Movement Profile
The non-profit association Citizens For Europe e.V. (CFE) was established in Berlin, Germany by young professionals from throughout Europe beginning of 2010. Their common objective is to foster and to support the European Union (EU) project on citizen’s level by enhancing political participation rights for people residing in the EU and by developing and promoting a modern and progressive EU citizenship that fully mirrors the transnational nature of the EU. Thus, such an EU citizenship would not only consider EU citizens but all people lawfully residing in the EU. Additionally, it would focus on political participation and break down barriers for free expression of political will, especially in elections from local to European level. With its projects and activities from local to European level CFE raises awareness among the public and political decision makers for current discrimination of both mobile EU citizens residing in a Member State of which they are not a national and long-term third-country residents.
Despite its young age and thanks to the previous engagements of its members CFE has already gathered valuable European and local partners and resources to carry out various projects. Next to the journal Open Citizenship and a conference on European citizenship, that both elaborate new models of European citizenship and modes of political participation, this also includes the development of the social-political online community Vote-Exchange.org.
Vote Exchange – fighting discrimination
Vote-Exchange.org is a free web-based tool that allows EU citizens residing in an EU Member State of which they are not a national to enter a transnational discourse about national political parties, programmes and candidates and, eventually, a cross-border voting partnership. Vote-Exchange.org meets the growing desire for political participation in the EU and empowers EU citizens to exert their will to vote at national level in an innovative way. The platform is an indispensable step towards the making of a citizen’s Europe with full and equal political participation rights overcoming the discrimination of more than 12 million EU citizens.
CFE’s future activities
All mentioned projects will be continued and further developed in 2011. As 2010 as been the pilot phase for our association and its projects 2011 will become the first “operating” year. The journal Open Citizenship as well as Vote-Exchange.org will be further improved and new workshops and events concerning the topics of citizenship and political participation will be organised. In conjunction with Berlin’s local and regional elections, which will take place in September 2011, CFE will initiate a broad media campaign with many local partners to raise awareness in public and among political decision-makers for the exclusion of people residing in Berlin from political elections. This will also include alternative elections allowing these disenfranchised citizens to express their political will. Experiences from Berlin shall then be implemented in other major cities in Europe.
Together with our international partners we will organise regional workshops in several cities across Europe in order to scrutinize how the topics of EU citizenship and voting rights are discussed in different European regions. A closing conference in Berlin will bring these different perspectives together. The aim is to trigger a European-wide debate on the topic and to identify future partners.
Our vision of an EU citizenship – towards a progressive European citizenship and cosmopolitan electoral laws
Migration to and the ongoing integration process of the European Union as well as the increasing cross-border mobility of its citizens challenge the classical legal and political construction of citizens as national beings. As more and more citizens in the Union choose a transnational lifestyle by residing in a Member State of which they are not nationals and as millions of third-country nationals are lawfully residing in the EU national citizenship loses the ability to fully coordinate people’s lives.
European citizenship based on the classical national paradigm ironically signifies exclusion and discriminates against those EU citizens who symbolize with their transnational lifestyle the European integration process. Furthermore, it excludes those millions of people lawfully residing in the EU without being national of an EU Member State. It is the first group that actually expresses the process of European integration and the latter on which the future of the EU is built. Unfortunately, the Treaty of Lisbon has not brought any positive development to this situation.
This at hand, Citizens For Europe e.V. seeks to define and establish a citizenship for the European Union that:
- goes beyond national attributes and integrates “residency” as a sufficient qualification for EU citizenship
- develops to a “citizenship of participation” granting broad political participation rights on different geographical levels for both Member State nationals and third-country residents
- is a concern of the EU institutions and lies also in their competences