Alternatives Européennes
Euroalter
Alternatives Europeénnes promotes democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state throughout Europe and beyond.
ID: 261651939142-60
Lobbying Activity
Response to Proposal for a Directive on cross-border activities of associations
28 Oct 2022
European Alternatives welcomes the proposal for a legislative initiative on the cross-border activities of associations. Our practical experience over 15 years of organising activities throughout the European Union has demonstrated how complicated a lack of effective access to all aspects of the single market is for associations. In practical terms, it is extremely difficult for associations to employ staff based on other countries, and problems with VAT and other tax regulations are recurrent. As a result, European Alternatives has had to open and maintain legal associations in different countries, where we would have much preferred to have one association which all our members could be members of: it causes democratic confusion to oblige European citizens who have the right to move to choose between one or other nationally registered association, particularly if they are joining an association which aims to promote and advance European citizenship. The lack of a single statute for associations has resulted in a multiplication of overhead costs relating to maintaining offices and accountancy, and multiplied structures of direction and oversight unnecessarily. The lack of a single association status makes fundraising much more complicated, as does the difficulty of cross-border charitable giving. Our attempts to use the status of EEIG to bring together different associations in one overarching legal structure was unsatisfactory - in effect only making another costly layer of bureaucracy with no democratic or associative structure. Our recommendation would therefore be to create a single status for European associations which would allow the association to choose a headquarters in one country where it would fulfil administrative and fiscal requirements with the state, to allow the association to move its headquarters to any address inside the EU, to have locally registered offices where necessary, with the possibility of employing staff straightforwardly throughout the single market, with a democratic structure that can include all members.
Read full responseResponse to EU Citizenship Report 2020
5 Aug 2020
The Citizenship report of 2020 should prioritise two areas in our view:
Firstly, the effective access to European citizenship rights of young mobile working Europeans. In advance of the Covid-19 crisis it was already apparent that young mobile Europeans often had more difficulty in accessing their rights as European citizens than some other parts of the population. They are more likely to be working in temporary, part time, or precarious employment, sometimes mixing this with their studies, are often highly mobile in moving frequently between European countries, and they are often poorly represented by trade unions and other workers organisations. Survey research conducted by Alternatives Européennes shows that young mobile European workers have difficulty opening bank accounts, renting apartments, having access to social security and healthcare and can experience discrimination in the workplace. Younger workers are less likely to know how to address these problems in accessing their rights, and more likely to leave problems unaddressed until they are in urgent need of them (for example access to healthcare). Surveys conducted by Alternatives Européennes during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that these problems in accessing rights often got significantly worse during the lockdowns, with younger mobile workers finding it more difficult to benefit from government job-support schemes, more difficult to know their health and safety rights at work, and more difficult to access healthcare and often put into difficult situations such as depending on health insurance of a partner. In the context of the relaunch of European economies following lockdowns, and deep recessions leading to youth unemployment which will likely be addressed at least partially by schemes promoting mobility of young workers, the European Commission should address ensuring that young workers who are mobile have effective access to their citizenship rights.
Secondly, the citizenship report should address citizenship education. Both Eurobarometer, and H2020 research projects such as Euryka (led by University of Geneva) have shown that there is a strong public demand for greater knowledge about the functioning of European democracy, and young people in particular feel ill prepared by their education to participate fully. As the European Union goes through a period of change and reform, and in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe, the European Commission should address what steps it can take to develop educational materials for citizenship education on European citizenship, and in what ways it can follow up on the Council recommendation of 22nd May 2018 on ‘promoting common values, inclusive education, and the European dimension of teaching'.
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