New Arenas for the Basic Income Debate

Dear Friend,

Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE) is happy to be back with our monthly newsletter after a long break, mostly due to the corona situation.

The UBIE Core Group had productive weekend workshop a few weeks ago and we came out of it energised, full of exciting new ideas: We are working on plans to revive our highly successful Basic Income Tea webinars, a digital Basic Income Winter School, and a series of online trainings for UBI campaigners.

As further lockdowns are enforced in most countries across Europe, with small businesses keep failing and unemployment rising, lack of income remains a critical issue for millions of people. Therefore, we are also continuing our cooperation with WeMove.EU on the “Emergency Basic Income for the EU” petition campaign – which just hit 200.000 supporters recently, yay! Our aim is to convince EU decision makers to consider basic income as the best policy for helping Europe emerge from the corona crisis. Next week we have a big scoop coming up – can’t tell more yet, but follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to be among the first ones to hear the news!

If you are interested in getting involved with the above activities, do not hesitate to contact us at contact@ubie.org.

More news – including updates on the ECI campaign – below.

Stay tuned, stay safe!

Yours unconditionally,

The UBIE Core Group

UBIE takes the Basic Income debate into a new arena

UBIE Core Group member Alessandra Bianchiwas selected as a citizen panellist alongside two others to talk about the future of the European Welfare State. The discussion “Are Europe’s welfare systems sustainable?” was held with László Andor, Secretary-General of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and former EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (2010-2014). If you have not seen the debate organised in cooperation with Debating Europe, you can watch the whole discussion on their website.

Latest news

ECI “Start UBI” hits threshold in Slovenia

Slovenia is the first country to hit its threshold mark for the European Citizens’ Initiative “Start Unconditional Basic Incomes throughout Europe”. This quorum, which is calculated for each country based on the number of its MEPs, has to be crossed in seven EU member states at least. Sign the ECI here if you haven’t done so yet and make sure to share it across your networks!

Debate on Emergency UBI in the German parliament

Similarly to UBIE’s European campaign, petitions in several countries for a quick introduction of UBI as a response to the corona crisis have won strong popular support. A petition supported by several basic income groups in Germany was debated by the Petitions Committee in the Bundestag (the federal parliament) on Monday 26 October. Their demand was a monthly basic income of €1000 to be paid to all Germans to mitigate the effects of the corona crisis.  You can read Barb Jacobson’s article in BIEN news here.

Basic Income in Swedish party leadership contest

In Sweden, the Green Party is having internal elections for a female spokesperson (similar to party-leader). The most popular candidate, Rebecka Le Moine, is promoting “basic income for everyone”. Le Moine is also hoping that the Green Party will promote a basic income proposal during the parliamentary elections in 2022.

Win a year of European basic income with the UBI4ALL

Talking about Basic Income is important, but what about experiencing it – for an entire year? This is now possible, wherever you are in Europe, with the new raffle UBI4ALL: Besides registering for the raffle, you can also support it through a crowdfunding campaign. Once a UBI for one year (9600€) is raised all participants will get a winning number and notified about the date of the raffle. The raffle will be  live streamed and the winning numbers are published on the UBI4ALL website and in their newsletter.

UBIE volunteers invest huge amounts of their time, energy and money into promoting basic income. With your help, we can strengthen our financial foundation in order to professionalise our work and accelerate the UBI journey.

Unconditional Basic Income Europe asbl

Rue de Pavie 17

1000 Brussels

Belgium

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Legal representative:

Alessandra Bianchi (Chair)

contact@ubie.org