ON THE 80th ANNIVERSARY OF THE VENTOTENE MANIFESTO TOWARDS A FEDERAL EUROPE

par admin, publié dans EVENTS

Dear Delegates,
Dear Members of the Federal Committee,
Dear Members of the Executive Bureau,
Dear Presidents and Secretary Generals of the Sections,
Dear Federalist Friends,


In the framework of our XXVII European Congress, « Our Federal Europe – sovereign and democratic », we would like to kindly invite you to the UEF SPAIN – SPINELLI GROUP hybrid discussion that will take place on Friday 2nd July 2021, 17.00-20.45 CEST

Venue:  Centre Cultural La Nau – Universitat de València, Carrer de la Universitat, 2, 46003 València, Valencia, Spain

ON THE 80th ANNIVERSARY OF THE VENTOTENE MANIFESTO TOWARDS A FEDERAL EUROPE

16:30     Arrival of the participants 
17:00    Welcome and opening statements

  • María Vicenta Mestre Escrivá, Rector of the University of Valencia
  • Joan Calabuig Rull, Regional Secretary for the European Union and External Relations of the Government of Valencia
  • Sergi Campillo, Vice-Mayor of Valencia
  • Juan González Barba, Secretary of State for the European Union, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Government of Spain
  • Jürgen Foecking, vice-director European Parliament Liaison Office in Madrid
  • Enrique Barón Crespo, UEF Spain President
  • Francisco Aldecoa, president European Movement Spain
  • Sandro Gozi, UEF President, Member of the European Parliament and member of the Conference on the Future of Europe

18.00    Panel 1: The Federalist strategy in the Conference of the Future of Europe

Moderator: Enrique Barón Crespo, UEF Spain President

  • Domènec Ruiz Devesa, Member of the European Parliament, S&D Group, Vice- President of UEF, member of the Conference
  • Danuta Hübner, member of the European Parliament, EPP Group, Member of the Conference
  • Katalin Cseh, Member of the European Parliament, RENEW Group, member of the Conference – tbc
  • Dimitrios Papadimoulis, Vice-president of the European Parliament, The Left, member of the Conference
  • Fabio Massimo Castaldo, Vice-President of the European Parliament, Non-Attached, member of the Conference

19:00    Panel 2: The role of MEPs and national parliamentarians in the Conference on the Future of Europe

Moderator: Francisco Aldecoa, president European Movement Spain

  • Héctor Gómez Hernández, member of the Spanish Parliament (PSOE) and member of the Conference.
  • Maite Pagazaurtundúa, Member of the European Parliament, RENEW Group
  • Jordi Sebastiá i Talavera, Former Member of the European Parliament, Greens/EFA Group
  • Inmaculada Rodríguez Piñero, Member of the European Parliament, S&D Group 

20:00    Closing remarks 

  • Susana Sumelzo, Chair of the Joint Committee on European Affairs Congress-Senate, Spain – tbc
  • Brando Benifei, president Spinelli Group, Member of the European Parliament and member of the Conference on the Future of Europe

If you would like to attend this event, please register here and do not forget to indicate if you will join physically or online. 
 

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Warm federalist regards,

Anna ECHTERHOFF

Secretary-General

Register here.

Message from UEF Secretary General: CoFoE Digital Platform – User Guide

par admin, publié dans INFO

Dear federalist friend,

For the Union of European Federalists, being present in a structured and effective way, as well as being recognisable on the platform with its proposals in the Conference on the Future of Europe, becomes a necessary condition both for conveying its political message and for enhancing meetings on the ground at all levels.

The aim is to be influential in order to condition future decision-making processes, to bring out the drive for federal reform of the European Treaties.

What was clearly explained during the presentation of the platform, answering specific questions in an explicit way, is that the topic of the revision of the Treaties, considered a taboo by many member states, will become unavoidable if it emerges from the debate and the requests of citizens, on the platform. From there, it can be conveyed both to the European citizens’ panels and, above all, to the plenary session.
The Digital Platform will therefore be in the coming months, until the conclusion of the process of confrontation with the citizens, the only tool at our disposal to convey ideas and political messages to the Conference.

If we are to succeed in achieving our objectives, it will therefore be necessary to devise an effective strategy and to organise a careful national (and European) direction which will enable us not to disperse our messages, not to drown them in the sea of proposals which will soon fill the platform, but which, on the contrary, will enable us to dominate the debate on the future of the European Union by directing it in such a way as to bring out the consensus in support of a Europe which, in order to live up to the expectations of its citizens, must equip itself with the competences, the political decision-making mechanisms and the appropriate resources. In a word, become a federal political Union.

With a view to a debate as inclusive as possible and aimed at advancing federalist demands, we encourage the sections and regional centres to organise debates link to our political proposals on the platform, which can be attractive to a diverse audience and allow collaboration with local and regional actors. It will also be important to try to understand how the themes identified can be declined in a federalist sense.

The debate should have a format that seeks to make the participants protagonists of the discussion. 

Attached you will find a summary of the indications in the user guides of the platform to help you organise your events in a federalist way.

The UEF Secreatariat (secretariat@federalists.eu) is at your disposal for information, help and collaboration.
 

Let’s do not waste this opportunity.

Warm federalist regards,

Anna Echterhoff, UEF Secretary General

Assemblée générale de l’Union des Fédéralistes Européens – Belgique, samedi 5 juin 2021

par admin, publié dans EVENTS

Chers Amis, Chers Membres, 
 
Nous avons le plaisir de vous inviter à l’Assemblée Générale (AG) annuelle de notre association qui se tiendra le samedi 5 juin 2021 de 10h00 à 11h40. Pour des raisons sanitaires (Covid-19), notre AG se tiendra de façon virtuelle (via Zoom).

Première partie de l’AG: Questions statutaires et rapports de 10h00 à 10h40

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71629373281?pwd=UnRMV2srRVlPdy9sK3cvRXNMZHBQdz09

Meeting ID: 716 2937 3281
Passcode: H22jcE


Deuxième partie de l’AG: Débat politique de 11h00 à 11h40

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/71189446168?pwd=VWVnYUpYZWNyZXRqOEFVK3NGY1lsdz09

Meeting ID: 711 8944 6168
Passcode: U9d8yC

 
Au-delà des questions statutaires, nous souhaiterions que cette réunion soit aussi un moment de réflexion politique sur l’Europe et sur l’action des fédéralistes européens. Nous avons invité à cet effet le Député européen et Président du Mouvement européen Belgique, Tom Vandenkendelaere à intervenir et à dialoguer avec nous sur le thème de l’avenir de l’Europe.
 
En espérant vous voir participer nombreux et nombreuses, merci de confirmer votre présence par courrier électronique, téléphone ou SMS (0460.76.01.84). En cas d’empêchement, merci d’avance de nous envoyer une procuration de vote par courrier électronique.
 
Avec nos meilleures salutations,
 
Domenico Rossetti di Valdalbero                              Michele Ciavarini Azzi
Secrétaire général                                                          Président
 

 

Programme de l’Assemblée Générale du 5 juin 2021

  1. Approbation des comptes au 31.12.2020 et décharge aux administrateurs (1.1.2020-31.12.2020)
  2. Rapport d’activité du Secrétaire général
  3. Rapport politique du Président
  4. Présentation des candidatures et élection du nouveau Conseil d’Administration* 
  5. Débat avec Tom Vandenkendelaere, Député européen
  6. Divers

* Les candidatures (postes à pourvoir : président, vice-président, administrateur délégué, secrétaire général, trésorier, responsable communication) doivent être adressées au Président, M. Ciavarini Azzi, par courriel à Michele.Ciavarini-Azzi@ec.europa.eu) avant le 29 mai 2021. Tous les membres en ordre de cotisation ont un droit de vote. Un membre absent peut se faire représenter en donnant une procuration de vote à un représentant.

Federalists events – April 2021

par admin, publié dans EVENTS

Dear federalist friends,
 
We are happy to invite you again to a series of timely and interesting events in the framework of our two ongoing projects:

Moreover, as a partner of JEF Europe in the Y-FED project, we would also like to flag you the  Y-FED Large-Scale Model Simulation.
Please, find below the details of each event and project. You are all invited to attend!

Warm federalist regards,

UEF Secretariat

Register here

IMAGINING THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

In which Europe would you like to live in 10 or 20 years’ time?

The Conference on the Future of Europe will begin on May 9, Europe Day, to define the direction that the European Union should take.

Citizens and civil society will be able to give their opinion on the Europe they want and thus contribute to shaping its future in the medium and long term through a participatory forum.

UEF and Xul Foundation invite you to participate in this process with Crossroads Europe, a European funded project, to collect proposals and opinions on the Europe we want in the field of participatory democracy and representation. These contributions will be collected in a document of policy recommendations to be submitted to the Conference on the Future of Europe.

If you want to get involved and contribute, if you wonder how to develop participatory processes in times of pandemic, if you want to broaden your knowledge on citizen participation, if you want to contribute to the construction of Europe and to give your opinion on the challenges it faces and its future, we are counting on you. Do you want to rethink Europe with us? We have planned a series of virtual workshops that will take place ONLINE on April 20 and 21, 2021.

Register here

2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the return to freedom and democracy to Central and Eastern Europe and of Estonia’s restoration of independence.

The project « Democracy is Europe » aims to raise awareness on the centrality of the European ideals in the transitions and peaceful revolutions of 1989-1991 in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and to encourage debate and reflection on the impact of such ideas in today’s Europe.

The Estonian session of “Democracy is Europe” is organized in cooperation with and locally managed by the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies of the University of Tartu.

The Estonian grass-root event consists of two days of activities. On April 23, two panel sessions will be held to discuss the historical context of Estonia’s Singing Revolution and its significance for nations struggling for democracy and freedom nowadays. The panels will be open to everyone interested. On April 24, the registered participants, grouped in virtual teams, will work on different creative projects that capture the significance of Estonia’s experience for today’s Europe and its fundamental contribution to the process of integration. The day will be concluded by a keynote speech of Visiting Prof. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former president of Estonia (2006-2016).

The full programme of the event is available at the following link and the Facebook event can be found here. Registration is REQUIRED to participate in the event and is available at the following link (open until April 22).

Register here

Y-FED
The project “Y-FED: Europe is what we make of it” aims to bring the EU closer to its young citizens by developing a proposal for an improved institutional framework of the Union in line with the European Youth Goals. The initiative, supported by an Erasmus+ “European Youth Together” grant, will be implemented between January 2020 and July 2021 through a series of capacity-building training courses, public policy hackathons, a large-scale simulation of a reformed EU and advocacy actions. The project partners comprise 18 civil society organisations as well as 2 networks of European and regional decision-makers.

About the Large-scale Model Simulation, 14 – 19 June, 2021

The large-scale simulation is the main event of the nearly 2 years long project “Y-FED: Europe is what we make of it” that will gather more than 100 young people from all over Europe in an online and physical environment for 5 days.

As the cherry on the top, the model simulation is none like any other simulations out there (MUNs, MEUs). It follows its own methodology recreating a European Union of the future that is more youth-led, more inclusive, more efficient and closer to its citizens. The model is inspired by the first edition of Y-FED in 2019 and the hackathon solutions based on the European Youth goals.  The event is going to be a blended activity with an online and offline (in Strasbourg, France) settings and the current call is for the participants who will join the event physically in Strasbourg under the roles of members of “The House of Citizens” and “The European Senate”. For the rest of the roles who will through online participation, there will be a call launched in May. The goal will be to create a synergy between the participants in Strasbourg under the 2 roles of members of “The House of Citizens” and “The European Senate” and the journalists, lobbyists and citizens who will join online.

Federalists Events – April 2021

par admin, publié dans EVENTS
Dear federalist friends,

We hope you are all well and enjoying the springtime wherever you are in Europe!

We would like to update you on our next project events! In the context of our Crossoroads EU project we are glad and proud to invite you to attend four interesting sessions, in Spanish, co-organised by our partner Fundacion Xul.

The events will address the topic of Participatory Democracy in the European Union with dialogues at a national and an international level. The participants, in the second phase of the events, will also have the chance to develop the necessary skills to use Digital Platforms for democratic engagement – Decidim.

We kindly invite you to participate and to spread the voice among your network and friends.

Warm regards and see you later,
 
UEF Secretariat

Register here

IMAGINING THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
In which Europe would you like to live in 10 or 20 years’ time? The Conference on the Future of Europe will begin on May 9, Europe Day, to define the direction that the European Union should take. Citizens and civil society will be able to give their opinion on the Europe they want and thus contribute to shaping its future in the medium and long term through a participatory forum. UEF and Xul Foundation invite you to participate in this process with Crossroads Europe, a European funded project, to collect proposals and opinions on the Europe we want in the field of participatory democracy and representation. These contributions will be collected in a document of policy recommendations to be submitted to the Conference on the Future of Europe. If you want to get involved and contribute, if you wonder how to develop participatory processes in times of pandemic, if you want to broaden your knowledge on citizen participation, if you want to contribute to the construction of Europe and to give your opinion on the challenges it faces and its future, we are counting on you. Do you want to rethink Europe with us? We have planned a series of spaces for dialogue and reflection, as well as virtual workshops that will take place in April. 

Fundacion Xul The Spanish non-profit organization Xul Foundation, is one of the nine partners involved in the European project Crossroads Europe, led by the Union of European Federalists, which aims to promote cross-cutting dialogue on the construction of the EU around four thematic axes: climate change, international community, democracy and governance, and security and freedom.

Carte blanche: Faut-il bâtir une souveraineté numérique nationale et européenne?

par admin, publié dans ARTICLES

Par Francisco Vigalondo, Marcel Vanden Clooster, Domenico Rossetti di Valdalbero, Nezka FigeljUnion des Fédéralistes européens.

L’établissement d’une Fédération européenne avec une politique numérique commune supranationale permettrait de sauvegarder l’unité du marché européen et de prendre en considération le souci des citoyens attachés au respect de la vie privée et à la diversité culturelle.

Lire la suite sur Le Soir.

PRESS RELEASE: The Conference on the Future of Europe gets under way

par admin, publié dans NEWS
Today the European Parliament gave the green light to the Conference on the Future of Europe. The UEF welcomes the reaching of an agreement that finally opens the opportunity to work for a new Europe together with the citizens. For the forces that believe in a federal, sovereign and democratic Europe, this is the time for commitment and mobilisation.
 Welcoming with relief the long-awaited launch of the Conference on the Future of Europe, the UEF underlines the importance of the historical moment and the political challenges that the European Union is facing and recalls the need for the Conference to be a moment of confrontation to bring together citizens, leading exponents, NGOs, trade unions, and representatives of national and European institutions, to debate and decide how to go about adapting our institutions in a way that will complete the building of a federal, sovereign and democratic Europe.

« At watershed moments in history, communities, to avoid sliding into an irreversible decline, need to be able to adapt their institutions, equipping them to govern new circumstances » says Sandro Gozi, President of UEF and MEP. « This is what we need to do today in the European Union: making the Next Generation EU facility permanent and creating a federal budget, so that the EU can share fiscal sovereignty with the Member States; and acquiring new competences, also through extending the ordinary legislative procedure, in the field of health, economic policy, foreign policy and defence, to make Europe a global leader in the defence of fundamental values and the rule of law, a model for a socially sustainable ecological transition and a global player for a new multilateralism. »

« This is why the Conference must be able to discuss without taboos not only which European policies need to be strengthened, but also which treaty reforms are needed to equip the EU with the necessary tools to act effectively and incisively« , continues Domenec Ruiz Devesa, UEF Vice-President and MEP.

« In this regard, the reform of the European electoral system will also be fundamental, in order to uniform it, to create pan-European constituencies with transnational lists, starting the birth of a real European political space and public debate« , concludes Sandro Gozi. « Now is the time for debate and action, also to overcome the limits of the Conference’s governance, which the Council wanted to weaken with the principle of consensus to reach conclusions. We need a common front of all the forces that believe in a sovereign and democratic Europe, in the European Parliament, in national parliaments and governments, in civil society. It starts a process that we believe should lead to building the federal Europe we need. And the time to do it is now: now or never. Let us not waste this opportunity. »
END
The Union of European Federalists (UEF) is a pan-European, non-governmental political organisation dedicated to the promotion of European political unity. For more than 70 years UEF has been a leading voice in the promotion of European unity and an early campaigner for key milestones in the development of the European Communities and then the European Union. With 25 national sections and over 400 local groups across Europe, UEF promotes a federal Europe among citizens and political representatives at all levels of government. More on: www.federalists.eu.

PRESS CONTACT:
Anna Echterhoff
anna.echterhoff@federalists.euUnion of European Federalists [UEF]
Rue d’Arlon 53
B-1000 Bruxelles
+32 (0)2 508-3030