Unconditional Basic Income Europe

NEWSLETTER – December 2020

2020: An Eye-Opening Year

Dear Friend,

Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE) wishes you happy holidays and a Happy New Year. Also, a special welcome to our new subscribers!

Just like for most of you, 2020 turned out very different from what we originally planned for UBIE. But it was by no means a year wasted! The basic income debate accelerated everywhere across Europe and the world. Our petition for introducing an emergency Basic Income in the EU as a response to the crisis received impressive support within just a few weeks’ time. Also, the European Citizens’ Initiative “Start UBI” is closing in on the six digits realm – you can help to reach that milestone by signing the ECI and sharing it!

In December, Santa Claus brought us impressive numbers to prove that the demand for Basic Income in Europe is stronger than ever: A YouGov poll commissioned by WeMove.EU and UBIE has shown that two in three Europeans* are in favour of the introduction of an EU-wide Basic Income scheme!

Support for an EU-wide Basic Income experiment was about the same level, so together with WeMove.EU we decided to ask the EU to initiate a basic income trial – please support and share the petition! Let’s surpass 50.000 signatures before the year is over!

And just before Christmas, our advocacy received a supreme blessing when Pope Francis surprised the world with very strong arguments in favour of the Basic Income idea in his new book “Let us Dream: The path to a better future” – read more about this here!

Our task now is building on that momentum: Therefore, we’re using our winter holidays to prepare exciting activities such as training sessions for UBI campaigners, a UBIE Winter School, as well as further editions of our highly successful Basic Income Tea webinar series. And we’re also looking into further ways of convincing policy makers in the EU institutions and European capitals to start working on the introduction of Basic Income.

2021, we’re ready for you!

A fabulous New Year to all of you – stay with us, stay safe!

Yours unconditionally,

The UBIE Core Group: Vladan Lausevic, Ulrich Schachtschneider, Alessandra Bianchi, Dániel Fehér and Antonis Triantafyllakis

*) 65% of respondents in the six EU member states where the poll was conducted: 83% in Portugal, 73% in Poland, 68% in Spain, 64% in Italy, 59% in Germany, and 52% in France.

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Story Contest: How We Made Basic Income Happen

Isn’t there a better way of ending a strange year like 2020 or beginning a new one that the whole world has big hopes in than daring a deep glance into the future?

This is your chance to tell everyone about your idea how Basic Income will become a reality in the coming decades everywhere in Europe. Hey, you can even win a book by participating in our story contest:

Write your story (between 1000-2000 words)
Publish it anywhere where it can be publicly visible (your own blog, on Medium, a story on your Facebook profile, or anywhere you can share a link to)
Share it with a post on your most active social media channel using the hashtag #HowWeMadeBasicIncomeHappen, also tagging UBIE (you can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram)
Send the link to that post to us on contact@ubie.org so we can keep track and you’re good to go!

The story that gets the most interactions (likes, comments, reshares) by Friday, January 15, 2021, at 23:59 CET will win a signed copy of Philippe Van Parijs’ and Yannick Vanderborght’s book “Basic Income. A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy”!!!

Keep checking the UBIE website and our social media channels to read and support the newest contributions!