzare immediatamente una sala di produzione d’emergenza che si chiama Pandemos per rispondere alla crisi in corso della Covid-19 e al suo impatto sul settore culturale.
A Global Health and Green New Deal
Can we both build a global response to Covid-19 and its social consequences yet at the same time, prevent ecological disaster? This now seems increasingly to be a worldwide demand, but what would be the appropriate response?
No return to ‘normal’: how do we build a new economy?
We’ve had a decade of austerity that left the NHS badly exposed to coronavirus. The economic model introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s has also produced stark regional inequalities. Many post-industrial regions have never recovered. Globally inequality has mushroomed, tax evasion is systemic, a small group of billionaires control financial assets that dwarf many states, and a handful of big data corporations dominate the twenty-first century economy. So even before the Covid-19 crisis our economy faced huge problems and challenges. The model was broken and needed to change. The current crisis has undermined the neoliberal idea that the state doesn’t have a role to play in the economy. Massive interventions mean that the state is back with a vengeance. But what kind of state intervention do we need? How do we ensure the response to the crisis tackles the fundamental inequalities and injustices of the modern economy? Is there a danger that the end of neoliberalism gives rise to something even worse – a capitalism that is hugely dependent on the state but uses it to sustain, not challenge, global inequalities? To find answers to these crucial questions Zoe Williams (Guardian) and Niccolo Milanese (European Alternatives) will talk to Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor and Labour MP for Oxford East and economist James Meadway. The event is organised as a collaboration between Another Europe Is Possible, European Alternatives and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Christos Katsioulis, director of FES London, will offer some opening remarks to kick off the discussion.
School of resistance: Make the world habitable again
THE STREAMING WILL BE LIVE ON THU 28 MAY AT 17.00 CET ON https://www.ntgent.be/en/productions/school-of-resistance-make-the-world-habitable-again https://www.facebook.com/NTGentstadstheater http://international-institute.de/ https://www.facebook.com/iipmmilorau/ https://www.br.de/kultur/theater/index.html During our second School of Resistance climate activists Vandana Shiva and Vanessa Nakate address the effects of climate change in the Global South and plead for an inclusive form of climate activism. With the world’s biggest polluters shutting down most of their industries and cutting back their use of fossil fuels, our carbon footprint has rapidly dropped by a significant amount. But whether or not the environment will eventually benefit from today’s crisis is anything but a certainty. Crucial climate conferences and negotiations that were to take place in the next coming months are being cancelled and the mantra of ‘economy first’ might replace climate concerns in the minds of the public and those in power. And what about these countries that benefit least from our fossil-fuel economies, but are already being affected by the disastrous effects of climate change today? In the second episode of School of Resistance the Indian scholar and environmentalist Vandana Shiva will address together with Fridays For Future Uganda founder Vanessa Nakate the effects of climate change in the Global South and plead for an inclusive form of climate activism. 𝙑𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝙎𝙝𝙞𝙫𝙖 is an Indian scholar, anti-globalization author and environmental activist advocating for organic and ecological farming and the protection of biodiversity, seed sovereignty and social justice. In 1982, she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, investigating sustainable methods of agriculture. Being the first Fridays For Future activist in Uganda and the founder of the Rise up Climate Movement, 𝙑𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖 𝙉𝙖𝙠𝙖𝙩𝙚 seeks to amplify the voices of climate activists from across Africa. She also spearheaded a campaign to save Congo’s rain forest and is currently working on a project to install solar panels and stoves in schools. 🇸🇨🇭🇴🇴🇱 🇴🇫 🇷🇪🇸🇮🇸🇹🇦🇳🇨🇪 On April 20th, 2020, the oil price dipped below zero for the first time in history. It wasn’t the only world record caused by Covid-19. In no more than a few months, a nasty virus was able to pull off what worldwide protest marches and general strikes couldn’t do: slowing down our planet. Correction: slowing down all human activities on this planet. Suddenly, as a society, we remember the meaning of ‘ economy’ as a way to support life and not to make profit at whatever cost. But how can we shape the future of our planet, without falling back into old damaging patterns? To solve the problems we are facing today and to come up with valuable alternatives for the future, the biweekly livestream School of Resistance creates a platform of experts of change around the world: artists, activists, politics and philosophers.
On World Refugee Day, we call for a fundamental change in European migration policy
The initiative has been launched as a joint effort by European Alternatives, EMERGENCY, Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform, INURA, Mediterranea Saving Humans, Open Arms, Seebruecke, Welcome to Europe, Watch the Med Alarm Phone.
Open Letter to Angela Merkel: For a citizens-centered Conference on the Future of Europe
Together with Citizens Take Over Europe we published a open letter to Angela Merkel, asking to convene the Conference on the Future of Europe, If you believe that the EU German Presidency should work with citizens to redesign Europe, please sign it !
France24: Europe after Covid 19: How €750 billion could reboot the EU
Vox Europ: The case for a citizens-centered Conference on the Future of Europe
EU Observer: Future of Europe Conference: Council urged to move now
Avtonomi Akadimia
Avtonomi Akadimia is called to existence by the artist Joulia Strauss in honor of the extraordinary educational projects she had a joy and priviledge to be part of: New Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (Timur Novikov †), The German Film School, Berlin (Bernd Willim †), and Sophienstrasse 22a, Berlin (Friedrich Kittler †).
Which way forward in Europe? EU Funding for a solidary migration policy
After our first panel on how to build a strong alliance between cities and civil society, we invite mayors, city representatives, European civil society actors, search and rescue NGOs and representatives of the European institutions to join us in the second online panel of “From the Sea to the City”. With this series of monthly online panels that will take place throughout 2020, we want to join forces to reimagine the European stance on migration with cities and human rights at the center. In each panel we will present and discuss the 5 demands that are at the forefront of our initiative. United, we want to change the attitude towards migration in Europe and to influence the public debate on these issues. Welcoming municipalities are growing in number all over Europe and represent a powerful political voice, able to relaunch Europe from the bottom-up. Online Panel II: Which way forward in Europe? EU Funding for a solidary migration policy. A stronger involvement of cities and civil society organisations in EU funding is an essential part of an EU migration policy that builds on human rights. A number of cities and municipalities all over Europe have already declared their readiness to welcome migrants and refugees. What these cities need are the resources to finance reception, housing and inclusion, as well as additional investments into community building. In order to stimulate a positive welcoming dynamic of cities in Europe the financing should include a concrete “overhead” for the cities’ own development needs. This would encourage broad social support in undertaking the long-lasting process of arrivals in the cities. Cities play a fundamental role in refugee reception and uphold European values and law even when their national governments at times do not, but they also need the financial resources to do so. How could cities take a stand for direct funding from EU institutions and have a voice on the way in which funds are distributed and managed at the national and regional level? In this panel we will analyze the obstacles that cities are currently facing in regards to EU funding and we will discuss proposals and good practices as an example for a concrete strategy for the future. INVITED SPEAKERS Gesine Schwan, HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform Gergely Karácsony, Mayor of Budapest Katharina Bamberg, Eurocities Carlos Mascarell Vilar, Council of European Municipalities and Regions Moderation: Malisa Zobel (HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform and member of From the Sea to the City).
Solidarity Cities of Europe
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From Sea to City
From the Sea to the City” è un’iniziativa congiunta che mira a unire le forze per reimmaginare la posizione europea sulla migrazione con al centro le città e i diritti umani.
Jonas Staal – New Unions
Eva-Maria Bertschy – The New Gospel
Transeuropa 2019 – opening
Oltre il Muro – Transeuropa 2019
Lorenzo Marsili presents Transeuropa 2019
Transeuropa 2019 – summary day 1
Transeuropa 2019 – summary day 2
Manufactourist – Transeuropa 2019 performance
Rizoma: meet the artists of our first project, Pandemos
We ask artists to work on their project over the Summer with a first delivery in August 2020. The book and exhibition will be prepared over the months of August and September for presentation in October.
Citizens Take Over Europe demands transparency and citizen participation in the planning of the Conference on the Future of Europe
Citizens Take Over Europe welcomes President Von der Leyen’s due reference to the Conference on the Future of Europe in her State of the Union address, but calls for greater transparency and citizen participation in the planning of the Conference.
Citizens Take Over Europe
We are a group of civil society organizations, citizens and residents from across Europe, joined in a common effort to promote a forward-looking and citizens-centered European democracy.
Our new memorandum calls to the European Labour Authority to do more to protect the rights of mobile workers
With Workers without Borders we advocate for the European institutions to do more to protect the rights of mobile workers. Last week, we sent a legal memorandum to the newly established European Labour Authority calling to take initiative in order to protect the rights of young workers.
Legal memorandum to the European Labor Authority
In 2020, at least 17 million European citizens live or work in another Member State. Among these European citizens are a large number of mobile young workers. The objective of this memorandum is to lead to the establishment of a special program and dialogue with the newly established European Labor Authority. The aim would be, in the long run, to build an advocacy case for the European Commission and European Labor Authority in order to promote the rights of these mobile young workers.
Protecting citizenship rights of young mobile European workers
In the context of the combined recession and pandemic that Europe is now entering, the risks to the European citizenship rights of young Europeans are increased. It is vitally important not only that the European Union supports the rights of young Europeans to move, but also follows up to ensure the continued protected and effective access to these rights over the course of the mobility of an individual, and in particular in the vulnerable phase of transition to work. This report offers a view to targeted initiatives which can specifically help the rights of young mobile workers.
Our Petition to the European Parliament
After months of hard work and lobbying with Citizens Take Over Europe, today we submit a petition to the European Parliament for more transparency on the negotiations about the Conference on the Future of Europe. We are also handing over our open letter to all three EU institutions to demand that citizens are involved in co-creating the Conference.
Artsformation
Artsformation is a research project that aims to understand, analyse, and promote the ways in which the Arts can reinforce the social, cultural, economic, and political benefits of digital transformation.
Artsformation: A new research project working in the intersection between art and technology
Contemporary art and technology is changing people’s lives everyday. Artsformation will investigate this transformative power.
Creating concrete Corridors of Solidarity
While rescue organizations try to improve their coordination on a daily operational level at sea, a wide spectrum of civil society actors push and lobby for relocation and evacuation of refugees and migrants to welcoming cities. Against the background of an escalated EU border regime, the idea of corridors of solidarity is a practice and a vision at the same time. In this online panel we want to re-discuss with members of various networks, cities and organizations about their experiences and limits, about their challenges and perspectives in their struggles for an open Europe and for the right to move in safe passages. Register: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6wczo_NbTVyKUjFIWc_Atw With the participation of: Rikko Voorberg, Let’s bring them here Maurice Stierl, WatchTheMed Alarm Phone Federica Brizi – Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy – Reception System and Humanitarian Corridors Manager Filippo Furri – Member of Migreurop and researcher on “solidarity cities” Eleonora de Majo (City Councillor for Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Naples) and Monica Buonanno (City Councillor for Social Policy and Labour of the Municipality of Naples) Moderation by Hagen Kopp, No one is illegal and member of From the Sea to the City
School of Resistance: The Paranoia of the Western Mind
A dialogue with Achille Mbembe (Cameroon) Host: Milo Rau Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’20 When Achille Mbembe, one of the most important African thinkers of our age, was uninvited by the German Ruhrtriennale because of a comparison of the Israeli policy of occupation with South African apartheid, it sparked a complex debate. Once again, the so-called postcolonial perspective (known for its transhistorical comparison of political and especially colonial violence) clashed with a perspective centred on the “incomparability” of the inner-European genocide (the Holocaust), elevated to a moral imperative. Even if the writings of Mbembe were misread: the longer the debate lasted, the more irreconcilable the two perspectives became. What lies behind the obvious incapacity of the Western mind to recognize non-European comparisons or even universals? What are the historic, political, and topical sources of this paranoia? Starting from such questions, the discussion will focus on Mbembe’s intellectual work about statehood, violence, death, slavery, capital, sexuality, urbanity, and political economies of brutality, which are imagined and objectified by race, racism, and colonialism.
A global jurisdiction for a global economy
A dialogue with Miriam Saage-Maaß and Sylvestre Bisimwa. The global economy is out of control. All over the world, multinational companies are violating human rights, disregarding labour rights, relocating people and destroying habitats without being held accountable. Often, states depend on corporate investments, or a few corrupt politicians earn enough from them to accept the damage to the population. With complicated and dynamic networks of subcontractors and the outsourcing of risky business, responsibility becomes diffuse. In addition, sophisticated strategies of tax avoidance and tax havens are used. The results are devastating. The overexploitation of the planet’s resources for the production of cheap products is driving the collapse of the global ecosystem. Enourmous global economic inequalities fuel social conflicts and force people to flee. What can civil society, what can states do to hold globally operating companies accountable again? Do we need a global justice system to get the economy back under control? The ninth episode of School of Resistance will host the lawyer and vice legal director of the European Center of Constitutional and Huma Rights (ECCHR) Miriam Saage-Maaß and the lawyer and chief investigator of “The Congo Tribunal” Sylvestre Bisimwa to speak about global justice und die “Kolwezi Hearings”, investigating the activities of the Swiss company Glencore in the D.R. Congo.
Opening Studio Rizoma and launch PANDEMOS
Studio Rizoma is an international cultural studio based in Palermo and with outreach offices in Berlin and Paris. It has been established by European Alternatives, with support from Allianzkulturstiftung, following the successful curation of the 2019 edition of the Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo in Palermo. Studio Rizoma begins its journey on October 27th through the results of PANDEMOS, the first project of the Studio conceived as a multimedia project and physical exhibition conceived during the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020. PANDEMOS, conceived by Lorenzo Marsili and curated by Izabela Anna Moren, is a collective exhibition of the works of 13 Italian and international artists working in Sicily, selected during the lockdown, who worked during the summer to develop a series of works related to the experience of the pandemic and its overcoming. The opening is conceived as a physical evening in Palermo to revive the “magic book” in one night and have a space in which to present the works presented through performances, readings and visual elements. The launch of PANDEMOS will be the first public appearance of Studio Rizoma and part of the evening will include the announcement and presentation of the institution to the local public for the first time through this project. ARTISTS Oli Bonzanigo Michele Bubacco & Carlo Santacaterina Michele Maria Cammarata & Roberto Lentini Eliza Collin Michelangelo Ferrara Lina Issa, Batch M. Ballow & Richard Braude Alessandro Librio Marianna Maruyama Ignazio Mortellaro Studio Luminescent Salvatore Peluso Selection Committee Giorgio Vasta, Luca Cinquemani, Giusi Diana, Letizia Gullo, Simone Mannino, Izabela Anna Moren, Ennio Pellicanò, Filippo Pistoia, Clarissa Renée Podbielski, Giuseppina Vara, Lorenzo Marsili. The website and the magic book will be launched online on the 27th October at 12h CET. The physical exhibition will start at 18h CET at the Ex-Convento della Magione. Studio Rizoma doesn’t have Facebook page at the moment, but you can follow the institute on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio_rizoma_/ — With the support of Allianz kulturstiftung, European Cultural Foundation, and Goethe-Institut Palermo.
Studio Rizoma presents PANDEMOS
Studio Rizoma begins its journey on October 27th through the results of PANDEMOS, the first project of the Studio conceived as a multimedia project and physical exhibition conceived during the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020.
Studio Rizoma
Studio Rizoma è uno studio culturale internazionale con sede a Palermo e uffici a Berlino e Parigi. È stato fondato da una ONG internazionale, European Alternatives, con il sostegno di Allianzkulturstiftung, in seguito al successo della curatela dell’edizione 2019 della Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo di Palermo.
Reason against Fanatism
Fanaticism also emerges from social exclusion and inadequate, precarious education, where the concept of the Republic is not synonymous with equality and fraternity.
Artribune: A Palermo nasce Rizoma, istituto di sperimentazione culturale promosso da European Alternatives
Repubblica: Palermo, temi e oggetti del lockdown raccontati da tredici artisti
Repubblica: Una mostra on line con le opere della quarantena
Join the board of European Alternatives!
European Alternatives is opening two new seats on its transnational board and is looking for dedicated candidates that will be elected by our members online in the second half of November 2020. These two new board members will be elected for a two-year term (renewable). The board of European Alternatives is made up of a mix of directly elected members and co-opted members to bring skills, capacities and strategic partnerships to the organisation. The roles of the board members are: To attend three to four meetings each year, and to dedicate an hour or two each week to European Alternatives keeping themselves up to date on activities and contributing to ongoing work To guide the strategy of European Alternatives ensuring it continues to work towards more democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state To establish and maintain key partnerships and alliances, including fundraising To speak or write on behalf of the organisation To guarantee the legal compliance of European Alternatives and responsible use of funds and the accountability and good governance of the organisation Online applications should be submitted no later than Sunday, November 15th, at midnight (CET) by sending an e-mail to m.pairet@euroalter.com and include: A short video or audio presentation (maximum of 3 minutes, ideally through a WeTransfer, Dropbox or other application of your choice), stating your experience, addressing members of European Alternatives and indicating the areas in which you would particularly like to contribute to the work of the Board. You are welcome to also express your views on current positions of European Alternatives and on the work program for the coming year. The endorsement (a couple of sentences), in writing, by 2 members (incl. staff and board) or partners of European Alternatives, directly addressed to m.pairet@euroalter.com A photo (separate .jpg file) In addition, all candidates should have paid their membership fee for the year 2020 (min. 5€/month or 60€/year). If you want to apply and haven’t yet paid your membership fee so, you can make your payment online. Incomplete applications will not be considered. The presentation videos will be published on our website and on social media at the start and during the voting period, for members of European Alternatives to get to know the candidates and ask any questions before making their choice. The audios and videos can be deleted on request, after the election has ended. If you have questions about the board roles and the elections, please contact m.pairet@euroalter.com
YiE-OT Shrinking Spaces for Youth Work!? – Challenges for Post-Democratic Societies
For the third time on 11./12. November 2020 expert workshops in the series “YOUTH IN EUROPE: OFFENBURG TALKS” will take place. Then the discussions will focus on the future of civil society and youth work in the post-democratic era as key current political issues. Needless to say, the discussions and inputs will also include the latest developments around Covid-19 and its implications and consequences for youth work and young people. The discussions will take place online on Wednesday, November 11th and Thursday, November 12th, 2020. As part of the event, eight technical contributions by European experts on various aspects of the topic will be offered. We invite you to follow these expert contributions live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jugendfuereuropa.de/ The lecture language is English. The livestream program (as PDF download ): Wednesday November 11, 2020 09:20 am “The Space for Civil Society: Shrinking? Growing? Changing? “ What is the issue, what is civil society and its relationship to the state and to the market? What are influential factors on civil society, what means demographic change and an increasing social inequality, what are the consequences for & expectations of civil society? Siri Hummel, Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society 09:40 am “Shrinking youth civic spaces” Despite the centrality of youth organizations in promoting and safeguarding basic human rights & democracy for young people, the last few years have witnessed a narrowing of the civic space available to youth. Tomaž Deželan, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia 11:00 am “What the Future Wants – a critical look at digital technologies designed for young people” Looking at shrinking civil space from a digital perspective, in particular at the role of digital technologies which are often addictive, unhealthy or unsafe – & what we should be doing about it. Daisy Kidd, Project Coordinator at Tactical Tech, Berlin, Germany 11:20 am “Using narratives as data to investigate shrinking youth work practices and spaces” “Shifting spaces” collects stories (narratives) on how shrinking space for civil society is affecting youth work and young people. Results and normative recommendations Rareş Augustin Crăiuţ, European Confederation of Youth Clubs (ECYC) Thursday November 12, 2020 09:10 am “What does ‘politics’ mean for youth and youth work?” Results and normative recommendations of the transnational Horizon 2020 research project “EURYKA: Reinventing democracy in Europe: Youth doing politics in times of increasing inequalities”. Niccolò Milanese, European Alternatives 09:30 am “Unlearning European Youth Work and disengaging the XXI century liberal democracy dystopia” Possibilities for youth work to challenge and disengage the paradoxical and reproductive nature of liberal democracies. Sérgio Xavier, Trainer · Facilitator · Policy Advisor · Researcher 11:00 am “An empty bottle? Youth work in Italy, between old challenges and new spaces ” The re-emergence of youth work at institutional level and of the“ crisis ”are (silently) converging, while producing a process that seems producing a (maybe nice, but) empty bottle . Maurizio Merico, University of Salerno 11:20 am “Which space for political commitment within youth work in France?” In France, youth work (animation) has an ambiguous and difficult relationship to politics why today, youth work may not be skrinking, but some of its principles and values might be at stake. Laurent Besse / Jérôme Camus, University of Tours —– The OFFENBURG TALKS touch upon the general social conditions that are relevant to the youth sector and have an impact on youth policy, youth work practice and the lives of young people in general. They are organized annually by a steering group representing five Erasmus + YOUTH IN ACTION national agencies. Around 30 researchers, policymakers and practitioners invited for their expertise on the topic at hand will discuss controversial issues, explore new areas and phenomena, and draw conclusions from the perspective of the youth field. You can find more about the event series “YOUTH IN EUROPE: OFFENBURGER TALK” at https://www.jugendfuereuropa.de/ueber-jfe/projekte/YouthInEurope-OffenburgTalks/ and on the YouTube channel
Community Conversations
During this Community Conversation, European Alternatives and YEN will discuss influencing democratic processes in Europe among young people with guest speaker Magid Magid. Whether it be citizen assemblies, guardians of the future, fighting for intergenerational rights or self-governing in city-states, we ask what are young people doing out there for their futures. We will have Marta Cillero of European Alternatives, a transnational civil society organisation and citizen movement that promotes democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state; Pia Šlogar of Youth of European Nationalities (YEN) the largest network of youth organisations of autochthonous, national and linguistic minorities in Europe. YEN advocates for the interests of minorities, with a special focus on young people; with Magid Magid a Somali-British justice activist, author and a former elected politician. He was a Green Party MEP representing Yorkshire & the Humber at the European Parliament and was previously the youngest ever Lord Mayor of his beloved city, Sheffield. Magid recently published ‘The Art of Disruption’ – A Manifesto for Real Change. European Alternatives and YEN are launching their guides to influencing European democracy soon. The conversation will be hosted in zoom. In order to access the zoom link, we ask you to register by filling out this form.
VoxEurop: “‘The virus started changing the way in which we use technology, but also the way we access, create and produce art’
Opportunity for Researchers to work with European Alternatives!
European Alternatives is a partner of the STAR project of the University of Siegen. Experienced researchers with a PhD, or 4 years full time research experience, can apply for a funded fellowship to spend up to 2 years with European Alternatives and then 12 months at the University of Siegen. Research projects should be in the areas of digital and media culture, inclusive society or regional economy in a globalised world. Applications should be made to the University of Siegen by 8th January. Full details of the call can be found here. If you are interested in this opportunity, contact us at info@euroalter.com
Meet the candidates of the 2020 EA Board Election
European Alternatives presents the 6 candidates who have applied to join the transnational board in 2020. The board members will be elected for a 2-year period. Their main task will be to guide the strategy of European Alternatives and to ensure it continues to work towards more democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state Members of European Alternatives will vote from Wednesday, November 18th, from 10am (CET) to Sunday, November 29th, midnight (CET) to elect the two new board members. If you would like to vote at the elections and take the opportunity to become a member, please click here. The voting will be online, password protected and anonymous. You can ask any questions directly to the candidates this week during the voting on our Facebook page under their video presentation or by sending an e-mail to Martin, m.pairet@euroalter.com, who will forward them. CANDIDATES FOR THE BOARD MARCIA BARATTO SOLENNE BOIZIAU KLAUS FRUCHTNIS MIKE MANICARDI GÜRKAN ÖZTURAN KASIA WOJCIK
We are looking for a researcher to work with us on solidarity in Berlin
The project involves running surveys and focus group work with activists in Poland, Germany and Italy to investigate the drivers and brakes of different kinds of solidarity in Europe.
Regroup, Rethink, React: Practical solutions to promote and implement human rights based migration policies.
The COVID-19 crisis put into sharp relief the importance of guaranteeing access to information, adequate shelter and housing, and healthcare services in order to secure the lives of individuals and the community. The pandemic highlighted a disproportionate threat for the most vulnerable, who had to comply with lockdown orders often sleeping rough and lacking basic levels of hygiene. Finally, the pandemic compromised the ability to work for many categories, particularly hitting those with precarious employment. A job and a house are essential prerequisites to gain residence permits and hence a proper access to fundamental rights. Starting from these three words “health”, “shelter” and “work”, this panel will explore current constraints and practical solutions to promote and implement human rights based migration policies. ✅ Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4vukfWKqTOm6EIBHE8SpYQ INVITED SPEAKERS ⚡️Annalisa Camilli (journalist) ⚡️Miguel Urban (member of the European parliament) ⚡️Aboubakar Soumahoro (activist) ⚡️Villeurbanne (collective in France) ⚡️Kalinca Copello (IOM Portugal) ⚡️Moderation by Laura Colini, URBACT, Tesserae and member of From the Sea to the City platform 〰️ OVERVIEW ‘From the Sea to the City’ aims to join forces to reimagine the European stance on migration with cities and human rights at the center. With this vision we want to send a strong signal to the European institutions that we want to pursue a welcoming and human-rights based migration and refugee policy. Welcoming refugees and migrants in our municipalities and cities is a chance to democratize Europe further from below: it is the cities that bear the brunt of managing migration, thus it is the cities that should also have a say in the European migration policy.
5th Annual Conference on European Citizenship
This event, to which the press and the general public are cordially invited, is the greatest annual caucus on European citizenship gathering together civil society activists, scholars and policy-makers. 2020 has thrown into sharp relief the paradoxes of this first transnational citizenship of the modern era. EU citizenship is at once popular and fragile with its first right to freedom of movement swept aside during the current pandemic. It is at once a fundamental status reflecting the core of the EU, yet fragile and all too easily lost or put up for sale. You can join us on a journey of discovery of weakness and strength by participating in 6 sessions debating the following questions: What is the current state and outlook for European citizenship? How to strengthen the enforcement of European rights, values and the rule of law? How to make European citizenship education central to the EU recovery plan? How to push back the boundaries of European citizenship within the EU and in neighbouring countries? How can the Voters Without Borders initiative, civil society and the European Parliament achieve full political rights for 14 million EU citizens on the move? Should new social, environmental and health rights be added to EU citizenship? The ECIT Foundation is asserting a more inclusive and resilient EU citizenship which should respect and bring together our different cultures and historical identities. It should be inextricably linked to the same charter of fundamental rights and core values of democracy and the rule of law across all Member States to have meaning. This common basis for living together in Europe must be built for the future too: every child should have access to citizenship education and its European dimension. A centrepiece for the conference will be the Declaration by NECE giving priority to European citizenship education, the poor relation in the EU budget and recovery plan. If citizenship is the right to have rights, EU citizenship is incomplete. Why is that EU citizens majority of stayers? 27 years after Union citizenship was established as an evolutionary concept by the Maastricht Treaty new European social, environmental and health rights should be established. REGISTER HERE
The EU should seize the Biden/Harris moment
We must hope that the EU will decide to take advantage of this Biden/Harris moment in the United States as the new presidential inauguration looms in January 2021
Planetary Politics
The global crisis of our time involves a complex of ecological, economic, technological and migratory challenges that no state is able to control. The result is a provincialization of our democracies with respect to the new planetary powers confronting humanity; it is from this that our increasingly impotent and rabid politics stems. As paradoxical as it may seem, it is precisely the decline of the nation-state that is the source of the great nationalist uprising of our time.
Protecting and Informing Young European Workers – Issue 1
Workers Without Borders advocates for the European Institutions to do more to protect the rights of workers who move. In particular, it calls on the newly established European Labour Authority (ELA) to take initiative in to protect the rights of young workers and people in precarious forms of employment. In 2020 and 2021 we are publishing a series of reports with key recommendations to the ELA.
Meet the two new board members of EA
Kasia Wojcik and Marcia Baratto will join the transnational Board of European Alternatives for a two-year term. The new board of European Alternatives will meet in the winter 2021.
6 recommendations to protect and inform young European workers
In 2020 and 2021 we are publishing a series of reports with key recommendations to the European Labour Authority to do more to protect young European workers.
Launching a Citizen-Led Conference on the Future of Europe
The Citizens Take Over Europe initiative brings together a coalition of 50 European civil society organisation who call for citizens to be at the centre of European decision-making in the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe. The coalition aims to host an independent self-organised citizen-driven Conference. Citizens Take Over Europe is organising a series of online events on the 15 December & 14-15 January showcasing the vision for a dynamic, participatory and inclusive Conference on the Future of Europe. Fill in the form below to register for this event! (FREE) During these sessions, decision-makers, opinion leaders, civil society activists, journalists, creators, influencers and artists, will come for a series of interactive workshops, and work together to tell the story of European democracy. There will be a mock public hearing with MEPs that will tackle how citizens’ voices can be listened to on a more permanent basis to develop EU policy-making. Citizens are now setting the tone and agenda for the conversation about the future of Europe. REGISTRATION USING THE LINK BELOW: https://forms.gle/LHMdfQGWuyBDsodF7 Participants must register for agenda and login details!
Daring New Spaces – Summit on the European Public Sphere
Daring New Spaces – Summit on the European Public Sphere For the past months, the project Daring New Spaces has created bold visions of a European public sphere for the year 2025. These visions were based on expert interviews and developed by young civil society leaders from across Europe. This process occurred parallel to the German EU Council Presidency and is working on prioritising the European public sphere during the current Trio-Presidency of Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia. At the summit, the most promising ideas and policy recommendations from this process will be presented and discussed.
2020: A year of resilience, reinvention and co-creation
We’ve put together for you our biannual report of 2020 – 2021 where you can see more in detail the impact of the work we’ve done together.
Citizens Take Over Europe – online sessions 2021
The Citizens Take Over Europe initiative brings together a coalition of 50 European civil society organisation who call for citizens to be at the centre of European decision-making in the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe. The coalition aims to host an independent self-organised citizen-driven Conference. Citizens Take Over Europe is organising a series of online events on the 15 December & 13-14 January showcasing the vision for a dynamic, participatory and inclusive Conference on the Future of Europe. Register for free! Day1: Tuesday 15th December – 17:30 – 20:30 – Better Participation: How do we get citizens to the centre of the Conference and European democracy? Day 2: Wednesday 13th January- 17:30-20:00 – Session: Storytelling the Future of Europe: How do we create a European narrative for more to join in? Day 3: Thursday 14th January 16:00-19:30 – Session: How should the Conference be organised? A Public Hearing and Citizen Co-Creation Lab
Launching a Citizen-Led Conference on the Future of Europe
As part of the Citizens Take Over Europe coalition, we are co-organising a series of events showcasing our vision for a dynamic, participatory conference on the future of Europe.
We are looking for a program coordinator to work with us on transnational democracy
As part of Citizens Takeover Europe, we are recruiting a program coordinator to work with us in Paris 4 days a week. Starting 1st February 2021 fixed term contract to June 2022.
Skillsharing Workshop by Sanaz Azimipour – »Voters Without Borders«
»Full Political Rights Should Not Be Tied To National Citizenship«
Your Voice on the Future of Europe
With CTOE we are launching a public consultation addressing citizens across Europe and asking for you to support and participation.
For a future beyond the nation state: our plans for 2021
In 2021 we want to continue moving from an inactive democracy to an inclusive and radically democratic Europe able to tackle the social crisis of our century.
Authoritarian Bending of Euro-Technocracy Illiberalism’s Devil in The Details in Southeast Europe: The Case of North Macedonia
These series of panels are part of the project “New challenges in the overcoming of ‘democratic backsliding’ in North Macedonia: ‘State capture’ and ‘illiberal democracy’ revisited in an emerging context,” supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. PARTICIPANTS: Gordan Georgiev, moderator/Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje Florian Bieber, Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, Austria Harun Cero, Political Scientist with a focus on Southeast Europe/Journalist Aleksandar Krzhalovski, Director of Macedonian Center for International Cooperation Niccolò Milanese, Director of European Alternatives Register to participate
School of Resistance: a film and discussion series
In search of strategies of resistance, Milo Rau, the IIPM (International Institute of Political Murder) and the NTGent have founded the global network “School of Resistance”, a series of debates streamed live, in May 2020. This symbolic institution for the future is coming to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin to examine aesthetic practices of resistance. Critically reflecting on existing projects, activists and artists discuss art as a transformative practice that shapes and creates realities. Milo Rau and the IIPM have been working on and through the internal contradictions of global capitalism for almost 15 years through installations, plays, films, books and political interventions. Interweaving activism and art leads to an expansion of the range of artistic strategies and, at the same time, contributes to the progressive dissolution of the boundaries of the concept of art. How can art react to states of crisis? How can it contribute to strategies of resistance? Six cinematic works by Milo Rau are the starting point for this investigation: The Last Days of the Ceausescus (2009/10), The Moscow Trials (2014), The General Assembly (2017), The Congo Tribunal (2017), Orestes in Mosul (2020) and The New Gospel (2020). In reflecting back on these works, the “School of Resistance” at the Akademie der Künste examines the conditions of global art production in general and the artistic strategies of the IIPM in particular.
Trust Without Borders
Trust Without Borders is a research project in cooperation with the University of Siegen, University of Siena and University of Warsaw that aims to determine the status quo of European solidarity and pathways towards a future Europe of solidarity.
Science Fiction Workshops: Registrations open for the first Hackathon!
As part of Artsformation, we are happy to launch the first online series of workshops on the topic of science fiction, including one Hackathon!
Art, international cooperation and Brexit
Welcome to the 3rd video from ‘Art, international cooperation and Brexit’ series, where we invite art practitioners from various fields to share and speculate about how Brexit can affect the art world, cultural mobility and international cultural projects. The speakers for this talk are: * Alicja Kaczmarek – director and founder of Centrala, Centrala Berlin. Alicja’s dedication to community development, social action and social justice, is rooted in years of professional experience and involvement in promotion of equality and human rights. Alicja has a degree in Sociology from Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland and an MA in Social Policy from the University of Birmingham. * Ségolène Pruvot is Director at European Alternatives, non-for profit organisation promoting Democracy, Equality and Culture beyond the Nation-State in Europe. Ségolène is an MSc graduate from Sciences-Po Paris and from the London School of Economics, where she specialised in Urban and Regional Planning and City Administration. Ségolène is now PhD candidate at the Univsersity Milano Bicocca in the URBEUR Programme – Urban and Local European Studies working on art practices, creativity and social justice in the city. https://euroalter.com * Gabriele Rosana is a public policy enthusiast with experiences both in the institutions and in the not-for-profit environment. He is passionate about the EU political project and the role that culture has to play there. During the 8th legislative term, he has worked for the Chair/Coordinator for a major political group of the CULT Committee in the European Parliament, and rapporteur for Creative Europe, extensively following the EU policy-making in the fields of culture, education, media, and digital. https://cultureactioneurope.org
A manifesto for the new decade – Reviving the Barcelona Acquis
The time has come for the Barcelona Process to be revived from its current somnambulism and fashioned anew for the contemporary world in which it must now operate.
Italians want Mario Draghi to deliver ‘normality’ – and therein lies the danger
Assemblies of Solidarity
‘Assemblies of Solidarity’ is a citizens-led engagement and communications project, aiming at connecting groups that are disproportionately affected by Covid-19.
Civic Council on European Democracy – Talks Across Europe
Leading international artists and thinkers discuss with citizens from Palermo and other Sicilian cities how we can make our democracies function better.
Council Forum on European Democracy
The Civic Council on European Democracy is a platform that brings about energetic proposals to shake and reshape the European myth, bringing about new stories of common origin and destination.
Together against patriarchy, neoliberalism and racism
Today and everyday, European Alternatives is calling for a common transnational action in the fight against the political, social and sexual violence against women that questions the borders and demands the complete overturn of the present state of things.
Manifesto for a European Citizens’ Assembly
Let us come together and join forces in a common project and renew our European democracy, by drawing on its deeper roots, building towards the future.
Human Rights Must Come Before Profit
Sign our open letter and tell the European institutions: halt the investment treaty with China. Show solidarity with Xinjiang and Hong Kong
Room to Bloom: Open call for artists working on postcolonial feminism
This Spring 2021, with Room to Bloom we begin a new journey launching an open call for applications dedicated to young feminist artists.
From the Sea to the City: Ideas, good practices and next steps for a welcoming Europe
This report is the account of the four conferences held over the course of 2020 as part of the initiative From the Sea to the City, involving EU representatives, city represenatives, mayors and civil society to promote a progressive change in the EU migration policy.
New publication out: Ideas & Best practices for a welcoming Europe
We are happy to launch today our first publication with key recommendations and best practices in the field of European migration addressing EU representatives, civil society, mayors and city representatives.
Skillsharing Workshop by Lara Parizotto – »Voters Without Borders«
The Rise of Insurgent Europeanism
Civil society in Europe and its attitudes towards the European project have changed dramatically in the past decade of multiple crises. This study mapped, tracked and monitored developments in European civil society over a two-year period, revealing the nature and implications of these changes.
New publication out: The Rise of Insurgent Europeanism
The new research analyses how civil society in Europe and its attitudes towards the European project have changed dramatically in the past decade of multiple crises.
Now is time to move on from precarious Europe: the Social Pillar must ensure fair, decent and safe worker mobility in the EU
Europe depends on workers moving. Whether they are making deliveries, harvesting fruits and vegetables, caring for elderly people, working in construction, metal workers, lawyers, doctors, researchers or in many other kinds of work. People who move country in Europe are essential to the wellbeing of everyone.
From the Sea to the City: A conference of cities for a welcoming Europe
From the Sea to the City Consortium announces a new date for a hybrid Conference of Cities on 25-26 June 2021 online and in Palermo, in cooperation with the Cities of Potsdam and Palermo. Register to follow the online panels and mayors’ discussions here: https://zoom.us/…/tJElduCvqTMqHtC5yOkPHqMsZKi44K1Vxrsd The conference will continue the discussions started online throughout 2020 and will host online and physical discussions between Mayors, city representatives and civil society from all over Europe that have shown their willingness to uphold fundamental refugees’ and migrants‘ rights. From the Sea to the City aims to join forces to reimagine the European stance on migration with cities and human rights at the center. With this vision we want to send a strong signal to the European institutions that we want to pursue a welcoming and human-rights based migration and refugee policy. The conference is thought to be another step in the process of creating a European network of cities, municipalities and civil society with the aim to advocate for an active role of cities in European migration policy. This network wants to increase the visibility of welcoming municipalities at the EU level, encourage other cities to take action and build stronger alliances with civil society actors. The full programme and list of speakers will be announced soon on our website: https://fromseatocity.eu/about/ By registering to the Conference here you agree to receive updates and notifications about the conference programme and speakers. An initiative of From the Sea to the City Consortium In cooperation with the City of Palermo and the City of Potsdam With the support of the Schöpflin Foundation
We are looking for an intern to join our team!
To support our team, we are looking for an Intern for 3 months to further develop our project Assemblies of Solidarity. Apply today and join our team!
Room to Bloom – performance 1 Athens
Best Practices & Policy Demands of Migrant Workers – Issue 2
This report offers insights into the legal vacuum of EU labour and social policy in three sectors which may exhibit some innovative practices but depend above all on a significant number of migrant workers: platform work, care work and agricultural work. This report also provides an overview of best practices in union organising of migrant and mobile workers and 12 concluding demands for labour and social policy changes at national and European level.
Best practices and policy demands of migrant workers during the pandemic
Our second report on the struggles of migrant workers in the delivery, care and agricultural sectors not only shows how the system of exploitation works in Europe.
SCHOOL OF POLITICAL HOPE
The SCHOOL OF POLITICAL HOPE (SPH) is a school for all those who are looking for inspiration, empowerment, skills, tools and support for an active political life. Citizens, communities and civil society actors who want to improve their lives and the world come together at SPH – to learn how to organise politically and act together.
TUNISIA: THE JASMINE BLOOM MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO WILT
Written by Alvaro Vasconcelos The real lesson of what happened on July 25 in Tunisia, when the president, Kais Saied, carried out what was, in effect, a coup d’état, is clear; autocratic populism is a serious threat to democracy. Nor should we, outside Tunisia, be under any illusion; the future of our democracy is also at stake there. What really happened? On that day, in a surprise move to cut through a political Gordian knot that had persisted since the beginning of the year, setting the presidency at odds with the parliamentary assembly and the government, President Kais Saied declared a state of security, invoking Article 80 of the Constitution, and suspending the Assembly of People’s Representatives. The problem, however, was that, under those circumstances according to the constitution, the Assembly could not be suspended, as it was considered to be “in permanent session” and, therefore, beyond presidential reach as the ultimate repository of sovereign authority. Nonetheless, in a clear abuse of his powers, the president, despite his previous career as an academic constitutional lawyer, dismissed the prime minister, suspended parliament for 30 days, lifted the immunity of parliamentarians and assumed executive power. At first, he even sought to assume judicial authority as well, only to back down as, seven years after the promulgation of the constitution and partly because of presidential resistance in recent months, Tunisia has yet to establish a Constitutional Court. With the Assembly illegally suspended, there would have been no countervailing authority to the president, had he persisted in what would have been such a clear abuse of power. Initially, even the armed forces seemed to have broken away from their traditional political neutrality for the president announced his measures flanked by representatives of the military and security forces. It soon became clear, however, that the army was only fulfilling the role of maintaining domestic order, even if the police were more proactive. Nonetheless, Yadh Ben Achour, one of Tunisia’s most renowned constitutionalists and head of the Higher Political Reform Commission which had been charged with reform of the Tunisian constitution after the Jasmine revolution in 2011, called the presidential action “a coup d’état”. The subsequent closure of Qatari television Al Jazeera’s offices in Tunis, the arrest of members-of-parliament on allegations of corruption and the use of military courts to try them merely confirmed his disquiet The background Kais Saied, a political neophyte, was elected by a 73 per cent majority on a voter turnout of 49-to-55 per cent in the two electoral rounds of the presidential elections in September 2020 with a populist, messianic, anti-party and anti-parliamentary discourse. He sought an executive presidency in place of Tunisia’s current predominantly parliamentary system, supported by local representation based on ‘merit’ and not on party adherence which he sees as inherently corrupt. His electoral programme took advantage of the chronic inability of Tunisia’s democratic institutions to resolve the serious social and economic problems that had led to the fall of the Ben Ali dictatorship, such as youth unemployment, misery and hunger in rural areas, particularly in the interior as opposed to the coastal Sahel, now aggravated by the pandemic. The problem is that his anti-party rhetoric is uncomfortably reminiscent of the rhetoric which brought dictators like Salazar in Portugal to power in the 1930s. President Saied’s coup has been hailed by the street, reflecting the discontent of significant sectors of the population with political parties and a parliament where party fragmentation has made consensus increasingly difficult. There have long been tensions between Tunisia’s dominant Islamist movement, despite its endorsement of democratic policy and the plethora of secular parties that innately distrust it. In addition, the old guard, now gathered round Abir Moussa, the leader of the Free Destourian Party, also seeks to dominate the political system instead. And corruption has undoubtedly reared its head – for example, Nabil Karaoui, presidential candidate and the leader of Qalb Tounis (the ‘Heart of Tunisia’), the second-largest party in the Assembly, has repeatedly been detained on such charges. But popular support alone for a coup does not necessarily make it legitimate, particularly in a state supposedly governed by the rule-of-law and a constitution. What should be done Worryingly, the decision of the president to concentrate all power in his hands has been supported by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Their support, however, has little to do with their concern about Tunisia’s problems. The success of Tunisian democracy has always been seen as a threat by Middle Eastern dictatorships, particularly in the Gulf, as a dangerous example that alternatives to their despotic regimes do exist. As a result, Tunisian democrats must hope, at this time of crisis, that they will find support in the democracies of Europe and North America. The European Union, in particular has been Tunisia’s main political and economic partner in terms of trade and aid. It has been the Union which has been prepared to engage at moments of crisis, as occurred in 2013 when Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly seemed to be on the point of collapse. Then European states, including Portugal, contributed to a democratic resolution of the crisis. Today, the analysis of those who advocate the eradication of the Islamist Ennahda party, on the grounds that the current crisis is a consequence of the conflict between the heirs of Western secularism and “radical Islamism” must be rejected as a completely undemocratic approach which will ultimately fail. Even if, in general, the European Union continues to trade democracy for security in terms of its external affairs, contrary to what it promised in 2011, Tunisia has been the exception and this exception the Union must preserve. It has come to know Ennahda and knows that the party does not have a theocratic project, that it is a conservative but also a democratic party. Furthermore, Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, has always favoured compromise, drawing lessons from the experiences of the Algerian civil war in the 1990s and the political consequences for the Muslim Brotherhood when it was…
Job opportunity: Project coordinator to work with us on European solidarity in Berlin
Deadline for application is 20th September 2021. Interviews will be conducted online. Candidates should be available to start work from October 2021.
School of Resistance – For a Politics of Justice!
For years now, the situation at the external EU borders has been deteriorating. All means are used to prevent refugees from arriving in Europe, through the failure to provide assistance, through illegal Pushbacks and torture and violence. Those who manage to enter European soil are deprived of all their fundamental rights in inhumane camps or deliberately driven into illegality. But when injustice becomes right, resistance becomes a duty! On the weekend of the German federal elections the IIPM, the NTGent, the Schauspiel Köln and the School of Political Hope host together with #LeaveNoOneBehind and numerous organizations from all over the world a School of Resistance for a new politics of humanity and justice. A workshop program, three hybrid panels, a solo rally, a concert and the launch of a joint fundraising campaign will enable approaches to the embattled realities of migrating people in Europe.
Workers Without Borders in Conversation with EU Policy Makers
Europe depends on workers moving. Whether they are making deliveries, harvesting fruits and vegetables, caring for elderly people, working in construction, lawyers, doctors, researchers or in many other kinds of work. People who move to a country in Europe are essential to the well-being of everyone. Mobile workers are more at risk of exploitation, less likely to be well represented by trade unions and national authorities, and have many specific needs when it comes to information, to social protection and access to health services, to secure housing and the possibility of crossing borders to care for their families. European Alternatives gather together migrant workers, workers’ collectives, trade unions and NGOs fighting for the rights of migrant workers from inside and outside the EU. Together we not only want to articulate problems and demands, but also formulate policy recommendations to strengthen the rights of migrant workers. Our fourth event from the series brings together EU representatives, care workers, delivery workers, and a journalist to discuss in detail their experiences, analyses and demands. REGISTER HERE: https://us06web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_sKIHaqm7R9So-8VhbQJ8fA Speakers: Denis Gonton (Senior policy expert from the EU Commission) Agnes Jongerius (Member of the European Parliament) Kinga Milankovics (Care Worker) Orry Mittenmayer (Delivery Worker) Leila Minano (Journalist, Investigate Europe) Moderates: Niccolò Milanese (European Alternatives)
Between Land and Sea
BETWEEN LAND AND SEA is a political encounter and a programme of original artistic and theatrical productions developed and presented between Palermo, Tunis, and Bremen. It creates the first participatory and long-term artistic collaboration between the three port cities, acting as a bridge between Europe and the Maghreb and between the South and the North of Europe. BETWEEN LAND AND SEA engages more than 50 artists, workers, researchers, migrants, fishermen, farmers and citizens from Palermo, Tunis, Bremen, Beirut, New York, Abidjan, Berlin, Hamburg, Brussels, Dakar, Bamako to examine and critically reflect the existing connections between port cities and their intertwined histories, linked by global migration and trade. At a historical moment when humanity is facing unprecedented planetary challenges, artists, activists and citizens need to invent new ways to come together across borders and develop transnational and solidarity narratives. Port cities are privileged hubs for the creation of such cross-border networks. BETWEEN LAND AND SEA develops concrete transnational alliances, narratives and practices of solidarity to withstand future crises and disasters, such as desertification, conflicts arising from growing economic inequality, rising sea levels, displacement and global migration. All projects are original productions developed by Studio Rizoma, Dream City Biennale, and Theater Bremen. They will be shown together in a week-long festival in Palermo, Tunis, and Bremen as international premieres.
Between Land and Sea: 19-23 October in Palermo
BETWEEN LAND AND SEA engages more than 50 artists, workers, researchers, migrants, fishermen, farmers and citizens from Palermo, Tunis, Bremen, Beirut, New York, Abidjan, Berlin, Hamburg, Brussels, Dakar, Bamako to examine and critically reflect the existing connections between port cities and their intertwined histories, linked by global migration and trade. At a historical moment when humanity is facing unprecedented planetary challenges, artists, activists and citizens need to invent new ways to come together across borders and develop transnational and solidarity narratives. Port cities are privileged hubs for the creation of such cross-border networks. BETWEEN LAND AND SEA develops concrete transnational alliances, narratives and practices of solidarity to withstand future crises and disasters, such as desertification, conflicts arising from growing economic inequality, rising sea levels, displacement and global migration. All projects are original productions developed by Studio Rizoma, Dream City Biennale, and Theater Bremen. They will be shown together in a week-long festival in Palermo, Tunis, and Bremen as international premieres. The programme BETWEEN LAND AND SEA is conceived as a transnational production process resulting in original new artworks. The project is thought of as a single coordinated programme connecting Bremen, Tunis, and Palermo during both production phase and public presentation. As European Alternatives, and in cooperation with Citizens Take Over Europe, we are organising a Transnational Assembly of Solidarity in Palermo on Saturday 23rd October. This event will be the culmination of a process of more than 20 local citizens assemblies held across the European Union in 2021 discussing the future of Europe run by Citizens Takeover Europe. Citizen representatives from the local citizens assemblies that took place in over 10 countries across Europe will join local citizens and residents from Palermo and Tunis to discuss the recommendations of the independent citizen-led discussion on how to prevent environmental catastrophe. Taking place in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe, it will produce a Transnational Citizens Palermo Declaration on Climate Change, which will be submitted to the Conference. An important number of civil society organisations from across Europe that support the process, as part of the Citizens Takeover Europe coalition, will also be present and commit to follow up and campaign on the recommendations of the citizens. Thereby the Palermo Climate Declaration will be an important tool for activity across Europe and the Mediterranean. On Monday 18th, and in cooperation with Artsformation and The Mint, we are hosting a workshop to identify, through collaborative dialogue, mechanisms for marginalised voices to be heard in the discourse surrounding the digital transformation, especially how the Arts can offer channels of representation and amplification. At Ballarò Market / “Albergheria” in Palermo used goods deriving from donations or salvaged from garbage are sold and exchanged. This trade helps create a kind of informal and self-organized “welfare” system, where alternative economic dynamics, visions and forms of exchange become part of daily life. From Ballarò, rhizomatic lines of connection lead to other markets, and in particular to Tunisia, where many of the market vendors come from and regularly bring large loads of goods.
We are looking for a Communications intern to join our team!
This internship is based in Brussels and you’ll get to work with our colleague Ophélie Masson. Deadline for applications: October 10th at midnight. Interviews will be conducted online in the following week.
What’s in an experiment? Opportunities and risks for the Conference on the Future of Europe
This brief gathers together proposals put forward by participants in the EUI-STG transnational democracy forum with diverse areas of expertise (in academia, think tanks, policy, NGOs, journalism); and it therefore serves as a document of collective suggestions and agenda-setting for the academic year 2021-22.
Palermo Climate Declaration: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe
The Palermo Transnational Assembly came together following 20 local assemblies in all corners of Europe to acknowledge the mounting impacts climate change has on our lives and the biodiversity on our planet and make a clear statement to the Conference on the Future of Europe.
Between Land And Sea
BETWEEN LAND AND SEA engages more than 50 artists, workers, researchers, migrants, fishermen, farmers and citizens from Palermo, Tunis, Bremen, Beirut, New York, Abidjan, Berlin, Hamburg, Brussels, Dakar, Bamako to examine and critically reflect the existing connections between port cities and their intertwined histories, linked by global migration and trade. At a historical moment when humanity is facing unprecedented planetary challenges, artists, activists and citizens need to invent new ways to come together across borders and develop transnational and solidarity narratives.
Video Foreword – The Online Handbook for Transnational Activists
The Handbook for Transnational Activists – Book Presentation
Workers Without Borders in Conversation with EU Policy Makers
Artsformation – Between Land and Sea
What is the Conference on the Future of Europe?
Care Workers in the Health Sector
Delivery Workers in the Platform Economy
Room to Bloom at the Kyiv Biennale
The biennial hosts a series of artistic projects and events in the public programme, including a pavilion dedicated to Room to Bloom (our platform of emerging feminist artists) that focus specifically on current conditions, political factors and institutional actors that foster new alliances in the 21st century.
Room to Bloom: Ecofeminist Narratives for Europe and Beyond
Room to Bloom is a new feminist platform that brings together emerging artists from across the world who create ecological and postcolonial narratives for Europe and beyond. In this public event, members of Room to Bloom come together to present the newly established platform and discuss the most urgent feminist challenges in the international art scene. The event will also present Hybrids and humans/She-Wolf, the artistic project by Katarzyna Hertz and Magdalena Siemaszko (Kultura Kresu Collective & Room to Bloom artists). With this project, Kultura Kresu Collective wants to unveil the threads of reproduction, gender and race – that becomes important not only for humans, as the ecofeminist theorists remind us, but also for animals and elements of our environmental surroundings. Who has the right to live, reproduce and why? We refer to the discourses of modern environmentalism, as well as asking what care, protection and sharing mean in the posthuman age. In an open discussion with the public, the event will pose questions on the possibility of coexistence, nonhuman agency and interspecies ethics, post-scientific position in the human-nature bonding, as well as the sources of fear and control, stability, coherence and responsibility. Room to Bloom is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union The event will be held in English
Room to Bloom – Living Pavilion Palermo
Following our workshop in Athens, Room to Bloom transnational and intercultural platform reaches Palermo on November 19-23th. A second training and exhibition will take the shape of The living Pavilion: weaving commons out of time a call for action aiming to promote a collaborative learning by doing approach fostering exchange between artists, art professionals, institutions, and communities beyond frontiers. The online and site-specific program works as an organism aiming to leverage art practices from a transfeminist, post-human, queer, and decolonial standpoint. The relational device overfloods and delves into borderlands and institution walls with counter-narratives reshaping art practices into a motion site-specific laboratory committed to examine processes, activating archives aiming to re-center peripheries into inclusive spaces of radical difference and care. The three-day multi-format festival will spatially explore many forms of enclosure that underpin colonial and patriarchal binary mechanisms of exclusion of Capitalism configuring subaltern otherness as gender, class, race, and wilderness. Simultaneously we will be operating within multiple tensions across borders and politics of display building room for a less hierarchical and more horizontal collective agency, reclaiming space to re-imagine newer softer porous forms of otherness and togetherness. ‘The living Pavilion’ navigates daily Palermo’s public space through relational artworks and training led mainly by Room to Bloom network artists produced in collaboration with the local art scene in events hosted by artists, associations, collectives, and activists. Evenings will offer screenings, performances, and discussions with our guests in different venues open to the city’s general public and will be streamed online to our extended network. On-site and online radio streamed episodes will announce and expand a follow up of the outcome and afterlife of this 3 day collective artwork in order to promote interaction with local communities seeding a long-lasting ecosystem of interconnectedness across borders, time and distance for us to cultivate a sense of agency, cross-pollination, and belonging.
Generation D Liberation
Generation D Liberation works to engage young people on the topic of Europe and support them with the resources they need to form their vision and make it heard.
Room to Bloom in Palermo: The Living Pavilion
After its great success at the Kyiv-Allied Biennial, Room to Bloom is coming to Palermo for the first time from 19 to 22 November. The Living Pavilion will involve the practices of Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson, Carmelo Pollichino, En Dolci, Luca Cinquemani with Fabio Aranzulla of the Aterraterra association, Shapoor Safari and more.
How to build new unions of solidarity among migrant workers around Europe?
Check out the work A Space to Hold, by Cheikh Sene and Lina Issa
Room to Bloom – Palermo Living Pavilion
Week 1 – What is Hate Speech?
Week 1 – Causes and Consequences of Hate Speech
Week 1 – Forms of Hate Speech
Week 2 – What are Human Rights?
Week 2 – The history and evolution of Human Rights
Week 2 – The Human Rights Protection System
Week 3 – What hate speech is, is controversial
Week 4 – Preparing for taking Action against Hate Speech
Week 4 – A Human Rights Approach to Action
Week 4 – Interview with Emilia Roig (Center for Intersectional Justice)
For a Permanent EU Citizens’ Assembly: Why, When, How?
A public discussion by the EUI-STG democracy forum under the umbrella of EUI Democracy in the 21st century Interdisciplinary Research Cluster. We have been witnessing an impressive increase in the use of stratified randomly selected Citizens’ Assemblies across the world in the last decade. Many believe that they can play a crucial role in creating the social conditions to tackle complex policy problems such as the climate emergency in addition to their intrinsic value for democratic renewal. Others however, criticise them as a gimmick or even a threat to traditional representative democracy. This “deliberative wave” has now arrived in the EU, which for the first time in history is systematically applying such methods within the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe taking place in 2021-22. In fact, the four European Citizens’ Assemblies (here called Citizens’ Panels) with 800 randomly selected citizens from across the EU are a key pillar in the Conference architecture. On 10 December 2021, one of them will be hosted at the EUI in Florence for its final deliberation and recommendations on European democracy/Values and rights, rule of law and security . But what comes next? Do we need to make such EU Citizens’ Assembly permanent? And if so, how should it be designed to become a truly efficient and meaningful instrument of transnational deliberative democracy? What can we learn from the many prior experiences in this vein, such as the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate, the permanent Citizens Assembly in Eastern-Belgium or the Irish Citizens’ Assembly model where citizens can vote on the assembly’s proposals in a referendum? The EUI-STG Democracy Forum has been investigating these questions along side the Conference on the Future of Europe and is eager to exchange on this prospect with a broader public. Join us online to consider this topic with some of the most knowledgeable experts in the field. Chair: Kalypso Nicolaidis (EUI) Speakers: Initial Presenters: Claudia Chwalisz (OECD) Yves Sintomer (University of Paris and Oxford University) Roundtable: Gabriela Cretu (Social Democratic Party (PSD), Romania) David Farrell (University College Dublin) Christoph Niessen (EUI) Niccolo Milanese (European Alternatives and Citizens Take Over Europe) Alberto Alemanno (HEC Paris and The Good Lobby) Carsten Berg (Berggruen EUI Fellow and ECI) REGISTER HERE
For a Permanent EU Citizens’ Assembly: Why, When, How?
A public discussion by the EUI-STG democracy forum under the umbrella of EUI Democracy in the 21st century Interdisciplinary Research Cluster.
The Online Handbook for Transnational Activists
The Online Handbook for Transnational Activists is a publication focused on theory and practice of transnational struggles for equality and justice in the past, the present, and the future. Originally, a book publication was envisaged, but more recent considerations due to the Covid-19 pandemic have led us to consider an online publication. The objective is to create an educational platform based on the contributions planned so far, including articles, interviews, videos, photo stories, infographics, methodological tools, and other resources.
Citizens Take Over Europe goes to Florence to take part in the European Citizens’ Panels of the CoFoE
This weekend we are in Florence together with 200 citizens from all over Europe to take part in the European Citizens’ Panels of the Conference of the Future of Europe. We will be there to raise our concerns and say once again that citizens need to be at the center of the discussion!
Artsformation – Between Land and Sea International Workshop 1
A Space to Hold – Between Land and Sea
Emerald City by Stefania Artusi – Between Land and Sea
Between Land and Sea (Palermo 2021)
Welcome 2022! Ready for a new year of solidarity beyond borders
On behalf of our team, we would like to thank you so much for your energy and your support throughout 2021.
Palermo Climate Declaration: Avoiding Climate Catastrophe
No More War in Europe – An Appeal for Civic Action in Europe and Beyond
We, civic activists from states that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, members of the Council of Europe or participating in the OSCE note the urgent need to prevent war in Europe.
Assemblies of Solidarity by Laura Parker – Palermo
No To War in Europe
No to War in Europe! This is not a simple slogan, but an appeal to take action. As the confrontations at the Ukrainian-Russian border intesify, not only political leaders, but also actors of the civic society, should raise their voice and take a firm stand against nationalism and the threat of war. Read what our authors write about it.
No to War in Europe!
No to War in Europe! This is not a simple slogan, but an appeal to take action. As the confrontations at the Ukrainian-Russian border intesify, not only political leaders, but also actors of the civic society, should raise their voice and take a firm stand against nationalism and the threat of war. Read what our authors write about it.
We are all Ukrainians now
The question today is how to defend Ukraine and its beleaguered inhabitants. We know that, in military terms, it is impossible, as the Russian leader reminded Emmanuel Macron, and as he demonstrated to the world with the nuclear exercises he carried out before the invasion.
War in Ukraine: What we are doing, what our friends are doing, how you can help
European Alternatives and partners will keep this page updated – last update 28/2/22
Feminist Peace Practices
The Feminist Peace Practices project (FPP) engages in contextualising and highlighting transnational feminist peacebuilding interventions, particularly those that employ the use of arts and culture, in different African countries.
Call to Action! #DoNotLeaveUsAlone
Sign our petition & join our solidarity demonstration from Berlin Central Station to the Chancellor’s Office.
Europe Calling Special Power to the People! How can Europe work for everyone?
No More War Citizens Assembly
Register to participate on Wednesday 13th April: 6pm Kyiv, 6pm Moscow, 4pm UK time, 5pm Paris The war in Ukraine creates multiple urgent needs for solidarity – with people most exposed in Ukraine, with those who have fled, with all of those welcoming and trying to help these people, and with those opposed to the war in Russia, Belarus and elsewhere. Many civil society organisations are highly mobilised to try to respond to these imperatives and deal with emergencies every day. The war is again reshaping in many ways the security, human rights, social and ecological contexts across Europe and the wider Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, parts of which, like Syria, have been in a state of war for over a decade. It will be up to citizens and civil society to try to overcome new divisions both inside countries and between countries, both now and in future years. It is imperative that the invasion of Ukraine fails, that Russian forces withdraw, that military hostilities cease and that alleged war crimes are investigated and brought to justice. Civil society has an essential part to play in each of these elements of ending the war, both through its own actions and in calling on governments to provide resources to those resisting imperialism. Our actions now will shape the possibilities of peaceful futures. Civil society has an essential part to play in each of these elements of ending the war, both through its own actions and in calling on governments to provide resources to those resisting imperialism. Our actions now will shape the possibilities of peaceful futures. With this assembly we seek to open a space for civil society to focus and maintain public and political attention on protecting human rights and bringing an end to the war, to network and share solidarity actions, to share different perspectives and analysis of the consequences of the war and think together about what European and international architecture should be built to ensure peace. This is why we are calling for No More War Citizens Assemblies online, on a rolling basis during, picking up on the spirit of the Helsinki Citizens Assemblies and building on the No to War Appeal published in January 2021, prior to the Russian invasion. Please join us by registering for the online zoom assembly here (Zoom login details will be sent in registration). If you prefer to register via email please contact: euroalter@protonmail.com
Transeuropa Festival 2022 – Decolonize! Decarbonise! Democratize!
The new edition of Transeuropa takes place in Porto and presents a rich schedule of events prepared in cooperation with local partners in the city. The programme will consist of events, exhibitions, open assemblies, meetings and music and will involve a large number of historical spaces of the city. THE THEME In an era marked by climate catastrophe, inequality and discrimination towards minority groups, Transeuropa Festival open spaces to recognise the agency of citiziens to take action and redefine the space we occupy in the world. Curated collectively and taking into account a plurality of voices, our programme actively participates in deconstructing spaces of oppression and works in building spaces of freedom and imagination to construct viable and long-term alternatives. Porto becomes the ideal location to take forward these concepts and rethink a new physical and conceptual space in which the relations between Europe, Africa and Latin America take a different shape. By inviting artists, activists, workers and citizens to Porto we co-create a programme that relates to the city and its communities; we create a collective space to imagine new narratives and enact political agency. Decolonize, Decarbonise, Democratize; our curatorial theme focuses on the combination of scientific and technical knowledge but also holistic and artistic practices that facilitate the creation of collaborative alliances across our interconnected world. Let’s imagine and create together, let’s Decolonize, Decarbonise and Democratize our lives.
No More War Citizens Assembly
Register to participate on this assembly of citizens taking place on Wednesday 13th April: 6pm Kyiv, 6pm Moscow, 4pm UK time, 5pm Paris.
New edition of Transeuropa Festival: 20-25 April in Porto
TRANSEUROPA Festival 2022 edition, Decolonialize! Decarbonize! Democratize!, takes place in Porto from the 21th to the 25th of April.
Transeuropa Festival Journal 2022
The 2022 edition of TRANSEUROPA unfolds from three central themes that reflect on the most urgent challenges we are facing today: Decolonize, Decarbonise, Democratize. Our curatorial theme focuses on the combination of scientific and technical knowledge but also on holistic and artistic practices that facilitate the creation of collaborative alliances across our interconnected world. Curated collectively and taking into account a plurality of local and international voices, our programme actively participates in deconstructing spaces of oppression and works in building spaces of freedom and imagination to construct viable and long-term alternatives.
Porto Declaration for Transnational Peace
We are launching the Transnational Peace Declaration on 23 April at University of Porto in the context of Transeuropa Festival at 18.30h
No More War Citizens Assembly II – 27 April, 5pm Paris
Register to participate on Wednesday 27th April: 6pm Kyiv, 6pm Moscow, 4pm UK time, 5pm Paris.
Call for Contributions: “Co-Creation: Challenging Boundaries Conference”
Photo: Ruses and Refusals, 2019, Madison Bycroft © Luca Girardini CO-CREATION: CHALLENGING BOUNDARIES INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE Oxford Brookes University 12-13 September 2022 Submission Deadline: 30th June 2022 Call for Contribution To mark the end of a four year EU project on Co-Creation in marginalised urban areas, the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University is organising a two-day interdisciplinary conference to explore the possibilities and limitations of Co-Creation as a concept, method, and policy tool in breaking down boundaries between different parts of the city, between different groups within cities, between different parts of the world, between disciplines and between different practices. We are looking for contributions which explore the varied and contested aspects of Co-Creation, including: Defining and Redefining Co-Creation Using Co-Creation to challenge barriers of stigmatisation and marginalisation in cities Co-Creation; Co-option or Empowerment? Co-Creation in the global ‘North’ and ‘South’ Co-Creation Inside and Outside the State Co-Creation and research; challenging university/community boundaries “Postcards from….” City and Community Stories on Co-Creation (Co)-Creative methods and practices We welcome contributions in a variety of formats, including papers, presentations, videos, performances, workshops and alternative formats. Please submit your abstract (deadline 30th June 2022) to Dr. M. Reza Shirazi (shirazi@brookes.ac.uk) and include title, author and affiliation, contact information, abstract (max 300 words), and up to 5 key words. The conference is free. The organisers will support the travel and accommodation of one early career researcher and one community-based artist or urban practitioner. ****Download the full call as a pdf here****
Freedom for Osman Kavala
Osman Kavala has been in prison since 2017. In 2020, he was acquitted by the court from the charges directed against him for his involvement in the Gezi Park protests.
Lunch debate – Convention for a people-powered Europe: The future of democratic participation
The second birthday of our coalition Citizens Take Over Europe is approaching! And we will celebrate it on the 7th of May in Strasbourg during the Strasbourg Summit organised by the Federalists movements. We answered the call launched by the European federalists to join the Summit in Strasbourg because the outcomes of the Conference need to be followed up. Citizens Take Over Europe started to work together two years ago when the Conference on the Future of Europe was a big “IF”. Now, with the outcomes on the table and with the European Parliament announcing that it will officially call for an EU Convention, we want to be there for the Conference’s conclusion to launch our clear message for a European Convention. Now it is the time for a leap forward in European history, and not a missed opportunity! The fragility revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic demands this. The humanitarian and energetic crisis caused by the war of aggression against Ukraine demands this. We will be in Strasbourg to be part of the Civil Society Convention and to attend the March for Europe. And you can meet us at the event we organised: Lunch debate – Convention for a people-powered Europe: The future of democratic participation Saturday 7th May 1.00 PM – 2.15 PM L’Aubette, Strasbourg During the event you will be able to meet the coalition Citizens Take Over Europe and discuss how the Conference on the Future of Europe can become the kick-off for the democratization of Europe and its reforms. We will be discussing the call and open letter for a European Convention and our vision for it, the institutionalisation of a European Citizens’ Assembly, and provide practical examples of deliberative processes including from the Assemblies of Solidarity project, which led to the Palermo Climate Declaration and Porto eco-social justice Declaration. If you are planning to be in Strasbourg, register here to attend the event. We hope to meet you in Strasbourg!
The Citizens Take Over Europe Coalition joins the Strasbourg Summit!
The second birthday of our coalition Citizens Take Over Europe is approaching. And we will celebrate it on the 7th of May in Strasbourg during the Strasbourg Summit organized by the Federalists movements. During our debate “Convention for a people-powered Europe: The future of democratic participation” we will discuss the need for a European Convention and how the Conference on the Future of Europe can become the kick-off for the democratization of the EU.
Bringing local voices to Strasbourg – The CoFoE in Porto and the experience of the Portuguese National Assembly
Photo: the Portuguese National Assembly during the TRANSEUROPA Festival 2022, © Natacha Oliveira & Maria Ferreira By Jéssica Moreira On May 7, the Portuguese Closing Session for the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) was held at the Serralves Foundation in Porto. This ceremony, hosting the national Portuguese representatives of the CoFoE in Strasburg, the State Secretary for European Affairs and the Portuguese Prime Minister, marked a closing chapter of the efforts made for the Conference, giving an overview of what was done on the national level regarding the different topics of the CoFoE. More than 200 people attended the event, many of which where young adults engaged in local students’ and youth movements and the general adhesion was so large, that the room exceeded its maximum capacity. At the end, the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, sat in front of a large audience for a Q&A session. What ensued was a public display of youth militance for the future of Europe. The questions revolved around six main topics and demands: The EU’s and the national promotion of youth participation has to be complemented by structural support measures for the economic and social emancipation of what is considered the most qualified generation in Portugal’s history; Ecological commitment needs to be taken seriously and to be seen as a compromise and commitment between generations. More efforts need to be done in order to prioritize ecological and social concerns over profit. Moreover, energetic – or other form of – dependencies from countries disrespecting basic human rights have to be avoided; Institutional reforms must be proceeded by a stricter regulation of the housing market, allowing young people and minoritized groups to live and develop projects in the cities; The example of transnational participative democracy set by CoFoE needs to be traduced in a long-lasting endeavour, fostering the engagement of national communities for the EU project; The national education system needs to be revised, allowing more space for creativity, associative behaviour and critical thinking. This involves a curriculum reform of history classes, promoting a more critical perspective of historical events. School curriculums should provide more time and opportunities to students to engage in socio-political projects; The EU and national governments need to preserve their support for Ukraine and debate ways to deepen this aid and to stop Russia’s aggression. The request was made, for Portugal to express a clear and strong position regarding material and humanitarian support of Ukraine. The Portuguese Citizens’ Assembly and the Conference on the Future of Europe European Alternatives’ and Forum Demos’ representatives joined the event there to represent the work done on the TRANSEUROPA Festival 2022 in Porto, namely the Citizens’ and the Transnational Assemblies held from the 22nd to the 24th of April. These assemblies have revolved around many of the issues raised by the participants in this closing session. The Citizens’ Assembly was part of the national events created in the context of the debate set forth by the CoFoE. Initiated by Forum Demos, the assembly held at Ermesinde’s Cultural Forum, on the 22nd and 23rd of April, aimed to explore, in cooperation with 20 national NGO’s and several activists, the issues and responses needed, at national and European level, in order to guarantee the rights of socially discriminated communities and to foster hospitality and equality. The perspectives on these topics where multiple, since the assembly sought to address local, national and European questions regarding the protection of minorities and socially discriminated people. Being part of the project Asssemblies of Solidarity, coordinated by the coalition Citizens Take Over Europe, the assembly was based on a participative way of making politics that seeks to involve citizens’ horizontally, creating platforms based on their direct participation in the elaboration of policy proposals. Even though the communities involved were bound to local realties, they represented groups present in many European societies – namely, afro-descendent, Sinti and Roma, and migrant and refugee communities. Gathering 38 citizens, engaged in different NGOs and representing the diversity of Portuguese society, the assembly elaborated a a number of recommendations on the socio-political and cultural challenges faced by these communities in Portugal. Gathering 38 citizens, engaged in different NGOs and representing the diversity of Portuguese society, the assembly elaborated a a number of recommendations on the socio-political and cultural challenges faced by these communities in Portugal. Through this participation, the assembly brought togheter 20 national NGOs working on the rights the different communities, namely ACMET, ADEIMA, Associação de Estudantes Africanos em Vila Real, Associação para a Integração, Centro Social de Soutelo, CIVITAS Braga, Costume Colossal, Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa – Gondomar/Valongo, DJASS, Fórum Refúgio, KALINA, LAR, Mén-non, Moinho da Juventude, Movimento Mulheres Brasileiras, NEA, Ribalta Ambição, SOS Racismo, TANE-TIMOR e UNA – União Negra das Artes. The assembly thus sought to work on the topics set forth for the CoFoE, namely, “Participative Democracy” and “Values and rights, state of law, security”. One of the main issues raised was the need to improve internal security for discriminated communities and people, and improve social, medical and economic protection for people belonging to these communities. The Citizens’ Assembly aimed at looking at local and national experiences, in order to develop a project that could shape the future of Europe as a society of the future, characterised by diversity, the guarantee of equal rights and access to these rights, paying particular attention to socially discriminated communities and minorities and the inclusion of these communities not only in consultative processes but also in decision-making processes. The Citizens’ Assembly aimed at looking at local and national experiences, in order to develop a project that could shape the future of Europe as a society of the future, characterised by diversity, the guarantee of equal rights and access to these rights, paying particular attention to socially discriminated communities and minorities and the inclusion of these communities not only in consultative processes but also in decision-making processes. Understanding “Europe” as an inclusive and democratic supranational entity, the assembly set up a forum with the objective of…
Workers Without Borders?
The report pays particular attention to the situation of mobile workers from the region in Germany, given its economic size and recent visa liberalisation, but also brings in examples and considerations from throughout the EU.
Workers Without Borders? The Rights of workers from the Balkans in the EU
By Niccolo Milanese Worker mobility is foundational to post-World War Two Europe. The movement of workers from countries without enough adequately paid work to countries without enough workers has transformed many lives and all European societies. My own grandfather was one such worker, taking a crowded boat from post-war Sicily, where he was a shoemaker, to become a coal miner in Wales in the 1950s. Whilst his experience was a positive one for my family in terms of life opportunities, it was certainly not an easy one in terms of the respect of rights at work or family life, and the effects of this emigration for Sicily itself are highly ambiguous. Over the past decade, European Union enlargement to the East, visa liberalization and specific governmental programs have opened up Europe’s largest economies to much greater numbers of workers coming from Southeast Europe. An exodus of workers from the newest, poorest members of the European Union and neighbouring Western Balkans accession countries from former Yugoslavia is exacerbating some of the most dramatic demographic declines in the world. In researching a new report ‘Workers without Borders?’, European Alternatives spoke with 10s of workers who moved from these countries to understand the lived experience of worker mobility. We spoke with a wide variety of workers, but focused on young workers, female workers in the care economy, agency workers and ‘digital nomads’. Often regardless of whether they had EU citizenship or not, almost all of these workers had similar problems, including inadequate protection of rights at work, worse pay than other workers, poor accommodation, difficulty of getting qualifications recognized, dependency on their employer for their residence status, difficulty of getting social security contributions recognised and specific vulnerabilities in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The overall picture is one of a self-reinforcing system: people move relatively easily from poorer countries, not always in a regular way, to gain what is often poor-quality but better paid employment in richer European countries. The countries people leave lose out in terms of workforce and reduced tax and social security contributions, thereby reinforcing some of the reasons that lead people to leave. Poorer South East European countries at the periphery are effectively subsidizing the richer core European economies by educating and training a workforce which then leaves. Poorer South East European countries at the periphery are effectively subsidizing the richer core European economies by educating and training a workforce which then leaves. Germany, as the largest European economy, has a particular responsibility in this context, particularly following the introduction of the ‘Western Balkan Regulation’ in 2015, which has removed all qualification restrictions for workers coming from the Western Balkans to Germany. The new German government is committed to make the regulation permanent. For the report we spoke with trade unionists in Germany about some of the difficulties this regulation is creating by not sufficiently ensuring non-discrimination and equal rights and pay at work, and the central importance of workers themselves having adequate information about their rights and how to access them. We also heard about best practices of transnational worker organization, building solidarity between unions across countries, and ensuring workers can organize themselves. The Workers Without Borders? report makes wide ranging and profound recommendations to governments, the European Union, the newly formed European Labour Authority and to trade unions. These recommendations encompass new norms for job contracts, better rights for job-seekers, new EU-wide regulation on Agency work and decent accommodation, joint workplace inspections between EU and non-EU countries, specific measures for the care industry and better social-security coordination. Ultimately, the report argues that the structural problems of uneven and unfair economic development between the core EU economies and their South East European periphery will only be addressed by a paradigm shift in cooperation. Worker organization and empowerment will be an essential component of bringing about this shift.
Room to Bloom in the Warszawa Biennale: Imagining New Fictions
Room to Bloom artists arrive to the new edition of the Warszawa Biennale! Check out the full programme of the Biennale on their new website. Artists Talks I, Hybrid Event with Ana Maria Millan & Sonya Dyer The artists’ talk will offer the exploration of new ways of visualising the future, that take AI as allies, while being developed in full knowledge of their limitations. Ana Maria work RolePlay is an interesting association between physical engagement of participants in the long run and digital reality creation within video-games that allow for new forms of visualisation of the future. Ana Maria Millan has worked in several contexts with Rolplay, a very strong method at the basis of the collaborative elaboration of video Games (including with the feminists involved in the peace process in Colombia). Sonya’s work reimagines where the centre is located in fictional narratives of the future. She combines revisits Ancient myths with speculative world building through the lens of science fiction. Hailing Frequencies Open (HFO), her current body of work, combines social justice with speculation, fantasy with the political. The artist talk shall address issues such as speculative fictions, mythologies, world building, Black female subjectivities as well as the actual liberatory potential of tech and its limitation and biases. Artists Talks II, Hybrid Event with Niki Analyti (Future Proofing), Elly Cho, Nadja Verena Marcin (SophyGray): Room to Bloom artists have been selected to participate in the new edition of the Warszawa Biennale. The Biennial reflects and builds on the possibilities and risks associated with the development of the virtual world. Discover three artists from New York/Berlin, Greece and South Korea who explore notions of future, memory and patriarchalism and develop new narratives. The feminist audio bot #SOPHYGRAY (2021-2023) was created in response to compliant digital service assistants like Alexa and Siri with ground-breaking excerpts from bell hooks, Donna Haraway, Silvia Federici, Audre Lorde, and Anna Lowenhaupt-Tsing (+) that amusingly refute gendered expectations. As ways of working are currently re-evaluated around the world, this work critically and humorously examines the ideological implications of female voices in VA technology. Symbolically, “Sophy” asks, “What would it look like to rewire the modus operandi of service apps?” Elly Cho will introduce the Mimesis Rapture: fake machine is an online interactive art exhibition, which depicts the extinction crisis caused by climate change. Reflecting on the risks associated with the development of the virtual world, as a practical experimentation & gesture. The project is an attempt to use human agents as a tool to engage the public using fake facial recognition systems. In a practical experimentation & gesture, RoomToBloom invites the audience of Biennale Warszawa to engage in a hybrid onsite + virtual exercise. Three of the artists of the RoomtoBloom Network will present their work. The audience will be onsite and online. Participants will be invited to interact with transfeminist virtual cyborg #SophyGray via a downloadable app. Writing an Anti-manual for Feminist and Decolonial Art & Cultural Management A 2 hours workshop, in which we invite selected artists and art practitioners to exchange on feminist art management practices and co-write non-guidelines on feminist and art. As part of Room to Bloom a process is ongoing, that builds on the Code of Practice for Feminist Art Institutions created by Tranzit.cz to elaborate a Manifesto + Non-Guide for Decolonial Feminist Art & Cultural Management. RTB can bring in this process to Warsaw to include within the reflection and writing process Warsaw Based participants, i.e. effectively opening up the Room to Bloom network to Warsaw based people. The results of this workshop will be fully integrated into a year long process leading to the publication of the Manifesto + non-guide. Workshop led by Ségolène Pruvot and Lena Chen.
Call for applications – Room to Bloom Festival
Check out the conditions to participate and apply before 31 August.
Assemblies of Solidarity for Climate Action Now! (2022)
Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator
The Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator is part of European Alternatives’ School of Transnational Organizing and offers European youth and community leaders a space to organise and develop actions to advance struggles for solidarity, democracy and climate justice.
Call for Nominations open for the Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator *Deadline extended*
Do you know anyone that you would like to see take a larger role in society? Nominate your candidates by 18th September!
Opportunity to work with European Alternatives as Communications officer
This is an exciting opportunity to shape the future of an award-winning organisation on the frontline of European democracy, art and culture.
Trust Without Borders arrive to Rome: How to Organise Trust & Solidarity in Activist Struggles Without Borders
On the occasion of Short Theatre 2022, our project “Trust Without Borders” arrives in Rome in collaboration with ESC Atelier Autogestito, curating the workshop How to Organise Trust & Solidarity in Activist Struggles Without Borders.
Movement Learning Catalyst
A training and action learning programme strengthening the ecology of social movements and enhancing capacity for transversal and transnational organising
Call for applications – Room to Bloom Mentorship programme
With the new mentorship programme, developed in a pilot phase, Room to Bloom aims to provide a boost to emerging feminist artists international visibility and careers and an opportunity for them to work out in a growing network in Palermo and in Europe.
Room to Bloom Artist Talk with Lena Chen + Evoking Realities
ARTIST TALK + PERFORMANCE Palazzo Butera Lena Chen (@elleperil) is a Chinese-American writer and artist. Her research focuses on issues of feminism and pays particular attention to the issue of gender-based violence. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies at the University of California and is a Resident of Studio Rizoma. In this Talk, the artist will introduce her work in Palermo. Evoking Realities is a performance conceived by Matteo Binci (@matteobinci), winner of Italian Council 10. Can magic redefine bodies and re-enchant the world, affirming new processes of subjectification and sustaining an ethics of otherness?
Workshop with Lena Chen: Writing an Anti-Manual for Feminist and Decolonial Art
FREE WORKSHOP WITH THE ARTIST LENA CHEN ARCI PORCO ROSSO, PALERMO To participate write to: s.pruvot@euroalter.com – Release, envision, and manifest: join us for a collective ritual imagining an art world free of patriarchy and colonialism. Through embodied practices and facilitated storytelling, we invite you to share your personal experiences and struggles as artists and cultural producers. We will then use guided visualization, free writing, and collective drawing to imagine and manifest a feminist art world. These conversations will contribute toward the creation of a manifesto that offers guidelines for feminist and decolonial arts management practices. Lena Chen is a Chinese American writer and artist creating performances and socially engaged art. A recipient of Mozilla Foundation’s 2022 Creative Media Award and “Best Emerging Talent” at the 2019 B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, her work has appeared at Transmediale, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Färgfabriken, Baltimore Museum of Art, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Sheffield DocFest, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, among others. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Sundance Institute, Millay Colony for the Arts, Burning Man Global Arts Fund, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Pittsburgh Foundation, and Arthur Boskamp Foundation. She has spoken at Oxford, Yale, Stanford, and SXSW. She is founder of Heal Her, an expressive arts initiative that supports survivors of gender-based violence. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, she earned a B.A. in sociology from Harvard University and a M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. Lena Chen is a member of the Room to Bloom community and resident with Studio Rizoma. www.lenachen.com Founder, Heal Her
Resistance and reinvention: What’s next after the Italian elections
An authentic response would be to advance European democracy starting with transparency and democratic participation of citizens.
We are looking for an intern to be part of our Room to Bloom project
European Alternatives is seeking a intern for our Room to Bloom project. The position can be part time or full time, start as soon as possible, ideally from mid/end October 2022. Place of Work: Paris 17.
Time for progressive forces to search for a new identity
In the last weeks, analysts have been producing dozens of assessments and forecasts on the evolution of the political preferences in Italy, but ideas about what to do for defending a progressive offer in the Italian political market are confused, as it can only be after such a a rightward turn of the electorate.
FiERCE
FiERCE is a research project providing knowledge and tools for revitalizing alliances between feminist movements, civil society and political decision makers.
There is now a way for the UK to rebuild its bridges with the EU – Labour should take the lead
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is no Mussolini – but she may be a Trump
Room to Bloom Festival
Celebrating Postcolonial and Ecofeminist Art Room to Bloom Festival will take place next 1-4 November 2022 in Malmö, Sweden on the theme: Celebrating Postcolonial and Ecofeminist Art & Activism. Following the artists gatherings organised by Room to Bloom programme in Athens, Palermo, Kyiv and online, we are now launching an open invitation to participate in the Room to Bloom Festival that will take place at STPLN in Malmö, Sweden on 1 – 4 November. We aspire to have a collective moment for artists and cultural professionals to network, exchange and showcase their work in Sweden’s diversity capital, Malmö. Why ecofeminism and postcolonial feminism? Taking place in one of the most dynamic centers of our rapidly changing world, the ecofeminism workshop taking place online and in Athens invites participants to collaborate in defining and enacting a new role of art. The participants will have a chance to learn from and create together with experts on activist, transindigenous, ecofeminist, revolutionary, and therapeutic practices. Together, we will work on a sustainable communal art world based on an experience of harmonious coexistence with the environment and the role of the feminine in the cycle of life. What can we learn about our future from communities which still, or again, live in an unmediated relation to their, now drastically changing, living conditions? Objectives of the Festival empowering emerging artists by opening a circle of strong practitioners who shape contemporary art today for active participation in the process of transformation of the art world and our society in general. knowledge sharing. presenting artworks and performances. creating an epistemology beyond differentiation between theoretical knowledge and physical experience through participatory artworks and practices. REGISTER HERE
International Workshop in Paris | Odyssey in Utero
How is our relationship with our bodies affected by digital transformation? This question will be at the core of the participative workshop Odyssey in Utero by T.I.E (visual and performance artist), Allie Rozetta (visual artist), and Djimadjim (sound and kinesthetic artist). This function of the uterus as a place of transformation will be the central axis in this workshop that aims to interrogate women’s link to the uterus, natural forces, and bodies in a world that is more and more virtually connected. In an immersive device, in a closed space, the artists and participants will explore the link to the real by translating the reality of body sensations, emotions, and feelings through digital tools. Based on the practice of the circle of women, this workshop has been conceived as a performative ritual. It invites the participants to intentionally invest in the gesture and questions their presence in the world, in connection with their environments. It calls on the necessity to let vital flows circulate between the visible and the invisible and brings us back to the strength of the incarnation, using the body as a vehicle of the intangible. Register to participate You can sign up until noon on October 24 at the following link: https://forms.gle/juJXbcFVYNgMAuxQ6
Syndicat! – Transnational Workers’ Organizing Summit
Workers are rising across the planet, as for us the climate crisis is a transnational class struggle which is hitting working people first and foremost. As a matter of survival migrant, climate, racial and workers’ justice groups are organizing themselves everyday to pool their capacities and resources to change the course of history and resist the inhumane conditions we live in. They build organizations, movements and campaigns capable of fighting for transnational climate justice, decent green jobs, ecological housing, decolonial education systems, universal healthcare … Because if it’s not workers organizing the social, ecological and political transformation we need, the current economic system will literally destroy the ecological systems upon which our lives depend – as it already does for many of us. It’s not as it is often claimed that working-class people do not care. They care very much. What they lack are the democratic rights and powers to care as they would like to. How can we build a powerful transnational ecology of movements based on the local struggles and issues we face? And how can we ecologize our struggles in order to build the power which allows us to have control over our lives, workplaces, and futures, and to care for ourselves, our communities, and the planet as we would like to? MIGRANT WORKERS AND ORGANIZERS CONSPIRING WITH TRAINERS, ACTIVISTS, STUDENTS, ARTISTS, AND THEORISTS During the Transnational Workers’ Organizing Summit under the title »Syndicat!«, taking place in Bremen, as part of the »Between Land and Sea« Festival, as a community of 50 migrant workers, climate justice organizers, and anti-racist activists as well as trainers, artists, and theorists from across Europe we will meet in Bremen for four days of non-public discussions, training sessions, and a public transnational assembly of workers’ solidarity, as well as an inspiring programme of theater and dance performances, exhibitions, and films, to build new transnational bridges between workers’, migrant, and climate justice struggles. In addition to the non-public sessions, there will also be a public “Transnational Assembly of Workers’ Solidarity: Towards Ecological Syndicalism!” to which everyone is warmly invited.
Transnational Assembly of Workers’ Solidarity – Towards Ecological Syndicalism!
Imagine that in the near future an ecological event would occur that we find imaginable, but just not yet realistic. Consider one of the many climate catastrophes that have been warned about for years and have now begun to unfold, the Corona pandemic, or something like Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, which only a short time before even few considered possible. The public Transnational Assembly of Workers’ Solidarity as part of the Syndicat! Summit unfolding within the Between Land and Sea Festival confronts migrant workers, climate justice activists, and anti-racist organizers from across Europe – and all of us who assemble in Bremen – with the joint mission to imaginatively, discursively, and strategically pre-enact a not improbable future scenario, and to shift the supposedly inevitable course of history into eco-fascism, which grants the right to life to only a few. Towards an ecological syndicalism that fights for the right of the many – workers, migrants, and especially poor and indigenous communities in the Global South – to care for ourselves, our communities, and the planet as we would like to. The Assembly will be held in English language.
Syndicat! – Transnational Workers’ Organizing Summit
Workers are rising across the planet, as for us the climate crisis is a transnational class struggle which is hitting working people first and foremost. As a matter of survival migrant, climate, racial and workers’ justice groups are organizing themselves everyday to pool their capacities and resources to change the course of history and resist the inhumane conditions we live in. They build organizations, movements and campaigns capable of fighting for transnational climate justice, decent green jobs, ecological housing, decolonial education systems, universal healthcare … Because if it’s not workers organizing the social, ecological and political transformation we need, the current economic system will literally destroy the ecological systems upon which our lives depend – as it already does for many of us. It’s not as it is often claimed that working-class people do not care. They care very much. What they lack are the democratic rights and powers to care as they would like to. How can we build a powerful transnational ecology of movements based on the local struggles and issues we face? And how can we ecologize our struggles in order to build the power which allows us to have control over our lives, workplaces, and futures, and to care for ourselves, our communities, and the planet as we would like to? During the Transnational Workers’ Organizing Summit under the title »Syndicat!«, taking place in Bremen, as part of the »Between Land and Sea« Festival, as a community of 50 migrant workers, climate justice organizers, and anti-racist activists as well as trainers, artists, and theorists from across Europe we will meet in Bremen for four days of non-public discussions, training sessions, and a public transnational assembly of workers’ solidarity, as well as an inspiring programme of theater and dance performances, exhibitions, and films, to build new transnational bridges between workers’, migrant, and climate justice struggles. In addition to the non-public sessions, there will also be a public “Transnational Assembly of Workers’ Solidarity: Towards Ecological Syndicalism!” to which everyone is warmly invited. ABOUT THE SYNDICAT! SUMMIT AT BETWEEN LAND AND SEA FESTIVAL A coastline, a border between land and sea, can either frame a piece of land or a sea, depending on the direction of view. Accordingly, it connects Palermo rather with Bremen or with Tunis. Depending on the perspective, port cities are either gateways to the world or bottlenecks. Migration and commodity flows are shaped or disrupted by border regimes, sanctions, pandemics, blocked ports, transverse cargo ships or striking workers. Between Land and Sea Festival is a cultural and political program in and focused on Bremen, Palermo and Tunis. A look along coastlines and global migration routes and supply chains. Following events in Palermo (2021) and Tunis (2022), Theater Bremen will present performances, dance, an exhibition, videos, documentaries and feature films, as well as workshops and debates in cooperation with local partners from November 14 to 20, 2022. The festival gathers international artists, academics and activists and asks how the struggles for a fair economy, migration and climate justice can be connected. The non-public Syndicat! summit, inviting migrant and refugee workers, climate justice activists, community organizers and trade unionists from across Europe, provides a space for cross-border exchange, sharing best practice skills and strategizing for transnational alliances. How can the struggles for decent work, the right to asylum and climate justice be connected? Learn more about the festival programme: https://theaterbremen.de/de_DE/between-land-and-sea
Open call for videographers: Video production needed for a workshop in Paris
(FRENCH VERSION BELOW) Context and rationale As part of European Alternatives’ Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator project, a two-day workshop will take place on December 10 & 11, 2022 in Paris. We would like to use this opportunity to produce videos that will allow us to communicate about the project over the next few years. We are looking for a videographer to make a video/sound recording of (1) interviews with participants and the project team (2) background visuals/sounds (ideally during the workshops and some shots of the social event on 10/12 evening). The expected deliverables for this assignment are as follows: Two videos of about 2-3 minutes each, presenting interviews (in English, French and German) of YMCA participants Specifications The first video will address democratic participation on a European scale. 6-7 interviews are scheduled. The second video will address transnational cooperation with focus on Franco-German cooperation AE will prepare the questions for the interviews (5-6 questions, answers max. 1mn). The rushes will have to be delivered at the end of the mission. Optional Tasks Animate the YMCA logo (e.g. successive arrival of color bands) Format Ideas Presentation – Assemblies of Solidarity Presentation of the Y-FED European Youth program Composition of your application Kindly include the following elements in your response: CV of the filmmaker List of the members of the film crew (if any) List of equipment Link to a demo reel Work plan including a list of steps for the preparation of the video, the expected duration of each step and the type of support expected from EA Financial offer Contact Please send us your application by Tuesday, November 22 at the latest at info@euroalter.com with the reference “YMCA FILMING” in the subject of your message. Contexte Dans le cadre du projet Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator (YMCA) d’Alternatives Européennes, un atelier de deux jours aura lieu le 10 & 11 décembre 2022 à Paris. Nous souhaitons utiliser cette occasion pour produire des vidéos nous permettant de communiquer sur le projet au cours des prochaines années. Nous cherchons un.e réalisateur.trice pour faire une captation son/vidéo (1) des entretiens avec les participant.e.s et l’équipe projet (2) de visuels/sons d’arrière-plan (idéalement pendant les ateliers et quelques plans de l’événement social du 10/12 au soir). Les livrables attendus pour cette mission sont les suivants: Deux vidéos d’environ 2-3 minutes chacune, présentant des entretiens (en anglais, français et allemand) de participant.e.s au programme YMCA Spécifications La première vidéo portera sur la participation démocratique à l’échelle européenne. 6-7 entretiens sont envisagés. La seconde vidéo portera sur la coopération transnationale avec un focus sur la coopération franco-allemande. 3-4 entretiens sont envisagés. Alternatives Européennes préparera les questions pour les entretiens (5-6 questions, réponses d’1mn max). Les rushs devront être livrés en fin de mission. Tâches optionnelles Animer le logo YMCA (arrivée successive des bandes de couleurs, par exemple) Idées de format Présentation des assemblées de la solidarité Présentation du programme Y-FED des Jeunes européens Composition du dossier de candidature Dans votre réponse, nous vous prions bien vouloir joindre les éléments suivants : CV du réalisateur Liste des membres de l’équipe de tournage (le cas échéant) Liste du matériel à disposition Lien vers une demo reel Méthodologie de travail pour la préparation de la vidéo, la durée prévue pour chaque étape et le type d’appui attendu de la part d’AE Offre financière Contact Nous vous prions de bien vouloir nous faire parvenir au plus tard au mardi 22 novembre 2022 votre dossier de candidature en un seul fichier à l’adresse suivante : info@euroalter.com. Merci d’utiliser la référence “TOURNAGE YMCA” dans l’objet de votre message.
Rethinking Alter-Globalisation: The Advent of Planetary Politics?
A special meeting of the EUI-STG Democracy Forum, the EUI “TD21” Interdisciplinary Research Cluster and Citizens Take Over Europe in collaboration with the European Civic Forum. Twenty years ago, in November 2002, tens of thousands of activists, trade unionists, NGOs and civil society campaigners gathered in Florence as part of the first European Social Forum to call for an alternative model of globalisation capable of delivering global justice. On the anniversary of the 2002 Florence event, as diverse groups of social actors gather in the city once again, the EUI-STG forum will host a special meeting to assess what is needed in order to deliver on the promise of alter-globalisation in the era of planetary politics. Among other things we will be asking: What are the ideas and frames we need to uphold from the alter-globalisation agenda? While western countries continue to turn a blind eye to their colonial past and present, people of the global majority – those on the frontline of many global emergencies – are denied real agency in designing solutions. Fair distribution of pain and gain across the world, global historical and redistributive justice, the import of colonial legacies, are all frames we have inherited from this prior era. How are they still relevant and how should they be transformed? More specifically, to what extent can or should the ‘social forum model’ be revitalised? Please register here: https://www.eui.eu/events?id=554691
Launching the Movement Learning Catalyst: A Year+ Programme
With the Movement Learning Catalyst programme, we aim to nurture the interconnected movements and the needed strategies to challenge the systems of oppression we face today.
Transnational Citizens’ Assembly on End-of-Life Decisions
TRANSNATIONAL CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY ON END-OF-LIFE DECISIONS Tuesday, 6th of December – 3.00 PM to 5.30 PM CET ℅ European Economic and Social Committee – Rue Belliard – Bruxelles REGISTER HERE TO BE AMONG THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE ASSEMBLY* No matter who you are, what your job is, if you are an expert or if you are a person who likes to articulate arguments and engage in a meaningful exchange with other people: the Transnational European Assembly is an experiment you want to be a part of. Organized by a group of pan-European civil society organizations* the Transnational European Assembly will take place on the 6th of December from 2.30 PM to 5.30 PM in Brussels. The assembly aims to bring together people that wish to change the current policy and regulations in place regarding end-of-life decisions, and want to discuss how EU-rules should look like to ensure the right to self-determination and that decision-making on individual bodies is treated as a fundamental right in all European Union Member States, starting from the recommendations set by the citizens’ panels of the Conference on the Future of Europe (source): “We recommend the EU should support palliative care and assisted death [euthanasia] following a concrete set of rules and regulations. We recommend this because it would reduce the pain of the patients and families and it would ensure a decent end of life” [recommendation 24 from the citizens’ panels of the Conference on the Future of Europe] In particular, the Assembly will aim to gain consensus on a declaration to cover three main areas, which will be discussed in smaller groups: Decisions on refusals of treatments and access to palliative care Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: legislations on voluntary death with medical support Living Will and End of Life Decisions within and among different EU Member States Does it seem like a daunting task? No worries – the session will be facilitated by subject matter experts and a professional facilitator. This Assembly is designed to ensure the maximum level of participation from all groups of people living in Brussels. And no specific knowledge of the current regulations is needed to partake in the assembly. Together, we will work on the proposals conceived during the Transnational European Assembly. They will be transformed into recommendations to be used to influence the European election manifestos of political parties, and for organisations and grassroots movements to more strongly advocate for what will be deliberated. Some of the participants in the Transnational European Assembly will, later on, join in the TRANSEUROPA Festival organized in November 2023 in Cluj, Romania, which aims at bringing culture and politics closer together. The scientific and legal content of the Assembly will be curated in collaboration with the legal team of Associazione Luca Coscioni per la libertà di Ricerca Scientifica APS (ALC). Lawyers and ALC board memebrs Dr. Francesca Re and Alessia Cicatelli will be present as well as Lawyer Claudia Pisi, Eumans Board Member and curator of the project for the European Living Will. – Before and after the Transeuropa Assembly the coalition Citizens Take Over Europe will present and collect feedback on its “European Citizens Assembly Blueprint”, a crowd-sourcing-based process aiming at influence the decisions of the EU institutions on how to further involve citizens in sortition-based citizens panels on the basis of the experience of the Conference on the Future of Europe. APPLICATION PROCESS To ensure the best experience for all the participants in the Assembly there is a maximum of 70 participants allowed. Criteria of selection will be applied to ensure diversity in the background and profiles of the participants. In order to be a part of the Transeuropa Citizens Assembly on the 6th of December, fill this form . You will receive a confirmation of the application after your submission and we will confirm to all of you the logistical information in a few days. THE ORGANISERS The Transnational Citizens Assembly on End of Life Decisions is organised by EUMANS – paneuropean movement of popular initiative for democracy, freedom and sustainability. The project is co-funded by the European Union. Partners in the project are: European Alternatives (organisers of the project “Assemblies of Solidarity” in 2021/2022, holding 21 citizens assemblies across the Eu), the coalition Citizens Take Over Europe (which acted as a watch-dog for the Conference on the Future of Europe and is leading a process to design the Blueprint for a European Citizens Assembly), the coalition Politici Per Caso, who is active in Italy for the institutionalisation of citizens assemblies, Science for Democracy and Associazione Luca Coscioni, which are among the European leading expert on the application of the right to science as a fundamental right. The Assembly is a module of the full day event “(Digital) Democracy is a human right. Design it, Implement it, Experience it.”)
Twenty years after Florence’s European Social Forum
Article by Gianluca Solera, writer, journalist and member of the EA advisory board One month ago, representatives of European social organisations and movements gathered in Florence on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the first European Social Forum, which gathered in Tuscany thousands of people of the anti-, alter-globalisation movement from across the continent. It was the time of the mobilisation against neoliberal policies, and against the war in Iraq. Many of those who were there proudly remember the one-million European march against the war held on November 9, 2002. Twenty years later, according to the organisers of the gathering, the registered entities are around 150, and delegates about 700. Nevertheless, the social and political climate is not any longer the same. Many participants have grey hairs, and right-wing parties are running the hosting country. Keywords used at the conference are more about the issues at stake than about solutions : wars, climatic crisis, inequalities. The meeting room at Palaffari has 475 seats, and the closing day, a Sunday morning, almost half of the chairs were already empty. The atmosphere is that of a family reunion after so many years, and national and local media are barely paying attention to the happening. The atmosphere is that of a family reunion after so many years, and national and local media are barely paying attention to the happening. Organisers managed to do however something which was difficult to assemble : they successfully invited different entities to converge to Florence and run their own events around the Social Forum. Thus, the two days of the Forum became four, including the single activities of the European civic forum, Florence’s academic institutions, or local and European NGOs. Funds were limited, but the organisers decided to rely upon civil society’s funds and remain autonomous rather than asking local governments for financial support. Many were the strong and powerful contributions that were made at the speakers’ table. I can mention Marta Lempart (on the struggle of Polish women for sexual and democratic rights), Souad Wheidi (on the conditions of migrants in Lybian concentration camps), Vittorio Agnoletto (on the profits of Big Pharma during the pandemic), Gonzalo Berrón (on the growing role of private companies in global governance), or Dario Salvetti, representing Florence’s GKN factory collective who have been mobilising against layoffs and relocations. Several participants pointed out however at the lack of debate in the plenaries, the so-called « Convergence assemblies ». They lamented the fact that there was no debate at all ; pre-planned interventions were following one another without any single possibility to ask something. It was a kind of experience of « democratic centralism », which reminded me a lot of traditional Leftism. You had to wait for the lunch break to ask questions to speakers, if they had time for it… I guess that organisers wanted to offer as much time as possible for different interventions, but the outcome was rather annoying. What I liked at least was the way how the topics of the Convergence assemblies were formulated, general and open, such as : « Being right is not enough: how to be effective in the time of emptied democracy? », or « From resentment and loneliness to collective hope: how to beat the consensus of right-wing forces within society? ». The lack of debate however clashed with the intention formulated in those titles, because each speaker was addressing his own thing, and there was no coherent exchange following a consequential path. When speaking with some of the participants, like my friend Roberto Spini, who was among the members of the local organising committee, and others, I could pick up the main concerns and open questions that were floating in the room. The first one was that it is really not possible nor relevant any more to declare that the alternative, antisystemic movement is right, and the others are wrong. That stand was still a powerful weapon twenty years ago because the mobilisation was very strong and had an effective influence on decision-makers and institutions. This is not the case any longer. A participant coming from Brasil was for example publicly pleading for establishing unity among diverse citizens’ platforms and currents to beat resurgent fascist ideologies, meaning that divisions in society based on the assumption that someone is more right than others, or that he is more progressive than others, would be paving the way for authoritarian narratives. Unfortunately, many in the audience did not seem having catched the point. The second point that was bouncing back in the room as a thorn in the flesh was that the trade chain with political parties and politicians in Europe is definitely broken. Generally speaking, nowadays, the alter-globalisation movement does not have clear political party references in European representative democracies, and it is more isolated than ever. I did not hear much analyses on the issue, but that coupure was obvious to everybody. To be honest, there was a recorded contribution by a member of the European parliament from the Spanish Podemos party, but is was read out, unspontaneous and rather ideological! You could feel that participants were looking for a common thread, were calling for reanimating the transnational networks, and reconnecting with the local contexts and communities located in between, but the lack of a political project is rather limiting the available options. On Sunday afternoon, before the event closure, a working group proposed as an attempt at a solution to launch a new mobilisation. « A common path begins after too many years of thematic and geographic fragmentation that has weakened anyone fighting for social and environmental justice, in any country and at any latitude », say the organisers. They have in mind the creation of a coordinating table between all the organisations and movements, with regular meetings and two objectives: including in the coming months all the actors, small and large, who are willing to unite and coordinate to tackle together the major problems of our time ; and working to build global civil society mobilisations, starting with an AlterCop at the next UN…
It’s the End of the Year!
Let’s be honest: Many of us would not have imagined at the end of 2021 that things would get even harder and scarier in 2022. In Europe there is war again, which not only means tremendous suffering for the Ukrainian people and dissidents in Russia and in exile, but also shows once again that we are indivisibly connected across the entire planet in securing peace, in fighting injustice, in protecting the very foundations of our lives and in ensuring that our basic needs are met. While this has brought war back onto our frontpages, we should not forget the ongoing wars and human rights abuses across the world. Solidarity with protesters in Iran, China, Peru, and beyond and with those most affected by today’s intersecting crises. With the cost of living crisis right at our doorstep, we look towards the moment when one day, finally, the climate crisis is back at the top of the political agenda. Yes, it has been a difficult year for most of us. Time was running and maybe most of us were pushed professionally, politically and personally more by our fears than by our hopes. And so often we experienced how much tougher it would be if it weren’t for the solidarities, mutual aid and support in our families and communities carrying each other through another crisis. And yet, the end of the year and the Christmas season always remind us how much more and better we would like to care for one another… and where and why we fail to do so. Our Team’s Highlights of 2022 And that is probably what has given us at European Alternatives the most hope this year. We celebrated our 15th anniversary and saw, perhaps more than ever, how everywhere in our projects and in the communities we work with, calls for solidarity and a future based on the principles of care are getting louder and louder. For 15 years we have been fighting now for democracy, equality, and culture beyond the nation state. Obviously, some years have been harder than others. 2022, despite its unimagined events, is outweighed by the sense of hope, courage and joy we have witnessed in so many places around Europe from so many literally wonderful people who day after day give proof that there is very much good, beauty, and truth in this world, and without whom our political, educational and artistic work would not be possible. We are indeed proud of our progressive community of transnationalists: activists in grassroots initiatives, academics and theorists from research institutions, political artists and cultural institutions, and the many community organizers, movement educators, advocates, campaigners… and everyday people from around the world who fight for the rights of all of us and fly the flag for climate and social justice as well as safety and dignity for workers, migrants, and refugees. And we are immensely grateful that together we all share a home for those of us who sometimes share this deep sense of political powerlessness and oftentimes feel like we are in political nowhere in these rough times. If you are not already an official part of it, join us now. Our Christmas Wishlist 2022 But we also know that our community needs to get more inclusive, even more diverse, and definitely more powerful. As you know, we try our best to make it possible for as many people as possible to participate in our political, educational, and cultural projects, because a democratic and solidary world is only possible when we are together and with all the people who can’t take anything for granted in life. Unfortunately, however, we do not always succeed in this. Public funders and private foundations often do not support everything that we would like to see, even though many people need to be enabled to participate in political life. This year, we still paid scholarship grants to too few of our participants and were too rarely able to provide childcare, translations, and sign language interpretation. And we know very well that workshops and events are half the fun without food. But to make 2023 even better, we ask you to donate and support European Alternatives! Because only together can we as a community and network of European Alternatives become more independent, more sustainable, and more powerful – so everyone can be part of our community, attend and enjoy our events and workshops, and imagine, demand, and enact the futures we strive for. Our Christmas wish is therefore for you to use this time to make a one-time donation to European Alternatives or to become a supporting member. Because only together, when people dedicate their hopes, time, and also money, can we make the political miracles happen – those that we wish for more strongly every year. Peace & Solidarity – to you and your loved ones! Support European Alternatives
Sakharov Prize awarded to “the Brave People of Ukraine”
By Martino Bozzi On the 14 of December 2022 European Alternatives was honoured to be attending the Sakharov Prize ceremony in Strasbourg. Here are our impressions of the day and how we hope this will enhance the right to democracy and freedom. The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is the most important award given by the European Union to human rights work. Named after Andrei Sakharov, it pays tribute to a physicist who conceived one of the most destructive weapons in human history; became a dissident, fought against war, for peace and for human rights, founded an association to defend the latter, and despite pressure from the Soviet regime, fought for the freedom of political prisoners and all people who were deprived of fundamental rights. In 2022, the European Union awarded the prize to the ‘Brave People of Ukraine’ represented by their president, elected leaders and civil society. The unprecedented decision to nominate ‘all Ukrainian People’ for an award that until last year had been given exclusively to individuals, groups and organisations is aimed at underlining the Union’s support towards Ukraine and all its population. During the award ceremony, both Roberta Metsola and Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasised their commitment to defending values such as freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. On the one hand, the President of the European Parliament emphasised that the values that the Ukrainian people are fighting for are the same as those that underpin our life in the EU, while the Ukrainian President stressed that, in order to safeguard these values: ‘it is necessary to act now […] to bring to justice to all those who unleashed [the war] and to prevent any repetition of aggression’. The representatives of the Ukrainian people present in Strasbourg were: Oleksandra Matviichuk, human rights lawyer and chair of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) who received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize; Yulia Pajevska, founder of the evacuation medical unit Angels of Taria, which provides medical care and support to civilians since the armed conflict in Donbas; the elected mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov; Yaroslav Bozhko, representing the Yellow Ribbon Civil Resistance Movement, which plays an important role in defending the freedom of speech and resistance against Russian; and Olekssandr Chekryhin and Stanislav Kulykivskyi, representing the State Emergency Services (SES). Together with other CSOs, European Alternatives had the opportunity to participate in a discussion with these representatives. Dealing with the topic of ‘what can we do?’ to help Ukraine, two key themes emerged. Firstly, O. Matviichuk emphasised that political decisions are not enough to help Ukraine as the priority is to defend its territories. To do this, Ukraine needs weapons and countries that can supply them. Secondly, all the representatives stressed the importance of the concept of truth. Truth as a tool to fight propaganda not only within Russia, but also externally, since citizens of the various countries, in and outside Europe, must know about the events and war crimes taking place in Ukraine. As O. Matviichuk stated in the ‘No to War in Europe’ campaign: ‘History taught us that wars begin with propaganda, provocations and hybrid methods. We also know how they end. Either with the defeat of one of the parties and enormous human casualties. Or with a powerful anti-war movement within the aggressor-state […]. We currently lack the international solidarity movement that can find support, with anti-war appeals, inside authoritarian Russia itself. But must endeavour to build it’. Reflecting on these words written before the start of the war in Ukraine and those spoken by the representatives during the Sakharov Prize ceremony, what Ukrainians state we can do to support and help them in this conflict between authoritarianism and democracy is to inform ourselves and help inform others to act and help others to act. The situation in Ukraine and of the Ukrainian people themselves through their representatives present in Strasbourg also underlined the urgent need for solidarity. Solidarity for the people who have remained in Ukraine, for those who have fled, for Ukraine and the surrounding countries that need the infrastructures to accommodate these people, but also solidarity for the people who oppose the war and propaganda in Russia. In conclusion, this year’s Sakharov Prize is full of significance, expectations and hopes. “The Brave People of Ukraine” as recipients of this award allow us to understand how it is the people themselves who are the bearers of those fundamental values that we want to be safeguarded. This prize not only represents the European Union’s support for Ukraine but hopefully, will also be a way for the Ukrainian people to make their voices and demands heard and for these to be embraced in order to promote, through transnational cooperation, action and solidarity, the victory of fundamental rights and thus Ukrainian people, that the Sakharov Prize aims to represent. Image: First Vice-President Othmar Karas meets with the Laureates of the Sakharov Prize 2022. © European Union 2022/ Fred Marvaux
Democracy, Ecology and Freedom in Europe
Democracy, Ecology and Freedom in Europe – A Paneuropean Government Program proposed to the EU through European Citizens Initiatives In just over one year the European Elections are coming, and immediately after that the new European Commission will be nominated. What can we do to push for the resolution of the urgent matters that otherwise risk to be left untackled: the climate emergency, social and fundamental rights and a sustainable peace? And how can we ensure that these issues are tackled through a profound democratic and federalist reform of Europe? We will talk about it in Bologna Saturday 4th of February. As EUMANS and European Alternatives – two civil society organisations that share a similar vision for Europe – we invite organisations and individual citizens to work together on two levels: 1) Mobilizing citizens, promoting a people-led paneuropean program deeply rooted in democracy, ecology, freedom, equality and federalism, through the activation of instruments of popular initiative, both at the european (i.e. European Citizens Initiatives) and national scales, and leveraging as much as possible sortition-based citizens assemblies. After a first discussion in Bologna, the full program will be defined in Gdansk, Poland from the 17th and the 19th of March. 2) Mobilizing politics, ensuring an adequate presence for this people-led program during the elections, presenting a transnational list at the European Elections in 2024 with the priority of enforcing these political proposals. Alternatively, we will evaluate the possibility to take part in the elections through coalitions and different electoral initiatives in the different Member States, on the basis of the support to the full program. A more detailed presentation of this project is available HERE.
We, the Non-Europeans
Drawing from Derrida’s question on ‘what is called Europe?’ and Said’s work on the non-European, this lecture will look at how the two authors converged on the fundamental inability of Europe to approach the non-European with the openness that it required. The discussion will instead focus on ‘what is called the non-European’ and confront the audience to how Europeans and non-Europeans place themselves within world history, how this should prompt us to re-evaluate central concepts where we perform being Europeans and non-Europeans such as democracy, rights, citizenship, law, territory and state. This lecture is delivered by Engin Isin, Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary University of London and European Alternative’s advisory board member, and will be discussed by Joanne Brueton, Lecturer in French studies, University of London Institute in Paris and Musab Younis, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London. Chair: Sarah Wolff, Professor, Queen Mary University of London This event is part of the 2022/2023 Seminar Series of the Center for European Research on ‘The idea of Europe: Past, Present and Future’ and is part of the co-Duties project funded by the Norwegian Research Council and is organised in partnership with ULIP. To read more about Prof. Isin work check his website. Reserve your free place here.
Keynote Speech by Daniel Gutierrez – »Voters Without Borders«
Job Opportunity: Assitant.e de recherche
Alternatives Européennes recherche un.e. assistant.e de recherche pour un projet européen de recherche sur les théories féministes et les mouvements anti-genre en France.
Freelance Opportunity: Organisation d’événement Culturel
Pour la mise en place d’un festival de littérature et un colloque universitaire qui se déroulera à Saint-Denis du 28 juin 2023 au 2 juillet 2023, l’association Alternatives Européennes recherche un.e. producteur.rice d’événement freelance de février 2023 à fin juillet 2023.
Europe Calling Webinar with Robert Habeck, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Economy & Climate Protection
Dear friends, The years 2015 to 2022 were the eight hottest on record. We are in the middle of the climate crisis. At the same time, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has caused an energy crisis in Europe; as a result, more lignite-fired piles are running in Germany than planned and LNG liquid gas infrastructure is being built in the EU to replace Russian gas. Is a renaissance of fossil energies looming? How can the world even reach the 1.5°C target of the Paris Climate Agreement? One thing is clear: Germany and the EU are doing more than ever before to protect the climate. But it’s not enough yet – that’s also what the German government’s expert council on climate issues says. Robert Habeck, Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, will take the time to answer your questions on climate policy in the next Europe Calling webinar. Together we want to discuss with Robert Habeck why Germany and Europe are not yet on the 1.5°C path and how he plans to get there – and what you think about it. When? Monday, 23 January 2023, 20:00 – 21:00 hrs CET (Brussels/Berlin) Register right here: Link to register The webinar is simultaneously translated into English. Use this very rare opportunity to talk directly to the Vice-Chancellor and invite others to join you! With European greetings, Maximilian Fries and everyone at Europe Calling e.V.
Biggest webinar in the history of EuropeCalling
Innovative format and potential for evolving democratic public spheres
The Art of Decolonising Digital Resistance
The absence of real dialogue between the arts, communities and the policy making process is detrimental to both the arts, public policy and our society at large. The Art of Decolonising Digital Resistance is a live participatory action, where the audience is anticipated to engage and respond to a series of artist provocations exploring how arts and culture practitioners can become a catalyst for decolonising resistance practices and creating an equitable European digital transformation. At the heart of the discussion is the need to unlock the potential contribution from the arts to policymaking in our digital society. Τhrough this process the aim is to achieve practical reconciliation between artists, policymakers and communities across Europe who have been long excluded from public discourse and decision-making. What are the potentialities unfolded in the relation between artists, communities and policy-makers in our digital society? What are the logics and conditions that govern such relationships? Participants will interact with an Assembly of artists and through hands-on actions will explore the intersection between the arts and public policy in Europe’s digital transformation as well as its various societal impacts. Common to all of these questions is the urgency to foster empathy, mutual understanding and common objectives in a time where the digital transformation permeates all spheres of life. Artistes Provocateurs: Jamie Allen, Marta Espiridião, Vukasin Nedeljkovic, Vijay Patel, Alice Pedroletti, Samar Zughool To attend the event, guests should RSVP by the 31st of January 2023 to latrafoundation@gmail.com. A ticket to attend the event is not required. Date: Friday 3rd of February 2023 Time: 17:00 – 20:00
TRANSEUROPA CITIZEN’S ASSEMBLY REPORT OUT NOW
The report on our Citizen’s Assembly on the ‘imperative of hospitality’, which took place in Valongo last year, is now available. The assembly was held in partnership with Forum Demos. The citizen’s assembly was themed ‘how to guarantee the imperative of hospitality in equality?’ and brought together Afro-descendent, migrant and Roma groups from throughout Portugal. We explored how these groups can be empowered to fully and equally participate and shape the future of society. There were 7 fundamental recommendations: 1. Reform of education: Include racialised people in the construction of educational policies, in design of textbooks and popularise a non-Eurocentric, anti-colonial and anti-racist education in schools 2. Ensure the representativeness of public-decision making bodies through quotas to level out inequalities 3. Generalise the fight against inequality by restructuring census information which often hides structural inequality rather than revealing it at local, national and European levels 4. Reform integration projects by giving autonomy to people from communities through Portuguese language classes and strengthening relations between these communities and instance of power 5. Combat social segregation in Portuguese cities by breaking cycles of poverty and exclusion whilst remaking the urban fabric 6. Openly address police violence against racialised communities 7. De-racialise public health, recognising the position of vulnerability particularly of black and gypsy women Click the link below to read the full report: Report: How to ensure the imperative of hospitality in equality? (Jan 2023)
Transnational Assembly of Workers Solidarity: Towards Ecological Syndicalism
What does it mean to promote and create popular transnational assemblies that pre-enact the future? How can this be a catalyst and an instrument to enable people to organise across a powerful transnational movement ecology to build convergence of labour, climate, migration struggles and eventually ecologise the demands of these struggles for a socio-ecological transformation? The Bremen Transnational Assembly of Worker’s Solidarity organised by European Alternatives was based on these values. The Assembly took place as part of the Between Land and Sea Festival brought together 152 young people from eight European countries and in the spirit of transnationalism also a few community members from non-European backgrounds. Targeted at young citizens with lower levels of education and those unemployed and in precarious work conditions, the assembly was a rewarding occasion of learning and exchange. Hosted in the creativity-fostering premises of Theatre Bremen, the assembly used a future scenario to enable experiential learning and support participants to experience the methodology first hand and in an action oriented context. The fictitious scenario displayed the world in 2023, in which as a consequence of the climate crisis a heat wave struck, causing heightened levels of civil unrest. The assembly presented several societal responses to the crisis and the participants were then asked to join into the storyline and find solutions collectively. The program of the assembly was as follows: Day 1 Training, trust building and information on different ways of influencing politics. Day 2: Assembly Group discussion I Solidarity in Personal Life. Care Needs and the Crisis Break Storytelling Monologue Group Discussion II Power relations and labour struggle Group Discussion III Solidarity Networks & the Future Break Inspirational Speeches & Calls to action Final Speeches The assembly format to “pre-enact a future scenario” was a rewarding methodology with a range of good feedback from the participants and will be employed in the future. The interlinked and deepening ecological and social crises shape the lives of people throughout Europe in different ways, and so the assembly set a frame and methodology in which people can be empowered to address these circumstances and collectively claim new rights on a transnational scale, whilst turning resolutely towards the future. Report on TEA Bremen Event
Job Opportunity: Movement Learning Research Officer
European Alternatives is recruiting a Movement Learning Research Officer to contribute to its educative work to enhance progressive movements to work transnationally and transversally.
Power to the People: how are rising living costs affecting your life?
The EUI-STG Democracy Forum, and partners from across Europe, discuss the ongoing economic pressures in Europe from a bottom-up citizen-centred perspective as part of the ‘Power to the People’ webinar series. How is the cost of living crisis effecting you? What political solutions do you think are missing and needed? With rising living costs now affecting people in all European countries, the EUI-STG Democracy Forum, in collaboration with a network of civil society partners (Europe Calling, Pulse of Europe, Mehr Demokratie, European Alternatives, Citizens Take Over Europe, Another Europe Is Possible), invites you to share your personal experience of the continent-wide economic squeeze. In this special webinar, open to the public, and interpreted in English, German and Italian, we will be exchanging across borders and languages on three highly intimate questions: What does inflation mean for your life? How are you adapting to it? How does it influence your perspective of the future? Given that all of us are affected by political choices at European level, this forum seeks to initiate a broad discussion between a diverse range of citizens and peoples of Europe in a manner that complements other, ongoing, expert discussions. To ensure all voices are heard, we will split-up into small groups to give everyone a trusted space to speak. This event is a chance to express yourself and to listen and learn about different perspectives on shared European problems. Because we strongly believe that reflecting on common fears, hopes and challenges is the first step towards building a European community of citizens that can make its voice heard. Please register here.
CALL FOR PITCHES: European Alternatives Journal
This year, European Alternatives relaunched its journal. We’re revamped it and will be creating an online web version which will feature not just text articles, but podcasts, videos, photography, art and culture too. The journal seeks to further our organisational aim: to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state. We’re here to show that an alternative Europe already exists as something that we, collectively, can imagine, demand and enact. Taking an intersectional approach, we’re looking for topical content – text or visual – that addresses the critical themes that affect us all from a transnational, transversal perspective. We cover a range of issues including climate, democracy, workers’ rights, social and economic policy, antiracism, decolonisation, feminism, Roma rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and more. We hope the journal can be a space to bring together thinkers and actors (and especially people who are both at the same time!) to explore novel ideas and engage in critical reflection on our work and the social movements around us. For an idea of the kinds of things we’ve published before, take a look at our past issues here. If you have an idea for an article, a feature, interview, review or photo essay, please get in touch at editors@euroalter.com. Pitches will be considered on a rolling basis, but we strongly encourage you to submit them by Tuesday 21st February 2023 or earlier to be considered for the first issue. We strongly encourage submissions from people from minoritised and underrepresented backgrounds.
OUT NOW: “Illiberal Democracies” in Europe: An Authoritarian Response to the Crisis of Illiberalism
Edited by Katerina Kolozova and Niccolò Milanese, this newly published book explores the crisis of liberalism and how we develop a response to it. The years since 2014 have shown that, however unpalatable, incoherent, and internally contradictory illiberal democracy may be, it is a political choice that is available at the ballot box in many countries. Critical scholars committed to democracy have an obligation to understand its socio-historical construction, its emotional appeal, and its rhetorical force, to more effectively combat it. Ultimately, this book argues that the difficulty many have had of admitting the political efficacy of illiberal democracy as a term is due to an underlying crisis within liberalism itself: this is the fissured terrain that the phenomenon exploits. Examining illiberalism, liberalism, or democracy as static concepts is just as barren an approach as examining them in one country in isolation from their interactions with others. It is above all to the dynamic, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of liberalism and its alternatives that this collection aims to contribute. Download a PDF version of the book here.
Solidarity with Ukraine: building a new internationalism
On 11 March, The Conflict and Civicness Research Group at LSE is hosting this one-day conference that aims to blur the lines between academic research and activism in solidarity with Ukraine’s resistance to war. European Alternatives is proud to be an organising partner of this event. Register to attend online here. French interpretation will be available online. Click here to register to attend in person. The Russian war against Ukraine marks a major turning point in 21st century history. It concentrates in a single cataclysm some of the most reactionary forces threatening the future survival of the human species: crony capitalism, authoritarianism, extractivism, patriarchy, ethnonationalism, imperialism and the polluting industries destroying planet Earth. Ukraine’s tremendous resistance to the Russian invasion is first and foremost about the protection of the country’s democracy, territorial integrity, political freedom and human rights. But in the context of a ‘century of cascading crises’, it raises issues and challenges that go far beyond Ukraine – indeed, that are truly global. By bringing Ukrainian activists and academics into dialogue with other global civil society movements and creating a space for discussion and action, the Solidarity with Ukraine conferences project seeks to make a small contribution to taking this forward. SPEAKERS INCLUDE Oleksandra Matviychuk (Centre for Civil Liberties, joint winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize) Volodymyr Artiukh (Oxford University) Natalia Lomonosova (CEDOS) Sharon Weill (The American University in Paris) Shukria Rezaei (Afghan human rights activist) Alena Ivanova (Another Europe Is Possible) Mary Kaldor (LSE) Taras Fedirko (Glasgow University) Maliek Banat (LSE Ukraine Society) Mazen Gharibah (LSE) Oksana Potapova (LSE) Nadia Whittome (MP for Nottingham East) Anna Ackermann (Ecodiya) Danylo Nikiforov (LSE Ukraine Society) Anne Le Huérou (Paris Nanterre University) Yulia Yurchenko (Greenwich University) John McDonnell MP (MP for Hayes and Harlington) PRACTICAL INFO Doors for the Solidarity with Ukraine conference open at 10.00 Saturday 11th March for a 10.30 start The full programme will be released shortly FILMS FOR UKRAINE On the evening of the 10th March, our friends and colleagues at the Kings College London – Films For Ukraine project will show the award winning Ukrainian film, Atlantis (2019). Details of how to sign up will be posted here shortly. HYBRID EVENT This is a ‘hybrid event’ meaning that it will take place in-person and online. Registration for the online component will open two weeks prior to the event. You should only register for a ticket on Eventbrite if you intend to attend in person. ABOUT THE ORGANISER Solidarity with Ukraine; Building a New Internationalism has been organised by the Ukraine team of the Conflict and Civicness Research Group (LSE CCRG), a research unit at the LSE exploring the changing nature of war and conflict in the 21st century. The following organisations have partnered with the LSE CCRG on the conference: Another Europe Is Possible (UK) CEDETIM (FR) Centre for Civil Liberties (UA) Commons / Spilne (UA) Democratic Security Institute (Georgia) European Alternatives (FR, IT, DE) European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine Films for Ukraine – Kings College London Global Justice Now (UK) Institute for Policy Studies (US) International Catalan Institute for Peace (ICIP) London Ukrainian Institute LSE Ukraine Society Never Again Association (Poland) The University of New Europe Ukrainian Students Union (UK) Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (UK)
Democracy, Ecology and Liberty beyond borders: a citizens’ summit for a pan-European government plan
In just over one year, the European Elections will be here, and right after that the new European Commission will be nominated. The months ahead will give us a terrific opportunity to put on the EU agenda radical reforms for democracy, sustainability, civil and social rights. To do that a coordinated nonviolent and popular mobilization is necessary. This is why we need to meet in person! “European Alternatives” and “Eumans” are inviting you to Gdansk, Poland, at the European Solidarity Center (pI. Solidarności 1, 80-863) from 17 to 19 March, to “Democracy, Ecology and Liberty beyond borders. A citizens summit for a paneuropean government plan”. The meeting will provide us with an opportunity to decide concrete articulated proposals – starting from the recommendations of the Conference on the Future of Europe – to be pursued through European Citizens Initiatives, popular assemblies and other participatory and institutional ways. Poland is a crucial place in Europe for the challenges it poses to the Rule of Law, a country that despite those violations of rights has a vibrant civil society with scores of proposals to address vital aspects of liberal-democracy and the ascertainment of individual rights. The Polish national elections scheduled for this autumn, Polands’ key role in Europe’s response to the war waged by Russia, and its relationship with Ukraine are only a few additional reasons why we believe Gdansk is the place! Below we are happy to share some of the issues currently being discussed in an open participatory process that started in Bologna, Italy on 4 February and that will be finalised in Gdansk:- A campaign to strengthen European Democracy starting from the follow up to the Conference on the Future of Europe: European Digital identity, a permanent European Citizens Assembly, transnational lists and other forms of transnational civic participation (Draft Text for a European Citizens Initiative); A European fair climate policy to exit fossil fuel by 2035; (Draft Text for a European Citizens Initiative) A human rights centered approach to cannabis legalization; (Draft Tex for a European Citizens Initiative) Include safe abortion in the European Charter of fundamental human rights; (Draft Text for a European Citizens Initiative) Include Voluntary Assisted Dying in the European Charter of fundamental human rights; (Essential Documents: Transeuropa Assembly Declaration + European Living Will Research) Create a humane and effective EU mechanism for asylum seekers and migrants in line with the obligation of international law; Launch a system for universal basic services and income in the EU. Other issues to be furthered developed: science and innovation (genome editing and stem cell research, psychedelics), gender/equality and other proposals coming from the Conference on the future of Europe Anyone, be they individuals or organisations, is invited to to take part in the campaign, or support only some of these initiatives, and eventually use them for campaigning in the next European elections. PLEASE FIND HERE THE LINK WITH THE FIRST DRAFT PROGRAM AND ALL THE LOGISTIC INFORMATION. You can register at this link and donate to support the organisation of the event here. If you are interested in attending the event or part of it and / or to participate in the drafting of the paneuropean government proposals, please email us to info@eumans.eu.
RESISTANCE: Open Call for Artists
Our partner organisation Artsformation invites you to apply to the RESISTANCE Participatory Arts Productions which will take place in Lesvos-Greece between the 11th-21st of April 2023. The deadline to apply is 9 March 2023. Click here for more details and to apply. ARTSFORMATION seeks to provide a dedicated space where artists can create new artworks which generate artistic thinking, processes, and solutions to the societal challenges caused by Europe’s digital transformation. How can different modes of resistance towards digital colonial forces be manifested through artworks? How can artworks serve as equalizers in the societal inequalities caused by the digital transformation? How can artworks help empower the equitable participation of otherwise marginalized communities in Europe’s digital transformation? For this purpose, ARTSFORMATION conducts the present Open Call for Participatory Arts Productions, where 10 artists will be selected to travel to Lesvos between the 11th-21st of April 2023, for the purpose of participating in a programme aimed at spurring the production of individual artworks that respond to the themes set out by ARTSFORMATION, as well as the challenges posed by Europe’s digital transformation. During their presence in Lesvos, participants will engage in participatory actions and peer learning sessions that will assist them in producing new and individual pieces of artwork that respond to the themes set out in the Open Call. The artworks are anticipated to proactively respond to the challenges posed by Europe’s digital transformation, and will be displayed in Lesvos in a group exhibition that will be open and free for the public to attend. Successful applicants are anticipated to benefit from: Expertly facilitated peer-to-peer learning sessions; Dialogue and debate with inspiring arts, culture and creative practitioners from across Europe; Access to an EU-wide trans-disciplinary professional network; Safe environment to express themselves, test new ideas and self-reflect; Opportunities to influence the debate on how arts and culture can shape Europe’s digital transformation; Fully-covered expenses to attend the in-person programme in Lesvos-Greece. Fully-covered expenses to produce their proposed artwork in Lesvos-Greece. Fully-covered expenses to display their proposed artwork both in exhibitions hosted in Lesvos-Greece, as well as future exhibitions organized by ARTSFORMATION.
Report: Power to the People – how do rising living costs affect your life?
For the first of a series of transnational ‘Power to the People’ online assemblies leading up to the European elections, hundreds of people from sixteen countries across and outside the European continent joined a special transnational assembly last week to discuss rising costs of living. Organised by a coalition of partners involving European Alternatives, Europe Calling, Citizens Takeover Europe, EUI-STG Democracy Forum, Mehr Democratie and Another Europe is Possible, the first assembly discussed the ongoing economic pressures in Europe from a bottom-up citizen-centred perspective. The assembly had simultaneous translation in English, Italian and German throughout and was moderated by Sarah (Mehr Demokratie) and Seema (Another Europe Is Possible / European Alternatives). The assembly began with an opening plenary featuring contributions from residents across Europe. A Marseille resident read a poem touching on the general crisis of low pay across all sectors, poor healthcare provision, the high cost of food and housing, and the particular impact the crisis has had on racialised and minoritised communities. The poem highlighted the growing level of organisation to push back against low pay and high bills, including strikes in all sectors and the ‘Don’t Pay’ movement. Immediately emphasising the common cross-border experience, a writer from Palermo started her contribution with a reference to the growing ‘Don’t Pay’ movement in her region. She highlighted the dire state of the economy where average wages have not been adjusted for over thirty years whilst inflation is now in double digits. She criticised the fossil fuel companies who have used this moment of crisis as a profiteering opportunity, and referenced Naomi Klein’s theory of ‘disaster capitalism’ as a model to explain their behaviour. She advocated an intersectional response to the crisis, joining the climate, labour, migrant, feminist and LGBTQI+ movements to resist systemic exploitation. From Cluj, a video capturing the key moments of a local protest and march against the rising costs of living was shared. The protest ‘Everything is too expensive! Utilities, food & housing!’ was organized by Social Housing NOW! in collaboration with the Socialist Action Group, Gastivists Romania, Fridays for Future Romania and the Syndicate of the Militant Students. You can watch the video below. Video editing and English translation by Jasmina Closca. Finally an Erlangen resident shared tweets from the founder of the NGO “sanktionsfrei”, which helps people who have had their social benefits cut. The tweets showed the extreme hardship now faced by many individuals who were already struggling as a result of high inflation and the failure of the state to ensure everyone in society’s basic needs are met. After the opening plenary, participants were split into 38 breakout rooms limited to 5 people in each room, allowing for participants to speak, share and listen to each other’s lived experience of the cost of living crisis. Many participants found commonalities across borders in each person’s experience of the cost of living crisis. In the closing plenary participants had a chance to feedback on their experience. There was a strong appreciation for the opportunity to reflect and share across borders, creating a transnational dialogue. People also shared their sense of empowerment about political solutions to the crisis, with some sharing their experience organising for higher pay acting collectively within trade unions, and others emphasising the complimentary power of the ‘Don’t Pay’ protests. Recommendations and ideas from the assembly will be taken forward in further Power to the People webinars, and to Transnational European Assemblies organised by European Alternatives and other partners over the coming year. The event was organised by the Power to the People consortium (EUI-STG Democracy Forum, Europe Calling, Pulse of Europe, Mehr Demokratie, European Alternatives, Citizens Take Over Europe, Another Europe Is Possible). TEA Event Report
Job Opportunity: Project Coordinator – “Next Time”
We’re recruiting a Project Coordinator to manage our new project “Next Time”. Next Time aims at encouraging and facilitating the active engagement of European citizens & residents in the context of the next European Elections (Spring 2024). European Alternatives Mission & Values European Alternatives works to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state and imagine, demand and enact alternatives for a viable future for Europe. WE ARE DOING THIS THROUGH: Articulate a radical, long-term vision of democratic, just and culturally-open politics, society and culture beyond the nation-state for Europe and for the world. Experimenting with forms of action that contribute to transformative change in political institutions, society, the economy and imagination. Building the capacity, the mutual-awareness and connection of members, activists and organisations working in line with our values. Advancing and defending human, fundamental, civic, democratic and social rights across borders. OUR VALUES GUIDE HOW WE WORK TO PURSUE OUR MISSION: Transnational and local: we believe local and regional initiatives benefit from going beyond national boundaries and interests Transdisciplinary: we believe alternatives are generated at the intersection of disciplines and are enriched by diverse expertise and perspectives Creative and experimental: we believe in the power of the arts and culture to unlock imaginaries and in the necessity of acting and learning through experimentation Open, inclusive and feminist: we believe in a culturally open society and in diversity as a precondition for sustainable alternatives to emerge Empowering and participatory: we provide the space for citizens to network and ensure our activities and events give space for co-creation and participation Anti-eurocentric: we believe involving other parts of the world in our reflections and activities is necessary to make new alternatives emerge Role and responsibilities European Alternatives is recruiting a Project Coordinator to manage its new project “Next Time”. Next Time aims at encouraging and facilitating the active engagement of European citizens & residents in the context of the next European Elections (Spring 2024) through: Capacity building: the project coordinator will set an open call for participants and tailor a six-session training programme for those selected participants. Multimedia citizens’ engagement actions: you will accompany the selected participants into implementing their own actions such as citizens assemblies, workshops, a podcast series, artistic outputs Representing European Alternatives at external events Administrative and Financial oversight of the project, in collaboration with the Finance and Administration Manager Ensuring the visibility and dissemination of the project, with the support of our Communications Officer The project will be implemented in at least the following 7 countries: Greece, Bulgaria, Sweden, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechia. Your profile Project management experience (2-3 years), preferably involving multiple partners Experience in working/assisting on the implementation of EU-funded projects Proven interest in community-building and empowerment of disadvantaged/marginalised groups Ideally, experience working in remote teams and maintaining strong working relationships with remote colleagues Experience working in Eastern Europe and in-depth knowledge of local context Strong organisational and administrative skills Capacity to travel regularly (25-30% of working time) Excellent command of spoken and written English It is a plus if you have… Knowledge of civic engagement engagement sphere Competences in communication and social networks management Knowledge of other languages Working conditions Gross Salary depending on place of residence, experience, number of hours between 25,000 Euros and 30,000 Euros for 20 to 28 hours/week. Contract: 3 or 4 days per week, corresponding annual leave and public holidays depending on place of work. The contract can be a national contract with EA Paris or a consultancy agreement depending on location. Duration: 16 months, with possibility of extension. Start Date: 3rd April Location: EA team works transnationally and remotely. We do have physical offices in Paris and Brussels where you could work, but you can be based anywhere in the EU. Diversity: European Alternatives is an organisation actively seeking to move through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive journey in every aspect of its work. We acknowledge that people from under-represented backgrounds aren’t included enough in the NGO sector and we are strongly committed to doing what we can to correct this. We especially want to hear from you if you feel that opportunities like this are less available to you. European Alternatives is an equal opportunities employer and particularly encourages applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds, education and working experiences. How to apply? Apply by sending a CV and short cover letter to info@euroalter.com. Deadline to apply 17th of March 2023. Interviews will be held in the week beginning 20th of March.
Feminism, Women & Migration
Participants on our Youth Movement and Campaign Accelerator programme have organised ‘Feminism, women & migration’, a discussion taking place in Amsterdam about intersectional feminism, people of colour and migrant women, in collaboration with Makibaka and Migrante Amsterdam. It is a mixed event open to all – people identifying as men, non-binary and identities other than cisgendar are more than welcome.
Il dibattito sulle questioni di fine vita in Italia: una prospettiva politica.
MARCO CAPPATO (Associazione Luca Coscioni) introducono ANTONIA FAUSTINI LORENZO FIERAMONTI (Università La Sapienza)
EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL WOMEN*: NO MATTER WHERE WE COME FROM OR GO TO!
EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL WOMEN*: NO MATTER WHERE WE COME FROM OR GO TO! Transnational Assembly of Feminist Solidarity 18.03.2023, 17:00-20:00, European Solidarity Centre Register now until March 15 +++ If you are not in Gdansk on this day, you can join us online via live-stream. Please register, so we can send you the live-stream link. +++ Women in Poland are fighting on the frontlines of the struggles against the far-right, they inspired the feminist movement far beyond Poland with their protests and the All-Poland Women’s Strike in recent years. No less, the crises on the Polish-Belarusian border and the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine have shown how strong Polish civil society is, despite its right-wing government, when it comes to welcoming people and caring for each other. However, with the upcoming national elections and the European elections in 2024, we all face the questions together of how to bring together the issues and demands around women’s rights, migrants’ rights, and social rights and become more powerful together. Therefore, on March 18, 2023, leading feminist, queer and migrant activists from Poland will come together at the European Solidarity Centre in Gdansk for a transnational assembly of feminist solidarity. This will not only be another step towards local, national, and transnational community and network building of intersectional feminist struggles. Most importantly, it will be a collective exercise in strategically reframing issues and demands around gender, migrant and social rights, and reimagining narrative strategies for the right to body self-determination, access to healthcare and social services, and reproductive justice beyond the borders of national origin and place of residence. All feminists are kindly invited. Polish women from Gdansk and other Polish cities and communities will be present, as well as refugees, activists, and organizers from Ukraine, Belarus, and non-European countries, and Polish women from other EU countries. If you are far away from Gdansk, join us via live-stream from wherever you are – as transnational organizing is all about being connected beyond borders. This assembly is ultimately also an attempt by the civil society opposition to negotiate a better future and possible avenues to it, strategize on how we can win elections, build a pluralist intersectional feminist movement, and finally also discuss policies improving lives of women, queers, and migrants. Because as long as fundamental, civil and human rights remain negotiable for the Polish right-wing government and the EU is not stopping these unlawful practices, women, queers and migrants have no other choice but to resist and organize alternatives from below… The assembly will be co-chaired by Marta Lempart (Co-Founder of the All-Poland Women’s Strike) and Ophélie Masson (European Alternatives & EUMANS). In addition, there will be simultaneous Polish-English interpretation and live-streaming, and a graphic recorder will visually document the results of the discussions. The workshop is part of the EUMANS Citizens Summit on “Democracy, Ecology and Liberty Beyond Borders. For a Pan-European Government Plan”, which will be held at ESC in Gdansk, from March 17-19, 2023. Here you can find more information about the rest of the programme and also the registration for other events. A report of the event is available to download here. HOSTED BY European Alternatives, School of Transnational Organizing, Trust Without Borders, Transnational European Assemblies & ESC WITH THE SUPPORT OF Bundesministerium für Bildung & Forschung (BMBF) & European Commission ABOUT EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVES & THE SCHOOL OF TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZING European Alternatives is a citizen-powered transnational grassroots organization with offices in Paris, Palermo, and Berlin – imagining, demanding, and enacting democracy, equality, and culture beyond the nation state. Our »School of Transnational Organizing« is a grassroots school where everyday people, social movement builders, trade union organizers, migrant workers, climate justice activists, political artists as well as marginalized communities meet to learn the tools and skills to master the lost art of organizing solidarity and together shape the landscape of what we think is possible. BE PART OF OUR PROGRESSIVE COMMUNITY OF TRANSNATIONALISTS Are you a progressive activist, academic, or artist, part of a grassroots initiative, civil society organisation, or social movement? United across borders and struggles, we as citizens and workers in our communities and cities organize for a Europe of solidarity and justice. Join us
WHAT IS TO BE DONE
WHAT IS TO BE DONE Transnational Organizing Forum 25.03.2023, 17:00-22:00, Betahaus Berlin Register now until March 20! In recent years, youth movements have played a major role in shaping the political landscape across the globe. It was not only Greta Thunberg and the young activist-led climate justice movement Fridays for Future that drew attention to the urgent need for action on the climate crisis and influenced policies and public opinion around the world. Also in many countries in Europe, young, especially female, migrant, BIPoC, queer and working-class organizers and campaigners have demonstrated the power of young people to effect social and political change. And yet, in the face of opposition from policymakers, global corporations and lobbyists, as well as right-wing movements, we are always at risk of desperation. Many of us ask, therefore, how can we become more victorious by uniting across the borders of identities, struggles and nations? The Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator has had six months to answer that very question with its first cohort: How do we build the next generation of movements, organisations, and campaigns? A special focus was on cutting-edge methods of storytelling, 1:1 conversations, popular assemblies, house meetings as part of so-called Listening Campaigns, which should help us and our communities to transform our political depression into collective action. Now, we are thrilled to announce WHAT IS TO BE DONE, a transnational organizing forum that focuses on building more hopeful, more joyful, and more powerful social movements, political campaigns, and collective actions – in cities and communities across the continent and beyond the borders of identities, struggles, and nations. Attention to the next generation of movements and organizers from across Europe gathering in Berlin! Join us for an evening full of mutual inspiration, collective learning, and joint conspiration … and the final public moment of the Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator Bootcamp! SCHEDULE & SPEAKERS 17:00–17:15 Welcoming Address by Georg Blokus (Berlin Hub Director of European Alternatives) 17:15–18:15 Short Talks by Movement & Campaign Organizers from Berlin & across Europe Antonia & Domenico (Associazione Luca Coscioni, Italy) Sanaz & Elahe (woman*life freedom collective, Berlin) Jasper & Charlie (End Fossil: Occupy!, The Netherlands) Ahmad & Rob (Gorillas Workers Collective, Berlin) Fruzsina & Veronika (ADOM Student Movement for Alternative Student-Centred Education, Hungary) Patricia & Bana (Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen, Berlin) We want to celebrate what we have accomplished and inspire each other. Representatives from 6 movements and campaigns will share their stories, the issues and demands of their movements, campaign journeys, best practice methods and tools, as well as current challenges in short talks in words, photos and videos. 18:30–19:30 World Café Then, in a world café with representatives of the 6 movements and campaigns at a total of 12 tables, we will first give space for questions and skill sharing in a 25-minute round; in a second round, the representatives of the movements and campaign will bring an urgent current challenge to the table, and all other participants will be invited to give support with their knowledge, tools, and experiences to address this challenge. 20:00–20:15 Keynote by Sarah-Lee Heinrich (German Green Party Youth Speaker) We are happy to have Sarah-Lee Heinrich with us this evening, who will share her political experiences at the intersection of movements, parties and institutions, as well as her vision for a transnational socio-ecological transformation led by young, female, migrant, BIPoC, queer and working-class movements and organizers. 20:15–21:45 Assembly of Transnational Solidarity Next, we will move on to an „Assembly of Transnational Solidarity” that will focus on the needs of young activists and organizers, and the avenues for transnational movements and campaigns. We are also pleased to announce that funders will be invited to this part of the event, which will provide an excellent opportunity to get to know each other, share visions and values, and to discuss urgent support needs for capacity, leadership and infrastructure building. 22:00 Meet & Drink Finally, we will end the day with a meet & drink connecting people who share a passion for making a difference in our current world. All activists, organizers and campaigners who will be in Berlin on that day are very welcome. We are especially happy about young beginners who are seeking inspiration, empowerment and support. The event will be held in English. Drinks and snacks will be waiting for you! HOSTED BY European Alternatives, School of Transnational Organizing & Assemblies of Solidarity WITH THE SUPPORT OF European Parliament ABOUT EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVES & THE SCHOOL OF TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZING European Alternatives is a citizen-powered transnational grassroots organization with offices in Paris, Palermo, and Berlin – imagining, demanding, and enacting democracy, equality, and culture beyond the nation state. Our »School of Transnational Organizing« is a grassroots school where everyday people, social movement builders, trade union organizers, migrant workers, climate justice activists, political artists as well as marginalized communities meet to learn the tools and skills to master the lost art of organizing solidarity and together shape the landscape of what we think is possible. Read more BE PART OF OUR PROGRESSIVE COMMUNITY OF TRANSNATIONALISTS Are you a progressive activist, academic, or artist, part of a grassroots initiative, civil society organisation, or social movement? United across borders and struggles, we as citizens and workers in our communities and cities organize for a Europe of solidarity and justice. Join us
Illiberal Democracies in Europe
“Illiberal Democracies” in Europe: An Authoritarian Response to the Crisis of Liberalism. Edited by Katerina Kolozova and Niccolò Milanese. Assistant Editor Christopher A. Ellison
Extracting the future or creating it: fire, water, protest and rebellion
The burning streets of Paris have filled newsreels and newsfeeds around the world, instantly memefied on the model of a burning house or burning world: ‘everything is fine’, or ‘tout va bien’ says the speech bubble emerging ironically from people eating dinner or drinking their coffee looking calmly at a barricade in flames.
Offre d’Emploi: Responsable Administration et Finance
L’association Alternatives Européennes: Missions et valeurs: Alternatives Européennes promeut la démocratie, l’égalité et la culture au-delà de l’État-nation et encourage à mettre en œuvre des alternatives pour l’avenir de l’Europe. L’association acte de manière transnationale par le biais d’activités créatives et expérimentales. Vous rejoindrez une équipe dynamique, venue d’horizons divers et qui travaille majoritairement en anglais. European Alternatives s’emploie à promouvoir la démocratie, l’égalité et la culture au-delà de l’État-nation et à imaginer, exiger et mettre en œuvre des alternatives pour un avenir viable pour l’Europe. Nos modes d’actions: Articuler une vision radicale et à long terme d’une politique, d’une société et d’une culture démocratiques, justes et culturellement ouvertes au-delà de l’État-nation pour l’Europe et pour le monde. Expérimenter des formes d’action qui contribuent à un changement transformateur dans les institutions politiques, la société, l’économie et l’imaginaire. Renforcer les capacités, la connaissance mutuelle et la connexion des membres, des militants associatifs et des organisations travaillant en accord avec nos valeurs. Faire progresser et défendre les droits humains, fondamentaux, civiques, démocratiques et sociaux au-delà des frontières. Nos valeurs: Transnational et local : nous pensons que les initiatives locales et régionales ont intérêt à dépasser les frontières et les intérêts nationaux Transdisciplinaire : nous croyons que les alternatives sont générées à l’intersection des disciplines et sont enrichies par diverses expertises et perspectives Créatif et expérimental : nous croyons au pouvoir des arts et de la culture pour débloquer les imaginaires et à la nécessité d’agir et d’apprendre par l’expérimentation Ouverte, inclusive et féministe : nous croyons en une société culturellement ouverte et en la diversité comme condition préalable à l’émergence d’alternatives durables Autonomisant et participatif : nous offrons aux citoyens un espace de réseautage et veillons à ce que nos activités et événements offrent un espace de co-création et de participation Anti-eurocentrique : nous pensons qu’impliquer d’autres parties du monde dans nos réflexions et nos activités est nécessaire pour faire émerger de nouvelles alternatives Notre structure et son fonctionnement opérationnel: Alternatives Européennes est une association française. Elle a des associations soeurs en Grande Bretagne, Allemagne et Italie, avec lesquelles elle collabore régulièrement. Dans le cadre de la coordination de projets européens, Alternatives Européennes gère des partenariats avec d’autres associations et institutions en Europe et est responsable du suivi financier de ces projets auprès de ses financeurs. Alternatives Européennes mène des activités majoritairement en Europe avec des financements publics et privés. Votre rôle En tant que responsable Administration et Finance de l’Association, vous aurez un rôle clef dans la planification et le suivi financier et administratif de l’association. Vous serez responsable de la gestion et du suivi de l’activité et de la planification financière de l’association, en lien avec les chefs de projets, et en liaison avec les comptables et les auditeurs. Vous aurez aussi la responsabilité de réaliser le suivi budgétaire et les opérations de paiement. Garant de la pérennité financière, de la transparence et de la fiabilité des comptes, vous serez responsable de la communication financière et produirez les documents comptables et financiers réglementaires. Vous mettez en œuvre les outils permettant de piloter et de rendre compte de la situation financière de l’association, ainsi que de contrôler la correcte utilisation des ressources. Vous travaillerez dans nos bureaux à Paris à Paris 17. L’association a une politique flexible pour ce qui est du travail à domicile, mais le poste demande une présence régulière dans les locaux. Vos tâches principales: Sous la responsabilité des co-directeurs, en collaboration étroite avec les responsables chefs de projet, et en coordination avec votre homologue responsable de l’association allemande : Coordonner et réaliser les rapports financiers des projets de l’association Organiser et superviser la comptabilité Piloter le processus budgétaire en lien avec les opérationnels Garantir un contrôle de gestion rigoureux et une analyse financière pertinente en veillant à l’équilibre global de l’association Produire les éléments financiers dans les délais : comptabilité sociale (bilan, compte de résultats, annexes) Elaborer les bilans financiers et les dossiers de subvention Organiser et superviser l’établissement des paies, leur fiabilité dans les délais impartis selon les règles fiscales, sociales et administratives Organiser les outils de pilotage et de suivi Participer ponctuellement aux instances de l’association sur les aspects financiers Gérer les paiements des prestataires de service Gérer la contractualisation avec les partenaires et les prestataires Profil recherché: De formation supérieure en Comptabilité/Finance (Bac + 4/5, Master Comptabilité contrôle et audit / DSCG / Équivalent) vous justifiez d’une solide expérience. Vous êtes en capacité de mettre en place des outils de contrôle budgétaire et de gestion. Vous détenez de bonnes bases solides en comptabilité et en analyse financière, notamment dans la lecture des documents comptables et financiers (grands livres, balances, bilans et comptes de résultats…). Vous êtes doté de bonnes capacités d’analyse et de synthèse, dans des environnements complexes. Vous faites preuve de disponibilité, d’organisation, de rigueur et d’adaptabilité, vous êtes dynamique, autonome, et rigoureux(se) et avez des capacités relationnelles et pédagogiques importantes. Vous êtes flexible, adaptable et aimez travailler en équipe et en réseau. Vous parlez anglais et français de façon courante et êtes à l’aise pour travailler en anglais et en français. Vous êtes intéressé.e par les finalités et les modes d’action de l’association Vous avez l’expérience de la gestion financière et administrative de projets européens ou auprès de bailleurs de fonds internationaux. Le poste à pourvoir en CDI. Rémunération autour de 40,000-45,000 € brut annuel pour un temps plein en fonction de l’expérience. Le poste peut être à temps plein ou 4 jours par semaine si souhaité par la ou le canditat.e. Candidature : Merci de bien vouloir candidater en envoyant votre CV et votre lettre de motivation par email à info@euroalter.com avec le titre “Responsable Administration et Finance”. Recrutement: Nous étudierons les candidatures au fur et à mesure de leur soumission. L’appel est ouvert jusqu’au 30 avril inclus. Le poste est à pourvoir dans les plus brefs délais. Si l’association a trouvé une personne adéquate, elle se donne le droit de clore l’appel à candidature avant la date indiquée dans cette…
European Alternatives is looking for a European project’s specialist for the position of administration and finance manager
We are looking for an Administration and Finance Manager, whose role will be to lead the planning and financial and administrative monitoring of the association. This is a job creation. Budget & Financial Management Control You will be responsible for setting up budget monitoring, in order to improve our financial management, to report on the financial situation of the association, and to control the correct use of our resources. You will be in charge of producing financial reports for our funders. You will also be in charge of improving our planning, working upstream with project managers during the budgeting phase. Your role will be to structure the tools and procedures used by the Association in this area. You will set up analytical accounting to enable us to better monitor our activity, in conjunction with the project managers. Accounting and payroll On the accounting side, the Association works with an accounting firm for the production of regulatory accounting and financial documents. Your role will be to liaise with our contact persons, to ensure that he/she has all the necessary information in time, and that the documents are produced on time, and with the required level of quality. You will be the interlocutor of the auditors, in particular mandated by the donors. Payments You will be in charge of payment operations, and oversee the cash management of the Association. In this context, you may be required to create monitoring tools considered necessary. Administration You will be responsible for the proper organization of the administration of the association, and for the respect of its administrative obligations. You will be responsible for drafting contracts for new employees, free-lancers, volunteers and partnership agreements. Communication In general, you will finally be required to participate punctually in the governing bodies of the association on financial aspects. Required profile Higher education in European project management or accounting (Bac + 4/5) you have about 5 years of experience. You are able to implement budget control and management tools. You have a solid foundation in accounting and financial analysis. You have experience in the financial and administrative management of European projects or with international donors. You have good analytical and synthesis skills. You show availability, organization, rigor and adaptability, you are dynamic and autonomous, and have significant relational and pedagogical skills. You are flexible, adaptable and enjoy working in a team and with partners. You speak English and French fluently and are comfortable working in English and French. You are interested in the purposes and modes of action of the association. Terms The position to be filled on a permanent contract if the person is based in France. Remuneration around 45,000 € gross per year depending on experience. The position can be full-time or 4 days a week if desired by the candidate. Ideally you will work in our offices in Paris in Paris 17. The association has a flexible policy regarding working from home, but the position requires a regular presence on the premises. Applications Please apply by sending your CV and cover letter by email to info@euroalter.com with the title “Responsible for Administration and Finance”. Recruitment We will review applications as soon as they are submitted. The position is to be filled as soon as possible. The interviews will be carried out by zoom or in person in Paris 17.
Decolonial Europe Day
The Decolonial Europe Day is a new initiative that uses the occasion of Europe Day (9 May every year) to bring together existing decolonising initiatives, civil society organisations and other actors around the common project of decolonising Europe, understood as an ongoing process. Our intention is to create a space for exchange on how to decolonise Europe, to amplify decolonial voices in and on Europe, to support the creation of synergies and to make this type of conversation more mainstream in Europe, with the ultimate purpose of dismantling and replacing colonial power structures. The first edition of the Decolonial Europe Day will take place in online format on 9 May 2023 (9:30-18:00 South/Central African & Central European Summer Time). The project is initiated by a small group of people in collaboration with several civil society organisations and pre-existing decolonising initiatives (see ‘about us’ section). The initiative aims to contribute to a shift in the dominant narrative on Europe in Europe, knowing that a shift of the narrative is a precondition for dismantling colonial power structures. While Europe Day typically mobilises those celebrating Europe, our approach is different. As stated by Gurminder Bhambra, “Europe’s past is an imperial and colonial past”, to which we add: Europe’s present and future will continue to be a colonial present and future unless Europe makes decolonisation its core concern. Register here to participate
Launching Decolonial Europe Day
The Decolonial Europe Day is a new initiative that uses the occasion of Europe Day (9 May every year) to bring together existing decolonising initiatives, civil society organisations and other actors around the common project of decolonising Europe, understood as an ongoing process.
XENIA – PER UNA LEGGE DELL’OSPITE
NATURA COMUNE lancia un percorso di scrittura collettiva di una legge di iniziativa popolare sull’accoglienza aperto a tutte e tutti: cittadine/i, residenti, migranti, associazioni e forze sociali e politiche. Si comincerà il 6 maggio con un pomeriggio di confronto e di interventi di esperti ed esperte chiamati a parlare di quello che è l’immigrazione davvero, oltre stereotipi e slogan. Non mancherà un momento di scambio tra i partecipanti: che cosa deve prevedere una legge che intenda proporre un modello di accoglienza alternativo affinché sia credibile ed efficace? Parteciperanno MIMMO LUCANO DONATELLA DI CESARE LUIGI MANCONI LAURA MARIA CINQUINI MATTIA FERRARI PAPIA AKTAR ALESSIO SANGIORGI e molte altre e altri Con una performance di GIOVANNI VISENTIN del Constitutional Circus – e i disegni di GIANLUCA COSTANTINI. For more information visit http://www.naturacomune.eu/and to register, use this link. Registration is not obligatory.
Decolonising Europe
The Decolonial Europe Day is a new initiative that uses the occasion of ‘Europe Day’ (9 May every year) to bring together existing decolonising initiatives, civil society organisations and other actors around the common project of decolonising Europe.
Cities 4 Refugees
Our new project Cities for Refugees involves municipalities, activists, NGOs and other multipliers who are directly working to improve the situation for migrants arriving to Europe and within Europe. Focusing on the cooperation between municipalities from different countries and its local civil society group, the objectives of the initiative are increasing capacity-building for activists and cities through the dialogue around best practice examples in different fields of migration and cooperation. Combining public moments and workshop sessions, the first online event of the project will bring together European city representatives, and members of active civil society initiatives from all over Europe that are already working and advocating to open up opportunities for practical, open-minded solutions which place human rights at the center of the future migration politics. If you wish to participate in the first public event and be updated on the programme, save the date 27 June, 2023 and register in this form below: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeKDx3RfOVIrajXY1ek-JSd1I4OrS6u1GCo-xPOcYq6IXfNIA/viewform
Appel à bénévoles “Festival des littératures en marge”
Appel à bénévoles pour le festival “Littératures en marges”. Du 29 juin au 2 juillet, le festival “Littératures en Marges” se déroulera à Saint-Denis dans la région parisienne. L’événement est organisé par les universités de Bath, Oxford, Sorbonne Paris Nord et Cergy, en collaboration avec l’association Alternatives Européennes. Il se déroule sur le campus de Condorcet (Aubervilliers) et à Saint-Denis, dans des lieux tels que le MC93, « L’Écran » (cinéma), la Ligne 13 (salle de concert), Mots et Regards et le musée Paul-Éluard ou encore le 6B. L’événement commence par une partie colloque académique les 29 et 30 juin et se poursuit par un festival incluant la projection d’un film, des panels de discussion et débats, un concert, une représentation théâtrale et une soirée les 1er et 2 juillet. Les organisateurs du festival recherchent des bénévoles pour les tâches suivantes : L’accueil des participants étrangers (venant du Brésil) et des conférenciers d’honneur, leur prise en charge à leur arrivée et pendant toute la durée de leur séjour. L’accueil des participants au colloque et aux journées du Festival, leur orientation vers les salles et les lieux adéquats. L’aide à la mise en place, à l’organisation et à la logistique : installation et désinstallation des salles, pauses cafés et orientation vers les lieux de restauration, etc. Les accords de volontariat et de stage peuvent être établis pour des durées allant de quelques heures à quelques semaines. Une soirée de rencontre entre les partenaires et les bénévoles est prévue avant l’événement. La participation aux différentes activités du festival sera gratuite et les repas et boissons seront couverts (notamment lors de la fête de clôture au 6B). Quels profils recherchons-nous ? Des personnes intéressées par toutes les formes de littérature, notamment celles des marges, dans une perspective académique ou artistique. Des personnes intéressées par le Brésil et potentiellement lusophones. Des personnalités fiables et positives, qui seront des facilitateurs avant, après et pendant l’événement. Nous accueillons des personnes de tous horizons, n’hésitez pas à nous contacter pour toutes question et signaler votre participation à l’adresse : b.dibb@euroalter.com Plus d’informations sur l’événement et le programme ici : https://euroalter.com/events/litteratures-en-marges/
Ateliers d’écriture gratuits
Ateliers d’expression littéraire créative avec les écrivains Insa Sané (slam, poésie orale, textes musicaux) et Mabrouk Rachedi (narration, prose). Les canditures sont fermées pour Mabrouck Rachedi, nous acceptons encore les candidatures finales pour Insa Sané. Vous avez entre 15 et 35 ans, et vous avez envie de jouer avec les mots, raconter des histoires, perfectionner votre style ? Vous avez déjà une pratique d’écriture et vous souhaitez passer à la publication ? Ces ateliers s’adressent à celles et ceux qui souhaitent faire progresser leur écriture. Ces ateliers sont réalisés en amont du Festival des Littératures des Marges qui a lieu du 29 juin au 2 juillet à Saint-Denis (Ile de France). Les ateliers se déroulent en juin2023 à la MC93, 9 Bd Lénine, 93000 Bobigny. Vous pouvez choisir de rejoindre l’un des ateliers suivants : Atelier écritures et slam animé par Insa Sané, écrivain, rappeur, slammeur et comédien. Atelier d’écriture en prose sur le thème des Marges, animé par Mabrouk Rachedi, écrivain. Les ateliers s’adressent à des groupes de 10 à 15 personnes maximum. Les séances, d’une durée de 2 à 3 heures. Ces ateliers sont gratuits. Ils se déroulent une à deux fois par semaine en juin 2023. Les ateliers avec Insa Sané se dérouleront aux dates suivantes: Mercredi 14/06 18-20h Samedi 17/06 15-17h Mercredi 21/06 18-20h Samedi 24/06 15-17h Mercredi 28/06 18-20h Les ateliers avec Mabrouk Rachedi se dérouleront aux dates suivantes : Jeudi 15/06 18-20h Jeudi 22/06 18-20h Jeudi 29/06 18-20h Jeudi 06/07 18-20h Jeudi 13/07 18-20h Ces ateliers sont ouverts à tous et toutes. Une priorité sera accordée aux participant.e.s vivant dans les villes du nord de la région parisienne et aux personnes ayant déjà entamé un travail d’écriture. Une sélection de textes sera considérée pour publication. Pour manifester votre intérêt et candidater, voici le formulaire à remplir : https://forms.gle/AmCzgdGPiULQvNgE7. Les canditures sont fermées pour Mabrouck Rachedi, nous acceptons encore les candidatures finales pour Insa Sané. Si vous avez des questions, des besoins particuliers pour vous permettre de participer à ces ateliers, n’hésitez pas à nous contacter à l’adresse suivante: b.dibb@euroalter.com.
New Challenges
New Challenges on the Urban Periphery is a project using the concepts of co-creation, a research method using creativity to co-produce knowledge with academics, communities and creative practitioners about urban marginality, in the context of Paris banlieues.
Open Call for DEMO – Democracy, Elections, Mentorship, Organizing Programme
Open Call for “DEMO: Democracy, Elections, Mentorship, Organizing” programme (17 May – 30 June) Have you ever felt the weight of the world’s problems on your shoulders? Do you dream of a better future, but feel powerless to make it happen? It’s time to take action and become the changemaker you want to be. The truth is, there are injustices all around us. From abortion-free zones to modern-day slavery, discrimination against the LGBTQI+ community, and wars that take innocent lives every day. The very foundations of European democracy are under threat. But we refuse to give up hope. We believe that change starts with each and every one of us. That’s why we’re inviting you to join the “D.E.M.O.” programme and to be one of 50 changemakers who will shape the Europe of tomorrow. Together, we’ll learn the knowledge and skills we need to fight for the rights of those who need it most. We’ll educate ourselves and our communities to change the course of history. With your voice and your actions, we can rebuild democracy. With the “D.E.M.O.” programme you take the action and we support you all the way. About the project Are you ready to be part of something truly special? The “D.E.M.O.” program is more than just a training – it’s a movement to fight against far-right populism and to rebuild the democracy in Europe that you want to live in. By joining our community of citizens, campaigners and activists from all over Europe, you’ll be able to connect with like-minded individuals who are passionate about creating positive change. Together, we’ll explore new ways to promote honesty, leadership, self-awareness, equality, and diversity in our communities. Over the course of 12 months, you’ll receive expert training and mentoring to develop your leadership, technical, and theoretical skills. And the best part? You’ll have the opportunity to put these skills into action by conducting two activities in your country – so you can make a real difference in your community. So what are you waiting for? Join us and become part of a movement to shape the Europe of tomorrow. What we expect ➤ For you to join us and commit to participate in the two in-person bootcamps in Bulgaria and Slovakia and two online trainings NB: European Alternatives will cover your expenses for transport, subsistence and accommodation for the two in-person bootcamps! What we offer Public Online training (1 & 2):/ Online, September – October 2023 European Alternatives’ School of Transnational Organizing will bring together world-class campaign strategists from around the globe for a public online course, “BY, WITH & FOR THE PEOPLE: How Progressives Can Win Election Campaigns”. They will share their lessons learnt on transformative organising and electoral movement building. Invited are all electoral campaigners and grassroots organisers – advanced or beginner – gearing up for next year’s European election campaigns who want to learn the skills and tools necessary to run inspiring and successful campaigns that put people back at the centre of politics. Closed training (3)/ Online, September 2023 A meeting for the D.E.M.O selected participants for peer-to-peer learning, skills sharing and preparation for the first in person meeting! Bootcamp 1: / In person in Bulgaria, November 2023 This first transnational meeting will provide you with an opportunity to get to know the other participants. You will discuss how to build trust, relationships & community and will attend workshop sessions led by inspiring activists in the role of Podcast Producer, Artivist, Video Influencer, Community Workshop Facilitator. Mentoring (4)/ Online, January 2023 A mentoring follow-up to accompany you in implementing actions for change in your own communities. You will receive a personal and dedicated time to tailor your activities and reinforce your skills depending on your needs and wishes. It will also be an opportunity to prepare for the program in Slovakia, to check in how we are doing with the planned activities and where we are at in the process! Bootcamp 2 / In person in Slovakia, February 2024 The second bootcamp will focus on your experience up to now and on celebrating some of the activities that you will have already implemented. The detailed programme will be available at a later stage and will be tailored for your needs. Check out here the visual timeline of the project. To finish your learning cycle during the second part of the program you will get the opportunity to organise two activities for your community. Before and during that you will receive group and individual mentorship support. Here are examples of activities previously done that you can get inspiration from: workshops in a community centre, university or at another event; podcast episodes, participatory art creations, educational videos. Apply now until 30.06.2023! Fill in the application form HERE and / or share it with your friends and colleagues. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for online interviews until the end of July. Please bear in mind that your participation in the project is counted as official volunteering experience and you will receive a certificate for your time and commitment. The project is co-funded by the European Parliament.
DEMO: Democracy, Elections, Mentorship, Organizing
The “D.E.M.O.” project aims to encourage and facilitate the active engagement of a wide network of European citizens through both capacity-building & citizens’ engagement actions, in the context of the upcoming 2024 European Elections.
About the journal
The EA journal is a space to imagine alternatives beyond the nation-state. It contains think-pieces, articles, artistic and cultural contribtions, podcasts, videos and more on a broad range of topics and themes spanning democracy, culture, equality, decolonisation, social movement organising and more. In 2023, we relaunched the European Alternatives journal. First published in 2007, the journal has long been a space to map out visions, ideas and pathways for an alternative, open and radically more democratic Europe. In that first issue, Etienne Balibar set out his theses for an ‘Alter-Globalizing Europe’. The theses called for a postcolonial European identity that overcomes the ‘East-West’ divide and the ‘West then the Rest’ mentality; an open Europe that invents a variable geometry, acknowledging its constitutive interpenetration with vast Euro-Atlantic, Euro-Asian, Euro-Mediterranean and Euro-African spaces; as American hegemony declines, a Europe that positions itself as mediator not a power bloc – tending towards conflict reduction, redistribution, egalitarianism and decentralisation; and a Europe whose relationship with the so-called global ‘South’ is characterised by a genuine reciprocity of possibilities of co-development. Newly relaunched in 2023, the journal continues to be a space to grapple with the specificities and challenges of constructing a new geopolitical imaginary. The journal seeks to further our organisational aim: to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state. We’re here to show that an alternative Europe already exists as something that we, collectively, can imagine, demand and enact. We hope this journal can be a critical and accessible space where ideas and actions can interact to foster new connections, systems, temporalities and imaginaries – linking social movements, academics, civil society, artists, activists and the very earth we inhabit to build together and live the alternatives we dream.
The Historic Day When European Leaders Have Found a Disgraceful New Meaning for Solidarity
Our Statement on the Decision about the “Common European Asylum System” By Georg Blokus, Gabriela Siegel & Seema Syeda Waking up and reading the news about yesterday’s decision on the “Common European Asylum System” leaves many progressive organizers, refugee rights activists, and defenders of human rights on the European continent speechless. It leaves even more of those seeking protection at the gates of Fortress Europe at risk of death and border violence. Scrolling through the tweets of political decision-makers and seeing their pathetic celebration of ‘European solidarity’ raises the question: what is the antonym of solidarity? After all, that is what the perverted ‘solidarity’ being celebrated here represents. It is a political travesty to hail such an agreement as a ‘historic success’. In reality, the proposed measures hollow out the remnants of the EU’s commitment towards the principle of asylum. Masquerading as a plan to expand the processing of asylum claims at the EU’s external borders, the proposals would in fact further facilitate the mass detention of refugees, the proliferation of prison-like detention centres, and the expansion of the arbitrary and fast-tracked deportation of asylum-seekers to a supposedly ‘safe’ third country they transited through on their way to safety. All of this without any exceptions for families with children. “We have prevented much worse today, and in this respect I am very pleased and very proud that we have succeeded overall with a large majority”, German Minister for Interior Affairs Nancy Faeser assures us in her hopeless but happy statement. What shred of credibility can the so-called post-War European liberal ‘democratic’ order cling to when the interpretation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Refugee Convention is grotesquely stretched to permit stripping asylum seekers of their right to due process and legal protections? Shall we celebrate the de facto death knell of the right to asylum in the name of European solidarity? When Donald Trump and his administration locked children in cages at the U.S.-Mexico border, European leaders positioned themselves as a cut above this, and clamoured together to express (partial) outrage. In reality, the transnational collusion of Fortress Europe and the US’s dangerous border policies has only grown, and yesterday shows the results of years of de facto policies normalising the criminalisation of asylum in Europe. No wonder right-wing leaders and governments across the EU, from Italy to Poland and Austria all the way to Hungary, are applauding – even though Hungary and Poland, for example, voted against this new European consensus – only because of the introduction of ‘solidary’ financial penalties for not accepting refugees entitled to protection. But for us at European Alternatives and for our friends, allies, and partners from civil society, political education, culture, trade unions, social movements and refugee communities, this should not be the end. After all, we should firstly remember that, long before the summer of 2015, solidarity in Europe has been plagued from the start. Europe’s murderous border policies are the result of continuing colonial structures and racialisation, a centuries old system of exploitation and dehumanizing inequality. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Open borders as reparations for Europe’s responsibility in creating planetary crises can be achieved, and we will continue to fight for them. It is we, the broad transnational movement of migrants and human rights activists, educators and organisers, who know all too well what lived solidarity means. We see this every day, as we fight for everybody’s right to a dignified and just life – beyond the political mockery EU leaders have made over the years of the principles of human rights, particularly in the field of migration policy. We see this living practice of solidarity reflected in sea rescue missions, in progressive municipalities welcoming refugees, in migrant workers’ collectives, in free legal aid NGOs supporting asylum claims and family reunifications, in transnational networks of refugee solidarity, and refugee community centres… beyond the borders of origins, religions and nation states. Without the many who hold up the flag of human rights every day, European solidarity would have long been devoid of any true meaning. »We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.« FRED HAMPTON Especially now until the end of the year, when the European Parliament is about to enter trilogue negotiations with national governments and the EU Commission about the proposed reform of the “Common European Asylum System”, it is time that we overcome our speechlessness and turn our political powerlessness into grassroots power led by the voices of the many refugee organisations and migrant movements. We cannot lose hope – we must revive it with courage, and compel the European Parliament and the EU Commission to immediately stop this reform. Otherwise, the next European elections in 2024 could be the first elections in which Europeans will face the unenviable task of choosing between the nightmarish subtleties of a vaguely diversified, but nonetheless united right-wing Europe. For this, the most precarious and vulnerable amongst us, particularly refugees, will pay the greatest price – with their dreams, their rights, and in many cases even their lives. About the Authors Georg Blokus is a political psychologist, educator, and theatermaker. As European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub Director and Head of Organizing Education, he is leading the School of Transnational Organizing on its mission to build the next generation of movements and organizers. Gabriela Siegel is a movement lawyer and community organizer. As Grassroots Community Manager in European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub she is managing education programs of the School of Transnational Organizing supporting communities of migrants, workers, and organizers fighting for dignity and justice. Seema Syeda is a London and Marseille based campaigner, activist and trade unionist. She seeks to organise to dismantle the structures of racial capitalism and build a world without borders where wealth and power are distributed justly and equally.…
TRANSEUROPA Assemblies
A series of citizens assemblies taking place across the continent, TransEuropa Assemblies is engaging citizens and residents of the EU in a deliberation of their priorities for the 2024 European elections, with the aim of influencing party political programmes ahead of the elections, and contributing to the deepening and extension of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Alternance – Assistant.e Secrétariat administratif, Logistique et Comptabilité
Alternatives Européennes recherche une personne pour l’assistance au secrétariat administratif, la comptabilité et la logistique. Idéalement, vous êtes en formation en alternance en comptabilité gestion des entreprises et/ou associations, secrétariat ou gestion de projets. Votre rôle : – Assurer des tâches de secrétariat courantes pour l’association – Assurer des tâches administratives courantes de l’association: déclarations, maintien de dossiers et tableaux administratifs à jour, transmission de documents administratifs à des personnes extérieures et archivage.. – Participer à la bonne tenue comptable de l’association: classification de reçus de paiement, en papier et en ligne, rapprochement bancaire – Réaliser des achats simples pour la vie de l’association (matériel de bureau, papeterie, autre) – Préparer les paiements à réaliser en imprimant et classant les factures – Classer et archiver documents administratifs et documents clés de la vie de l’association Vous: Vous êtes flexible, adaptable et aimez travailler en équipe et en réseau. Vous êtes prêt.e à travailler en anglais et en français. Vous êtes intéressé.e par les finalités et les modes d’action de l’association L’association Alternatives Européennes: Missions et valeurs: Alternatives Européennes promeut la démocratie, l’égalité et la culture au-delà de l’État-nation et encourage à mettre en œuvre des alternatives pour l’avenir de l’Europe. L’association acte de manière transnationale par le biais d’activités créatives et expérimentales. Vous rejoindrez une équipe dynamique, venue d’horizons divers et qui travaille majoritairement en anglais. European Alternatives s’emploie à promouvoir la démocratie, l’égalité et la culture au-delà de l’État-nation et à imaginer, exiger et mettre en œuvre des alternatives pour un avenir viable pour l’Europe. Nos modes d’actions: Articuler une vision radicale et à long terme d’une politique, d’une société et d’une culture démocratiques, justes et culturellement ouvertes au-delà de l’État-nation pour l’Europe et pour le monde. Expérimenter des formes d’action qui contribuent à un changement transformateur dans les institutions politiques, la société, l’économie et l’imaginaire. Renforcer les capacités, la connaissance mutuelle et la connexion des membres, des militants associatifs et des organisations travaillant en accord avec nos valeurs. Faire progresser et défendre les droits humains, fondamentaux, civiques, démocratiques et sociaux au-delà des frontières. Nos valeurs: Transnational et local : nous pensons que les initiatives locales et régionales ont intérêt à dépasser les frontières et les intérêts nationaux Transdisciplinaire : nous croyons que les alternatives sont générées à l’intersection des disciplines et sont enrichies par diverses expertises et perspectives Créatif et expérimental : nous croyons au pouvoir des arts et de la culture pour débloquer les imaginaires et à la nécessité d’agir et d’apprendre par l’expérimentation Ouverte, inclusive et féministe : nous croyons en une société culturellement ouverte et en la diversité comme condition préalable à l’émergence d’alternatives durables Autonomisant et participatif : nous offrons aux citoyens un espace de réseautage et veillons à ce que nos activités et événements offrent un espace de co-création et de participation Anti-eurocentrique : nous pensons qu’impliquer d’autres parties du monde dans nos réflexions et nos activités est nécessaire pour faire émerger de nouvelles alternatives Notre structure et son fonctionnement opérationnel: Alternatives Européennes est une association française. Elle a des associations soeurs en Grande Bretagne, Allemagne et Italie, avec lesquelles elle collabore régulièrement. Dans le cadre de la coordination de projets européens, Alternatives Européennes gère des partenariats avec d’autres associations et institutions en Europe et est responsable du suivi financier de ces projets auprès de ses financeurs. Alternatives Européennes mène des activités majoritairement en Europe avec des financements publics et privés. Candidature : Merci de bien vouloir candidater en envoyant votre CV et votre lettre de motivation par email à info@euroalter.com avec le titre “Alternance – Administration et Finance”. Recrutement: Nous étudierons les candidatures au fur et à mesure de leur soumission. Les interviews seront réalisées par zoom ou en personne à Paris 17. Diversité : Alternatives est un employeur garantissant l’égalité des chances et encourage particulièrement les candidatures de candidats issus de divers horizons, formations et expériences professionnelles. Nous reconnaissons que les personnes issues de milieux sous-représentés ne sont pas suffisamment incluses dans le secteur des ONG et nous nous engageons fermement à faire ce que nous pouvons pour corriger cela. Si vous pensez que de telles opportunités sont moins disponibles pour vous, n’hésitez pas à candidater.
Climate Fatigue: how to turn powerlessness into change?
A webinar by “Power to the People”. Anxiety, desperation, denial … people react differently to the ever-growing odds of climate catastrophe. For decades, movements have debated strategies mobilizing those emotions politically: turning fatigue into activism and direct actions. Groups like Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Letzte Generation have shown both the potential and limitations within the current climate activism toolkit. Indeed, the path to a just, forceful and inclusive climate action is full of obstacles for the many who feel powerless. Repression is fierce and growing, often fuelled by governments and defenders of the ending fossil fuel era alike. As climate urgency whistles ever more stridently to our ears, we must come together to imagine how to turn powerlessness into meaningful change. Following this ambitious purpose, the Power to the People group organizes two multilingual virtual events on the 22nd and 29th of June 2023. Inviting citizens, activists and decision makers all over Europe. In the first event, we invite influential speakers from movements, science, politics and civil society to listen and learn about different perspectives to create a common base for the second event. In the second event, we want to create a democratic, transnational space for people to share their emotions and personal experiences, empower each other and grow together. Specifically, those two events are: 22 June 2023: Panel of perspectives, setting the stage (with interpretation into French, English, German and Italian) 29 June 2023: Small-group breakout rooms, so everybody gets room to share, empower and grow We invite everyone to join us! Click here to register.
Lancio del numero 1 della Rivista europea delle alternative
Last year, the year of our 15th anniversary, when we wrote our last biannual report of activities (read here), it was clear that we wanted 2023 to be the year in which we would relaunch our magazine of arts, politics and reflection. It was precisely 16 years ago when we published the first edition of our transnational journal – a space to map out visions, ideas and pathways for an alternative, open and radically more democratic Europe.
Transnational European Assembly on advancing towards a gender justice in the European Union
On the 22nd of June 2023, we held the European Transnational Assembly on advancing towards Gender Justice in the European Union, in Barcelona at the National Catalan History Museum premises.
Overcoming fear with organisation in order to win the elections
Progressives must stop reacting to the far-right agenda and push instead for a positive programme of solutions to world crises.
Launching the European Alternatives Journal Issue 2
As an NGO that acts and situates itself in the interstices between EU institutions, associations and movements, European Alternatives is by no means immune from the structural colonial context within which we exist. What we begin to discuss here is only a small, by no means complete, step engaging with a broader global process of dismantling and transformation.
Job Opportunity: Project Assistant
Apply by sending a CV and short cover letter to v.kostova@euroalter.com. Deadline to apply: 8th of September 2023. Interviews will be held as of the 11th of September.
Kyiv: hope in the darkness
Luke Cooper reports on networks of civicness from the frontline of Ukraine’s resistance.
Transnational Citizen Assembly for Housing Justice in Cluj Napoca – Romania
We proposed the housing crisis issue for the TEA Assembly in Cluj-Napoca because the city became the most expensive locality of Romania in terms of real estate market in the last decade, while simultaneously becoming the centre of one of the most active housing movements in the country.
Transeuropa Festival 2023 – Holding Spaces
The new edition of Transeuropa takes place in Cluj Napoca and presents a rich schedule of events prepared in cooperation with local partners in the city. The programme will consist of events, exhibitions, open assemblies, meetings and music and will involve a large number of historical spaces of the city. THE THEME This year’s edition of the TRANSEUROPA festival asks participants first and foremost, what kind of environment do they want to live in? When we think about the ideal environment, about where we want to live, how we want to shape the world around us, we think far into the future, about our grandchildren and about what the world will be like in a hundred years’ time. When we look that far ahead, everything we imagine becomes elusive, everything seems to be fiction, guesswork, a possibility. For us, working with imagination and fantasy is of great value, because it inspires and motivates us, and is often a remedy for the harsh reality. However, we also think it is important to try to think together about these issues in the near future, to imagine how we imagine our own environment in, say, five or ten years’ time. It is also an important question to consider how we share spaces with each other and with other species. Which spaces are accessible to whom, and which communities and groups are constantly excluded, what can we do to create spaces that are inclusive? When we think about who, we often forget that there are living beings outside the human species. Where are the spatial boundaries between the spaces used by humans and the animal kingdom? How can we ‘rewild’ spaces? After all, humans may have got to the top of the pyramid by domesticating their environment. They created artificial spaces for their own comfort and safety. And everything that humanity has touched has the imprint of artificiality on it. The planet is divided into two parts, one by the presence of the human race, and the other by everything else we call nature. At the same time we have to think about what we do with artificial intelligence, what we think about programs, robots, and cyborgs. What we want to use these creatures for, and how much space and freedom we want to give them. Of course, it is also very important to look at what we think about the human race. What kind of systems do we think in, how many kinds and types of identities can we identify with, how open are we to, for example, contemporary witchcraft? Can we determine for whom certain physical spaces are available? Are these spaces really available? Is this just an illusion? How aware are we of who created these spaces and with what intentions? In which direction do these spaces change, in which direction do the intentions change? Whose needs are decisive? When we talk about a particular physical space, we must also take into account that there are simultaneously many spaces that are no longer visible. At the same time, possible alternatives to space are all present. Can we grasp the multidimensionality of spaces? Can we deal with it consciously? Underneath the tons of concrete is earth. And the blades of grass are breaking through this hard concrete and coming out from underneath, just like the past. The motto of this year’s edition is “Holding Spaces”. Holding spaces is important not only in a physical sense, but also in a symbolic sense. It is important to re-examine the values that are important to us and that should reclaim not only physical spaces, but also virtual spaces and meta spaces. We must reclaim not only the spaces of our habitat, but the space of discourse, the space of understanding, the space of caring, the space of learning, the space of change.
Artsformation Summit: Mobilising the arts for an inclusive digital transformation
Three years ago, with Artsformation, we embarked on an exploration to discern the intricate relationship between the arts and our unfolding digital society. Our mission was not just to observe, but to actively engage in understanding how the arts are intertwined with digital transformation. We believed that the arts could serve as a significant bridge, fostering a more inclusive and sustainable digital era. Together with the project partners, artists and members of the board, we created a programme consisting of public panels, exhibitions, open meetings and music involving key stakeholders in the city. Brussels becomes an ideal location to take forward discussions around technology and the arts, and to present some of the most interesting results of the project. The festival is open to all and will be of particular interest to people in the creative sector, government, industry, research as well as anyone interested in exploring how art and technology can contribute to socio-ecological transformation.
Public Lecture DEMO
Come and join us for an online open discussion with Jelena Vasiljevic and Dobrica Veselinovic in Zoom on the 20th of September at 18:30 CET! Please register in advance for this webinar here until the 19th of September, 18:30 CET: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TM5-p8VtSISwfQUukgmqIA?fbclid=IwAR37eAo7puG5j0HOyOBdV6KGXwtLgQyouQHUarwwQp42Pp3D7rVX5I69GOo#/registration Programme 18:30 – 18:40 – Presentation of the European Alternatives, the D.E.M.O. project and the lecturers 18:40 – 19:00 – Jelena Vasiljevic – individual presentation 19:00 – 19:20 – Dobrica Veselinovic – individual presentation 19:20 – 20:20 – Discussion with both lecturers 20:20 – onwards – Q & A from the audience Jelena Vasiljević is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her background is in political anthropology and citizenship studies. Her expertise and research interests include theories of citizenship, citizenship transformations in the post-Yugoslav states, memory politics, civic engagement, and social movements in South-East Europe. Presently, she is primarily interested in theories and practices of solidarity. She was an expert member of The Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG). Currently, she also serves as a Belgrade city councilor. Dobrica Veselinović was born in 1981 in Belgrade, where he lived his entire life. He graduated from the First Belgrade High School and the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. Attended a large number of summer schools, seminars and debates in the country and abroad, and held the same number of lectures and presentations. He has been active in the civil sector for more than 15 years. In the last few years, he primarily deals with issues of urban development and fights for public spaces and public and common goods. He is the initiator of the Ministry of Space collective, Ne davimo Beograd, and green left coalition “Moramo”. His areas of interest are: political theory, ecology and issues of urban development. Currently part of Small council of Ne davimo Beograd, and head of Ne davimo Beograd group in Belgrade city assembly. Initiator of Green left front, new green political party in Serbia. This event is part of the program of D.E.M.O. (Democracy, Elections, Mentorship, Organizing) by European Alternatives. The “D.E.M.O.” project aims to encourage and facilitate the active engagement of a wide network of European citizens through both capacity-building & citizens’ engagement actions, in the context of the upcoming 2024 European Elections. It will provide 50 change-makers from at least 8 countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Sweden and others) – with the necessary tools to re-imagine democracy in their local communities and to encourage democratic participation.
Transeuropa Festival in Cluj Napoca! 11-15 October
This year’s edition of the TRANSEUROPA festival asks participants first and foremost, what kind of environment do they want to live in?
New partnership to promote an open, democratic & enlarged Europe
European Alternatives is delighted to announce an exciting new partnership with the Centre for Advanced Studies – Southeast Europe (University of Rijeka), the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (University of Belgrade) and the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (Skopje) to work together to promote a new vision of an open, democratic and enlarged Europe. The aim of the partnership is to share resources and exchange in the fields of international policy analysis, advocacy, social engagement and to re- conceptualise in Europe beyond the borders of any given nation/state to create a new vision for a just and unified Europe. Areas of co-operation will include: Engaging collaboratively in applied (policy) analysis as well as academic in-depth research concerning topics including amongst others: European politics; geopolitics and planetary politics; inter- cultural relations; gender, migrant and minority rights; and just ecological, social, and economic change. Work together in direct political and policy advocacy Through social engagement, promote and encourage free and politically responsible societies and democratic practice that allows for social and economic justice, as well as improving intercultural relations and working toward greater gender equality Work towards creating a vision of Europe that is just and unified Organisation of international meetings, conferences, workshops, and outreach events Free and open exchange of information, ideas and results from various analyses, and publications Conducting joint research and development projects Cooperation in individual projects Organization of lectures, symposia, international meetings, conferences, summer schools and workshops Exchange of researchers and students Exchange of information, teaching materials, technological and scientific publications Search for opportunities to collaborate in the future Download the full memorandum of understanding here.
Centre for Advanced Studies – Southeastern Europe (University of Rijeka)
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (University of Belgrade)
Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (Skopje)
Arrivals in Lampedusa – Solidarity and resistance in the face of Europe’s reception crisis
Following the arrival of a record number of people on the move in Lampedusa, civil society expresses its deep concern at the security response of European states, the crisis of reception, and reaffirms its solidarity with people on the move arriving in Europe.
Democratic Odyssey, a permanent EU citizens’ assembly launched in Athens
The Democratic Odyssey is a campaign to make a standing European People’s Assembly an integral part of the EU political system. The very first pilot assembly is to take place in Athens, on 26 September 2024, during the Athens Democracy Forum. The Democratic Odyssey is a decentralized, collaborative, and transparent exercise of crowdsourcing and co-creation kicked-off by a core consortium composed of The European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance, Particip-Action, European Alternatives, Citizens Take Over Europe, The Democracy and Culture Foundation, Democracy Next, Mehr Demokratie, Eliamep, The Real Deal, Phoenix, The European Capital of Democracy, as well as the Berggruen and Salvia Foundations. This community is open to all who want to be involved. Threatened from within and outside by the rise of partisan hyper-polarization, authoritarian buy-in, disinformation and electoral interference, European democracy is feeling the squeeze on all sides. How can Europe address citizens’ sense of disenfranchisement? Yes, this is an old and difficult question. But there are pathways to renewal. For the Democratic Odyssey consortium, part of the solution lies in creating a standing European People’s Assembly that will become a core part of the institutional landscape of the European Union, made of citizens selected by lot, serving on a rotating basis. “Our vision is that of an interconnected assembly, within the ever-growing network of participatory and deliberative spaces around the continent, in towns and cities, in schools, workplaces and theatres, in political and corporate seats of power.” As Professor Kalypso Nicolaidis, who is leading the academic work on transnational democracy at the EUI, explains: “Our vision is that of an interconnected assembly, within the ever-growing network of participatory and deliberative spaces around the continent, in towns and cities, in schools, workplaces and theatres, in political and corporate seats of power.” Next year the Democratic Odyssey will put theories into practice by organizing a big prototype transnational assembly in Athens, bolstered by mini-assemblies around Europe before and after. This project comes at an opportune moment. In the past five years, in Europe, there have been ten national assemblies and around 70 local assemblies on the topic of climate change alone. The EU itself took a huge leap with the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) which integrated transnational, multi-lingual, sortition-based deliberation into the policy making process. However, two years later, we cannot ignore the disappointment of its citizen participants, whose recommendations were left largely unheard. The Conference on the Future of Europe planted a seed which the Democratic Odyssey wants to make flourish. As James Mackay, the project’s coordinator, declared in a recent interview with European Alternatives: “we are not aiming at making a ‘perfect’ assembly (whatever that would even mean). Our hope is more modest: to offer a “proof of concept” that, in the window between the EP elections but before the new Commissions convenes, can bring grassroots and institutional actors together to consider how citizens’ participation can be institutionalised in the longer term.”
Democratic Odyssey
A decentralised, collaborative and transparent exercise of crowdsourcing and co-creation which seeks to institutionalise a permanent peoples’ assembly and participatory ecosystem in Europe
Artsformation Catalogue
Three years ago, with Artsformation, we embarked on an exploration to discern the intricate relationship between the arts and our unfolding digital society. Our mission was not just to observe, but to actively engage in understanding how the arts are intertwined with digital transformation. We believed that the arts could serve as a significant bridge, fostering a more inclusive and sustainable digital era. This catalogue aims to present in an interactive and pleasant way, the results and outcomes of our journey with Artsformation.
Critical Change Labs
Critical ChangeLab (Democracy Meets Arts: Critical Change Labs for Building Democratic Cultures through Creative and Narrative Practices) is a Horizon Europe research and innovation project addressing democratic erosion trends by strengthening youth participation in society. The project is carried out by 10 partner institutions and examines the current state of democracy in learning environments across Europe, generating a robust evidence base for the design of a participatory democratic curriculum. Critical ChangeLab develops a model of democratic pedagogy using creative and narrative practices to foster youth’s active democratic citizenship at a time when polarisation and dwindling trust in democracy are spreading across Europe. At the Critical ChangeLabs, diverse actors from formal and non-formal education and civic organizations work together with youth to rethink European democracy and envision futures that are justice-oriented. Partners include University of Oulu (Coordinator) – Finland, Trinity College Dublin – Ireland, University of Barcelona – Spain, stichting Waag Society WAAG – Netherlands, Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co – Austria, Kersnikova Institute – Slovenia, LATRA Innovation Lab – Greece, Tactical Tech – Germany, Alternatives Européennes – France, and Institute of Social Research in Zagreb – Croatia.
Open letter to the European Commission: Stand by your commitment to the European Citizens’ Initiative
We, the undersigned civil society organizations dedicated to the promotion of European democracy and its foundational values, write to you today with an unequivocal and urgent message.
EU, speak out against war crimes
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von Der Leyen; the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola; EU Member States Heads of State and Government PETITION We demand that the EU leaders: call on all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to comply with international law and to prioritise the protection of civilians’ lives fully denounce Israel’s indiscriminate military bombing and attacks on Palestinian civilians and civilian areas, including hospitals, schools, residential buildings in Gaza firmly pressure Israel to respect its obligations under international law, including ensuring the vital supply of water, gas, fuel, electricity and basic supplies to Palestinians in Gaza and guarantee the safety of international press and relief services urge all parties to agree to ceasefire unequivocally call for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor to allow the safe transit of people out of crisis zone and of humanitarian aid in the region hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and collective punishment against civilians, including by publicly supporting the investigation carried out by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Since October 7th, at least 1,400 Israelis and over 3,800 Palestinians have been killed. [1] Civilians on both sides are paying the price of an unprecedented escalation in hostilities between Israel and Gaza. Key EU leaders are not calling for an end to this violence. President of the European Commission von der Leyen and other officials expressed unreserved solidarity with Israel but said nothing in response to the international crimes taking place in Gaza. [2] This gives Israel green light from the EU to break international law. The EU was founded on the commitment to peace and EU leaders have a duty to pressure all countries to follow international law and protect civilians. It’s clear our leaders need reminding of this and we must urge them to denounce indiscriminate bombing of civilians and residential areas in Gaza. Around the world, people see Europe as silent on the fate of civilians in Gaza. But there is political will among EU diplomats and EU countries like Ireland to change this course. [3] Europe cannot apply double standards and must condemn war crimes regardless of where they take place and who the perpetrator is. It seems that our leaders cannot hear the voices of the Palestinians – so let’s add the voice of Europeans and our large community. References: [1] https://ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-13 [2] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-governments-fume-at-queen-ursula-von-der-leyen/ [3] https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status/1714202849930793423 In partnership with WeMove.eu
Open Call for an Immediate Ceasefire in IOPT
#CeasefireNow: Open Call for an Immediate Ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Israel to Prevent a Humanitarian Catastrophe and Further Loss of Innocent Lives
Online open discussion with Shaista Aziz and Radomir Lazovic
#OpenDiscussion: Come and join us online with Shaista Aziz and Radomir Lazovic in Zoom on the 24th of October at 18:30 CET!
Ceasefire Now: Voices for Peace and Justice
Another Europe Is Possible’s response aims to assemble the crucial voices for peace and justice that must be magnified to bring an immediate end to the war. On Monday 6th November 18.00 UK time we will host – in collaboration with organisations and networks spread across three continents – a vital conversation bringing together critical voices from the region demanding peace and justice for all. Will you join this dialogue? REGISTER ON ZOOM NOW – CLICK HERE Israel’s total siege and war on Gaza is unprecedented in its intensity. The war cannot be the answer to the deplorable atrocities committed by Hamas and other terrorist groups on 7th October 2023. This ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinian civilians is illegal in international law. Justice demands criminal accountability for all those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity – and the bravery to call for an end to the cycle of violence. This tragedy marks only the latest horrifying chapter in decades of war, occupation and illegal settlement. Only peace and justice based on the principle of universal human rights offers a genuine path to security. This event will bring together those critical voices for peace and justice in the region. Speakers: Yezid Sayigh is a distinguished academic and historian of the Palestinian national movement. A senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, he was previously part of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks with Israel. Atalya Ben-Abba is a member of the Refuser Solidarity Network. She has spent 110 days in prison for the ‘crime’ of conscientious objection towards conscription in the IDF and her story was told in the 2019 film ‘Objector’. Aida Touma-Suleiman is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and has been a member of the Knesset since 2015, representing the left party, Hadash. Shaista Aziz is a city councillor in Oxford. She is a former member of the Labour Party and now sits as an independent having resigned in October 2023 over the response of the Labour leadership to the Israeli war on Gaza. This meeting is hosted by Another Europe Is Possible in collaboration with the Refuser Solidarity Network, Foreign Policy in Focus (US) and European Alternatives.
Online open discussion with Arun Chaudhary and Ulrike Lunacek
#OpenDiscussion: Come and join us online with Arun Chaudhary and Ulrike Lunacek in Zoom on the 30th of November at 18:30 CET!
Call for participants open for the Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator
Time to put an end to the general anxiety and powerlessness, time to do something. Have you seen anyone around you step up to solve inequality, combat unfair treatment, and help those in need – even at the smallest scale? Is there anyone you would like to see take a larger role in society? Better yet: would you like to take on that challenge yourself? If your answer to any of these questions is YES, send them to the YMCA. That’s what it’s for. APPLY OR NOMINATE What is the YMCA? The YMCA (Youth Movement & Campaign Accelerator) is EA’s youth education program. It aims to increase the engagement of young people and their communities in constructing European democracy by creating a Europe-wide network of like-minded, self-improving individuals. In this programme, 25 participants will learn and practice techniques to activate their local communities, to articulate their issues and demands, and to move people around them to take collective action. Concretely: Online learning Collective, interactive training sessions; quizzes, access to YMCA resources & library Reading circle & discussions around social movement documentation (theory, testimonies…) Individual mentoring & workshops to plan actions, help each other overcome problems Offline networking Actions led on the ground by participants themselves – it’s up to you to take a leap of faith and get the people around you out of their comfort zone. In-person workshops and attendance to important events ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections* (*Possibility to cover travel costs based on available budget – to be clarified) Local actions Putting into practice things they learnt, participants in each country will organise one activity among the following Artistic intervention Content publication (article, podcast episode) Training on mobilization techniques in their community/network Citizen-led assembly to uncover the most pressing issues and plan a local campaign Campaigning & advocacy to decision-makers Movement management & community building Building communities behind issues – including the human relations aspect: trust-building, conflict management, solidarity, overcoming fear & anxiety Join a Europe-wide network of activists & establish forms of cooperation with them Who can nominate someone to join the YMCA? Anyone; it can be individuals or organisations. We will ask you about this person and why you think they would be a great local organiser. We will contact them on 22nd November to get to know them a little better. Can I apply myself? Absolutely. Take note that we’ll review all applications based on the same criteria. Who exactly can join the YMCA? Anyone who: Has an understanding of what problems exist in your community, but you don’t know where to start to fix it Is under 35 years old Has a good understanding of English Lives in a EU country Commits to attending online sessions + planning an activity in your community – trust is everything in building powerful movements! Full calendar is available on the project page & in the brochure. We especially encourage the participation of LGBTQ+ activists, people from minority communities in their country, people from outside the big city centers. How to apply or nominate someone Submit the name & details of someone you want to nominate for this project here. Deadlines Application/Nomination deadline 21 November, 2023 Interviews 22-23 November, 2023 Notification to successful/unsuccessful applicants 23 November, 2023 Want to know more? Find out more on the project page, or in this brochure. Info call: 17th November 2023, 5pm CET (Calendar invitation / Registration link) Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85729260442) Any questions? Myriam has the answers! Send here an email.
Decolonising Transnationalism: Online Course: Session 2 – Conversation with Aarti J Narsee.
Call for Podcast Sound Editors
Alternatives Européennes is an association working for democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state. Since 2007, its teams have been running projects in Europe and beyond, combining culture and civic commitment. This work is promoted through several communication tools: EA Journal, articles on the website, posts on social networks, and podcasts. To support the production of podcasts, we are looking for someone to occasionally edit episodes in French or English – other languages are welcome. Details of the assignment: De-rushing (following roadmap and timings) and editing (modalities to be discussed) Post-production: volume equalization, management of overdubbing tracks (in case of audio translation), clean-up & splicing of transitions, addition of music and jingles, compression & export of final file. Broadcast support: preparation of audio file for publication on platforms, transcript generation with online tools. Resources Resistance: Decolonising the Internet • A podcast on Spotify for Podcasters In your reply, please Indicate your software licenses Share episodes you’ve edited Provide a list of the steps involved in preparing the video, the expected duration of each step and the type of support expected from AE. Provide a budget estimate for the production of a typical episode Please send applications or questions to s.syeda@euroalter.com. The first interviews will take place in late November/early December 2023.
A Peoples’ Assembly for Europe
The Democratic Odyssey team meets with Dubravka Šuica, the European Commission’s Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, to discuss the future of citizen participation in the EU. On Wednesday 29 November, Dubravka Šuica, Vice-President for Democracy and Demography at the European Commission, will engage with the community of the Democratic Odyssey project to discuss the achievements of the Conference on the Future of Europe, the next generation citizen panels (ECPs) and future prospects for citizen participation in EU policymaking – both in the next Commission’s agenda, and in the European Parliament’s proposed Citizen Agoras. Participants will explore how the Democratic Odyssey’s ‘middle way’ process (involving civil, society, academia and citizens in agenda-setting, as well as institutional actors) can help top-down and bottom-up dynamics converge in future experiments with transnational deliberation. The conversation will be guided by Vice-President Šuica’s experience and knowledge of the field at the European Commission. Her keynote will be followed by a conversation with the Democratic Odyssey team, interventions from MEPs and practitioners and a Q&A with the public. Led by the Florence School of Transnational Governance, the Democratic Odyssey is a crowdsourced, decentralised and collaborative campaign developing a concept and strategy to institutionalise a permanent peoples’ assembly and participatory eco-system in the European Union. By building on lessons learned from the Conference on the Future of Europe (COFE) and other deliberative experiments, we are organising a randomly selected, transnational peoples’ assembly as a prototype for an EU-wide European Peoples’ Assembly. Our aim is to showcase how citizen participation can be enacted in all stages of the EU’s policy processes, from agenda setting and legislative initiative to co-legislation and even constitutional Treaty Change – all while amplifying the democratic potential of these experiments in the broader public sphere. Please join us by registering with the link below (in person or hybrid): https://apps.eui.eu/EventRegistration/Home/Login?eventId=565457
Reimagining Citizenship Education by Cultivating More-Than-Human Care
👋It’s now possible to register to the online workshop ‘Reimagining Citizenship Education by Cultivating More-Than-Human Care’ combining futures methods and more-than-human approaches to address these questions. Imagine if democratic systems acknowledged that all creatures capable of feelings and experiences, not just people, had rights. It would mean treating all living beings with consideration and respect, understanding that they have the capacity to feel joy, pain, and other emotions, and ensuring their well-being is considered in decision-making. How can this be reflected in civic education? This online workshop combines futures methods and more-than-human approaches to address these questions. At the session, participants will dive into an extreme future scenario putting themselves in the shoes of very different actors to identify various needs when tackling societal challenges. Through this session participants will get a first-hand experience of methods to innovate in citizenship education, as well as contribute to envision how to cultivate relations of care through citizenship education. The workshop design and supporting materials will be shared with participants after the session. Facilitators: Eva Durrall, University of Oulu, Niccolò Milanese, European Alternatives, Caitlin White, Trinity College, Andrew Newman, European Platform for Digital Humanism, Yusra Niaz, University of Oulu, Tuija Cornér, University of Helsinki, Heidi Hartikainen, University of Oulu, Marianne Kinnula, University of Oulu Eva Durall Gazulla is Academy postdoctoral researcher at the INTERACT research unit at University of Oulu, Finland. Her expertise areas include media and technology, design and learning using critical approaches as well as participatory design and futures techniques to engage participants in research. Currently, she is involved as research leader in various projects exploring democratic values in technology design and use with young people (co-PI in Critical ChangeLab and PI in Critical DataLit projects). Niccolò Milanese is director of European Alternatives, a transnational civil society organisation promoting democracy, equality and culutre beyond the nation state since 2007. Caitlin White is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Education at Trinity College, Dublin, where she works on the EU-funded Critical ChangeLab project. She holds a PhD in Public History from Trinity College and is interested in using the past to envision the future. Other research interests include modern Irish history, critical literacies, commemoration, memory, global citizenship education, and workshop design. Andrew Newman is a producer for the European Platform for Digital Humanism at Ars Electronica in Linz and is focused on fostering cultures of transdisciplinary collaboration. He is responsible for projects aimed at bringing artists and scientists together (STUDIOTOPIA), creating STEAM learning experiences (Critical ChangeLab, Open Science Hub, Creative School and STEAM INC) and promoting citizen science (IMPETUS). Yusra Niaz is a Doctoral Researcher at the INTERACT Research Unit at University of Oulu, Finland. She is a member of the research team working on the EU funded Critical ChangeLab project. Her doctoral research focuses on the relations young people make when they participate as design protagonists to design future technologies within this more than human centered design world. Other research interests include participatory design, critical approaches to learning and futures techniques. Tuija Cornér is a PhD researcher at the University of Helsinki. In the EU-funded Critical ChangeLab project, she is part of a research team at the University of Oulu. Her doctoral research focuses on continuous learning and collaborative learning processes. Her research draws from applications of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), such as the Change Laboratory method, expansive learning and transformative agency. Heidi Hartikainen is a postdoctoral researcher in Child-Computer Interaction at INTERACT research group in University of Oulu in Finland. She is interested in the themes of activism and empowerment through technology, especially concerning youth safety and security online. In her work she draws from critical and participatory methods when engaging youth to critically examine emerging technologies and envision our technological futures. Marianne Kinnula is an Associate Professor in Human-centred design and digitalisation, and the research unit vice-leader of INTERACT research unit in University of Oulu, Finland. Her research is in the fields of information systems and human-computer interaction with inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. Social sustainability of technology in terms of social inclusion, empowerment, and ethical stance in technology development and use at different levels, individual, organizational and society level, are in the heart of her research. The event’s timing is in Central European Time (CET) Register here: https://app.guestoo.de/public/event/b0fcba44-56fd-42b1-bf65-29af87cedcd3
ONLINE OPEN DISCUSSION WITH ARUN CHAUDHARY AND ULRIKE LUNACEK
Come and join us for an online open discussion with Arun Chaudhary (videographer for Barack Obama and Creative Director of Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign) and Ulrike Lunacek (Former Vice President of the European Parliament) on Zoom on Thursday 30 November at 18:30 CET! Arun Chaudhary is going to explore the mechanics of emotional storytelling in politics, especially in bad information environments and Ulrike Lunacek is going to speak about HR/fundamental rights and environmental issues in foreign affairs/enlargement and how civil society support/activism/advocacy is needed for political aims to succeed. Click HERE to join for the webinar! Passcode: 1234 Programme: 18:30 – 18:40 – Presentation of EA, D.E.M.O., the lecture and the participants 18:40 – 19:10 – Ulrike Lunacek – individual presentation 19:10 – 19:40 – Arun Chaudhary – individual presentation 19:40 – 20:20 – Discussion with both speakers 20:20 – onwards – time for Q & A from the audience Ulrike Lunacek is author, lecturer and facilitator in Vienna, Austria. From 1995 to 2020 she was a federal and then European politician (Austrian Green Party), among other functions she was Member of the Austrian Nationalrat from 1999-2009, Co-Spokesperson of the European Green Party from 2006-2009, Member of the European Parliament from 2009- 2017, and Vice President of the European Parliament from 2014-2017. From January to May 2020 she was Secretary of State for Arts and Culture. As before entering politics in 1995 she is also now active in several NGOs. For details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrike_Lunacek https://www.parlament.gv.at/person/8244 Arun Chaudhary is a filmmaker working in politics. After being a key member of Barack Obama’s New Media team during the 2008 campaign, he became the first Official White House Videographer, a position created for him at the beginning of the Obama administration. Chaudhary traveled extensively with the President, capturing public events and behind-the-scenes moments as well as producing and packaging presidential tapings for the Internet and broadcast television. He and his team set a new standard in documenting history, delivering crucial images to the public from the road in real-time. Arun is the creator and architect of “West Wing Week”, the first-ever online video diary of the White House. You can read about Arun’s time with Obama in this New York Times profile. After departing from the White House, Chaudhary joined Revolution Messaging as a partner, where he went on to help craft Senator Bernie Sanders’ game changing 2016 Presidential campaign as Creative Director. Arun’s work received extensive media coverage and praise, including this Ozy profile, “The Creative Genius Behind Bernie’s Revolution”, and this New Yorker piece, “How the Sanders’ Campaign got a Punk Sensibility”. In 2020, Arun moved to Berlin with his family to focus on counter-programming the far-right globally and to work more closely in international elections/campaigns. This event is part of the program of D.E.M.O. (Democracy, Elections, Mentorship, Organizing) by European Alternatives. The “D.E.M.O.” project aims to encourage and facilitate the active engagement of a wide network of European citizens through both capacity-building & citizens’ engagement actions, in the context of the upcoming 2024 European Elections. It will provide 50 change-makers from at least 8 countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Sweden and others) – with the necessary tools to re-imagine democracy in their local communities and to encourage democratic participation. Learn more about the project here. JOIN NOW
Podcast Launch: Beyond the Nation State
PODCAST LAUNCH NEW SERIES – BEYOND THE NATION STATE. How can we act beyond borders? What alternative realities can we build? How do we take care of people & planet, building a solidary society that works for everyone – at the intersection of class, gender, sexual orientation & geographic origin? How do we take care of non-human beings? In this podcast series, we meet transnational activists, academics, cultural practitioners & civil society to discuss these questions and imagine, demand & enact alternatives. Episode 1: International activism from Bulgaria to Iran. Click here to listen to the podcast. What does practical transnational organising look like? Can we build a New International? Through the lens of feminism, LGBTQIA+ rights, migrants’ organising, workers’ rights, the Covid-19 pandemic & more, we discuss how grassroots international activism can organically connect intersectional movements across and outside of Europe, from Bulgaria to Britain, Turkey to Iran. How can we act beyond nation-states and nationalism to build truly global consciousness and action? How can we remain sensitive to local contexts while working towards a new universalism? We spoke to Bulgaria-based activist Kalina Drenska, co-founder of EAST – East Autonomous Struggles Transnational to explore the possibilities.
Against the racist states of Europe
Last night the French parliamentary assembly passed an immigration law that introduces ‘national preference’ in access to social services that are in principle universal, a longstanding demand of the National Front that Le Pen swiftly claimed as an ‘ideological victory’. The same evening, negotiators of the European institutions found a preliminary agreement on reforming common asylum rules which increases arbitrary detention, fast-tracks deportation and introduces racial profiling at the border. In both processes of finding political compromise the pattern has been the same: the discussion of an initial proposal that claims to strike a balance between more solidarity for those in need and more restrictive access to asylum becomes dominated by the far-right, with the active complicity of the centrists, and ends up almost entirely repressive. This could be an object lesson in what happens when you allow the possibility of compromising on human and fundamental rights – they quickly collapse. And the worst excuse, used over and over again, is that by making this compromise, responsible leaders are forestalling the rise of the extremist racist right. Quite the opposite is what is happening. For there is no doubt who is celebrating: it is plainly visible for all to see. Le Pen is celebrating today, and just last weekend the party was in Rome, when hard-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hosted a grotesque spectacle at her Brothers of Italy Party ‘Atreju’ festival. Meeting with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak , Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and billionaire Elon Musk she discussed more plans to ‘offshore’ asylum processing on the model of the EU-Tunisia agreement and the Italy-Albania agreement, and more deportation plans on the model of Sunak’s unlawful Rwanda asylum plan, which has also recently seen admiration from the leaders of Germany and Austria, themselves perversely persuaded that contemplating such measures might save their political skin. That these repressive measures do almost nothing to improve the situation for any migrants, for the settled populations in Europe, or for the countries that people are leaving from is largely beside the point. The far right does not deal in material realities, it deals in moral abasement: where the death of a baby girl in a detention centre in the Netherlands was fatal for the governmental coalition of Mark Rutte, it was an enabler for Geert Wilders and his racist policies that would do nothing to prevent such things happening; the arrival of too many migrants to safely process in Lampedusa was not a reason for Meloni to call for a European scheme to adequately address this, but to call for a totally illegal EU naval blockade to block people at sea… and so on. We are all familiar with the pattern, and with the spinelessness of too many of those politicians charged with safeguarding constitutional values when faced with it: President of the European Commission Von Der Leyen said she was supportive of exploring such options… We are all familiar with the pattern, and with the spinelessness of too many of those politicians charged with safeguarding constitutional values when faced with it: President of the European Commission Von Der Leyen said she was supportive of exploring such options Part of the antidote to this doom loop is amplifying every action which is based on human solidarity with those migrating: from individuals welcoming refugees, to teams on boats rescuing people, to local municipalities or cities and regions refusing to put in place national racist policies (and at least two departments in France have already announced they will not apply the immigration law). And the other part of the antidote must be a courageous politics which sets out what a morally dignified Europe that can live up to its professed values would have to look like: it would require investment both in properly welcoming and giving political voice to migrants as well as in giving new skills to live in diversity to settled populations; it would require ensuring adequate pay of migrant labour and adequate taxation of the multinationals that benefit most from it; so that the economic ‘diversity dividend’ can be channelled back into society not into private pockets; it would require a Europe-wide industrial and economic policy that avoids the concentration of social problems in specific territories; and it would require a European neighbourhood policy in the South and the East which is not based on blackmail, but it based on sustainable investment conditional on human rights and democracy. We have to argue that such a program, far from being unrealistic, is the only way Europe can live in peace with itself.
Podcasts
European Alternatives runs a number of podcast series on the themes of democracy, culture and equality beyond the nation-state. Our different series explore artistic, technological, geopolitical, academic and societal questions from a transnational, transborder perspective. Peruse our in-house and collaborative podcast series below. Beyond the Nation State How can we act beyond borders? What alternative realities can we build? How do we take care of people & planet, building a solidary society that works for everyone – at the intersection of class, gender, sexual orientation & geographic origin? How do we take care of non-human beings? European Alternatives works to promote democracy, equality & culture beyond the nation-state. In this podcast series, we meet transnational activists, academics, cultural practitioners & civil society to imagine, demand & enact alternatives. Workers Without Borders Workers Without Borders brings together migrant workers from the Western Balkans that are currently working or have worked in different European countries in different sectors. We explore the challenges they face, their experiences, and their motivations to move between countries. Ukraine and the World The Ukraine and the World series is an initiative taken in collaboration with Foreign Policy in Focus – Institute for Policy Studies in the United States and our longstanding partner, Another Europe is Possible. In the first podcast in our Ukraine and the World series, Luke Cooper talks to Masha Shynkarenko, a Research Associate with the Ukraine in European Dialogue programme at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and an expert on the Russian colonisation of Crimea and the Crimean Tartar national movement. They discuss the long history of Russian and Soviet imperialism in the Crimean peninsula, life under Russian occupation, and the need for nuance and complexity in discussion of what decolonisation of Crimea should look like in practice. Resistance: Decolonising the Internet How can we use arts and creative space to bring a decolonial approach to digital transformation? ARTSFORMATION, a project in which European Alternatives is a key partner, ran ‘RESISTANCE’, a residency in Lesvos followed by a public assembly held at the 2023 Transmediale festival in Berlin to explore this question. In this podcast series we meet the residents, coordinators and researchers to discuss their experience building new imaginaries to challenge inequality and existing power structures in Europe’s digital transformation. We create a shared democratic space reframing the present narrative of survivability to one of sustainability and resilience.
Out Now: EA Journal Issue 4
As this editorial is being written, European and Western state’s active participation and complicity in the ongoing violence and genocide endemic to colonisation and nationalism continues to be painted in garish colours for all the world to see. At the same time, mass movements across borders are rising up to challenge this injustice. On the question of reparations for slavery and the brutal crimes of 500 years of European colonialism, demands for justice and accountability from colonial metropoles are taking place.
Transnational European Assembly on Social Parenting Report
The innovative TEA Assembly on Social Parenting took place from 19-20 October 2023. Read the report on what we discovered!
The ECI: Victim of Big Meat?
A webinar with Europe Calling and the ECI Campaign. The ECI is in the biggest crisis since it came into force in 2012 and we need to act now. More than 70 NGOs have recently pointed this out in an open letter to Commission President von der Leyen. What has happened? 1.4 million. That’s how many EU citizens have signed the European Citizens’ Initiative “End the Cage Age”. In doing so, they have backed the demand to end the agonising cage farming of farm animals in the EU. 180 million chickens, 112 million rabbits, 40 million ducks and geese, 10 million pigs and 1.2 million calves are still caged in the EU today. After the citizens’ initiative was finalised in 2019, a large majority of the European Parliament and the EU Commission also backed it. For the first time ever, the EU Commission committed to implementing the demands of the citizens’ initiative. An unprecedented success for direct citizens participation in the EU. But then in September 2023 came the U-turn: the EU Commission put legislation ready for signature to implement the citizens’ initiative on hold indefinitely – following a massive campaign by the meat industry. The EU Commission has caved in to lobbying pressure from the meat industry and at the same time dealt a serious blow to direct citizen participation in Europe. At a time when right-wing populists are gaining strength and dissatisfaction with politics is on the rise, this sends a fatal signal to citizens and is dangerous for our democracy. In this webinar, which we co-organise with Europe Calling e.V., we want to look at these developments and ask what they mean for the future of citizen participation in Europe. The speakers are: Nina Holland, researcher and activist at the NGO “Corporate Europe Observatory”. James Kanter, award-winning journalist and founder and editor of the EUScream podcast Olga Kikou, Head of the EU office of Compassion in World Farming and representative of the Citizens’ Committee of the “End the Cage Age” European Citizen Initiative. Carsten Berg, Director of The ECI Campaign, an NGO supporting and campaigning for the European Citizens’ Initiative Thomas Hieber, Attorney of the Citizens’ Committee of “End the Cage Age” A representative of the EU Commission (requested) Date: Thursday, 11 January 2024, 20:00 – 21:30 Register right here: LINK Be there yourself and invite others!
Elezioni serbe: una cartolina dalle porte dell’UE
Jelena Vasiljević comments on recent allegations of electoral fraud in Serbia – and the EU’s inadequate response.
NOW RECRUITING: Communications Intern
We are looking for a Communications intern to join our team! European Alternatives is looking for an intern that can work with us supporting our communications activities, learning how to work transnationally with a multidisciplinary team. Our projects are carried out across Europe often in partnership with other organisations and our members in Europe and the rest of the world. The internship will take place remotely with occasional travel. Internships are usually open to students who are still registered students in an education institution. Ideally there will be the possibility to have an Internship Agreement signed with your University. (ie. signed by you, European Alternatives and your university). The internship will be paid, with hours and salary to be discussed based on your location, availability and university grant status. Key projects which you will have the opportunity to be involved in are: General European Alternatives Communications including the EA journal, website, social media and visual identity renewal Movement Learning Catalyst – an educational project training social movement actors in transversal and cross-border organising Online citizens’ rights campaign ahead of the European Elections 2024 Transnational European Assemblies Project WHAT WE OFFER On the job training developing and implementing website, newsletter and social media schedules and content Insight into branding and visual identity setting processes working with innovative cause-led agencies Opportunity to contribute to our varied multimedia content including journal articles and web posts Opportunities for travel and networking across civil society, activist and cultural organisations around Europe Insight into the development and implementation of communications strategy Insight into planning and production of various multimedia outputs including promotional videos, documentaries, podcasts, journals and more Insight into analytics and reporting Main tasks include: Creating and updating engaging content on website and social media platforms using creative communications skills, with guidance Developing simple graphic designs on Canva, respecting the branding guidelines of the organisation and of our projects Simple video creation and editing for social media. Writing and sending newsletters to different audiences (Mailchimp management) Creating presentations and reports Attending key stakeholder meetings for learning and insight Tasks can evolve depending on the opportunities that arise and the skills you would like to develop HOW TO APPLY? Please send us in one single document: a one-page CV and a one-page maximum motivation letter to info@euroalter.com using the heading: Comms Intern 2024. Deadline for applications: We will consider applications on a rolling basis with a final deadline of 1 February 2024. Interviews will be held in the first two weeks of February. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU IF YOU: are fluent in English (working proficiency) are comfortable using social media are a strong team player and creative communicator who takes initiative and wants to bring in new ideas have a strong interest for engaging new and young audiences from diverse backgrounds want to stand up against discriminations of all forms and share our belief of participative democracy, equality and culture across borders It is a big plus if you have some experience in one or more of the following areas: project management, event organisation, journalism, social media and website management. We are particularly committed to hiring people from racial and ethnic minorities, people from LGBTQI+ communities, people with disabilities and people who identify with disadvantaged economic classes. If you don’t identify as one of these groups, we still want you to apply – but if you know of an awesome person who does, encourage them to apply as well! We look forward to reading your application!
Think Global Act Global
THINK GLOBAL, ACT GLOBAL will bring together activists and thinkers from around the world to work together on finding answers to the key planetary questions of our time. SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Clare Short (former Development Secretary) John McDonnell MP Zack Polanski (Green Party deputy leader) Raga Makawi (Sudanese democracy activist) Madhuresh Kumar (Indian climate activist/researcher) James Meadway (economist, Microdose podcast) Joey Ayoub (journalist, Hummus for Thought podcast) Shaista Aziz (Stop Trump Coalition) Yulia Yurchenko (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign) Nick Dearden (Global Justice Now) Hamza Hamouchene (Transnational Institute) Plus more to be confirmed Book your ticket Free markets were once sold as the route to global prosperitybut now that spell is broken. Yet the contours of the new system in formation are uncertain and the role of progressives complicated. The future we face is full of dangers as well as opportunities. Environmental disasters are unfolding in front of our eyes. In too many places it is the far right – threatening a new age of calamity and war – that is seizing the initiative. In the resistance to these dangers a vibrant internationalism is forming for these new times. 2024 may mark a major turning point for this tumultuous new era. Two billion people go to the polls. The choice in most of these contests is stark. Global democracy is in genuine peril. How do we make sense of – and respond to – the dramatic changes that are unfolding? What does internationalism in these new times look like? How do we need to change? And what practical steps should we take? THINK GLOBAL, ACT GLOBAL will bring together activists and thinkers from around the world to work together on finding answers to these questions. It is a process, not just an event. It is about building a movement of hope for new times. With sessions on: Palestine solidarity • Bidenomics • Climate internationalism • Trump redux and the far right • Pan-European migrant rights organising • Brexit and the economy • Progressive foreign policy • and more Standard tickets £10, but with a pay-what-you-can option. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
CCLab assistant.e Job Offer
European Alternatives is looking for a. research assistant for – as a priority – a European research project on alternative pedagogies for civic education and awareness-raising for democratic engagement. You will be included in an interdisciplinary and international research team (researchers from civil society). The position is full-time or 4 days/week, for a renewable period of 12 months. Research tasks include Animation and organization of civic education workshops, following a “participatory action research” method predefined by the project partners. Animation and organization of Focus Groups with young people, teachers, public decision-makers and technology specialists Planning and conducting interviews which will be recorded and transcribed Writing analysis reports Potential writing of academic articles Secretarial monitoring of the project and maintenance of coordination and cooperation with partners Dissemination in the formal and informal educational community of the tools developed within the project. Contribution to analytical reports and academic reports on these topics, in English If applicable: contribution to international meetings online or possibly in person. Other research assistance tasks for various research projects carried out by the association, notably FIERCE. Profile Doctoral student or postdoc. Based in Ile de France With professional proficiency in English (spoken and written) and French From educational sciences or political sciences, or related subjects Independent, autonomous but with a good habit of shared working methods Skills in training and leading working groups and individual educational monitoring (mentoring) are appreciated. Knowledge of gender-related themes and feminist movements would be an asset Pleasure and desire to travel and work in interaction with others Flexibility and adaptability The tasks are estimated at a minimum of 4 days per week, the expected remuneration will be between 1700 and 2100 euros gross depending on the actual working time (4 or 5 days) and experience. You will work under the supervision of the directors of the association. Workplace: Paris 17. The premises are shared offices. Part of the work can be done remotely. Frequent trips to France and other European countries are planned. Application: Send CV + Cover letter detailing experiences and research themes. Send by email with the subject “Research Assistant” to info@euroalter.com Diversity: Alternatives is an equal opportunity employer and particularly encourages applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds, education and professional experience. We recognize that people from underrepresented backgrounds are not sufficiently included in the NGO sector and we are strongly committed to doing what we can to correct this. If you think that such opportunities are less available to you, do not hesitate to apply. Applications will be studied as they are received. Ideally, receipt of the application no later than February 22, 2023. Interviews will be conducted by zoom or in person at Paris 17. Presentation of the association The European Alternatives association promotes democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state. It proposes to imagine, demand and implement alternatives for a viable future for Europe. Its action is based on four points: Articulate a radical, long-term vision of a democratic, just and culturally open politics, society and culture beyond the nation-state, for Europe and for the world. Experiment with forms of action that contribute to transforming political institutions, society, the economy and the imagination. Strengthen the capacities, mutual awareness and connections of members, activists and organizations who work in accordance with our values. Promote and defend human, fundamental, civic, democratic and social rights across borders. Missions and values European Alternatives promotes democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state and encourages implementing alternatives for the future of Europe. The association acts transnationally through creative and experimental activities. You will join a dynamic team, coming from diverse backgrounds and working mainly in English. European Alternatives works to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state and to imagine
Online open discussion with Laura Sullivan and Mashanti Alina
#OpenDiscussion: Come and join us online with Laura Sullivan and Mashanti Alina in Zoom on the 4th March at 18:30 CET!
Job offer: Campaign Coordinator
European Alternatives works to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state and imagine, demand and enact alternatives for a viable future for Europe. WE ARE DOING THIS THROUGH: Articulate a radical, long-term vision of democratic, just and culturally-open politics, society and culture beyond the nation-state for Europe and for the world. Experiment with forms of action that contribute to transformative change in political institutions, society, the economy and imagination. Build the capacity, the mutual-awareness and connection of members, activists and organisations working in line with our values. Advance and defend human, fundamental, civic, democratic and social rights across borders. OUR VALUES GUIDE HOW WE WORK TO PURSUE OUR MISSION: Transnational and local: we believe local and regional initiatives benefit from going beyond national boundaries and interests Transdisciplinary: we believe alternatives are generated at the intersection of disciplines and are enriched by diverse expertise and perspectives Creative and experimental: we believe in the power of the arts and culture to unlock imaginaries and in the necessity of acting and learning through experimentation Open, inclusive and feminist: we believe in a culturally open society and in diversity as a precondition for sustainable alternatives to emerge Empowering and participatory: we provide the space for citizens to network and ensure our activities and events give space for co-creation and participation Anti-eurocentric: we believe involving other parts of the world in our reflections and activities is necessary to make new alternatives emerge The role Ahead of the 2024 European elections, European Alternatives is recruiting a Campaign coordinator to launch its campaign in defence of equality, democracy, migrants rights and fundamental citizens’ rights beyond borders. This campaign will be part of a larger project entitled ‘TACKLE’, and give priority to issues of anti-discrimination and migrant rights. The campaign will specifically cover three thematics: Migration rights: equality and anti-discrimination Citizens and residents of the EU’s participation in democracy Social Justice for all The campaign is two-fold: the core content and messaging will be co-designed and implemented by the Campaign Coordinator, while the Communications team will create communications material to support its dissemination. The Campaign Coordinator will work on a daily basis with the Co-Directors, the Deputy Director, as well as with the Communications team, campaign partners and spokespeople mainly. Main Responsibilities Support the reflective thinking and strategic planning necessary to achieve a successful transnational campaign Contribute to policy proposals, particularly on anti-discrimination and migrant rights topics Coordinate across spokespersons of the campaign and teams of the main partner organisations to ensure fluidity of internal communication and interaction Seek pledges of support from candidates for the European elections Engage with relevant decision-makers and stakeholders and actively participate in key policy events to defend the interests of the transnational campaign Facilitate campaigning events, as well as strategic and impactful meetings (online and in person) and conferences gathering the main partners of the coalition to strengthen relationships and create new ones Support in identifying and onboarding new main partners adhering to the project of the transnational campaign, and in coordinating with like-minded other campaigns Liaise with media, with the support of our Communications Officer, to promote the transnational campaign and its main partners Collaborate in the preparation of communication products and actions Candidate requirements Education and work experience Degree in policy, EU affairs, social rights (including migration), political participation, or a related field At least 3 years of relevant professional experience in policy, lobbying or advocacy Working knowledge in the EU sector, focused on migration rights, social rights and/or political participation Skills and knowledge Familiarity with the main existing EU policy instruments related to the Social Pillar (ex: the EU anti-racism Action Plan, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, anti-discrimination directives, Democracy Action Plan, Defence of Democracy Package, …) and main EU policy relating to migration and asylum Familiarity with main tools of democratic political participation for EU citizens and residents Strong analytical skills with the ability to collect, organise, analyse, and disseminate significant amounts of information with attention to detail and accuracy Integrity and the ability to work with confidential information with discretion; awareness of safeguarding considerations when working with potentially vulnerable people Ability to work across various teams and coordinate efforts around a campaign Ability to work collaboratively with staff and other organisations, especially the local partners of the campaign Possess oral and written communication skills in languages: fluent English is a must; fluency in at least one other European language is necessary, notably French or Italian Working conditions Full-time or 4 days/week Initial period for 6 months Depending on contractual relationship and working time, the income range will be between 2800 and 3300 gross per month, VAT included. We are open to finding the best contractual arrangement based on residency and/or self-employed status of the candidates. European Alternatives has offices in Paris and Brussels. You can work in either one of these cities. Attendance in the office is compulsory one day per week Frequent travel is to be anticipated: up to 30% of working time How to apply? Send your CV and application letter to info@euroalter.com with the object “Campaign Coordinator application” by the 23rd of February 2024. Applications will be studied on a rolling basis. Diversity European Alternatives is an organisation actively seeking to move through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive journey in every aspect of its work. We acknowledge that people from under-represented backgrounds aren’t included enough in the NGO sector and we are strongly committed to doing what we can to correct this. We especially want to hear from you if you feel that opportunities like this are less available to you. European Alternatives is an equal opportunities employer and particularly encourages applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds, education and working experiences.
Literature in Margins
In the summer of 2023, we joined Faïza Guène, Fatima Ouassak, Rachid Santaki, Geovani Martins, Insa Sané and others for a weekend of literary exploration and summer sun in multiple cultural spaces in Saint-Denis. The Littératures en marges festival program included theater, academic lectures, rap workshops and performances, film screenings, discussions, concerts and more, all on the theme of literature from the margins. Note: the Saturday evening event was cancelled, and the Sunday modified, due to the protests denouncing the killing of Nahel M. The organizers of the Festival des Littératures en Marges support the protests, and the artists were rescheduled to a later date. You can read organizers Juliet Carpenter, Christina Horvath and Ségolène Pruvot’s commentary on celebrating the voices of the suburbs in the context of police violence in France here.
Freedom of Expression Evening
In a global and national context of increasing discrimination, violence and repression, the evening proposes to gather around freedom of expression and mobilizations for human rights and against discrimination. 7.30pm to 9pm: A space for gathering, discussion and sharing actions. 9pm to midnight: Musical liberation and fun with concerts. Free entry, but reservations recommended. No form of discrimination will be tolerated. Reserve your ticket Facebook — Maddly. Jongleuse de codes. Engraineuse de mots. Kickeuse de sons Armée de sa voix, son clavier et sa flûte, elle cisèle une musique farouchement affranchie et délicieusement double. Face A: Minimaliste et organique quand la songwriteuse prend la parole. Face B: la prêtresse chamanique de la danse, du beat et du flow se réveille et nous plonge dans les dancefloors des backrooms londoniens. Viens perdre tous tes repères pour la suivre dans un street movie qui parle de femmes, de bitume, d’identité, de nuit, de clichés, de départs. Au bout du chemin, la liberté. Insa Sané est écrivain, comédien, chanteur et slameur. Avec Lam Solo il crée le groupe 3K2N et en 1996, il fond avec une trentaine d’autres artistes -danseurs, chanteurs, graffeurs, compositeurs- le collectif Guérilla. En 2001, il se lance dans la comédie. Il intègre la troupe de théâtre Le Théâtre du voile déchiré avec laquelle il joue dans Les Oranges, une pièce qui tourne dans toute la France pendant quatre ans. En 2003, 3K2N signe chez Desh Musique. Il sort deux discs, Guérilla sous le nom de Possee Guerilla en 1998 et Du Plomb dans le crâne, en 2008 avec le Soul Slam Band. Auteur engagé, il produit des ateliers d’écriture stimulants et a sillonné les salons de la France entière, mais aussi les librairies, les bibliothèques, les collèges et lycées, les maisons d’arrêt. 75 flowers est un artiste né dans le 18è arrondissement de Paris. Après plusieurs années à faire ses classes à travers le monde à Londres, Stockholm, New-York ou à Dakar, 75 flowers revient à Paris pour définitivement lancer son projet musical. A l’instar d’un bouquet composé de fleurs, il propose des sonorités variées et colorées qui se mélangent et forment un tout cohérent et ultra good vibe. De la Bossa Nova au Rap en passant par la UK garage, en Anglais ou en Français, 75 flowers se présente comme le monde qu’il regarde : eclectique et sans limite. — If you would like to take part in the open discussion, or propose an idea, please contact : b.dibb@euroalter.com
Power to the People Webinar: “Who Decides in Europe? … For Farmers, Nature & Consumers”
Click here to register! Dear friends! In many European countries farmers are taking to the streets to demand a change in the rules governing the food system, from farm to shops, all the way to the fork – touching all our lives in the process. The highly competitive and industrialized food system is seen by many as a burden for farmers, consumers, the environment and climate. While there is less consensus among protesters about what exactly needs to change, the feeling of political powerlessness in the decision-making process in the European Union and in the member states is palpable for many – as are severe conflicts of interests. With the EU quickly backtracking on key nature and agricultural reforms as response to the farmer protests, many ask: Who decides in Europe? This is why we as Power to the People Group (see our previous webinars here) are hosting our next transnational, multilingual and interactive webinar covering this topic. It will be the start of a series on participatory democracy in Europe. With expert speakers we take a close look at how European democracy really works – both the written as well as unwritten rules between parliament, governments, civil society and lobbyism. What to keep and what needs to be changed to make sure that the priorities and values of the European citizens are not forgotten? We will hear from those involved at different stages of the decision-making process. Knowledge is power. Power to change. We aim not to answer all the questions on agriculture, food pricing, nature and climate. What we want to do is collect and distribute knowledge about the decision making processes as they are, and as they could be. European democracy is a vast sea and in this event we want to give you all a map to better navigate it – not least with the European elections coming up. With knowledge comes the power to change. Our speakers include: Prof Vivien A. Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and International Relations in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies; Professor of Political Science at Boston University andFounding Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe. Isabel Paliotta, Policy Officer for Sustainable Food Systems at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) MEP Jutta Paulus, Negotiator for the Nature Restoration Law and Methane Regulation (Greens, Germany) MP Aurélien Taché, Member of the French National Assembly for rural constituency Val-d’Oise (Les Verts, FR) Marta Messa, Secretary General for Slow Food EU César Luena, MEP, S&D, EP’s chief negotiator on NRL (tbc) Paulo Gouveia, Chief Policy Advisor, Copa Cogeca (tbc) Geneviève Savigny, European Coordination of Via Campesino (tbc) Prof Stephen Stec, Environment and Democracy Workgroup CEU and Lead Researcher RealDeal initiative for citizen participation in the European Green Deal (tbc) See online for an updated list Date: Thursday, 22 February 2024, 1900 – 2100h CET Register here Simultaneous interpretation is provided for English, German, Italian and French. This is the first event of our new series “Building a ‘Digital European Public Sphere’ Participatory democracy in the EU: current challenges and future perspectives” as part of the Democratic Odyssey for a permanent European peoples’ assembly (more here). All our previous events are available here. Please, join us for this event and invite others! Everyone at the Power to the People Group A cooperation of European Alternatives, European University Institute, Europe Calling, Mehr Demokratie, Another Europe is Possible, Citizens Takeover Europe, ECI Campaign and The Democratic Odyssey
Beyond Geopolitics – Progressive Demands for EU Enlargement
Tuesday 5 March 2024 (9.30 – 13.00) European Parliament (Brussels) – Spinelli 1G2 Driven by geopolitical ambitions, EU leaders are pushing forward a new round of enlargement. In candidate countries such as Ukraine and Moldova, the accession process will bring about deep political, economic and societal transformations in very little time. This conference aims to involve alternative voices in the debate around upcoming reforms, both in candidate countries as well as of the EU Treaties. EA Director Ségolène Pruvot will be speaking at the event. Click here for the latest updates. Languages: German, English, French, Greek, Spanish, Czech, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Slovak. Register HERE before 28 February. Contact: julia.klaus@europarl.europa.eu, helmut.scholz@europarl.europa.eu The event will be live-streamed. Online participants can use the Slido app to ask questions. The conference will be followed by a light lunch. PROGRAMME Welcome and opening remarks Helmut Scholz, MEP – The Left Stelios Kouloglou, MEP – The Left Ever Larger, Ever Closer? Reviewing the EU Treaty, Learning Lessons & Addressing Contradictions Keynote: Günter Verheugen (Commissioner for Enlargement 1999-2004, Commissioner for Enterprise & Industry 2004-2010, Germany) Adrian Zandberg (Co-leader of Lewica Razem, Poland) (tbc) Tea Jarc (ETUC Secretary, Slovenia) Ségolène Pruvot (Director of European Alternatives, France) Leïla Chaibi (MEP, The Left, France) Chair: Nikolaj Villumsen, MEP – The Left Beyond Geopolitics: Addressing Expectations & Challenges for Candidate Countries Keynote: Elisa Ferreira (Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Portugal) (tbc) Vitaliy Dudin (activist, NGO Sotsialnyi Rukh, Ukraine) (tbc) Vladimir Simović (Centre for the Politics of Emancipation, Serbia) Radmila Šekerinska (Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration 2002-2006, Minister of Defense 2017-2022, North Macedonia) Inna Șupac (Institute for Strategic Initiatives, MP 2009-2019, Moldova) Ion Ceban (Mayor of Chișinău, Mișcarea Alternativa Națională, Moldova) Andris Kesteris (European Commission, Media and Civil Society Principal Advisor at DG NEAR) Chair: Stelios Kouloglou, MEP – The Left Ready or not: Progressive Demands for EU enlargement Debate, in person and via Slido Chair: Helmut Scholz, MEP – The Left Closing Remarks Helmut Scholz, MEP – The Left Stelios Kouloglou, MEP – The Left
European Common Space for Alternatives
An exciting gathering of transnational social movement actors uniting to build transformative alternatives. Today, throughout Europe, we have a blossoming of mobilisations and social experiments that are exciting and enriching. At the same time, however, we are facing major and often dramatic challenges. While we have a large number of thematic networks in Europe, we no longer have a common space for all the social and citizens’ movements that would enable us to share our experiences and challenges and develop joint initiatives and mobilisations. Over the last two years, numerous meetings and conferences have provided an opportunity to discuss this absence and to make a modest attempt to rebuild this common space. We intend to bring together more people from diverse origins and backgrounds to the understanding of a caring society. Today, we want to propose a new step in this process by meeting together in the run-up to the European Union elections in June 2024. This broad encounter, which will be held in Marseille, France, from the 26-28 April, will be based on a simple premise: “To challenge the far right, we need a social, feminist, antiracist, ecological, peaceful and democratic Europe”. The event will be organised using a bottom-up approach, giving everyone the possibility to express themselves and to organise discussions and actions. Together, let’s make this encounter a milestone for change!
“The Meeting Point” – an exhibition and publication on female migration experiences
“The Meeting Point” by the DEMO participant Ally Zlatar delves into the depths of a transformative journey, drawing inspiration from the countless untold stories of the hardships women have endured in the forced and non-forced migration process. Through these works, we explore diverse perspectives and artistic expressions that illuminate the intricate relationship between art and the quest for identity within transitioning homelands and new contexts.Moving beyond visual allure, these artworks serve as poignant messengers, urging systemic reform, the preservation of connections in migrant communities, and a collective plea for humanity in the face of adversity. The Starving Artist aims to encourage reflection on the profound impact of belonging and identity formation through the lived-in experiences of artists to examine more in-depth what it means to navigate female-migrant identity in the 21st century. More info: https://starvingartist.cargo.site/the-meeting-point
Fluid Connections – Open Call for Emerging Artists & Thinkers
Fluctuations is looking for 5 people coming from any artistic field, or disciplines such as political sciences, philosophy, and ecology who are interested in a collaborative artistic process. Fluctuations is a transnational boat festival wandering European rivers, to mobilize on social, environmental, and citizenship topics! At numerous stops, a riverboat stage – the festiboat – docks in cities. The riverbanks come alive with joy, music, art, assemblies, workshops, sustainable food court and a kids section inviting all participants to co-create a collective future. Fluctuations will go full scale with its own boat in 2025 but is partnering up with Urban Boat for 2024 for beta events. Fluid Connections residency will take place on the Urban Boat during, and between, these events, aiming to create a space of interdisciplinary co-creation and exchange, and their work will be showcased at the festival. Specifically, we are looking for residents available for a period 6th to the 13th of July, and 14th to the 21st of July -between the Festivals in Lille (6-7/07), Brussels (13-14/07), and Utrecht (20-21/07) and/or additionally around the Fluctuations Festival in Hungary (around Szolnok, from the 8th to the 14th of September). Residencies will be live-in on Urban Boat, most cabins contain a single bed and the bathroom is shared, food will be provided. Selected residents will take part in preliminary online meetings/workshops at a time that suits the group during the months leading up to the residency. We believe that emerging artists need space and visibility and we want to support all those who participate in our residencies through creating an artistic community and offering networking opportunities following the events. Our fluid concept for creation is the following, if you can connect to it, don’t hesitate to apply! Rivers are moving bodies of water that weave like veins around the Earth. The river is in a constant state of movement and flow. We can look at it as what naturally separates or connects areas. Rivers are fluid borders. Rivers are flowing and soft, yet strong, and can influence and shape things of a more substantial material than themselves. Rivers shape the land, the rocks, and the caves. Rivers supply fresh water to still waters, ensuring that the ecosystem is maintained. Rivers are both stagnant and ephemeral. Rivers help different species to migrate, thus maintaining the existence of certain species. They provide mobility for humans, opening up pathways that would otherwise be inaccessible. The Fluid Connections residency invites its participants to be inspired by the nature of rivers in their work. The aim of our residency is to create an interdisciplinary collective artwork by artists and art enthusiasts from different disciplines. In this residency, we want to challenge the fluidity of the participants, encouraging them to dare to experiment and to dare to cross their own boundaries, to find in their diversity what can unite them. Find the fluidity between different artistic disciplines and be open to shaping each other’s artistic visions. To bring refreshing and innovative ideas to social arts like rivers are providing fresh water to the lakes and seas. At the same time, rivers can provide an extraordinary range of themes relevant to socially and environmentally conscious living. Environmental issues, biodiversity, climate crisis, migration, borders, colonization, accessibility, mobility, rights of nature, hydrofeminism & gender fluidity, and social inequality are just some examples of the themes that can emerge in collaborative work. We believe that art can shape people’s thinking in the same way as rivers can shape the earth, that is why we think it is important to give space for artists to talk about topics that affect people’s lives. How to apply? The residency applicants will be selected by the Fluctuations festival team. Residency applicants will be evaluated through a two-stage selection process. The first step will be based on the work submitted and the application form, and the second step will be an interview with the selected individuals. Deadline to apply: 23.59 Sunday 14th April Registration form: https://forms.gle/js89454teawTg1qB6 Questions: contact b.dibb@euroalter.com & vincefueg@gmail.com
Who we are
We pride ourselves on having a young, talented and transnational team that works hard to ensure European alternatives is a continuous success story. Meet the team of staff behind our organization. Meet the team
Ecosystem and network
Since 2007, European Alternatives has been working and networking with thousands of organisations, groups and initiatives around europe and beyond to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state. European Alternatives seeks to work in reinforced ongoing collaboration with selected organisations and individuals to build convergence and civic capacity across borders. We are part of an ecosystem composed of ally organisations which we have closely collaborated with us on our activities. Our network is the backbone of all our activities and play a fundamental role in achieving our mission. Featured partners Arts & Culture Campaigns & movements Civil Society Organisation Commons Community Organising & Education Media Migration Research & Academia
Resources
News and stories Videos Our videos include promotional, divulgative and journalistic productions by european alternatives and materials that are part of talk real, our audiovisual platform for the diffusion of innovative ideas and for the promotion of grassroots organizations and the individuals behind them. Publications Our publications include policy reports, tool-kits, books, artistic journals, magazines, and academic researches. Podcasts European Alternatives runs a number of podcast series on the themes of democracy, culture and equality beyond the nation-state. Our different series explore artistic, technological, geopolitical, academic and societal questions from a transnational, transborder perspective. Peruse our in-house and collaborative podcast series below. Research about EA European Alternatives runs a number of podcast series on the themes of democracy, culture and equality beyond the nation-state. Our different series explore artistic, technological, geopolitical, academic and societal questions from a transnational, transborder perspective. Peruse our in-house and collaborative podcast series below. Press Training and learning At European Alternatives we are always learning. We seek to create spaces to share our experiences and learn from wider movements, communities and partners. To this end, we participate in and co-create training and learning programmes for beginners and experts interested in transnational democracy and enacting a future beyond the nation state.
Training & learning
At European Alternatives we are always learning. We seek to create spaces to share our experiences and learn from wider movements, communities and partners. To this end, we participate in and co-create training and learning programmes for beginners and experts interested in transnational democracy and enacting a future beyond the nation state. Our learning approach involves a wide community of trainers, facilitators, and educators that work to train and support activists, organisations, and movements to lead more hopeful and more powerful struggles in their countries, cities, and communities. Our offline and online educational training and workshops do not require prior academic knowledge or activist experience so everyone can become part of the next generation of organisers and movements caring for people and the planet – united across the divisions and borders of struggles, communities, and nations. We experiment with formats and methodologies and are inspired by practices of popular education, transformative and experiential learning, place-based education and community organising. Our training & learning programme Below you can find our active and past projects that are part of our training & learning programme. Many of our resources and programmes are open to the public – sign up to our newsletter to get the latest updates on how you can get involved in our training & learning programmes.
Call for freelance feminist communications services
The Horizon Europe project FIERCE is centred on the study of discourses, actions, and democratic initiatives of feminist movements and organizations. Its goal is to analyse their impact on institutions and policies and to develop joint initiatives to strengthen democracy in Europe. This comes at a historical moment marked by the rise of anti-gender, populist, and far-right/conservative political forces. Following a participatory approach, the project intertwines research with the implementation of a series of concrete activities involving feminist movements and actors. FIERCE seeks to launch campaigning activity in seven prioritised thematic areas: 1. Combating anti-gender movements & consolidating a European feminist network. 2. Reproductive and sexual rights as a human right in Europe. 3. Foreign policies in war/conflict times. 4. LGBTQIA+ rights. The FIERCE project wishes to hire a communication agency or an individual professional with relevant expertise, to support the conclusion of the campaign design and implementation. For more details and to apply, read the terms of reference here. The deadline for proposals is 22 March 2024.
Decolonial Europe Day
The Decolonial Europe Day is an initiative that uses the occasion of Europe Day (9 May every year) to bring together existing decolonising initiatives, civil society organisations and other actors around the common project of decolonising Europe, understood as an ongoing process. Our intention is to create a space for exchange on how to decolonise Europe, to amplify decolonial voices in and on Europe, to support the creation of synergies and to make this type of conversation more mainstream in Europe, with the ultimate purpose of dismantling and replacing colonial power structures. Following the first edition in 2023, the second edition will take place in online format on 9 May 2024. The project is initiated by a small group of people in collaboration with several civil society organisations and pre-existing decolonising initiatives (see ‘about us’ section). The initiative aims to contribute to a shift in the dominant narrative on Europe in Europe, knowing that a shift of the narrative is a precondition for dismantling colonial power structures. While Europe Day typically mobilises those celebrating Europe, our approach is different. As stated by Gurminder K Bhambra, “Europe’s past is an imperial and colonial past”, to which we add: Europe’s present and future will continue to be a colonial present and future unless Europe makes decolonisation its core concern.
Democratic Odyssey People’s Assembly Topic Selection Workshop
The Democratic Odyssey, a project that has as its Zenith the establishment of a sortition-based People’s Assembly for Europe, needs your help to select the topic of the People’s Assembly. The Democratic Odyssey campaign is a crowdsourced, decentralized and collaborative initiative to embed citizen participation and deliberation in Europe; led by a consortium of highly experienced organisations. You can find a summary of the project on the webpage, but in a nutshell: the aim is to create and experiment with a ‘proof of concept’ for a Peoples’ Assembly for Europe, transnational of course, but also trans-local, i.e. one that feeds local participatory initiatives and is neither totally top-down (initiated by an institutional authority) nor completely bottom-up (initiated by civil society alone) but follows a third way (initiated, carried and supported by a coalition of actors from all walks of life). This process will lead, in September 2024, to the implementation of a prototype Assembly in Athens. The Democratic Odyssey team is currently in the process of selecting a topic of the assembly. The Topic Selection Workshop is taking place this Friday 22 March, from 12:00 to 14:00 CET (GMT+1) and it is open to all. We are deeply committed to bringing together diverse actors and to foster a constructive dialogue necessary to identify a topic that is impactful, cross-cutting, future-focused, and that represents a pressing issue faced by the European citizens. Your input would be very valuable and you are invited to join the Workshop. If you are interested, please fill out this form and you will receive the Zoom connection details.
Press
European Alternatives in the media
Earth Day Med
We are happy to be part of Earth Day’s transformation into Earth Day Med. From 19 to 21 April in various locations around Palermo, the festival will host concerts, screenings, children’s workshops, artistic events and a scientific and political conference on the ecological and environmental challenges of our time. There is no better place than Palermo and Sicily to reflect on the complexity of the current situation in the Mediterranean: thanks to its central position in the basin, Sicily preserves the memory of ancient cultures that have traversed the region over the centuries, and is today a landing point for those fleeing conflict and poverty, often exacerbated by climate change. From next week, the programme, artists and keynote speakers will be presented on our website and social channels. The festival is in collaboration with Ecco climate, Boll Foundation, Sustainability and Ecological Transition Centre, Memoria Viva Ecomuseum. Under the patronage of the Land and Environment Department, Municipality of Palermo, Union of the Mediterranean. Supported by ARS, Department of Tourism, Gesap and Allianz Foundation.
Imagine, Demand, Enact! Poster Competition Eu Elections 2024
The EU elections are coming up this June and it’s time to get creative! Do you want to use your budding art and design skills to promote basic rights and social transformation? We have an exciting opportunity open to anyone who wants to get their creative juices flowing. We’re running a competition to select the most inspiring, original, and powerful posters to promote social justice, citizens’ and migrants rights, and voter engagement ahead of the European Elections 2024. We’re looking for submissions on key transnational themes including climate, the economy, the cost of living crisis, workers rights, wom*n’s rights, the rights of minoritised communities, LGBTQI+ issues, housing rights, healthcare and other key topics that affect us all across borders. We especially welcome decolonial, feminist and intersectional messages. So what are you waiting for? Get your designs in now. Anyone can submit a design. We particularly encourage under 25s, unemployed and precariously employed people and people from minoritised, racialised and LGBTQI+ groups to make entries. Send your submissions to info@euroalter.com with subject line ‘POSTER COMPETITION’. Your design should fit an A4, A3, A2 or A1 poster format. DEADLINE: 11 April 2024, but we will be reviewing submissions on a rolling basis. Don’t wait to get yours in! PRIZE: The winners will be awarded 500 EUR and a travel opportunity to visit Marseille from the 25-28th of April – keep the date free.
OUT NOW EA Journal Issue 5
Issue 5 of the EA Journal is out now. Click here to read it. Spring is a time for new beginnings. In the EU, reproductive rights are high on the agenda as France inscribes the right to abortion into its constitution in a historic win for women’s rights, catalysing a push for the right to be guaranteed EU-wide. As Segolene Pruvot outlines in the Transversal Visions section of this journal, womens’ rights across the continent are by no means guaranteed – yet movements and organisers on the ground are enacting daily successes that we should celebrate. In the same section one such woman, artist Ami Weickaane, makes the case for her own enfranchisement as a decades-long resident of France who is still denied the right to vote – a pertinent issue as the EU elections approach. Outside Europe, global attention is still on the unfolding genocide in Gaza, where thousands of women and children continue to be killed, pregnant women have no medical facilities and premature babies are left for dead in bombed hospitals. The military applications of artificial intelligence have contributed to the high civilian death-rate. Ron Salaj, in an article on the uses and misuses of AI, argues that AI is the ‘Other’ of human and that we must resist it. Drawing on his latest research, Alvaro Oleart reflects on how the failures and successes of the global Palestine solidarity movement highlight the need to continue building an intersectional, decolonial ‘movement of movements’ to push mass mobilisations onto the level of permanent organisation, tangible power and concrete, material wins. This means continuing to connect with other anti-imperial struggles from the Congo and Sudan to Ukraine, as well as thematic global movements such as the climate movement, workers’ organising and human rights struggles. In the Assembling, Organizing, and Connecting section of the journal, Seema Syeda presents a case study of a Muslim women-led transnational anti-Islamophobia initiative; Bertie Coyle from Just Stop Oil makes the case for citizens’ assemblies as a more radical tactic than direct action; Rafa Font suggests alternatives to Big Tech; and EA presents two new podcasts highlighting transnational organising and migrant workers’ experiences: Beyond the Nation-State and Workers Without Borders. We also share a link to watch our latest Power to the People webinar on farming and agriculture. Last but not least in our Art Beyond Borders section, Celia Zayas transports us to a cultural festival on the sleepy volcano island of Annobón; Dina Ntzoria celebrates the power of diaspora art; Péter Tasnádi-Sáhy tells us more about the methodology of transformative theatre; and we watch Marion Colard in situ at her Série « PATA » exhibition, a co-created event representing the rich lives of Cluj’s Roma communities. What the broad array of actions and movements around the globe tells us is that though we may live in times of despair and feelings of powerlessness, we are in fact many; we are a multitude – and as Naomi Klein recently stated in a speech seeking to find hope – that multitude shows resolve. That multitude shows commitment, commitment to movements: “Movements for true equality, and justice — social, racial, gender, economic and ecological justice. Movements that exist in every country. Movements that have grown with tremendous speed over these past terrible months. Grown not only in the size of marches and blockades but in the depth of their analysis. Grown in their willingness to make connections across movements and issues, and in their willingness to name underlying systems. If these months have taught us anything, it is that these movements are all we have. In your country as well as mine, there is no moral leadership except the leadership rising up from the grassroots. All we have is one another.” Seema SyedaHead of Communications, European Alternatives
Diventate sostenitori/trici della campagna “Patto per l’uguaglianza”
Chi siamo Avocats sans Frontières, European Alternatives e un gruppo di partner della società civile e dell’università si sono uniti per promuovere l’uguaglianza e combattere la discriminazione che colpisce in particolare le comunità di migranti in Europa. Lavoreremo insieme in questo anno elettorale cruciale e nei prossimi anni per trasformare l’approccio europeo sulla diversità. Cerchiamo sostenitori/trici che si uniscano a noi! L’appello Le elezioni europee si avvicinano e le persone con background migratorio, le persone razzializzate, le donne, le persone LGBTQIA+ e altre minoranze continuano a essere usate come capri espiatori e a essere oggetto di discorsi che incitano all’odio. Ciò riflette la discriminazione sistemica ancora prevalente in molte parti della società e della politica europea. La discriminazione in tutte le sue dimensioni è in aumento in tutti i Paesi europei, nonostante i tentativi dell’UE di affrontare razzismo, sessismo e omofobia. Un recente sondaggio di Eurobarometro (n. 535) conclude che la discriminazione è considerata “diffusa” e “sempre più prevalente”, in particolare sulla base dell’identificazione come Rom, del colore della pelle o dell’origine etnica, del credo religioso, dell’identità di genere o della sessualità. Le attuali politiche dell’UE in materia di frontiere e migrazione rischiano di aumentare ulteriormente questa discriminazione. Noi diciamo: basta! Per questo motivo, nel periodo della campagna elettorale e in seguito, è necessario amplificare le voci e le azioni delle persone razzializzate e di quelle con un background migratorio. Insieme, solleciteremo i/le candidati/e alle elezioni europee a impegnarsi per un Patto per l’uguaglianza, incentrato sull’antidiscriminazione e l’antirazzismo in tutte le politiche dell’UE, compresa la migrazione, e a promuovere l’impegno regolare dei/le parlamentari con le comunità e le organizzazioni guidate dai migranti in Europa e oltre, nonché a promuovere la diffusione delle migliori pratiche dalle esperienze locali. Cerchiamo persone (artisti/e, attivisti/e, organizzatori/trici di comunità, persone con background migratorio (1°, 2° o 3° generazione), cittadini/e interessati/e), residenti in Francia, Belgio o Italia, che possano contribuire a co-creare e promuovere la nostra campagna Patto per l’uguaglianza. Dove e cosa Dovete essere disponibili tra il 24 aprile e le elezioni del Parlamento europeo (il 9 giugno 2024) per: – Contribuire attivamente all’elaborazione del messaggio e dei contenuti del Patto per l’uguaglianza – Cercare di parlare del Patto sui canali mediatici e in altri forum pubblici – Registrare videointerviste e altri contenuti per i social media – Organizzare e partecipare a dialoghi con i/le candidati/e al Parlamento europeo e ad altri eventi della campagna. Cerchiamo di creare una comunità di sostenitori/trici, attori/trici della società civile e funzionari/e eletti/e dopo le elezioni, per continuare a lavorare sull’integrazione dei temi della lotta alla discriminazione e al razzismo nella definizione delle politiche europee nei prossimi 5 anni. Chi Per essere portavoce di questa campagna i/le candidati/e ideali dovrebbero: – Avere un’esperienza diretta di migrazione, un background migratorio o far parte di gruppi a rischio di discriminazione razziale. – Avere esperienza nella società civile e nell’impegno comunitario lavorando con persone con background migratorio, – Avere una certa esperienza e reti di contatti nella campagna contro la discriminazione e per i diritti e la partecipazione degli/le immigrati/e. – Avere una certa esperienza nel campo dei media e/o dei social media – Essere disponibili per un incontro e una formazione di tutti i/le portavoce a Marsiglia dal 26 al 30 aprile, durante il forum sociale dello Spazio comune europeo per le alternative (ECSA). – Essere in grado di dedicare circa 4 ore a settimana alla campagna di maggio e di viaggiare in base alle esigenze legate alla campagna e agli eventi di sensibilizzazione. – Parlare inglese e francese, italiano o fiammingo. – Incoraggiamo in particolare le candidature di giovani, donne e minoranze di identità di genere. I sostenitori/trici riceveranno un compenso per la loro partecipazione di 700 euro, oltre alle spese di viaggio e alle indennità giornaliere. Idealmente dovrebbero vivere in Italia, Francia o Belgio. Come Se desiderate candidarvi o nominare un/a potenziale candidato/a, siete pregati/e di inviare un’e-mail a tackle@euroalter.com fornendo un breve paragrafo di motivazione entro il 10 aprile, o il prima possibile. Il team di European Alternatives e Avocats Sans Frontières si metterà in contatto con i/le candidati/e per confermare la partecipazione. Questo documento è stato prodotto con l’assistenza finanziaria dell’Unione Europea. Il contenuto del documento è di esclusiva responsabilità di European Alternatives e non può in nessun caso essere considerato come riflettente la posizione dell’Unione Europea.
We’re Hiring a Fundraising Manager in Berlin
We’re Hiring a Fundraising Manager in Berlin! European Alternatives is searching for an experienced Fundraising Manager for a part-time position (30 hours/week) to work in our Berlin Hub. The monthly salary will be € 3.000 gross. The position starts in June 2024 and is initially limited to 1 year until June 2025. An extension is desired. ABOUT EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVES & THE SCHOOL OF TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZING European Alternatives is a transnational non-profit organisation working closely with grassroots initiatives to imagine, demand, and enact democracy, equality, and culture beyond the nation-state. European Alternatives Berlin Hub is running the “School of Transnational Organizing,” a grassroots school where everyday people, social movement builders, trade union organizers, migrant workers, climate justice activists, community artists as well as marginalized communities meet to learn the tools and skills to master the lost art of organizing solidarity and together shape the landscape of what we think is possible. With a wide community of trainers, facilitators, and educators, we inspire, train, and support new popular pioneers, organizations, and movements to spread political hope, courage, and joy in their countries, cities, and communities. WHO WE SEARCH FOR Your Profile Your Tasks and Responsibilities WHAT WE EXPECT Essential Requirements Desirable Skills WHAT WE OFFER HOW TO APPLY European Alternatives is an equal opportunities employer. We are particularly encouraging applications from candidates with marginalized backgrounds, education, working and life experiences (class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, disabilities, etc.). If you don’t identify as one of these groups, we still want you to apply – but if you know of an awesome person who does, encourage them to apply as well! Candidates should ideally be Berlin-based and available to start work from May/June 2024. We want to create a prospect for continued employment if additional funding is raised. Any questions? Contact us via berlin@euroalter.com! Apply now via our application form! Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until 03.05.2024.
Contributors
We’re always on the lookout for new contributions to the EA journal. Taking an intersectional approach, we’re looking for topical content – text, audio, video and visual – that addresses the critical themes that affect us all from a transnational, transversal perspective. We cover a range of issues including climate, democracy, workers’ rights, social and economic policy, antiracism, decolonisation, feminism, Roma rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and more. We hope the journal can be a space to bring together thinkers and actors (and especially people who are both at the same time!) to explore novel ideas and engage in critical reflection on our work and the social movements around us. We strongly encourage submissions from people from minoritised and underrepresented backgrounds. Contact our editor Seema Syeda at s.syeda@euroalter.com if you’d like to contribute to the journal.
Journal
Print Editions
The entire backlog of the European Alternatives journal is available to download in PDF format, in versions beautifully created for print by the avant-garde designer Luca Pantorno. Follow Luca on instagram @lucapantorno. Issue 5 Issue 4 Issue 3 (Romanian version) Issue 3 (English version) Issue 2 Issue 1
Contribute
We’re always on the lookout for new contributions to the EA journal. Taking an intersectional approach, we’re looking for topical content – text, audio, video and visual – that addresses the critical themes that affect us all from a transnational, transversal perspective. We cover a range of issues including climate, democracy, workers’ rights, social and economic policy, antiracism, decolonisation, feminism, Roma rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and more. We hope the journal can be a space to bring together thinkers and actors (and especially people who are both at the same time!) to explore novel ideas and engage in critical reflection on our work and the social movements around us. We strongly encourage submissions from people from minoritised and underrepresented backgrounds. Contact our editor Seema Syeda at s.syeda@euroalter.com if you’d like to contribute to the journal.
Diaspora Art: creativity takes courage
Dina Ntziora on achieving authentic representation in cultural creation. But one Country, Rod Duncan – Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge, edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan In a world marked by diverse cultures, the arts serve as a powerful catalyst for fostering community cohesion within diaspora populations. This transcendent force not only preserves the intricate threads that connect individuals to their homelands but also propels a wave of contemporary creativity that embraces traditional folk art, promoting cultural diversity through various modes of artistic expression. The primary objective of supporting the contemporary cultural manifestations of diaspora communities goes beyond mere preservation—it is a celebration of identity, a testament to the richness of shared heritage. By nurturing these artistic endeavors, we create a platform that values the contributions of every individual, irrespective of their background or circumstances. This inclusive approach enables artists from diverse backgrounds to showcase their talents and share their unique experiences with an audience that is receptive and supportive. For refugees and those seeking refuge, whose journeys are often marked by hardship and displacement, the arts become a lifeline. They offer a means of expression, a way to communicate across barriers and rebuild a sense of belonging. The creative process becomes a sanctuary for healing, a space where resilience is transformed into art that speaks to shared humanity. Communities, in turn, come together through these artistic expressions. Whether through exhibitions, performances, or collaborative projects, the arts provide a common ground where differences are celebrated rather than feared. In this shared space, diverse narratives intertwine, creating a tapestry of unity that transcends borders and enriches the collective human experience. As we explore the transformative power of diaspora arts for community cohesion, it becomes evident that the creative process is not only about individual expression but also about forging connections. It is a bridge that spans cultural gaps, fostering understanding, empathy, and a sense of shared identity. In the face of challenges, the arts become a testament to resilience, a force that unites, heals, and ultimately strengthens the bonds that tie us together. In what ways can the arts be leveraged to empower refugees not only as storytellers but also as active participants in shaping the narratives that define their experiences, and what role do creatives play in facilitating this shift towards a more inclusive and participatory approach to cultural expression? Considering the intricate relationship between the arts, community, and collective identity, how can creatives and cultural professionals navigate the fine line between cultural appreciation and appropriation, ensuring that the power of artistic expression is wielded responsibly and respectfully? Embracing the transformative power of cultural exchange through the Arts of Diaspora extends beyond specific events, becoming an ongoing narrative interwoven into the social fabric of our communities. The belief in the ability of arts and culture to shape attitudes, foster understanding, and celebrate diversity is not bound by temporal constraints but rather represents a continuous and enriching presence in our collective experience. Activities centered around the Arts of Diaspora, rooted in shared principles and values, serve as dynamic agents for cultivating informed and inclusive attitudes. These engagements offer experiences that nurture empathy and connection, shedding light on the diverse reasons behind displacement, the rights of diaspora communities, and the structural challenges they encounter. As creatives and cultural professionals, our role is to hold space for the voices and stories of diaspora communities. By providing a platform for their artistic expression, we transcend stereotypes and resonate with mainstream audiences, contributing to a broader understanding of diverse perspectives. Through cultural activities, a sense of unity is fostered, offering the broader community an opportunity to deepen their understanding of diverse perspectives. By showcasing the abundance of diaspora narratives through diverse artistic mediums, Diaspora Arts reaches out to mainstream institutions, schools, local councils, faith groups, and cultural organizations, providing a platform for the wider community to explore and appreciate the richness of diversity. Ensuring authentic representation and avoiding tokenism in creative endeavors involves fostering meaningful and respectful engagement with diverse communities. This entails authentic collaboration from the project’s inception, involving community members in decision-making processes, and sharing power over the narrative. Diverse representation should go beyond surface-level characteristics, considering a range of experiences, perspectives, and stories. Long-term relationships built on trust and understanding contribute to more authentic representation, while continual self-reflection and education help creators navigate potential biases. The emphasis is on empowering communities to tell their own stories and cultivating a deep appreciation for the complexities within diverse narratives. By adopting these principles, creatives and cultural professionals can contribute to a richer, more inclusive creative landscape that transcends tokenism and authentically celebrates diversity. Providing a stage for voices to be heard, stories to be told, and healing to unfold through art and culture is a profound acknowledgment of the power inherent in shared human experiences. This becomes particularly crucial when engaging with minorities, underserved communities, and those experiencing displacement. Beneath the surface of apparent differences, we discover a tapestry of shared emotions, dreams, and aspirations that connect us on a fundamental level. Embracing the role of creatives and cultural professionals in advocating for authentic representation and breaking through systemic barriers requires courage and a readiness to take risks. The act of fostering unity and understanding through cultural activities serves as a daring endeavor to challenge pre-existing norms and biases within mainstream institutions. By showcasing the abundance of diaspora narratives through various artistic mediums, these individuals are not only providing a platform for the wider community to explore diversity but are also confronting systemic barriers that may resist the amplification of marginalized voices. In conclusion, the engagement with minorities, underserved communities, and displaced populations underscores a fundamental truth: beneath external differences, we share a profound commonality as human beings. The narratives woven through art and culture illuminate our shared struggles, triumphs, and aspirations, firmly asserting that our similarities far surpass the perceived divisions. This acknowledgment serves as a bridge connecting diverse communities, nurturing a sense of unity and…
How to be a free European digital citizen
IT engineer Rafa Font explores practical alternatives to big tech. Technology was supposed to be different. It should empower us to do more, with fewer intermediaries. But instead, we are trapped by “infinite scrolling”, and our productivity derails. Everyone should have access. It should be both safe enough for kids, and easy enough for older people. But reality is different. This is not the technology that we signed up for We should be able to choose providers. A photo provider from a company, and a storage provider from another, should work together. But when someone sends you pictures on OneDrive, but you use Google Photos, you need to download them one by one and upload them again. We should be able to express ourselves (without being jerks). Why, then, did our friend have to take down that Instagram video of her holidays, as she was getting so many rude comments? The online environment should be safe. However, we recently received a suspicious email asking us for our credit card details, which we promptly marked as “phishing”. IT should be sustainable. Energy consumption should be low, and hardware components should be recycled. Compare that ideal with the reality: data centres built beside rivers, returning the water used for cooling 2-3°C warmer. These six aspects (productivity, access, choice, freedom, safety, sustainability) are extracted from the “European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles”, from December 2022. It seems we’re still far from the ideal. Big Tech is Big, but is it Tech? Their business model is based on capturing our attention, measuring what we do, and then showing us personalised ads. We might think that the main revenue of the Big Tech industry comes from technology. It doesn’t. It comes from advertisements, so we could call them the Big Ads industry instead. In 2022, 80% of Google’s revenue came via ads. For Twitter, it was 90%. For Meta (including Facebook and Instagram), over 98%. This is their play book: The European Union has a history of disagreements with Big Tech, and there’s a long list of fines issued due to competition misbehaviours. Despite all this, European governments still advertise big American tech companies in their front pages, for free. Because free publicity is what you do when you show the icons of Twitter/X, Instagram, and Facebook in your front page. The European Union has brand-new laws for the online world: the “Digital Markets Act” (DMA), and the “Digital Services Act” (DSA). As digital citizens, do we need all this regulation? “Do you feel bad after two hours scrolling social media? This is exactly what it was designed for.” You might be using the Chrome browser on an Android phone. On your Windows laptop, maybe you use WhatsApp web app for your social life, LinkedIn for your professional contacts, and Gmail. You just received a message: it’s a friend sending you a YouTube video. Your phone blips: it’s an Instagram notification. You spend more time there now than on Facebook. In just five minutes, you have used 9 tools that are directly affected by the new regulation. European institutions are setting limits to Big Tech European laws might affect the whole world. This happened with the RoHS (to remove hazardous substances from electronics), and with GDPR (to protect personal data). International companies that operate in Europe have to comply, and sometimes it’s cheaper to adapt their whole business to what Europe requires. That’s the well-known “Brussels effect“. Its latest hit has been Apple’s switch to USB-C (also known as “standard European port”) in the iPhone 15. The DMA sets obligations for “gatekeepers”: not to abuse their position of power to promote their own products, not to use personal data gathered through one product into another (e.g. feed Facebook with WhatsApp data), and allow you to install software from other sources (being able to get your apps from other “stores”, not only the Play Store or the App Store). The DSA, in turn, targets “online platforms”. On them, ads must be prominently marked as such, and users can know who is paying for them. Those with more than 45 million users in the EU get special treatment. These are the “Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines” (e.g., Wikipedia, Booking, Pinterest). They are mandated to run risk assessments of potential infringements, mitigate them (for instance by reinforcing their content moderation), and set up crisis response mechanisms. Their algorithms will be audited (such as the one that composes your Instagram feed, or the recommendations you get from YouTube). Four European Alternatives for digital products that you can use today: Proton, Mastodon, Murena and Fairphone Under the European vision of being online, you’re above all a citizen. Technology is here to serve you. Under the current state of affairs, however, you’re above all a customer, if not a product. You can use technology, but this is a sub-product of the ad-selling business. It’s time to meet the resistance. On the website “European Alternatives for Digital Products”, Constantin Graf, a freelance software developer from Vienna, is compiling a list of IT tools created and hosted in Europe. He’s doing it to support local businesses and improve data protection, as EU-produced digital tools tend to be better at complying with related EU laws than US-made tools. Hosting in the EU is an important requirement for companies handling sensitive data. These tools support the freedom of the European digital citizen. Let’s highlight four examples that you can use right now. Reclaim your digital identity with ProtonMail Today, email is your digital identity. Gmail scans your emails to insert related advertisements in the middle of your inbox. That’s their business. Proton is not in the ads business; it’s in the tech business. It was created in 2014 in Switzerland to reclaim people’s control over their privacy, starting with email. Some of its strong selling points have been security, privacy, encryption and open source. 10 years later they’re a profitable company with offices all over Europe. Andy Yen, Proton’s CEO, is an…
Beyond The Nation-State
We’ve launched a new series of podcasts and videos at European Alternatives. Scan the QR codes below to dive into Beyond the Nation-State or Workers Without Borders, or watch our latest Power to the People event on farming and agriculture. Beyond the Nation-State How can we act beyond borders? What alternative realities can we build? How do we take care of people & planet, building a solidary society that works for everyone – at the intersection of class, gender, sexual orientation & geographic origin? How do we take care of non-human beings? In the Beyond the Nation-State podcast series, we meet transnational activists, academics, cultural practitioners & civil society to imagine, demand & enact alternatives. Scan the QR code to listen to Beyond the Nation-State: Workers Without Borders Workers Without Borders is a three-part podcast series bringing together migrant workers from the Western Balkans that are currently working or have worked in different European countries in different sectors. We explore the challenges they face, their experiences, and their motivations to move between countries. Scan the QR code to listen to Workers Without Borders: Power to the People Watch the latest Power to the People seminar on who makes key decisions in Europe about farming, agriculture and food supply. In many European countries farmers are taking to the streets to demand a change in the rules governing the food system, from farm to shops, all the way to the fork – touching all our lives in the process. The highly competitive and industrialized food system is seen by many as a burden for farmers, consumers, the environment and climate. While there is less consensus among protesters about what exactly needs to change, the feeling of political powerlessness in the decision-making process in the European Union and in the member states is palpable for many – as are severe conflicts of interests. With the EU quickly backtracking on key nature and agricultural reforms as response to the farmer protests, many ask: Who decides in Europe? This is why we as Power to the People Group hosted a transnational, multilingual and interactive webinar covering this topic. It is the start of a series on participatory democracy in Europe. With expert speakers we took a close look at how European democracy really works – both the written as well as unwritten rules between parliament, governments, civil society and lobbyism. What to keep and what needs to be changed to make sure that the priorities and values of the European citizens are not forgotten? We will hear from those involved at different stages of the decision-making process. Knowledge is power. Power to change. We aimed not to answer all the questions on agriculture, food pricing, nature and climate. What we want to do is collect and distribute knowledge about the decision making processes as they are, and as they could be. European democracy is a vast sea and in this event we want to give you all a map to better navigate it – not least with the European elections coming up. With knowledge comes the power to change. Speakers include: Versions in English, German, Italian and French are available. This is the first event of our new series “Building a ‘Digital European Public Sphere’ Participatory democracy in the EU: current challenges and future perspectives” as part of the Democratic Odyssey for a permanent European peoples’ assembly (more here). All our previous events are available here. Power to the People is a cooperation of European Alternatives, European University Institute, Europe Calling, Mehr Demokratie, Another Europe is Possible, Citizens Takeover Europe, ECI Campaign and The Democratic Odyssey. © Teemu Mäntynen Scan the QR code to watch the video.
People’s Assemblies: a radical proposition
Just Stop Oil activist Bertie Coyle argues why we need deliberative democracy now. Politics is broken but democracy is the cure. That’s the call coming from the corner of the ‘environmental movement’ that I stand in – an organisation called Just Stop Oil. Based in the UK, we’re part of the A22 network, a global coalition of like-minded groups which take disruptive direct action against drivers of the climate crisis. Just Stop Oil is called a radical group by Britain’s media. But we must take this with a pinch of salt because these media institutions are the other face of the coin to parliamentary politics, which we agreed was broken in the first sentence. I don’t think we’re that radical. That we’re in civil resistance may be, and this is essential to overturn the corrupt systems. But the demand for ‘No New Oil and Gas Licences in the UK’ is quite a reasonable goal. Moderate, even. A radical ask might be demilitarisation. Or the abolition of police and prisons. Or the end of rentierism, finally allowing landlords to retrain as ballet dancers, and train drivers, and watchmakers. These sorts of programmes could shift the systems of inequality and violence which prop up the power of a few at the expense of the masses. They sound radical to me both in the sense of ‘radical, dude!’, but also ‘radical change’. Comparatively, starting the slow process of winding up noxious carbon fuels for cheap and cheerful renewables doesn’t seem like a big ask. Finally stopping oil might not end business as usual. Resources will flow from the south to north, valuable things will be made by workers and owned by bosses, and GDP growth will be the metric by which we measure the value of life. Some companies may go bankrupt. But that’s not a radical change. There was probably a time when the Zeppelin market was considered too big to fail and local anarchists scrawled “IT IS EASIER TO IMAGINE AN END TO THE WORLD THAN AN END TO BLIMPS” in pedestrian underpasses. Next thing you know the Hindenburg disaster happens and everyone gets used to aeroplanes instead. Capitalism grinds on. The energy transition could be radical if it made the means of creating electricity a common good. But if it replicates the same exploitative structures that we see now, just with less emissions, it won’t realise its radical potential. In fact, that might save capitalism. With all that being said, we’re having a mighty struggle with this (on the face of it) reformist demand. A majority of British society is against the extraction of oil and gas. It makes you think. The government and the media, that horrible coin we picked up earlier, are both riding out for a sunset industry that is causing the worst crisis the world has seen since the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. You would be forgiven for thinking they are not working in our best interest, or even the interest of their own class. It’s a mystery. Mysteries like this, strange conflicts that fail to collapse under the weight of their contradictions, must be the result of system failure. A system that functions for a time can stop functioning due to external change. Even if it was better than the last one, it has now failed. Representative politics is better than feudalism. But feudalism was better than slavery. The hobbled form of democracy we currently have is not up to the task of softening the blow of global climate collapse, let alone stopping it. This is unarguable. We’ve passed 1.5C warming, and 2C is locked in. People didn’t vote for this. They didn’t vote for the UK’s rivers to be looped into the sewerage system, and they didn’t vote for a genocide in Gaza either. But here we are: swimming is an extreme sport and our government funds the companies that make white phosphorus munitions for Israel. British politics, so-called representative democracy, is producing self-replicating errors, glitching into a broken loop of toxic interests. The causes for this failure are malignant, but the cure isn’t. Citizens’ assemblies (sometimes ‘people’s’ or ‘jury’) are a model of direct democracy that orients power from the bottom-up. Creating policy through this kind of open, deliberative process is more empowering than liberal democracy. Rarely are people asked to speak their minds, even less be listened to. But it’s a liberating experience, and creates enormous goodwill. That’s because we’re not intrinsically buyers of a political product, but community members. “We’re not intrinsically buyers of a political product, but community members.” Fully realised, the citizen’s assembly model is a paradigm shift to a new, deeper form of democracy and popular empowerment. A salve to the political process. In this very moment it’s the tool to plan, organise, and execute progressive campaigns that win elections. In the years to come it will be embedded into the process of government – selected by sortition, like a poll, so that big money can’t corrupt it. “Fully realised, the citizen’s assembly model is a paradigm shift to a new, deeper form of democracy and popular empowerment.” An acerbic saying goes: liberals hear tone not content. Transgressive actions that call for reform are radical in tone, but not content. Having tea with your neighbours in the function room of a mosque and thrashing out local matters isn’t radical in tone, but it is in nature. Taking hammers to a petrol station feels more radical than a sober, directly democratic process to decide on key national issues – but it’s not necessarily. Perhaps we’ll be fair to the liberals who confuse tone for content by admitting that leftists can confuse ‘radical, dude!’ for ‘radical change’. “Taking hammers to a petrol station feels more radical than a sober, directly democratic process to decide on key national issues – but it’s not necessarily.” Liberal democracy has been captured by private interests, and the consequences of this can be measured in gargantuan units of suffering. Some reading this are certain that the…
Empowering Muslim Europe
Seema Syeda presents a case study of a Muslim women-led transnational initiative to address Islamophobia. Islamophobia is widespread in Europe in all spaces across the political spectrum. In the UK Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim were the number one target of religiously motivated hate crime in the year ending March 2023. Latest research in Germany shows that almost 1 in 3 Muslims (30%) in Germany state that they have been physically assaulted several times in the past year, with 50% being physically assaulted at least once. 1 “1 in 3 Muslims (30%) in Germany state that they have been physically assaulted several times in the past year.” There is a long historic context to anti-Muslim hatred in Europe. From the medieval crusades and religious persecution of the Spanish Inquisition, Europe’s more recent history of colonisation (including multiple genocides of Muslim and other populations), to the Bosnia genocide and persecution of Crimean Tartars, the continent has been the site of serious violence directed towards Muslims. This violence is little acknowledged in traditional and institutional histories and narratives of Europe. Today the construction of a white Judeo-Christian identity that dominates mainstream Western discourse about who can and who cannot be ‘European’, often directly but also insidiously, for instance in discourse around ‘integration’ and migration, contributes to an exclusive, violent and discriminatory space for Muslims and other racialised communities. Economic Context In many European societies, Muslims are amongst the lowest income bracket and are overwhelmingly working class. In modern capitalist society, which continues to be structured by an imperialist world order, Muslim populations around the globe are often amongst the most exploited for land and resources. From Bangladesh, where British colonialism and resource exploitation provided the motor for Europe’s Industrial Revolution, enriching the continent while impoverishing South Asia, to Iraq, Palestine, Libya and countless other countries invaded and bombed by European powers and their allies for access to land and oil, this imperial world structure has also shaped migration flows to Europe where migrants from majority-Muslim countries and other racialised groups can be exploited for cheap labour. It is thus useful for the ruling classes of Europe to maintain violent borders and harsh rhetoric and policies against resident Muslim populations and Muslim and racialised migrants. This aids in the continuous economic exploitation of these populations, many of whom live in economic insecurity, and also provides an easy scapegoat for the failings of nation-states and the EU to create equitable living conditions for all members of the population. The political, social and economic context above have established a broader structure of White Supremacy in Europe and the world. Scholar Francis Lee Ansley defines it as follows: By “white supremacy” I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings (Ansley, 1997). The campaign Another Europe Is Possible (AEIP) was founded to campaign against Brexit from a progressive and left-wing perspective. This meant supporting the transnational nature of the EU whilst being critical of its crony capitalist, neoliberal and imperial tendencies, including violent border regimes. It also meant tackling the structural causes of Brexit, particularly anti-immigrant sentiment and scapegoating of migrants for the inequality and economic failures caused by the state. Noting the rampant Islamophobia amongst the supporters and the rhetoric of the ‘Leave’ campaign and the far right in the UK and Europe, AEIP decided to launch a transnational anti-Islamophobia campaign, focusing on the UK, France and Germany as key sites of state-led and far right Islamophobia. Process and actions AEIP is a member-led democratic organisation. It’s strategy is decided by the National Committee, elected by members. A proposal to launch an anti-Islamophobia campaign was put forwards at National Committee and agreed. An anti-Islamophobia working group was established. It was led by members of the National Committee with lived experience of Islamophobia – Seema Syeda and Shaista Aziz, who both have Muslim backgrounds. An important foundation of any successful anti-racism campaign is that it should be led by those with lived experience; firstly to counter the dominance of white supremacy rather than reinforce it, but also because those with lived experience are by nature best placed to understand the nuances of the issues at play. It was also important as recognition of the fact that Islamophobia could be present and reinforced within our own organisation and progressive spaces alike, as it is a societal problem which few people have had awareness training and exposure about. Those without lived experience were also involved in the working group as key allies and supporters. “An important foundation of any successful anti-racism campaign is that it should be led by those with lived experience.” One of the first steps requested by the National Committee was an anti-Islamophobia training session for the committee itself. AEIP lacked financial resources for a formal training at the time, but we did run a public anti-Islamophobia event platforming UK Muslim voices who described the different kinds of Islamophobia they had experienced in progressive, centrist, right-wing and far right spaces alike, as well as the connection between Brexit and Islamophobia. We then held a transnational event in the run up to the French presidential election 2022 where Marine Le Pen ran her candidacy on a deeply Islamophobic campaign while the incumbent President Macron replicated some of her language and implemented Islamophobic policies, continuing a long tradition of French state attacks on the basic rights of Muslims in the metropole and in the colonies, supported by actors across the political spectrum. At this event we platformed self organised Muslim and migrant-led groups such as the Front Uni Des Immigration et Quartiers Populaire aswell as important allies such as Centre d’études et d’initiatives de solidarité internationale (CEDETIM) and Réseau…
‘We Are Many’
Ami Weickaane reflects on the lived experience of being ‘Euro but not European’ and presents a manifesto for change. The article tells the story of an Afro-European woman who has lived in Europe for over two decades and highlights the issue of exclusion despite significant contributions to her adopted country’s cultural and economic life. The woman in question is excluded from the political process – unable to vote or influence policies that affect her daily life and community. Her story raises essential questions about belonging and inclusion in modern Europe. Despite living, working, raising a family, and paying taxes in a European country, she needs to gain the legal recognition that comes with nationality, preventing her from fully embodying what it means to be European. This exclusion extends to one of the most fundamental rights in a democratic society: the right to vote. As the European elections approach, she and many others in similar situations find themselves voiceless, unable to influence decisions that affect their lives and the communities they have grown to love. The predicament of non-EU nationals like her is a personal issue and reflects broader legal and political dynamics within Europe. The criteria for naturalisation are strict, and policies often reflect the continent’s struggle with questions of identity and acceptance. As a result, many long-term residents are left in limbo. They are Europeans in every sense except legally, contributing to their communities, economies, and social fabric, yet excluded from the democratic processes that shape the continent’s future. It is crucial to ensure that these individuals are not left behind. ‘The criteria for naturalisation are strict, and policies often reflect the continent’s struggle with questions of identity and acceptance.’ Moreover, the challenges faced by these communities have intensified due to the rise of extreme right-wing politics in Europe. Xenophobic rhetoric and policies not only make their situation worse but also contribute to a hostile environment. The story of this Afro-European woman prompts us to consider the meaning of citizenship and belonging in a changing Europe. It challenges us to reflect on how inclusive our definitions of democracy and participation truly are. A critical gap in the European Union’s approach to inclusion and democracy This story is not only about an Afro-European woman who faces many complexities and challenges. ‘We Are Many’ is a testament, a manifesto, and a wake-up call as she represents a diverse group of people, including doctors, neighbours, hairdressers, students, journalists, and many others. Despite being deeply integrated into her host country, her journey highlights a critical gap in the European Union’s approach to inclusion and democracy. As of early 2019, approximately 21.8 million non-EU nationals lived in the EU, making her situation far from unique. These individuals contribute to their communities and the economy daily. However, they often have little say in shaping policies that affect their lives. ‘As we approach 2024, a year marked by global elections, let us find the courage to become the protagonists of our own stories.’ The experience raises critical questions about identity and social cohesion. The status of long-term residency without citizenship can impact one’s identity and the broader social fabric of Europe. The absence of a legal pathway to complete belonging challenges the notion of a unified European identity and risks creating divides within societies. Balancing these two priorities is crucial. European immigration and naturalisation policies are at a crossroads between ensuring national security and upholding human rights and inclusion principles. How can we rethink these policies to protect both citizens and non-citizens’ dignity and rights without compromising either? The exclusion of long-term, non-citizen residents from the electoral conversation raises questions about the representativeness of European democracies. It is vital to ensure that the diverse tapestry of European society is reflected in its political processes. Additionally, the increasing influence of right-wing nationalism across Europe poses significant challenges for immigrants and minority communities. How can European societies promote an inclusive narrative that embraces diversity and counteract divisive forces? ‘The exclusion of long-term, non-citizen residents from the electoral conversation raises questions about the representativeness of European democracies.’ ‘One way is by fostering a European identity transcending national borders and legal statuses, recognizing all residents as integral parts of the European community.’ An urgent need for activism and policy reform in Europe Additionally, the story of this Afro-European woman highlights the urgent need for activism and policy reform. Organisations and associations that advocate for immigrant rights are crucial in promoting more inclusive policies. Their efforts, combined with concerned citizens’ activism, are essential in bridging the gap between those who contribute to European societies and those who are acknowledged with full rights and privileges. The upcoming European elections present a critical opportunity for reflection and action as a catalyst for change. EU citizens are offered a moment to reflect on the type of continent they want to create. Will it value diversity and inclusion or give in to exclusion and division? This is a call to action for voters to consider the impact of their choices in the broader community, particularly those who contribute to the European project without recognition. Can we, who have invested our lives, talents, and dreams in this continent, be counted and heard? As a 46-year-old Senegalese woman who has woven the fabric of my life into European culture, I find myself at a crossroads. Europe, the backdrop of my growth and maturity and the birthplace of my entirely European children, presents a paradox of belonging that is both enriching and isolating. As a militant for human rights, voices, and mobility in the creative industry, I am deeply embedded in Europe’s cultural and socio-political landscape. However, my lack of European nationality makes it difficult for my voice to be heard in the corridors of power where decisions that shape our collective future are made. The upcoming elections hold personal significance for me. They prompt me to question whether Europe can be home for someone like me, who has contributed to its culture, diversity, and vibrancy yet remains…
Festival Sãlôngô: what happens where nothing happens
A boat brings back joy. Celia Zayas recounts her experiences of Festival Sãlôngô in the island of the sleepy volcano. “Annobón! Land!”, cried someone. Kids stood quickly and went to the deck to see the emerging land. I stood there, lying on the improvised common bed we had built on the floor. “It’s just four. We will not be arriving until six or seven,” someone said, turning his back to continue sleeping. We had been on the boat for four days. An old cargo ship with no cabins and capacity for 50 comfortably-seated passengers in a room, had been home for over 400 people and tons of fuel for the town’s generator, bags of rice, boxes of oil, building materials, water and other basics sent by relatives, that had no other way to arrive in Annnobón. After sleeping one on top of the other, over the luggage, next to the engines, and on every little corner safe from the wind and the cold for three nights, sharing a single toilet room, everyone was thrilled to arrive. Furthermore, many were returning to their homeland after years of being away. This boat being the only means of transportation to and from Annobón, once a month, and announced only two days in advance, makes it difficult for people to keep ties with their island. For some of us, the trip meant a discovery; we were about to hold the very first festival in the history of the island. Annobón: the where. Annobón is a sleepy volcano of 22 km2 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Gulf of Guinea. It belongs to Equatorial Guinea, yet its closest neighbor is São Tomé e Príncipe, with whom relations are almost non-existent. Geographically, and symbolically, Annobón is a far place relative to neighbouring lands. Annobón is home to the Ambo or Annobonese people, one of the six ethnic groups of Equatorial Guinea, but most of them do not live in Annobón. Lack of resources, transportation, food, employment, communications – 3G-net arrived only in December 2022 – frequent electricity shortages and limited access to education (only primary school can be completed on the island), force people to migrate to other parts of the country, where they usually establish themselves permanently. Still, they keep longing and dreaming of this central African paradise island, full of fishes, whales, dolphins, tuna, forests, rivers and lakes, where kids learn to swim and fish before they are even able to walk. Perhaps this has made Annobón a land of poets, writers and musicians, despite the difficult living conditions. Outside, they keep the dream alive through the Ambo culture: a language, fá d’Ambo, unique music and dance styles, spirituality, traditions, and a common and complex history emerging from colonization(s), oppression(s), creativity and community. Yet, for many, Ambo culture is a dying culture. In a globalized world with clear cultural hegemonies, surviving as a (very) minoritarian culture requires political will and resources, both of which are lacking in this case. The absolute lack of protection, systematization or recognition measures, and a general perception of the Ambo culture not being useful for scaling up in the social ladder, as it is not an asset for employment, nor is it linked to power spheres, rather the opposite, complete the picture. For many young Ambo people, their culture does not have value, and their island does not have a future. Some others want to change that. “In a globalized world with clear cultural hegemonies, surviving as a (very) minoritarian culture requires political will and resources.” Logistically, politically, and socially, development agencies or big organizations have worked little to none in Annobón. Historically, the island has been left behind and the situation has not changed much, even after Equatorial Guinea became an upper-middle-income country due to oil reserves discovered in the 1990s. But we were a group of young people with little to lose. Toiñ Bull, a young Ambo singer, a prominent figure in the cultural Ambo sphere, and a community activist, came up with the idea: what could show the value of traditional culture, while giving opportunity to young people, and disrupting the routine, all at once, in Annobón? A cultural festival. Festival Sãlôngô is a story. We are back in the boat. It is 9 am, and we see the island in front of us, an enormous green volcano with houses on its slope. People are walking like little ants making their way to the harbour to receive their relatives, who will be arriving with a new rice bag, frozen meat or soap, which they receive with a smile. “We are here, finally”, says Gines, an Ambo-ndowé poet and the accountant of the team. It is his first time visiting Annobón, his mother’s land. For him, the Festival Sãlôngô means knowing his own roots. By 11 am, we were already established in the primary school. The local government had offered us the space for camping and conducting workshops, a local business lent mattresses to us, and the regional hospital lent us their few mosquito nets. Food, water, sound materials and backpacks were all over the place, after being transported from the boat – we had to bring everything from the capital, so as not to make the only supermarket on the island run out of groceries and water – but all 60 people, artists, volunteers, organization, and trainers, were happy. For five days, the town changed. At the school, we taught. We put in place the program “Xima Ja Pe Tela” (sow in your land), a training program on Ambo cultural expressions through music, drums and woodcraft, and on entrepreneurship and cultural management to ensure some continuity of activities. However, with children accounting for the larger demographic group of the island, the children’s space was the most successful. There, youngsters learnt traditional stories, important places, traditions and spirituality of Annobón. In the afternoons, kids were thrilled by traditional sports competitions, all linked to the beach and the sea, as the most important place in Annobón, and…
‘The Lost Art of Organising Solidarity’
Alvaro Oleart draws on research to make the case for building a ‘movement of movements’. 1 In 2024, the time is ripe for more structural movement building, cohering fragments and transforming them into a broader transnational and decolonial political project. For instance, the ongoing transnational Palestine Solidarity movement has been able to not only shift the dominant public narrative on Israel, but also connect its anti-colonial struggle to other issues. As argued by Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden (2023), “there is no climate justice without human rights”. However, the Palestine Solidarity movement has also shown the limits of organising transnationally without permanent movement structures that articulate a ‘movement of movements’ (Cox and Nilsen, 2007) capable of structurally connecting different but related struggles. For this reason, it is an urgent task to build convivial spaces for movement infrastructure, where learning and unlearning processes are fostered and where different movements can connect to one another. Only by creating and encouraging these spaces can different movements with different political cultures get to know each other and ultimately construct a joint political culture in which different movements fit. Given the important power imbalances within movements, as economically powerful organisations tend to dominate them, it is necessary to think of ways in which these spaces can be democratised. There is a temptation from bigger organisations to operate on their own and only occasionally join other groups in a coalition that campaigns for a specific demand. The project-based understanding of cooperation structurally entrenches the position of power of bigger organisations, and also fuels distrust between them and grassroots organisations and activists. In the long term, focusing uniquely on project-based cooperation may actually harm movement solidarity because it emphasises the perceived ‘self-interest’ of organisations, as opposed to the articulation of a movement that may have short term concrete goals, but also a broader shared collective vision. If environmental organisations only cooperate on explicitly environmentally-related campaigns, it will nourish an instrumental conception of cooperation. Hence, tactical coalition-building in specific campaigns ought to be combined with broader discussions that encourage solidarity and movement-building – hence why Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden’s explicit support for Palestine is an encouraging and important sign. Prefigurative politics and transnational linkages These prefigurative movement spaces need to be supported and treated with care—there are far too many activist organisers that have suffered from burnouts related to the difficulties of managing and coordinating a wide range of organisations2. Evidently, different organisations have different priorities (workers’ rights for trade unions, women’s rights for feminist organisations, the environment for environmentalists, elections for political parties…), yet there is no contradiction between them, and they would politically enhance each other by mutually and intersectionally supporting one another in solidarity. Furthermore, they would be able to introduce these priorities in spaces that might otherwise not consider them as a priority. There is no magic formula for the successful articulation of a ‘movement of movements’. In fact, a managerial approach to configure coalitions would operate against the spirit of such endeavour. But it is important to acknowledge that, in spite of the differences that organisations may have, we are part of a common journey in the struggle for democracy. Without such permanent movement structures, different movements are likely to operate in parallel instead of joining forces to strengthen each other. The process of bringing together actors from different political and national spaces into a common movement requires the acknowledgement of mutual interdependencies. In turn, acknowledging them requires socially skilled actors that work precisely on building those bridges and convince a heterogeneous group of actors that they have common ground. The articulation of a ‘movement of movements’ is not an automatic process that mirrors global neoliberalism, but rather the outcome of practices of solidarity and activist organising. A transnational and intersectional field of action does not exist beforehand; it is constructed through the action of socially skilled organisations that make links between different political spheres and are able to construct a common political diagnosis that leads them to act together. It is not self-evident why a diverse group of actors ought to operate within the same political umbrella; it requires a process of meaning-making that encourages these actors to work together. Crucially, the singularity of the diverse actors is not eliminated by becoming part of a broader political project or movement. Much to the contrary, the singularity is enhanced by connecting it with other causes. When feminist organisations create links with environmental or migrants’ rights organisations, the gender dimension is reinforced in those spaces, thus enhancing its singularity within a larger and heterogeneous movement. Similarly, when Spanish trade unions connect with trade unions in Chile, the international dimension is strengthened. This organising vision closely aligns with Hardt and Negri’s (2004: 211) understanding of the ‘multitude’ : In political organization as in narration, there is a constant dialogue among diverse, singular subjects, a polyphonic composition of them, and a general enrichment of each through this common constitution. The multitude in movement is a kind of narration that produces new subjectivities and new languages. Building on the work of Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, I have conceptualised this political imaginary as the ‘decolonial multitude’ (Oleart, 2023) in order to further emphasise the decolonial component of connecting movements across borders. These movements realise that, in order to bring about new ideas into the public sphere and push for political change, it is also necessary to innovate in their political practices. A crucial source of inspiration in this sense can be drawn from the relationship between the United States civil rights movement and anti-colonial struggles. As argued by Erin Pineda (2022: 29-30), “the anticolonial frame was not a theoretical construct devised and imposed entirely by movement leaders from above, but a live context that connected the domestic grassroots to related fields of action across a world constructed through this action”. Transnational linkages and horizons have long existed, and it is only by connecting those struggles that a meaningful democratic transformation can take place.…
Transnational Feminism and Its Foes
Women’s rights are under attack but there are grounds for hope, argues Ségolène Pruvot.1 While feminist movements are transnational by nature and examples of positively changing societal attitudes abound, efforts to build more inclusive societies are increasingly in the crosshairs of well-funded anti-rights networks. Achieving a truly feminist Europe requires resources, support for activists, and alliances at all levels. Dreaming of a feminist future for Europe could conjure up a place in which no one is left behind. One in which no one is discriminated against for reasons of gender, race, sexual orientation, physical abilities, place of birth, or nationality. A place in which those with families can be parents and have fulfilling work, where those who want a family have the means to do so, and those who don’t do not have to justify why. Above all, a feminist Europe would be a place in which no violence is accepted as a means of dealing with inter-human and inter-species relationships. Feminism is a way of understanding the world and of acting. It rejects existing forms of social organisation that subjugate women and racialised people and that exploit people, animals, and Earth’s resources. It is a positioning that tries to understand, conceive of, and challenge domination. It is a way of situating oneself to be able to understand how various forms of domination and discrimination intersect. Feminism reflects on and from the position of women and women’s rights, not to establish (some) women as the new dominators, but, on the contrary, to forge paths towards a world where domination is not the rule. Feminist thinkers, intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists generate the fertile ground for imagining and constructing alternative models. Feminist movements are the beehives that nurture new ways to push for alternatives. “Feminism… rejects existing forms of social organisation that subjugate women and racialised people and that exploit people, animals, and Earth’s resources.” As part of these movements, I work on building transnational linkages between feminists with initiatives such as Room to Bloom, which networks and supports feminist artists, and FIERCE, which analyses feminist and anti-gender movements in various countries. While dreaming may be necessary, feminist movements are, above all, about doing: courageously and relentlessly paving the way for change; refusing established forms of domination; and building new practices. Threats to women’s rights Unfortunately, the dream of a peaceful future based on the principles of respect, social justice, and freedom is slipping further away every day. Growing social and economic polarisation – the impact of global capitalism – combined with rising nationalism and a return to the political mainstream of previously established xenophobia and extreme-right movements are key threats to women’s rights and the feminist movement. Until recently, feminism as a social movement was seen as a thing of the past, a movement that – with the supposed triumph of equality – had lost its reason to exist. The deflagration of the #MeToo movement in 2017 (also thanks to the flames bravely ignited and nurtured by feminists in previous years) managed to reinstate feminism as an acceptable frame for action in the public space. By unveiling the profound reach of patriarchy in our societies, it exposed the sexist and sexual violence women and children face throughout their lives, and the illusion of equality between women and men. MeToo has not reinvented feminism, but it has gone some way towards changing societal attitudes towards the movement. It has blown fresh wind in the sails of feminist work throughout the world and shown it to be just and justified. It has generated hope when the reasons to despair and feel paralysed are many. But #MeToo also happened at a time when anti-gender movements were slowly and surely gaining ground, often attacking women’s rights under the pretence of defending them against what they saw as the aberrations of radical feminism. Nationalist and extreme right movements – such as the Rassemblement National (RN) in France under Marine Le Pen and Fratelli d’Italia under Giorgia Meloni – have excelled in hijacking and reappropriating parts of feminist legacy. These have been reinvented and reinterpreted into what American author Susan Faludi has called “femonationalism”2, to target progressive feminism, reproductive rights, and migrants. This was strikingly encapsulated by Giorgia Meloni as she addressed a crowd of supporters of Spanish far-right party Vox in 2022: “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby! Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology! Yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death! Yes to the universal values of the Cross, no to Islamist violence! Yes to secure borders, no to mass immigration!” Just over a year after Meloni took office as Italy’s first female prime minister in October 2022, the climate has already changed for LGBTQI+ Italian residents. In July 2023, a state prosecutor demanded that the birth certificates of 33 children born from medically assisted reproduction to lesbian couples be amended to erase the name of the second mother. This is a modus operandi that consists of instrumentalising anti-gender discourses to counter the idea of equality between humans, and it therefore undermines the very foundations of our democracies. Reproductive rights are seen as a domain in which it is possible to “demonstrate” and instrumentalise what conservatives want to portray as an essential difference between humans. These ideas have a strong foundation in the Vatican’s conceptualisation of the difference between men and women. As researchers Sara Garbagnoli and Massimo Prearo highlight, a new essentialist representation of women as equal to men as humans but essentially different has been promoted by the Vatican since the 1990s3. In 1995, in a letter to bishops entitled Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II even encouraged women to promote a “new feminism” that “affirms the true genius of women” (i.e. supporting life). The Vatican has been instrumental in creating the myth of a “gender theory” that needs to be confronted to protect life. One of the powerful coordinating networks pushing this idea is Agenda Europe, created in 2013, “which forms…
Artificial Intelligence is the Other of human
Ron Salaj argues why we must resist AI. AI is Everywhere, but it doesn’t come from Nowhere Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere: from autonomous vehicles to digital assistants and chatbots; from facial/voice/emotion recognition technologies to social media; from banking, healthcare, and education to public services. (And, even in love too). However, AI doesn’t come from nowhere. We are living in a moment of polycrisis. New wars, conflicts and military coups are emerging on almost every continent in the world with a quarter of humanity involved in 55 global conflicts, as stated recently by United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk. The escalation and increase in natural disasters caused by climate change has set 2023 as the warmest year on record. The Covid-19 pandemic led to a severe global recession, the effects of which are still being felt today, especially affecting poorer social classes. Finally, we are witnessing the rise of far-right politics, which is increasingly taking control of governments in Europe and beyond. The times we are living in are post-normal times. Ziuddin Sardar, a British-Pakistani scholar who developed the concept, describes it as an “[…] in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense.” According to Sardar, post-normal times are marked by ‘chaos, complexity and contradictions’. It is precisely here that we should locate the mainstreaming of AI, both in public discourse and in practical implementation in everyday life. Following the post-2008 global financial crisis, we observed the rise of a ‘new spirit of capitalism’ characterised by a ‘regime of austerity.’ Presently, AI embodies the new knowledge regime that intensifies and amplifies the effects of austerity policies, while being obfuscated and presented as ‘neutral science’. On one hand, the private sector praises AI for increasing efficiency, objectivity, personalization of services, and reducing bias and discrimination. On the other hand, public institutions in general – and public administrations (the bureaucracy) in particular – are, more and more, being attracted to AI technologies and their promise of optimisations that make it possible to do more with less resources. However, what AI promises, as we will see next, is an oversimplified vision of society reduced in statistical numbers and pattern recognitions. AI is thus the ultimate symptom of the ‘Achievement Society’. “What AI promises… is an oversimplified vision of society reduced to statistical numbers and pattern recognitions.” AI as a new regime of Achievement Society In his book “The Burnout Society”, philosopher Byong Chul-Han developed the concept of the ‘achievement society’. He writes: “Today’s society is no longer Foucault’s disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society.” While disciplinary society, continues Han, was inhabited by ‘obedience-subjects’, achievement society is inhabited by ‘achievement-subjects’. We can take this further by stating that in the disciplinary society, those who did not obey were deemed ‘disobedient’; in the achievement society, those who do not conform to its norms are labelled as ‘losers’. Ultimately, the ideological imperative, according to Han, that guides the achievement society is the unlimited Can. “The ideological imperative of unlimited Can lies at the core of the AI regime.” The ideological imperative of unlimited Can lies at the core of the AI regime. How so? Firstly, it relates to AI’s insatiable need for data. AI technologies require vast amounts of data to train their models. But, not any data is good data. The data must be collected, categorised, labelled, ranked, and, in some instances, scored. This is exemplified by the American personal data collection company Acxiom, which gathers data on a consumer behaviour, marital status, job, hobbies, living standards and income. Acxiom divides people into 70 categories based on economic parameters alone. The group deemed to have the least customer worth is labelled ‘waste’. Other categories have similar pejorative labels, such as “Mid-Life Strugglers: Families”, “Tough Start: Young Single Parent”, “Fragile Families”, and so on; a division between those who have ‘made it’ and the ‘losers.’ We will get to this problematic relationship later on. Secondly, it pertains to human labour. The amount of human labour invested to develop and train AI technologies is also vast. Take, for example, one of the first deep learning dataset known as ImageNet, which consists of more than 14 million labelled images, each of which is tagged, belonging to more than 20,000 categories. This was made possible by the efforts of thousands of anonymous workers who were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. This platform gave rise to ‘crowdwork’: the practice of dividing large volumes of time-consuming tasks into smaller ones that can be quickly completed by millions of people worldwide. Crowdworkers who made ImageNet possible received payment for each task they finished, which sometimes was as little as a few cents. Similarly, to reduce the toxicity of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, OpenAI, the company who owns ChatGPT, outsourced Kenyan labourers earning less than $2 per hour. Beyond the precarious working conditions of the workers and their ill-paid jobs, the worker’s mental health was at stake. As one worker tasked with reading and labelling text for OpenAI, told TIME’s investigations, he suffered from recurring visions after reading a graphic description of a man having sex with a dog in the presence of a young child. “That was torture; […] You will read a number of statements like that all through the week. By the time it gets to Friday, you are disturbed from thinking through that picture,” he said. In addition to labour exploitation, people often unwittingly provide their data for free. Taking a picture, uploading it on Instagram, adding several hashtags and a description—this is unpaid labour that benefits Big Tech companies. Subsequently, this free labour is appropriated by these companies to train their AI technologies, as evidenced by Meta’s recent use of 1.1 billion Instagram and…
Theatre of the Oppressed Retrospective
A video interview on transformative performance with theatre director Péter Tasnádi-Sáhy. At last year’s Transeuropa Festival, ‘Holding Spaces’, which took place in Cluj, European Alternatives held a series of participatory theatre workshops entitled ‘Disconnected’ encouraging audiences to explore and take agency in performatively resolving the conflicts and contradictions of a housing crisis. The ‘Holding Spaces’ theme is about our relation to our environment. But we have to ask the question: what is the base of this relation? In prehistorical times Homo sapiens was the part of nature; it was our environment; we depended on it. But today our relationship has changed drastically; we have several kinds of environments, but most of them are alienated, and we hardly have any connection to them. We are disconnected from the places we want to hold. Forum theatre was developed by the Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal as part of the Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal aimed to help oppressed people to get a better understanding of their situation and give them a tool to change it. In this video interview theatre director Péter Tasnádi-Sáhy, gives a practical introduction to the method, including snapshots of the workshop itself. Scan the QR code to watch the interview: “We are disconnected from the places we want to hold.” Péter Tasnádi-Sáhy runs forum-theatre workshops for Ukrainian refugees at Dévai Inn (Budapest) and several other places. He holds a Master’s diploma in theatre directing from the University of Art Targu Mures and is currently a DLA candidate at BBU.
Série « PATA » Retrospective
A video interview with Marion Colard on co-creating art with Cluj’s Roma* communities. In last year’s Transeuropa Festival edition of the EA journal we covered Série «PATA», an exhibition which artist Marion Colard co-created with Roma* communities in Cluj, and presented at the Transeuropa Festival. In this video interview, Marion talks us through the processes and meanings behind the artwork. Through co-creation workshops, Marion Colard tries to sublimate the stories of people designated as “on the margins of society”. She seeks to bring out the beauty and strength of those who are forced to build themselves apart. The systemic discrimination, called “antiziganism” faced by Roma communities* is so tenacious that it seems to prevent any other form of narrative. Even if you have never met one before, if you hear “Roma child living in a slum”, an image comes to your mind. Colard’s wish is to tell another story and create, with the people concerned, other images. Behind every word, every stereotype, is a person with their own story, dreams and complex questions that form and grow beyond the living conditions imposed by systemic discrimination. During the workshops, different techniques were proposed such as monotype, painting, writing or photography. They expressed what was important for them in their environment, what they liked and didn’t like in their neighbourhood. With photography and colour paint we reinterpreted the art of portrait, embracing self-representation. “Behind every word, every stereotype, is a person with their own story, dreams and complex questions” Marion Colard is a self-taught visual artist, and has been working with Roma communities for eight years. *The term “Roma” is used in this article as a generic term and does not cover the diversity of communities on the field. Scan the QR code to watch the video interview:
Ukrainian letter of solidarity with Palestinian people
The Ukraine-Palestine Solidarity Group sends a letter of support to the people of Palestine. We, Ukrainian researchers, artists, political and labour activists, members of civil society stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine who for 75 years have been subjected and resisted Israeli military occupation, separation, settler colonial violence, ethnic cleansing, land dispossession and apartheid. We write this letter as people to people. The dominant discourse on the governmental level and even among solidarity groups that support the struggles of Ukrainians and Palestinians often creates separation. With this letter we reject these divisions, and affirm our solidarity with everyone who is oppressed and struggling for freedom. “We write this letter as people to people.” As activists committed to freedom, human rights, democracy and social justice, and while fully acknowledging power differentials, we firmly condemn attacks on civilian populations – be they Israelis attacked by Hamas or Palestinians attacked by the Israeli occupation forces and armed settler gangs. Deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. Yet this is no justification for the collective punishment of Palestinian people, identifying all residents of Gaza with Hamas and the indiscriminate use of the term “terrorism” applied to the whole Palestinian resistance. Nor is this a justification of continuation of the ongoing occupation. Echoing multiple UN resolutions, we know that there will be no lasting peace without justice for the Palestinian people. On October 7 we witnessed Hamas’ violence against the civilians in Israel, an event that is now singled out by many to demonize and dehumanize Palestinian resistance altogether. Hamas, a reactionary islamist organization, needs to be seen in a wider historical context and decades of Israel encroaching on Palestinian land, long before this organization came to exist in the late 1980s. During the Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were brutally displaced from their homes, with entire villages massacred and destroyed. Since its creation Israel has never stopped pursuing its colonial expansion. The Palestinians were forced to exile, fragmented and administered under different regimes. Some of them are Israeli citizens affected by structural discrimination and racism. Those living in the occupied West Bank are subjected to apartheid under decades of Israel’s military control. The people of the Gaza Strip have suffered from the blockade imposed by Israel since 2006, which restricted movement of people and goods, resulting in growing poverty and deprivation. Since the 7th of October and at the time of writing the death toll in the Gaza Strip is more than 8,500 people. Women and children have made up more than 62 percent of the fatalities, while more than 21,048 people have been injured. In recent days, Israel has bombed schools, residential areas, Greek Orthodox Church and several hospitals. Israel has also cut all water, electricity, and fuel supply in the Gaza Strip. There is a severe shortage of food and medicine, causing a total collapse of a healthcare system. Most of the Western and Israeli media justifies these deaths as mere collateral damage to fighting Hamas but is silent when it comes to Palestinian civilians targeted and killed in the Occupied West Bank. Since the beginning of 2023 alone, and before October 7, the death toll on the Palestinian side had already reached 227. Since the 7 of October, 121 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the occupied West Bank. More than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners are currently detained in Israeli prisons. Lasting peace and justice are only possible with the end of the ongoing occupation. Palestinians have the right to self-determination and resistance against Israeli’s occupation, just like Ukrainians have the right to resist Russian invasion. Our solidarity comes from a place of anger at the injustice, and a place of deep pain of knowing the devastating impacts of occupation, shelling of civil infrastructure, and humanitarian blockade from experiences in our homeland. Parts of Ukraine have been occupied since 2014, and the international community failed to stop Russian aggression then, ignoring the imperial and colonial nature of the armed violence, which consequently escalated on the 24th of February 2022. Civilians in Ukraine are shelled daily, in their homes, in hospitals, on bus stops, in queues for bread. As a result of the Russian occupation, thousands of people in Ukraine live without access to water, electricity or heating, and it is the most vulnerable groups that are mostly affected by the destruction of critical infrastructure. In the months of the siege and heavy bombardment of Mariupol there was no humanitarian corridor. Watching the Israeli targeting the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli humanitarian blockade and occupation of land resonates especially painfully with us. From this place of pain of experience and solidarity, we call on our fellow Ukrainians globally and all the people to raise their voices in support of the Palestinian people and condemn the ongoing Israeli mass ethnic cleansing. We reject the Ukrainian government statements that express unconditional support for Israel’s military actions, and we consider the calls to avoid civilian casualties by Ukraine’s MFA belated and insufficient. This position is a retreat from the support of Palestinian rights and condemnation of the Israeli occupation, which Ukraine has followed for decades, including voting in the UN. Aware of the pragmatic geopolitical reasoning behind Ukraine’s decision to echo Western allies, on whom we are dependent for our survival, we see the current support of Israel and dismissing Palestinian right to self-determination as contradictory to Ukraine’s own commitment to human rights and fight for our land and freedom. We as Ukrainians should stand in solidarity not with the oppressors, but with those who experience and resist the oppression. We strongly object to equating of Western military aid to Ukraine and Israel by some politicians. Ukraine doesn’t occupy the territories of other people, instead, it fights against the Russian occupation, and therefore international assistance serves a just cause and the protection of international law. Israel has occupied and annexed Palestinian and Syrian territories, and Western aid to it confirms an unjust order and demonstrates double standards in…
Recovering lost knowledges for transnational social justice
Justin Beaumont and Christopher Baker on dismantling ‘secular’ and ‘faith-based’ dichotomies towards a radical new imagining of decolonial postsecularity. We argue for a decolonial perspective on postsecularity that recovers lost knowledges of discriminated people for transnational social justice. Our approach prioritises a granular, ethnographic engagement with the discourses, experiences and activisms of people displaying and articulating diverse identities, values, and worldviews across difference. Authentic holistic reconnection drives new progressive political spaces of hope, justice and solidarity featuring actors outside Christian and Western secular contexts that bridge material and symbolic culture. This article has been written under the dark shadow of the horrific violence that has escalated in and around the Israeli controlled borders of the Palestinian Gaza Strip in October 2023, triggered by Hamas’s bloodiest ever military blow to Israel and coupled with fierce Israeli reprisal bombings (see Figure 1). These atrocities represent the latest eruption in a vicious circle of carnage that has afflicted these territories for 75 years since the Nakba of 1948. Whether talking about these latest conflicts in Israel-Palestine, the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War and captured Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China, or the mass exodus of Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh disputed region in Azerbaijan, these struggles, acts of ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses share colonial origins. Within Europe, for example, the power of financial capital has been concentrated in the German dominated Frankfurt banks, the German Federal Bank and the European Central Bank. These institutions have held European peripheral economies – Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland – in a form of neocolonial debt bondage through a number of government and bank bailouts since 2010. Greece’s sovereign debt crisis in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial calamity resulted in austerity measures that deepened poverty and immiseration, precipitating a humanitarian crisis for millions of Greeks. Alongside the 2023 heatwave and devastating wildfires, the country’s government corruption, discrimination against immigrants and minorities, and deplorable conditions for irregular migrants and asylum seekers, continue to afflict the people. Dreaming of the future, only a progressive decolonial politics that brings together people from diverse walks of life, ethical worldviews and political persuasions can recover lost knowledges in the quest for transnational social justice, lasting peace, and socio-environmental harmony. Definition of terms “Coloniality” concerns a structure of normative principles, values and practices that found western modernity and generates forms of exploration, extraction and domination of being, seeing, doing, thinking, feeling and acting. Whereas colonialism denotes the long-term political arrangements that govern these practices, coloniality refers to the logic, culture and structure of the modern world-system. ‘“Coloniality” concerns a structure of normative principles, values and practices that founds western modernity and generates forms of exploration, extraction and domination of being, seeing, doing, thinking, feeling and acting.’ “Decoloniality” is a way for us to re-learn knowledges from certain peoples, cultures and environments that were absent or forgotten by forces of modernity, settler-colonialism and racial capitalism. Drawing on the thinking of people like Fanon, Césaire and Spivak, among others (see Figure 2), the term means an intentional, holistic commitment to ourselves and respect towards the wholeness of mind, body and soul of other people in their cultural, ethnic, racial and belief differences. “Postsecularity” refers to the stimulation of multiple ethical values arising from new relationships between people of diverse faiths and secular worldviews. Re-use of a secular, public building by a faith-based organisation, to provide social and emotional support and shelter for homeless and insecurely housed people in cities from diverse social, cultural, religious and no-faith backgrounds, would be an example in practice (see Figure 3). Around the same time, Geographies of Postsecularity highlighted the variations in postcolonial readings of postsecularity outside the Christian/ secular/ Western nexus (see Figure 5). The authors defined postsecularity as ‘a context-contingent bubbling up of ethical values arising from amalgams of faith-based and secular determination to relate differently to alterity and become active in support of others by going beyond the social bubble of the normal habitus’ (p. 3) with case studies from Egypt, India, Philippines and Russia. In the aftermath of FACIT, the subsequent Horizon 2020 bid (ENLIGHTEN) in 2015 provided the material that culminated in the forthcoming Enlightened City. While fully aware of the historic colonial, rational humanist “Age of Enlightenment” connotations of the term, we seek to deploy the distinct notion of “enlightened” as spiritual awareness and recognition of radical difference. In this sense, the term embraces interculturality and the tensions between and limits of universal values and identity politics. All along we shared the intuitive belief that something new was happening. The research agenda we now propose brings postsecularity to ground level. At the beginning we were hindered by a lack of appropriate theoretical tools and conceptual terminology to grasp precisely the nature and meaning of the empirical changes felt around us. The search for spirituality and ethical values provided the avenue for examining the changing roles of religion and secularism in contemporary societies. Towards an enlightened city Deepening research into the faith groups in cities, the Faith-Based Organizations and Exclusion in European Cities (FACIT) project (2008-10) critically examined the value of the “F-word” in tackling, combating or mitigating poverty, exclusion and immiseration in diverse European urban areas. Inspired by a longstanding interest in Latin American liberation theology, a crucial component of decolonial theory, the research set out to address faith groups in relation to non-faith actors, despite critical urban theory and secular humanist intellectual moorings. Similarly, Manav Ratti’s landmark work The Postsecular Imagination has addressed from a perspective of postcolonial literature the potentials and limits of secular and religious thought outside the West. The interaction of postcolonialism, literary studies and decolonial thought informed the Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity that brought philosophers, theologians and social scientists together (see Figure 4). Emerging discourses, experiences and activisms Recovering lost knowledges for transnational social justices requires appreciation of three areas of interconnected enquiry. Specifically, we refer to the material and lived out expressions of discourses, experiences and activisms arising from…
A Forest in Three Parts
Pujita Guha reviews Oliver Ressler’s exhibition The Path is Never the Same, exploring the conflicts and confluences of activism, ecology and state repression. 1. The scene of the crime Exactly halfway through The Path is Never the Same, the viewer encounters a striated mound of soil and sand. Seen from a slight distance, the mound appears engulfed by silhouetted tall grasses, shrubs, with a thin bark curving up on the right edge of the frame. A narrow forested trail leads us to the mound, interjected almost rudely into our gaze toward the far horizon. Far in the background is the faint, blurred, barely distinguishable outline of an open-pit coal mine. What Oliver Ressler shows here is the “interfacing” between the drastically reduced Hambach forest in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region and energy conglomerate RWE’s Tagebau Hambach lignite mine, which is gradually devouring the forest. The Hambach forest lies over lignite reserves, making it vulnerable to the mining industry. The Path is Never the Same dramatizes the resistance to RWE’s occupation and decimation of the forest, focusing on the counter-occupation by activists in small tree-houses. This dyad or interfacing between mine and forest gives the work its spatial contours. The activists demonstrate a deep elemental attunement to the forest. They learn to observe and read it, transforming their own way of life as they come to understand its light, rhythm, weather, humidity, rain, foliage and animal life. This attunement to the forest enfolds but far exceeds the acts of protesting and resistance to the state and mining company. Concerning attunement, more later. The interfacing of the coal mine and the forest edge evokes historical “first contact” myths in which supposed civilizational “progress” encounters its “other”. The interface is not just a matter of edges and borders: the condition of the boundary is one of friction or agitation. Distinctions are made.1 The threshold between mine and forest is only 500 meters wide, or perhaps even non-existent: as the activists in the piece remind us, REW has already gnawed its way 30 meters into the forest. The frame appearing halfway through the film shows how close together these two worlds are in their constant friction, even as the distanced, observational camera work documents each realm separately. Early on in the film, Ressler juxtaposes close-ups of lush and verdant vegetal life – croaking frogs, glistening moss – with landscape shots of the vast bleak lignite mine whose symmetrical ridges are exposed on the earth’s surface. Monstrous serrated wheels dig into parched ground. Dark staircases down to the pit zig-zag across the landscape while the spoils of the mine – heaps of soil, sand and gravel – lie strewn among the mounds and hills above. The obscene matter of extractive capitalism is set against the abundant, life-affirming forest awaiting its death. The obscene matter of extractive capitalism is set against the abundant, life-affirming forest awaiting its death. The interfacing of the coal mine and the forest edge evokes historical “first contact” myths in which supposed civilizational “progress” encounters its “other”. The mine is initially framed from within the forest, but the camera soon inverts its perspective, shifting to the striated landscapes of the mine before deftly raising the gaze back to the forest behind, in keeping with the film’s slow observational rhythm. The roving camera pauses only after allowing aerial view of the forest from over the canopies. In the far distance, two floating red bars cut across each other like an “X” that marks a spot. According to Anthony Vidler, the “X that marks the spot” is the “place of the body might be marked by tape and chalk on the ground to which it had fallen; the alleged site of the crime might be gridded with painstaking care in order to provide a coordinate system by which to situate the evidence, carefully collected in labeled bags for presentation in court; the tracks of the criminal, the traces of blood, the dispersed weapons, and their hastily jettisoned ammunition might all be gathered together and plotted on the special kind of map that criminologists have defined as appropriate to fix the “scene” of the crime in legally tenable terms.”2 The “X” marks not just the scene of the crime but also its attendant bureaucracies: the procedures and investigations that follow. It denotes that a crime has taken place, marking both the time and the site of investigation. In the Hambach forest, however, the red “X” is not a crime scene marker but a sign made by an activist, indicating the path to the nearest “barrio” (cluster of treehouses and barricades in the forest) and warning police and miners not to enter. Facing inward to the forest, the “X” marks a safe spot for the activists. Outwardly, to anyone seeing it from its interface, it cautions the intruder. It is a sign meant to stop the entry of the so-called civilizational worlds. Lying close to the interface, the “X” at this spot is not the marker of a crime that has already taken place but of one that is imminent: the murder of the forest by the mine. Thus the interface marks not just the site of difference but also the site of violence: the subsumption of all life into civilizational progress. The “X” marks the annihilation of the forest, and more fundamentally, it marks the negation of life and its abundant generosity. It is a murder whose exact time is unclear, yet palpable and imminent. As an unmistakable mark, it leaves no doubt about the forest’s future. It makes visible the threat at hand. By its very presence, the “X” demands an immediate reaction at the interface. It is both a “Stop” sign addressed to miners and state, and a call to action and resistance addressed to the activists. On a fundamental level, the “X” collapses the imminent future of the forest’s death into the local and immediate present – the urgency of action and resistance in the forest – by pre-empting the scene of the crime. 3…
Transeuropa Festival Journal 2023
Holding Spaces – Transeuropa Festival 2023 Cluj
Voices from Pâta Rat
Série PATA Retrospective – Transeuropa 2023
Theatre of the Oppressed Retrospective – Transeuropa 2023
Room to Bloom Digital Catalogue
Artsformation Summit: Cyberspaces for social practice: XR,cyberfeminism & the digital non-binary
ARTSFORMATION—Five minutes with: Maitreyi Maheshwari
ARTSFORMATION—Five minutes with: Caroline Sinders
ARTSFORMATION—Five minutes with: T.I.E.
Holding Spaces Documentary (2024)
Holding Spaces | Episode 1: Spaces for training (Sofia)
Holding Spaces | Episode 2: Spaces for Action (Cluj)
Holding Spaces | Episode 3: Spaces to Assemble (Athens)
Holding Spaces | Episode 4: Spaces to imagine (Palermo)
Organizmo Bloom
Organizmo Bloom focuses on non western epistemologies and on community sustainable building.
By The Many! Campaign
Towards a people-powered Europe Ahead of the 2024 European elections, European Alternatives is launching a campaign to call for a radical shift in our politics, based on the transformative power of people working across borders. We imagine a democratic Europe in which everyone can live a good life, and which acts to bring transnational justice and a flourishing planet. We’re calling on individuals, organisations and MEPs to sign the By The Many pledge. Find out more below. The By The Many Manifesto The By The Many! manifesto is built on the demands arising out of the many citizens’ assemblies, partnerships and projects that we’ve been involved in over the years, drawing on the views of a multitude of individuals and groups across the continent. Our campaign is living and evolving: we welcome individuals and organisations to take actions that advocate for and develop our demands. Write to your MEP Ask your MEP candidate to sign our pledge and commit to a people-powered Europe using our pre-prepared email-sending tool. MEP Candidate? Sign our Pledge If you are an MEP candidate, sign our pledge and commit to a people-powered Europe. Organisation or Concerned Individual? You can sign our pledge too! Share our campaign Click here for a social media toolkit to share the By The Many campaign. If you’ve signed the By The Many pledge, share our pledge badge below on your website, socials, or profile pictures. Click here to download the badge.
By The Many! Write to your MEP
Encourage your MEP candidate to commit to a Europe created By the Many! By directly emailing your MEP candidates, you are letting them know how important it is to voters like you that they are aligned with your values. Complete the form below with your email/signature, and we’ll take care of sending the email for you. We have prepared a text for you to send but feel free to personalise it – it is more likely to be read if it is original and unique. Ask your friends to email their MEP candidates as well! Share our pledge badge below on your website, socials, or profile pictures! Click here to download the badge.
By the Many! Campaign Launch
On Thursday 25 April, European Alternatives will be hosting the launch of their EU election campaign ‘By the Many’ at Le Couvent ahead of the European Common Space for Alternatives conference. By the Many is the first step, starting with the EU elections, towards creating a transnational community of activists to push for progressive change and advocate for a greener, more democratic, more inclusive world. Join us to demand a people-powered Europe, and call for a radical shift in our politics, based on the transformative power of people working across borders. Get your tickets on Eventbrite
MEP Candidates: Sign the By The Many Pledge
Commit to a people-powered Europe The planet and its people are being exploited and harmed in the name of corporate super-profits. Too much of the political establishment continues to offer only minimal solutions that serve to maintain the balance of power in the hands of the few. The resulting climate and cost of living crises disproportionately impact vulnerable communities in the world and within Europe. We need to imagine, demand, and enact radical alternatives. We need a Europe created by the many, and powered by the people. Putting power firmly in the hands of ordinary people is the only way to disrupt a failing system and restore the promise of democracy. We call for a redistribution of power away from the state and towards local actors who work across borders. Together, we can fight back against hate, division, discrimination and exclusion. We can enact an alternative now to show another Europe is possible and another world is in the making. Sign the Pledge If you are an MEP candidate, organisation, or concerned individual, sign the BY THE MANY! pledge below. [Note the pledge text is not part of the widget at all. Might want to add it to the actual widget as a preamble] For a Europe and a planet shaped By the Many! I pledge to : Share our pledge badge below on your website, socials, or profile pictures! Click here to download the badge.
Unlearning Guide #1: How we turn intersectional solidarity from academic theory into lived practice through political relational work (German)
Individuals & Organisations: Sign The By The Many! Pledge
Join the call to create a Europe By the Many! Sign the Pledge If you are an organisation or concerned individual, sign the BY THE MANY! pledge below. For a Europe and a planet shaped By the Many! I pledge to :
Unlearning Guide #2: How popular education from below is transforming people, communities and societies (German)
Unlearning Guide #3: How we reach, engage and win over people politically through 1:1 conversations, actions & strikes (German)
Pact for Equality
Avocats Sans Frontières, European Alternatives e un consorzio di partner della società civile e universitari si stanno unendo per promuovere l’uguaglianza e combattere la discriminazione che colpisce specificamente le comunità di migranti in Europa. Lavoreremo insieme durante questo anno elettorale cruciale e nei prossimi anni per trasformare l’approccio europeo alla diversità. Le elezioni europee si avvicinano e le persone con un background migratorio, le persone razzializzate, le donne, la comunità LGBTQIA+ e altre minoranze continuano a essere usate come capri espiatori e sono oggetto di discorsi di incitamento all’odio. Ciò riflette la discriminazione sistemica ancora prevalente in molte parti della società e della politica europea. La discriminazione in tutte le sue dimensioni è in aumento in tutti i paesi europei, nonostante i tentativi dell’UE di affrontare il razzismo, il sessismo e l’omofobia. Una recente indagine Eurobarometro (n. 535) conclude che la discriminazione è vista come “diffusa” e “sempre più prevalente”, in particolare sulla base dell’identificazione come Rom, sulla base del colore della pelle o dell’origine etnica, del credo religioso, dell’identità di genere o sessualità. Le attuali politiche dell’UE in materia di frontiere e migrazione rischiano di aumentare ulteriormente questa discriminazione. Diciamo: basta! Questo è il motivo per cui, nel periodo della campagna elettorale e successivamente, le voci e l’azione delle persone razzializzate e delle persone con un background migratorio devono essere amplificate. Insieme, chiederemo ai candidati alle elezioni europee di impegnarsi per un Patto per l’uguaglianza, che concentrerà l’antidiscriminazione e l’antirazzismo in tutte le politiche dell’UE, compresa la migrazione, e promuoverà il coinvolgimento regolare dei parlamentari con le organizzazioni guidate dalle comunità e dai migranti in Europa. e oltre, e promuovere l’incremento delle migliori pratiche derivanti dalle esperienze locali. Nostro manifesto L’Unione europea dovrebbe essere l’istituzione garante dei diritti umani nello spazio comunitario. Invece dobbiamo prendere atto del fatto che l’Europa sia pervasa da discriminazione e razzismo strutturale. Dopo le elezione europee e alla luce dei recenti sviluppi in materia di migrazione, i casi di profilazione razziale, esclusione, violenza verbale e fisica e persino di morte ai danni di persone migranti, rifugiati e persone razzializzate sono destinati a crescere. Nell’ indagine Being Black in the EU condotta nel 2022 dall’Agenzia UE per i diritti fondamentali è stato rilevato che in un solo anno “la discriminazione razziale è incrementata dal 24% al 34%. Questo incremento è soprattutto percepito nella ricerca di abitazione e lavoro, nei luoghi di lavoro e studio.” Nel 2023, l’indagine EU Barometer survey ha riscontrato che l’aumento della discriminazione nell’Unione europea è dovuta principalmete all’etnia, razza, identità di genere e orientamento sessuale. La maggior parte degli episodi di discriminazione hanno avuto luogo sul lavoro o negli spazi pubblici. Eppure, le nostre comunità non sono mai state così interconnesse. L’Europa sta diventando sempre più diversificata e consapevole delle sue differenti identità e storie. Noi possiamo utilizzare le nostre reti, in questo momento cruciale, per creare insieme un’ Europa vibrante, equa, inclusiva e rappresentativa. Vogliamo rendere l’Europa dei diritti umani una realtà e non semplicemente uno slogan. Sottoscrivere il Patto per l’Uguaglianza significa riconoscere i valori comuni alla nostra umanità condivisa, che intendiamo riaffermare in Europa. Unisciti a noi nella battaglia per un futuro all’insegna dell’uguaglianza in Europa! Chi siamo Siamo un gruppo di giovani attivisti/e residenti in Europa ma con origini di Paesi terzi, attivi/e nel campo dell’anti-razzismo, migrazione e anti-discriminazione, politicamente attivi/e nelle nostre rispettive comunità e a livello transnazionale. Abbiamo deciso di riunirci per mobilitare le nostre competenze e formulare i principi e le richieste del Patto per l’Uguaglianza. Il nostro incontro è stato facilitato da Avocats Sans Frontières e Alternatives Européennes attraverso un progetto europeo. Il Patto per l’Uguaglianza è innanzitutto testimonianza diretta, formulato sulla base delle nostre personali esperienze di esclusione e discriminazione, nonchè dei nostri importanti legami con le rispettive comunità di riferimento nei territoridei Paesi membri UE. La nostra missione: “Noi abbiamo il privilegio di parlare per noi stessi e di poter attirare l’attenzione sui problemi e le ingiustizie affrontate dalle nostre comunità. Vogliamo utilizzare le nostre prospettive, esperienze e competenze per chiedere alle persone in posizione di potere decisionale di cambiare la realtà vissuta dalle persone migranti, rifugiate e persone razzializzate n Europa, e quindi, di contribuire a mettere fine a qualsiasi forma di discriminazione.” Le nostre richieste Antidiscriminazzione e uguaglianza – Applicazione dei principi di uguaglianza e antidiscriminazione in tutte le politiche Ue – Sensibilizzazione sul razzismo e sulla discriminazione – Una legge europea contro il razzismo in grado di colmare le lacune della Direttiva sull’uguaglianza razziale, per garantire una protezione reale contro la discriminazione – Investimenti e incentivi a favore dei progetti di responsabilità sociale, in particolare con riguardo alle questioni del razzismo e discriminazione – investimenti strutturali nelle organizzazioni civili, soprattutto quelle condotte da persone razzializzate – Raccolta di dati disaggregati, con categorie chiare e ampie, che comprendono razza, etnia, paese d’origine, nazionalità, religione nonché orientamento sessuale, età e abilità – Riconoscimento paritario ed equo dei titoli di studio o delle qualifiche tecnico-professionali rispetto a quelli delle istituzioni accademiche europee, indipendentemente dal paese d’origine o convenzioni esistenti tra istituzioni accademiche Migrazione e asilo – Prevedere alternative sicure lungo le rotte migratorie verso l’Europa, a cui si possa accedere universalmente a prescindere dal paese d’origine – Mettere fine alle politiche di esternalizzazione dell’UE a Paesi terzi in materia di migrazione e asilo – Interrompere i rimpatri sommari e arbitrari di migranti, rifugiati e richiedenti asilo – Eliminare la profilazione razziale alle frontiere e nelle società degli stati membri – Affermare pari diritti civili, politici e sociali nei confronti dei migranti – Prevedere percorsi complementari, includenti ma non limitati ai permessi di soggiorno per studio e lavoro, ma estesi anche ai permessi di soggiorno umanitari, per ricongiungimento familiare e sponsorizzazione privata Democrazia e cittadinanza – Affermare il diritto di tutti coloro che sono nati in Europa di acquisire la cittadinanza (ius soli) – Prevedere percorsi di naturalizzazione privi di criteri razzisti e discriminatori, basati sulla nazionalità, paese d’origine, etnia, razza o status economico sociale – Affermare il diritto di ciascuna persona…
EU elections: workers’ rights at the ballot box
A May Day message from ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch.
WOMEN IN STEM
On 05/03 in Ruse was held «WOMEN IN STEM» DISCUSSION organized by Ruse University and Soroptimist International (SI) Club Ruse.Soroptimist is a global volunteer movement aiming at transformation of the lives of women and girls. It’s network is around 66,000 club members in 120 countries and works at a local, national and international level to Educate, Empower and Enable opportunities for women and girls. The event was dedicated to March 8th – International Day of Women and we sticked the conversation to Women in STEM as participants were mainly professors and PhD Students at Ruse University and member of SI. Topics included the EU approach to Women in STEM, the rights and possibilities for women researchers (a brief overview of different programs and initiatives on EU level). The DEMO participant Diana Georgieva was the main presenter.
International Transgender Day of Visibility
“Gruppo Trans Arcigay Palermo” organized a whole-day event dedicated to the visibility of trans people! Artists, creators, authors, musicians and more came to share their art, music and voices for transgender visibility and acceptance.There was an exhibition of artworks, open mic night, clothes swap and much more. Here are some photos and videos from 31/03/2024. A key organizer was Giulia Amico, a DEMO participant.
Rural young people: Alternative futures for more hopeful rural societies
COST Action Rural NEET Youth Network organized the conference “Rural young people: Alternative futures for more hopeful rural societies” on 12/03/2024 in Brussels. The DEMO participant Rosario Scandurra was a keynote speaker on the topic Young people’s future in the peripheries of Europe: What’s next? Link to the event: https://rnyobservatory.eu/web/brussels-conference-2024-program/
VOTEfor705
Nadia Dalla Gasperina, a DEMO participant , started a letter-based campaign for the European Elections. The concept is, you write a short letter with a fun fact about the EU and a CTA line like “vote at the EU elections!”, send/drop it to someone’s PO box, and hopefully they’ll read it! You can join the movement – one letter at a time:https://www.instagram.com/votefor705?igsh=b3R1c2czOXRta3Qy
This body of mine – an exhibition and workshop on disability advocacy
“This body of mine” by the DEMO participant Ally ZlatarDisability activism is crucial to dismantle societal barriers and foster inclusivity. Lennard Davis emphasizes that disability is not merely a medical condition but a social construct shaped by cultural perceptions and systemic discrimination. By advocating for disability rights through ‘This Body of Mine’ the featured artists challenge ingrained stereotypes and promote accessibility in all facets of life. Their works strive to highlight the neglected and untold stories in hopes of disrupting mainstream narratives, challenging stigmas and fostering a more inclusive society. By integrating art into activism, we not only raise awareness but also cultivate a culture of acceptance and empowerment for people with disabilities, paving the way for meaningful societal change focused on people-centred solutions More info: https://starvingartist.cargo.site/this-body-of-mine
“Civic Circle: Engaging Communities in Democracy and Elections” – a series of community discussion groups on Democracy and Elections
The DEMO participant Dina Ntziora organizes “Civic Circle: Engaging Communities in Democracy and Elections” – a series of community discussion groups on Democracy and Elections. Communities are the bedrock of democracy, serving as the fundamental units where citizens come together to express their collective voice and shape the course of governance. Within these communities, the concept of democracy takes on a tangible form, embodying principles of equality, representation, and participation. Elections serve as a pivotal mechanism through which communities exercise their democratic rights, enabling individuals to select representatives who align with their values and advocate for their interests.The perception of the right to vote varies among individuals within communities, influenced by a myriad of factors such as historical context, cultural norms, and socio-economic status. For many, the right to vote represents a fundamental aspect of citizenship, symbolizing both a privilege and a responsibility to contribute to the democratic process. Others may view voting through a lens of skepticism or disillusionment, questioning the efficacy of their participation in an electoral system they perceive as flawed or unresponsive to their needs.
Democracy Chronicles: Graphic Novel Pop-Up Library
Pop Up Democracy graphic novel Library by Dina Ntziora, a DEMO participant. Step into a world where vibrant illustrations and compelling narratives intersect with the core values of democracy, voting rights, and human dignity. Our project aims to ignite conversations and inspire critical thinking by showcasing a curated collection of comic books and graphic novels that explore themes ranging from civic engagement to social justice.For one unforgettable weekend, our pop-up library invites the public to immerse themselves in a diverse array of visual storytelling. From tales of historical revolutions to futuristic dystopias, each graphic novel offers a unique perspective on the complexities of democracy and the importance of active participation in shaping our collective future.
EU CAN DO IT
Antonia Faustini (Fiore), a DEMO participant, shares with you 6 important petitions. The goal of her organisation is to create a European network and collect signatures for 6 petitions addressed to the EU Parliament, with the hope that if we get enough attention those will be presented also as European Citizens Initiatives. The petitions are the following: 1. The introduction of Voluntary assisted dying as a fundamental human right for EU citizens ;2. The introduction of Abortion as a fundamental human right for EU citizens; 3. Cannabis decriminalization in all the EU countries; 4. The development of a civic artificial intelligence; 5. Stop subsiding with European public money of intensive animal farming (we also presented a documentary in Italian on the topic a few weeks ago); 6. The introduction of a “carbon tax”, shifting taxation from labor to emissions. More info here —> https://www.eumans.eu/eu-can-do-it
Let’s have a seat
A project by the DEMO participant Yasir Syed: Imagine a world where your voice doesn’t count. Where what you think, what you feel, doesn’t matter. That’s a world without democracy. Yes, democracy is messy. It’s loud. It’s full of arguments and disagreements. Sometimes, it feels like it’s breaking apart at the seams. But guess what? That’s also its beauty.In the heart of democracy lies a promise – a promise that every single one of us has a say in shaping our future. It’s like a giant family dinner where everyone, and I mean everyone, gets to talk. Sure, we might argue about what’s on the menu, but in the end, we all sit at the same table. The problem these days is that some people sitting at the at the table don’t understand the menu anymore and no one can explain so they are not only losing interest in choosing something from the menu, but they have also lost their appetite and don’t even care what is being served and who chooses. This needs to be changed. So after putting a lot of thought the plan I came up with project that is called ‘ Lets have a seat’ consist of two parts:What’s on the Menu?: In a vibrant poster campaign set to launch in the first week of May, we invite 30 dynamic young adults, ages 18 to 30, to craft and share their visual interpretations of democracy and European Union values. We will select the top five standout posters for widespread distribution. This initiative aims to harness the digital reach of our participants, anticipating an engagement of at least 20 individuals per poster, culminating in an estimated total outreach of 130 people. The Chef’s Special – A Dinner of Dialogue: On the 7th of July 2024, join us at The Hague Youth Factory for ‘The Chef’s Special’, an immersive dinner debate experience. Engage in a culinary evening filled with robust discussions on human dignity, the depths of freedom, the facets of equality, and the crucial role of democracy and decision-making in our society. This event promises not only a feast for the senses but also food for thought, as we unravel these topics in depth. With 50 attendees each committed to sharing the experience online, we aim to amplify our message to a broader audience, ensuring a significant impact with a target goal of engaging 100 people. More: https://vimeo.com/920042838
For a decolonial EU climate policy
Dr Amiera Sawas questions the EU’s commitment to climate action and pushes for stronger, globally just climate policy ahead of the EU elections.
By The Many! Campaign
Ahead of the 2024 European elections, European Alternatives is launching a campaign to call for a radical shift in our politics, based on the transformative power of people working across borders.
Be Fierce! Join our Five Claims for a Feminist Europe.
Our charter Outlines Five FIERCE Claims for a Feminist Europe as key policies challenges for the next European Parliament and Commission.
Candidati al Parlamento europeo: firmano l’impegno del Patto per l’uguaglianza
Il Patto per l’Uguaglianza è un impegno tra le organizzazioni della società civile, le comunità razzializzate, i sindacati e gli eurodeputati a impegnarsi in un processo di dialogo formale regolare durante i prossimi cinque anni e oltre. Riteniamo che gli eurodeputati abbiano il potere di invertire la tendenza all’aumento dell’odio e della discriminazione in Europa, nonché di affrontare le sempre più strette vie di dialogo con gli attori della società civile e le comunità locali nel processo di elaborazione delle politiche. Per i candidati al Parlamento europeo, le elezioni del Parlamento europeo del 2024 rappresentano un’opportunità unica per riaffermare il proprio impegno nei confronti dei valori fondanti dell’Unione e del suo quadro antidiscriminatorio. Firmando il Patto per l’Uguaglianza, una volta eletto eurodeputato mi impegno a:Riaffermare e chiedere un rafforzamento del quadro antidiscriminatorio dell’UE, attraverso l’espansione dei suoi strumenti chiave e il monitoraggio della loro corretta attuazione da parte degli Stati membriMonitorare attentamente gli sviluppi dell’attuale quadro antidiscriminatorio per affrontare meglio le sfide specifiche del razzismo strutturale e della discriminazione intersezionale che colpiscono sia i cittadini dell’UE che quelli dei paesi terzi, in tutti gli ambiti politici dell’UE (in particolare migrazione e asilo) e i gruppi sociali nell’area euro-mediterranea. regioneBasare le mie decisioni di voto su processi inclusivi e partecipativi, principalmente attraverso la consultazione di individui e movimenti direttamente colpiti dal razzismo e dalla discriminazione, nonché della società civile, del mondo accademico e di altri soggetti interessati fornendo prove e competenze sulla discriminazione all’interno e da parte dell’UEPromuovere una narrativa positiva e un allontanamento politico dai discorsi cartolarizzati, criminalizzanti, islamofobici e stigmatizzanti nei confronti delle persone razzializzate – indipendentemente dalla cittadinanza – così come delle organizzazioni, dei difensori dei diritti umani e del pubblico in generale che agiscono in solidarietà verso questi gruppi Richiedere misure concrete e cambiamenti politici a favore dell’uguaglianza, della non discriminazione e dell’antirazzismoAffrontare le eredità e le disuguaglianze postcoloniali, in particolare promuovendo un rapporto di reciprocità tra il Nord e il Sud del MediterraneoCollaborare con gli organismi nazionali per l’uguaglianza per promuovere la consapevolezza dei mezzi legali a disposizione delle vittime, la raccolta di dati disaggregati e di alta qualità sul razzismo e la discriminazione, responsabilizzare le autorità nazionali e spingere per l’attuazione della direttiva sugli standard per gli organismi per l’uguaglianzaCollaborare con le autorità locali per promuovere le migliori pratiche e monitorare l’attuazione del quadro antidiscriminatorio dell’UE a livello nazionale, nonché l’adozione e l’applicazione dei piani d’azione nazionali contro il razzismo.
Pact for Equality Campaign
Avocats Sans Frontières, European Alternatives and a consortium of civil society and university partners are coming together to promote equality and to fight discrimination affecting specifically migrant communities in Europe.
EU PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS 2024 FACTSHEET
Ahead of the EU Parliament elections 2024, we are publishing an election guide, which analyses the manifestos of the different parties and analyses how they positionate themselves on key topics.
Digital futures for all
Viktoria Tomova and Shubham Kaushik on the European Digital Rights (EDRi) network’s transformative vision for EU digital policy. In recent years, protecting and advancing digital rights feels like a never-ending battle as more and more of our lives get entangled with the digital world. Challenges to our freedoms online and offline continue to pile up as we face tech corporations with ginormous budgets and states with carte blanche to do anything for ‘national security’ reasons. In the last five years, EU lawmakers moved one step forward, and three steps back when it came to putting people first in their tech legislation. They passed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) law that did not center people’s rights, proposed full-fledged attacks on the confidentiality of our communications and passed a lukewarm law to regulate platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The war in Ukraine and the siege against Gaza have heightened everyone’s appetites for securitisation narratives. At the same time, winds are blowing in the direction of AI hype, leaving important human rights considerations in the dust. In this context, together with broader social movements, European Digital Rights (EDRi) has been challenging power imbalances and protecting digital rights. Throughout the last 20 years, EDRi has served as the backbone of Europe’s digital rights movement – and we’re determined to continue in the face of all obstacles and changing contexts. And the context is about to change. 2024 will see many elections throughout the world, but also in Europe. The June EU elections are an opportunity to get our message to newly-elected politicians, and to turn our vision of people-centred democratic future into reality. Nothing changes if nothing changes: imagining alternatives through collective positive narratives One of the key ways to affect change on EU digital policies is through changing the narrative around technology and digital spaces. EDRi has been doing transformative narrative work along with racial and social justice organisations through a decolonial approach to digital policy, stories about communities, and by developing a positive vision for our digital futures. Allowing people to imagine alternatives gives all of us a common goal to collectively work towards. We have seen the impact of this in the work we have done in two of the most debated digital laws in the recent years: the AI Act and the fight to defend confidentiality of communication in the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) file. Putting people and empowering narratives at the heart of AI Act advocacy EDRi and our partners tenaciously advocated for an AI Act that prioritises people from the very beginning of the legislative process. When the law was initially proposed by the Commission in 2020, protecting our fundamental rights seemed to be more lip service than reality. Together with a broad range of digital, human rights and social justice organisations, we influenced the conversation through our collective vision.Our positive values-based framing was also reflected in our Reclaim Your Face campaign, which explained to people what’s at stake in clear, easy-to-understand terms. Supported by 80 organisations around Europe, we put banning biometric mass surveillance on the lawmakers’ agenda, and mobilised over 250,000 people to support us in this effort. EDRi also convened a variety of civil society and expert voices to develop a collective narrative about the AI Act. We did this to challenge the dominant state and industry driven narratives which centre technosolutionism and innovation-at-all-costs. At the heart of all our efforts were the interests of communities who would be most harmed by feckless regulation. We listened to stories of people with a migration background, racialised communities, people with disabilities, and other groups who have lived experiences of technological harms. Our work on transforming narratives helped us face many challenges. We overcame some of the lack of political will by lawmakers, who were being pulled by the billions of euros spent by tech lobbies to water down the AI Act for the sake of their profits. Our work made the pitfalls of going down the ‘innovation at any cost’ rabbit hole clear to decision-makers and the public. Envisioning encryption: positive spin on privacy and child safety Similarly, the Stop Scanning Me campaign led by EDRi and our members used narrative change to turn the political debate on encryption 180 degrees. Some of the key challenges we faced during the legislative process were administrative malpractices and abuses of power stemming from the European Commission’s Department leading the CSAR law (DG HOME) and its Commissioner, Ylva Johansson. We publicly scrutinised the lack of transparency, inclusion and accountability in the EU institutions responsible for the legislative process. To do this, we developed a consistent and coordinated dissemination of a positive framing around encryption, prioritising the lived experiences of those most impacted by the law. Our online communication centered values-based testimonies from academics, journalists, tech experts, privacy-protecting companies, young activists, lawyers, and child rights groups. Given how deeply encryption affects people from different walks of lives, we brought some of these people to Brussels to meet with key EU policymakers. By framing encryption as essential to everyone’s security, we made it politically difficult for the opposition’s technosolutionist argument to be used as a justification for legalising mass surveillance. Furthermore, in our narrative, we tackled the securitisation push guised behind children’s rights. We created alternative solutions that moved the political focus from weakening privacy and increasing mass surveillance to developing more sustainable measures. From vision to reality: a positive digital future is within reach The critical work the EDRi network has been doing on protecting people’s privacy through narrative change and a people-focused policy approach has been instrumental in impacting EU policy-making. EDRi along with DFF have led a two-year process for building a programme to decolonise digital rights field in Europe. The programme – which was developed with over 30 social and racial justice movements – aims to address power dynamics in the field and imagine a vision for anti-colonial digital futures. Additionally, we co-developed The Future Is Now: a series of short utopian fictional stories which help us reimagine…