European democracy: how's that gonna work?

LinkedIn blog post, 05/10/2025, by Sven Franck (en français , in Deutsch)

I'm currently trying a first: putting a member motion on the Volt Europa General Assembly agenda this November. To do so, our Statutes require endorsements of 1% of members - around 350 as we recently passed 35 000 legal members. Easy you might think, but it's the first member motion in my time at Volt and while it may sound trivial on paper, it's a small sample of figuring out how to campaign for a topic across borders and how a European democracy could function.

Checks and balances anyone?

A quick "dip" dive into Volt: we have three organs, the European Board, the member Assembly and the Country Council, where representatives of chapters coordinate and supervise the work of the European Board. The Country Council can only call a General Assembly (your nuclear option) as it cannot put items the agenda of ordinary General Assemblies. I would like to change this with my motion and member vote, because a healthy democracy, also on European level, requires independent and robust checks and balances.

It feeds into one of my #jumpstartEU ideas for Volt to become a blueprint of how a European democracy could function. The EU won't just transform into the United States of Europe and we should stay clear from downgrading into a Europe of Nations. I'd wager that without a template to experiment and develop a transnational democratic system, there will probably be little progress towards a federal Europe. If Volt built a system, chapters aka members states would buy into, with a representative Board aka Commission, who they would not control, but hold accountable, Volt could poke the real Commission and say "Hey, it works here, why don't you try it, too?".

Crossborder grassroots 101

So far so good. But in practice, statuary changes are not really a sexy topic. There also isn't a central platform to view motions. So I spent quite some time doing the equivalent of going from door to door. And you know what? It worked. I was surprised how much positive feedback I received making the effort to explain why it's important, the pros and cons and why members should debate and vote on whether they want this or not.

I'm keeping a personal leaderboard and am happy to have received endorsements from members of 25 of the 31 countries Volt is active in - with many chapters promoting the motion because they understand the importance of their role in the Country Council and the motion giving especially smaller chapters an important platform.

We're still two months away from the General Assembly, but I'm already looking forward to this debate and member vote. Whether adopted or not is up to the Assembly. But either way, the motion fuels the idea of becoming a blueprint or "purpleprint" of a European democracy. Considering the state of the EU today, such an initiative seem more important than ever.