2024-02-18

15th February

I believe in fairies. This is the sentence with which Pieter Pan and his friends bring Tinkerbell back to life. At Volt, we believe in a democratically structured EU. In contrast to more right-wing orientated parties, we focus on European cooperation. We believe that there should be a pan-European defence force. (If you want peace, prepare for war.) In Volt, we discuss the reintroduction of compulsory social or military service after leaving school. However, we are less interested in shooting practice and more in mixing the different bubbles of our society and in letting them work together towards a common goal. That could be in the retirement home, during flood relief efforts, or while polishing tanks for the Belgian or European army.

The Belgian or European army should be two organizations working together in a coordinated manner. - ?Do I hear someone saying; Yeah, you believe in fairies! Fair point. But Europe needs new positive visions. Shooting Russians as a unifying goal is not an option. – Such a European army, however, leads to the need for a European foreign minister to represent Europe. And now comes the big BUT: Europe can no longer afford to praise its less capable politicians away by appointing them to positions in Brussels. A European foreign minister would have to have more solid democratic legitimization than the cronies of the governments currently in office. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was elected to the Bundestag in 2017 via a list seat in a constituency with 190,336 eligible voters. Since then, she has mainly been appointed (says Wikipedia). No citizen has ever voted for her to make European policy at all. Of course, she has also been confirmed by the European Parliament, but the options where limited to vote Yes or No. And as Sonneborn so aptly put it: the EU will need many years to recover from her first term of office.

Volt rejects the accumulation and arrogation of powers without a democratically legitimized mandate.

16th of February

It is Friday. Thank God. The week was exhausting.

Last Saturday, I spent my afternoon handing out flyers. I have to admit, the people of Leuven were quite positive about it. I will need to check with Richard Kelder if we got significantly more signatures that day.

On Sunday, I tried to catch up with my 'normal life' and edited Volt texts for LinkedIn and Facebook later in the night.

On Monday evening, we had an online welcome event for new Belgian members, a kind of meet-and-greet that you can join from all over the world. While chatting with Hans van Gaever, one of the lead candidates for Brussels (Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region), I got some new ideas for the political café we held on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, I had to cope with non-Volt related stress, giving me a 6-hour sleep deficit for the rest of the week. So, I took that evening off. But to be honest, I hadn't planned to join our events in Namur or in Brussels that evening. Again, no chance to participate and travelling by public transport when having a 9-to-5 job the next day.

Wednesday was exciting. I put on Facebook that we had 30% new members/supporters in the room when we debated about affordable housing and how to achieve this. - Don't tell anybody that we were only 9 people in total. It's starting to get frustrating to see how slowly we grow compared to BSW or Die Werteunion, two new parties in Germany, who start already with 4000 members.

At least we can say that Volt does not serve old wine in new bottles. We are in the vast majority real citizens struggling in average jobs to make a living. Our popularity in Belgium is limited because we still need to build up our visibility in society. This also means that we have to continue campaigning after the elections to become really famous in Belgium during the next legislative period.

When looking into the crystal ball, I foresee the core team cracking after the communal elections later this year. We still haven't managed to rally all hands on deck, as two-thirds of our members remain silent. Thanks to technical obstacles on the electronic platform of the Belgian government, not even all of our members could sign the enhancement form yet. If all of them would do it today (and could do it for the Flemish parliament), we would reach the goal of 500 signatures. This is a feasible number.

However, the political structure in Belgium requires that we need as many for each constituency where we candidate, plus the 5000 for Europe. This means we need about 8000 to 10000 people to support our candidacy. The 70 Volt people who are hyperactive as Duracell rabbits need to collect about 142 signatures on average over roughly 25 weeks - so only one signature per day. Did I mention, I am introverted? To talk to 142 people - friends and strangers - is a huge effort.

Let's return to the affordable housing debate. Since we were only a few, we had a really good discussion strengthening our approach in Volt Flanders. What do we stand for? In one word: balance. Volt supports investment in the construction and maintenance of social housing units to increase the supply of affordable rental housing. We are also looking into options of implementing control measures to limit rent increases and ensure stability for tenants. Another approach is to establish programs to support first-time homebuyers, such as low-interest loans, down payment assistance, or mortgage guarantee schemes.

Next to the issues faced by people who like to rent or buy their first house, we discussed the problems raising for many older people if they own a house and are now obliged to renovate it to become CO2 neutral in the near future. The upcoming costs might exceed their savings. One conceivable solution to this problem would be a system in which the state assumes the guarantees for the necessary loans, which homeowners can take out interest-free and repay over long terms. - In other words, the state pays in advance, and the citizens repay the costs to the state afterward.

On Thursday, a delegation of Volt took part in the Grote Kopstukkendebat of the student organization Politika at the KUL. Not on the podium. Volt is not important enough (yet!). Sitting in the audience, we listened to the representatives of the old parties elaborating their points of view on statements like: "The European migration policy must become stricter" or "The government does not do enough to protect citizens' purchasing power." It was impressive since all of the speakers were already members of one or other Belgian parliament or governmental body. It is their job to know the facts, while we, the newcomers, have to spend hours researching on the internet to come to a fact-based opinion. Some of them were even charismatic speakers. We had hoped to get some attention in the open question part of the event; however, this was cancelled because the debate itself took too long. Too bad, a missed opportunity for David to kick Goliath in the shins.

We used the reception afterward to hand out some flyers to the students. The VIPs did not take part in the reception; at least, I did not see them. – The low-budget kind-of-champagne Politika offered, reminded me to follow up with Jasper Coosemans on the planning of our upcoming GA in Antwerp. Next month, no location yet, no catering, no budget - we will have a great event, as always. I made a mental note on how to spend my weekend: looking for venues for our public events.

18th of February

The weekend is nearly over. I ignored the countless WhatsApp messages since Friday afternoon and focused on housecleaning on Saturday and getting some rest on Sunday. Since cutting back some trees and re-arranging the kitchen, I realized that I have become more "mature" than I was ten years ago. After dinner, I had a short feedback call with the Volt fundraising team. Tomorrow after work, I will distribute some more flyers into letterboxes asking for signature. At 8 PM, we have another meet and greet online. Now it is nearly midnight, and I am hesitating to check my Volt email for replies to our offer for workshops about women in politics on 8th of March. I might do it tomorrow before work and then decide if we have the headcount to participate in another event on that day, too.