Running to become Volt Europa Co-President

My name is Sven Franck. I have been a member of Volt since 2018 and I'm running for the co-presidency of Volt Europa to lead our organization of over 35.000 members in more than 30 European countries. Our election will take place June 13 and 14 in Bratislava at our European General Assembly.

It is an internal election but the closest thing to a true pan-European election, because even European elections are national in nature: if you run in France, you don’t need to convince Finnish voters, and vice versa. For me, that is precisely what I will have to do.

With cause: Because already in 2022, the European Parliament voted in favor of "transnational lists" for the European elections, in which Europe will be a single, vast constituency. Like so many other reforms, this one is also still blocked by our national governments, which, meeting in the EU Council, refuse any step toward a truly united and democratic Europe.

This means, we don’t know what a real transnational campaign would actually look like. Guess what? I want to find out, and I want Volt to lead the way.

The challenge: visit local teams in 25+ countries

The equivalent of bringing the EU closer to its citizens is bringing Volt Europa closer to our members. I have ten weeks to visit local teams in all EU member states plus the UK, Switzerland and Albania where we have registered political parties. Germany and the Netherlands are our biggest chapters, so a lot of stops will be there. In some countries we are still developing - no reason to not visit. It's an internal campaign with an outward focus. It will be rough with sometimes two or three stops per day and a lot of late night and earlybird bus trips.

Here is the map and calendar. It will be updated on the go:

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Volt member or not, subscribe to my campaign newsletter (via Keila.io) and receive updates of my tour and how you can help. You can also follow me on social media of course, but the newsletter will have more insights and stories from the road.

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The message: Leadership. Legitimacy. Leverage.

Europe is at a crossroads: from Putin’s war of attrition against Ukraine to risking losing Greenland and facing the fallout of the war in Iran: the challenges have never been greater. Yet, the European Union remains weak and invisible. Our heads of state are paralyzed - by their protectionism and fear of losing power. Just like "America first", it's "Germany first", "France first", "Italy first" as no leader is considering Europe as a solution. If they only knew the political relevance a United Europe could have. A Europe that echoed the same message in all member states, a Europe that gave its citizens security and a home, a Europe capable of defending itself. A Europe that would stand up for democracy and stand as equal among geopolitical blocks.

This Europe will never happen if we continue to rely on national parties and leaders. Are there any European leaders? I believe they exist in all member states, but they have no platform in national political systems. If I'm elected, I want Volt to become the platform for the European leadership which we need today and in the future for the European Union to make the next step. I want to make Volt Europa a European political force, capable of driving the narrative of what the European Union needs to look like, creating legitimacy backed by our national chapters sharing our common goals and developing leverage by making citizens understand that a stronger Europe will only happen with a vote for Volt. On European, national and on local level.

The programme

I've been preparing this candidacy for a while (see also my #jumpstartEU initiative), because we need to hit the ground running with only a 3 year runway to the 2029 European elections. I have 5 priorities I would like Volt Europa to work on, which I will introduce here until the official campaign launches in May:

• 

  Volt as EU blueprint

  (How to build leverage with our organization)
  Volt is like a mini-EU. What if we made it functioning mini-EU following what we have in our Programme? If we practiced what we preached and became our own "best practice", we would have a powerful argument to pitch to heads of state and the Commission to copy us. Learn more.

• 

  Objective #2

  (How to make citizens feel European)
  To be announced April 7st.

• 

  Objective #3

  (How to overcome electoral thresholds and give our MEPs legal initiative)
  To be announced April 14th.

• 

  Objective #4

  (How to have influence the choice of Commissioner or enter Parliaments)
  To be announced April 21th.

• 

  Objective #5

  (How to challenge for the Commission Presidency or enter national Parliaments)
  To be announced April 28th.

The campaign objectives

Aside from trying to visit members across as many member states as possible, I would like to work on two further objectives in this campaign:

• 

  A political declaration for our Bratislava GA

  (Motion)
  A political Volt Europa has to have political messages. I'm filing a member motion to debate and vote on a political declaration to close our upcoming European General Assembly in Bratislava. To add this point to the official agenda will require endorsements from 1% of membership, so I need to find 350 members to endorse my proposal. Learn more.

• 

  9th of May - A day for European news

  (Initiative)
  On my campaign trail, I would also like to try and propose to newspapers to dedicate May 9th to what's happening in Europe. Not having to read about Trump for one day may actually feel like relief. Discover the initiative.

Stay up to date

Volt member or not, subscribe to my campaign newsletter (via Keila.io) and receive updates of my tour and how you can help. You can also follow me on social media of course, but the newsletter will have more insights and stories from the road.

Subscribe