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Chair’s Update – May 2023

It’s now been over a month since I took up the role of Chair at European Movement so here, for the members, is an update of what’s been going on inside and outside of EM – with a glimpse into my plans & thoughts going forwards.

Membership: During the election, we had 17,500 members… We are now at 19,100!

A big welcome & thank you to all the new joiners! Driving this membership up constantly is very important as it empowers everything that we do. And it’s been a delight watching people post their welcome letters, cards and pin badges on social media. We’re a vibrant community - so please do keep pestering friends, family, colleagues etc to join and help keep pushing that number up.

With so many pro-EU people feeling politically homeless at the moment, this really does represent a huge growth opportunity for European Movement. We should seize it. If you want to know more of my thoughts around the current political landscape then please do have a read of my recent interview with The New European.

Our staff team is growing too

Firstly, our CEO, Anna Bird, is due to leave on May 12^th. I’d like to thank her for everything she has done, for all of her recent advice to me, and for ensuring that she leaves behind an expanded, professional team. While we hunt for a new CEO, Emma Knaggs will be stepping up as Interim CEO – plus, we’re expanding the team further to allow us to have even more campaign impact. Stay tuned for more updates very soon!

All this expansion is possible thanks to your support as members, and the response to our Crowdfunder which has just hit the £70,000 mark. Thanks to all who have chipped in!

Young European Movement (YEM)

On April 21^st-22^nd, YEM had their AGM. Sir Vince Cable and I attended the gala dinner on the Friday night and Saturday saw the elections for a new YEM President and team. I would like to congratulate Klajdi Selimi on his election as President and all of his team on their new roles. I saw a lot of talent bubbling away in YEM and look forward to working with them. I’d also like to say a big thank you to the outgoing President, Julius Lajtha, for all of his work.

With recent polling for ITV showing 86% of 18-25 year-olds would vote for the UK to join the EU, let’s turn YEM into the campaigning force that can capture and robustly represent our youth.

Networking, networking, networking

A key aspect of my job is to ensure European Movement is well-linked with our myriad of stakeholders and friends in this very broad community which also expands beyond UK borders and right across Europe. So alongside developing better links with other organisations on the “domestic” front, I’ve also had meetings with the office of the European Parliament in the UK, with European Movement Ireland, with European Movement International – and have more such meetings in development.   

25 years of peace in Northern Ireland: The European movement video.

To mark 25 years of peace in Northern Ireland – and to highlight the role of the EU and damage of Brexit to the peace process – European Movement produced a beautiful series of videos, featuring 14 citizens of Northern Ireland. It was a beautiful piece of work led by Pablo, which sets out EM’s stall as the kind of positive, inspiring, community-grounded organisation we want to be.

The main 14-min video has been viewed over 1.4 million times on Twitter alone and was retweeted by Billie Piper, Alastair Campbell, Marina Purkiss, Peter Stefanovic, and many others. It featured in The Irish Examiner and I discussed it in my interview with Politico Europe, where I said the UK rejoining the EU would fix all of NI’s current Brexit-related problems. That led to a bizarre attack in the Express from Ben Habib! But the main point here is that at EM, we’re not just reacting to the news. We’re setting out our stall - and increasingly we are the news.

The Brexit Public Inquiry petition: A triumph of local group campaigning

Leeds for Europe’s petition calling for a public inquiry into Brexit damage has now passed 202,000 signatures & closes on May 18th.

The petition secured a date for debate in parliament: April 24^th. European Movement backed the “Brexit Inquiry Campaign” spun out of Leeds for Europe all the way - encouraging other organisations to support it too, commissioning polling, and contacting MPs to ask them to attend the debate and provide quotes beforehand. 

The debate itself was a fantastic success with MPs turning up to back the call and even political parties announcing their backing of it. The debate featured in the Mirror, Independent, BBC, New European and even YouGov ran polling on the question showing public support.

On social media, clips of the debate continue to circulate and grow. Hilary Benn’s speech on YouTube now has a quarter of a million views. So the Brexit Inquiry campaign continues, now topped up with more material. Do follow @InquiryBrexit on Twitter to keep up to date with it.

The Retained EU Law (REUL) bill

Under huge pressure from many organisations including European Movement, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s pet plan to throw over 4,000 EU laws on the bonfire is faltering and limping.

At European Movement, we recognised the huge danger in REUL and so stopping this bill has been our flagship advocacy campaign over the last 5 months - with 45,000 of our supporters having taken action on it to date; contacting MPs, peers, taking part in action days, etc.

This is an absolutely vital battle to win. We must defeat the deliberate vandalism of Rees-Mogg and save our British-European standards that we wrote together and which keep us aligned.

Horizons dimming but still within reach

You may be unsurprised to hear that, as a scientist, I find the government’s current behaviour on Horizon (and Copernicus) immensely frustrating. It is something that I actually find hard to talk about after years and years of showing analyses, giving warnings, detailing the value of UK-EU science relations etc.

In brief, when the Windsor Framework was agreed and Ursula von der Leyen said that it was good news for science, my heart leaped. It’s hard to explain why Rishi Sunak did not also leap at the opportunity, after two years of shunning our own ‘Plan B’ in the hope of getting into Horizon. Weirdly, he took instead a line that he preferred the Plan B and wanted it published for all to admire. No wonder UK scientists have said no way to the stupid idea. But clearly that has not stopped Rishi Sunak, the man who pulled us out of Erasmus+, eying up more stupid ideas. He may think it’s a clever bargaining technique, but long drawn-out negotiations with so much scepticism is actually having a chilling effect and is massively detrimental to the conditions UK science needs right now.

At European Movement we have this page where you can add your name demanding our return to Horizon. It’s imperative that we get our place back on this vital programme.

The battle is long, but we have the grit. We keep building to take our country back to the heart of Europe.

Dr. Mike Galsworthy, May 2023

Saturday 25 March 2023 was declared ‘National Rejoin Day’. To help celebrate it a small team from Mid Kent gathered in Maidstone on a windy, day at the end of Fremlin Walk, on the corner of Week Street and Earl Street. A new table and display stand were erected for the first time and seriously tested by the wind.

We were joined by Nick from SSTIE (Sevenoaks, Swanley and Tonbridge in Europe) and handed out plenty of leaflets. We also had a new Brexitometer, inviting people to mark whether certain groups were Brexit Winners or Brexit losers. Among the groups were Farmers, Fishers and Families. Apart from a single person, everybody chose to mark every group, whether student or singer as a loser from Brexit.

Although most people passing by studiously avoided meeting our gaze, there were plenty of people who responded with real joy to our presence in Maidstone, as Brexity a place as any in Kent.

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