Topics and priorities
Political priorities and topics I care about and which I would push for if elected.
Europe's foreign policy is non-existing. Instead of a doctrine and vision, member state governments and the Commission defer to their national objectives resulting in a cacophony of 27+1 and ensuing geopolitical irrelevance. We remain dependent on everything from US protection to Chinese rare earths. The EU is long past preserving peace within the European Union - it is essential for Europe to develop and defend a proper foreign policy that ensures stability beyond our borders, ensures the EU's geopolitical independence and defends the democratic values and ideals we hold dear. It's time for a European foreign policy.
One of Europe's strengths is the diversity of our SMEs. However, most of EU funding goes to large national players (think Airbus, Thales etc) who produce little innovation. We need a change in mindset and a European Small Business Act. Such an act should not only reserve a portion of public contracts for SMEs, but ensure that legislation passed on European and national level does not put SMEs at a disadvantage while striking a balance between standardisation, openness and interoperability. It will facilitate European economic integration way beyond the 28th regime (EU Inc.) towards capital market integration and harmonising market access and bureaucratic requirements. We need a European Small Business Act to define the EU's economic narrative of the future and to use the diversity of our economies as a driver Europe's future competitiveness.
There are already over 15 million mobile EU citizens living and working in another EU member state than their country of origin. They live the European idea for free movement and a European citizenship, yet they are indirectly supporting nationalism, because most of their democratic rights are caught in the barb wire of the border of their home country. Mobile EU citizens cannot vote in all elections in their country of residence and they are often excluded or have little incentive to vote in their country of origin. Our democracies need these votes and we should orient voting rights towards citizenship rather than nationality of this or that member state. We need to work on universal suffrage for mobile EU citizens.
We seem to live in the digital wild west: online fraud is affecting young and old alike and with the direction the US is heading and the influence of social media networks on everything from our childrens' attention span to democratic elections, Europe needs to question whether we can afford to continue to be digital vassals. We don't need European social media. We need smart legislation: from interoperability to limiting the reach of bots and artificial opinion-making. We need digital rights to protect against the ongoing anarchy of AI scrapers. And we need to hold merchants and financial institutions accountable for not flagging transactions that have a high risk of being fraudulent (like your grandfather wiring 25.000€ to Ghana or purchasing 1.000€ of iTunes gift cards). If competitive regulations permit monopolies and impunity and our governments only answer is introducing Orwellian surveillance measures like universal chat controls and back-doors, it's time to redefine digital rights and protection.