A transnational campaign - Pt 3

This is the homecoming stage of my transnational listening tour. In this newsletter, I’ll write about my transnational listening tour, the political situation in the countries and cities I’m visiting, how Volt is doing and traveling across the continent. If you want to know more about my campaign and programme, check out my website, a bit more about myself and my resume.

Stories from the transnational trail: Homecoming

Ljubljana, Slovenia 🇸🇮

It wasn't really a campaign related event, but mid April, we held the founding General Assembly of Volt Slovenia. It was the last requirement to register a political party besides having Statutes, a proper programme and collecting 200 signatures of founding members who had to validate their signature at the townhall - that too longer than anticipated.

We started about a year ago with a handful of members and by being consistent with newsletters, social media and physical meetings, we managed to grow quickly. I also networked - meeting the main political blogger, ministries PR advisors, former commissioners and everyone who could help us along the way. I also attended any pro-EU event I could find, always ask a question on behalf of Volt and also found members and key contacts by doing so. We even managed to be in the local and national media multiple times and national television even attended our General Assembly (see my 30sec in the evening news)

We have in the meantime the approval from the interior ministry that everything is in order. I'm happy we managed this before the new conservative-right-wing government will be installed - they surely would have made life harder. Next step for Volt Slovenija: prepare local and eventual snap elections, meaning more networking to find potential members and future candidates.

Munich, Germany 🇩🇪

Munich is my first stop whenever I travel northwards from Ljubljana. The local team was so kind to help organise a Meet&Greet for me talk about "Europa und Lederhosen" (Europe and leatherpants) alluding to the conservative CSU slogan in the 90s that Bavaria was a high-tech and traditional region at the same time. Question for me was, if that also applied to Europe: because the German Chancellor from the conservative CDU often claims to wanting a stronger Europe, but in fact, he does just the opposite.

This fit well into my programme of wanting to make Volt Europa a platform for European political leadership. We need to have political weight to be able to call out heads of state talking about a strong Europe "in name only". It's nothing national chapters can do alone, it requires communicating together and being a counter-weight to national heads of state.

This weight will not come out of nowhere. It requires a political network which I've been building for over a year and also sufficient support in the population. This is why the main proposal I wanted to discuss is weaponizing European Citizen Initiatives (ECIs) by building a mailing list of over 1 million supporters and then filing ECIs en masse. It will give our MEPs the equivalent of legal initiative. We can put items from our Moonshot programme on the legislative agenda. And we can build our electoral potential over two years to be able to overcome thresholds.

In the ensuing discussion the members attending were very supportive of this grassroots approach to build electability. I received many good ideas for fine-tuning my message and was happy how well I was received on my first campaign stop in Germany - with Volters from Bayreuth and even Slovenia attending.

Regensburg, Germany 🇩🇪

Next on my route was Regensburg where I graduated in 2001 in business administration and haven't been back since. I arrived with enough time at hand for a Stadtbummel, rediscovering places, my old student appartment and the corners of old town we used to hang out at. I kind of got carried away and almost missed the start of the Meet&Greet where I was expected.

Compared to Munich, this was a more informal meeting, so we just started discussing Volt, the recent local campaign and coalition negotiations and how local teams would benefit greatly, if national or European party leadership was more visible in German national media. It is a common request in all countries and shows why our approach of limiting Volt Europa to administrative work actually limits our potential.

I described again my concrete objectives and my intention to move Volt from a party that only talks about "What" we want to one that challenges the status quo by showing "How" we can actually shape Europe and European politics. As the day before, I had the feeling this is welcome change of mindset and necessary pivot to rediscover our grassroots and bottom-up politics.

We ended up discussing until the restaurant closed and I was superhappy with again having received a lot of support for my ideas and wanting to make Volt Europa visible "on the ground" in national and even local politics.

A big thank you to hosting me and next time, I will compete with the local team in "all you can eat Schnitzel" 😊

Bamberg, Germany 🇩🇪

Next up was a visit to Bamberg where the local team organised an evening with elected officials and members from the local teams in the region. We already made it into local television during the European elections and it was great that Hans Günther Brünker managed to get the local TV to do another interview with me about the Volt Europa Co-Presidency elections - watch the interview.

This evening I shared the stage and we discussed the political situation in our respective municipalities - me chipping in with my experience as a local candidate in Lille and now helping the team to prepare local elections in Ljubljana. It's interesting to compare the challenges and common points and how best practice from one local team could really help elsewhere, provided there was more possibilities to connect. This was one of my main takeaways of the evening, that chapters don't really have means to connect to local teams further away and especially abroad. The European project was built on connecting across borders and what is true for businesses should just as much be a priority for Volt and our network: the more Volt Europa helps to connect, the stronger we will become.

As on my visits before, concrete projects organised by Volt Europa and translated down to local level, ideally as a kit, teams can order and become operational, received a lot of support. We're missing today the reasons to stand on the marketplace and get citizens interested in what Volt is doing. We have to empower our local teams much more by providing links and tools rather than overburdening them with procedures.

A big thank you to everyone involved in making this event happen and all the local officials who took the time to join me in Bamberg. I took the last train back to my hometown for an evening with mum before heading off to Dresden.

Dresden, Germany 🇩🇪

My last stop before Berlin took me to Dresden - not straightforward to reach jumping from one regional train to another and I could also only fit in a dinner if I wanted to be in time for next morning General Assembly of Volt Germany in Berlin.

We were a small group but all very interested to meet, because it doesn't happen often that a candidate for the European Board visits - a pity, Dresden is a beautiful city and with the extreme right leading polls by a wide margin in these parts of Germany, it's also a place in Europe where the future of democracy will be decided. We should be more present! I learned how Volt tries to provide a positive narrative and how difficult it is to present a pro-European alternative to the Alternative (for Deutschland).

We did fit quite a few topics into the evening, I could present and discuss my ideas for the Co-Presidency and how they could make a difference for local teams and Volt's ongoing dependence on non European technology providers and social media platforms - since I'm an avid poster on Mastodon.

Since there is no way to get out of Dresden towards Berlin after a dinner, I had to hurry to another Flixbus that dropped my off at Alexanderplatz after 1am in the morning. Touchdown in my hotel room at 2am for a handful of hours of sleep before the General Assembly would kick off.

Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪

I could feel the last couple of days and spent quite some time at the bar ... drinking tea to not fall sick, which kinda worked. I was part of a group of international Volters invited by Volt Germany to give its General Assembly more of an international touch. The GA is very procedural, so all of us listened to a good part of the morning programme and before we took up our mission for the weekend: exchange with the German members.

Running for the Board - as many of the other international members - this was a great opportunity and I feel most of us present made good use of it, pitching and discussing ideas, also among ourselves, and our different visions of what Volt Europa had to do to make another step forward. This went on well into the evening, but after our joint dinner and a spaghetti ice which I haven't had in 40+ years, I called it a day to catch up some sleep.

Sunday went by the same way and on our final dinner, many of us thought it was a great idea and opportunity provided by Volt Germany to bring Volt Europa closer to its German members - one of my pitches for doing my tour. However, since in the meantime, our Electoral Commission, established that no campaign activities were to take place before the campaign start of May 1st, I decided to stop my tour and any campaign activities until then - and went back to Ljubljana to sit still and cancel my meetings to Italy, Malta and parts of France. I had all tickets booked, so this was also kind of a downer, but rules are rules. My plan was now to do the real kickoff May 1st in Lille on the soup festival.

Stay tuned for how that went. Thank you for reading and for supporting my campaign.

Purple regards 💜

Sven