Quaker Council for European Affairs
QCEA
QCEA brings the Quaker vision of peace, climate justice and equality to Europe and its institutions.
ID: 482053344061-94
Lobbying Activity
Response to Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness
7 Nov 2025
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) welcomes this initiative. Having a strategy for intergenerational fairness highlights the positive social aspects of fairness and solidarity within the Union which benefit the public at large and strengthen legitimacy of its institutions. The initiative should further solidify the EUs commitments to human rights and a just transition, protecting future generations from authoritarianism and the climate crisis. QCEA welcomes the EUs ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and urges a complete phase-out of fossil fuels. Intergenerational fairness calls for decisions rooted in care, dialogue, and long-term vision, well beyond 2050. Building trust through just transitions and inclusive participation can strengthen solidarity between generations. A sustainable future depends on nature-based solutions that respect the right to clean air, water, and soil, and on resilient food systems that ensure health and dignity for all. Through open dialogue and shared responsibility, the EU could strengthen the social cohesion needed to face the climate crisis without leaving anyone behind while fostering our EU values of peace and solidarity. For QCEA, an EU strategy on intergenerational fairness must also look beyond short-term management toward building sustainable, peaceful futures with regard to migration. This means fostering solidarity across generations and geographies, and protecting the dignity and agency of future migrants. It requires anticipatory climate mobility policies and fair adaptation funding that address root causes rather than externalise responsibility. Governance must include youth voices, long-term vision, and mechanisms to assess intergenerational impact. Externally, the EU should promote global fairness and youth resilience in regions of origin. Finally, migration should be acknowledged as a shared, intergenerational story of renewal and collective responsibility. Fairness towards future generations should prioritise civic security over militarism. Intergenerational fairness should build trust, cooperation and collective solidarity for positive peace rather than short-sighted military deterrence which causes further environmental harm, insecurity and alienation. Massive subsidies to the arms industry today risk leaving future generations in debt and without adequate investment in social or environmental services. We owe it to future generations to build a stable and cooperative world order rather than engage in zero-sum transactions.
Read full responseResponse to EU vision for enhancing global climate and energy transition
11 Sept 2025
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) welcomes this initiative and calls on the Commission to ensure that the European Unions (EU) transition is grounded in justice. The green transition cannot be built on the suffering of others. The EU must take responsibility and accountability for reducing its own emissions while ensuring that the rest of the world does not pay the price for its transformation. To ensure effective global climate action, EUs climate and energy policies should decrease rather than increase existing inequalities or create new ones. Extractive activities for critical raw materials or large-scale land use for carbon offsets displace communities, undermine food security, and damage fragile ecosystems. These practices are in direct contradiction with the EUs commitments to human rights. A credible global strategy must prioritize real reductions in emissions within the EU, while supporting renewable, decentralized and community-led energy systems beyond EUs borders. Climate finance should be decided after prior consultation with all stakeholders and designed to meet adaptation as well as loss and damage needs. It should be based on grants and not delivered through loans that deepen dependency and foster neocolonialist practices. The transition must protect those most vulnerable to both climate impacts and to the lack of effective responses to the crisis. Vulnerable people include local communities whose lands are at risk, small-scale farmers whose livelihoods depend on fragile ecosystems, women, children, older persons and people with disabilities who face systemic barriers to resilience and adaptation. It also includes low-income or racialized communities in Europe and beyond already exposed to environmental harms. These voices must not only be heard but meaningfully included at each step of the political process in shaping solutions. The EUs strategy must also acknowledge that climate change is already driving displacement and insecurity. Rising sea levels, extreme weather, and resource scarcity are forcing people to move, sometimes across borders. The EU should avoid militarized responses and instead have a rights-based approach to climate mobility. This means supporting safe and legal pathways for those displaced, investing in conflict-sensitive adaptation, and ensuring that resource stresses do not turn into violence. As we have seen repeatedly, peace requires long-term approaches that address root causes of instability rather than short-term fixes. Climate diplomacy must be grounded in cooperation, not competition. This strategy should also incorporate what we have learned from the European Green Deal. Efforts to accelerate the transition have sometimes overlooked how EU climate policies and decarbonisation efforts can fuel conflict. Without conflict-sensitive analysis, the EU risks exacerbating tensions within communities and between regions. A sustainable path requires a green transition implemented trough a rights-based approach, being transparent about trade-offs, and creating space for dialogue with those most affected. A global strategy that promotes cooperation, dialogue, and equity will strengthen trust and build legitimacy for EU climate leadership. When it comes to resources, the EU should not pursue an illusion of green growth that replicates extractive patterns and deepens inequalities. A just global climate and energy strategy must recognize planetary boundaries, promote sufficiency over excess, and build partnerships based on equality. Above all, it must place human rights at the centre of its strategy rather than profits for European industry.
Read full responseResponse to EU Civil Society Strategy
7 Aug 2025
Like many civil society organisations we welcome this initiative to develop a EU Civil Society strategy and agree with the importance of civil society for the EU. As the initiative is aiming to promote dialogue with CSOs this should include examining how the Commission itself and other EU bodies make themselves accessible to civil society. EU institutions should be more open to public input by making it clearer who is responsible for which policies and how CSOs and the public can contact them. Unfortunately in recent years this information is increasingly hidden from the public, and in practice only accessible to specifically chosen CSOs. This can have the effect of making those of us in Brussels the gatekeepers or bottlenecks for local civil society groups and those outside of the EU, even though the latter are often better representatives of those groups affected by EU policies. There is often no public information available on how to contact officials in the Commission below the Director level, no consistency among the Permanent Representations on how public is access to staff assigned to the different Council of the EU bodies, and no clear information about standing rapporteurs within the European Parliament. The Transparency Register is one tool in particular that can be selectively used to restrict decision makers access to a wider array of civil society within the EU and outside, as it favours organisations who have the resources to regularly interact with the institutions rather than those who have expertise on the specific subject matter. There should be more mechanisms to ensure that smaller and non-European civil society organisations are able to interact with EU officials and parliamentarians without being dissuaded by bureaucratic hurdles. If the Commission is recognising the need for greater EU engagement with CSOs there should be an approach to not only improving the quality of interactions with organisations that are already engaging directly with the institutions but expanding access to a wider variety of groups.
Read full responseResponse to Anti-racism Strategy
8 Jul 2025
Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) supports ENAR's recommendation for the upcoming EU anti-racist strategy. The Strategy must: a. Integrate racial justice across EU employment and social protection frameworks. Embed anti-racism within the European Pillar of Social Rights, the EU Care Strategy, and the European Semester, ensuring targeted actions and funding for racialised workers, especially in precarious sectors. b. Acknowledge and value care work through a reparative and racial justice lens Recognise the centrality of care work - predominantly performed by racialised women - to economic systems. Approach care work like any other work, meaning care workers should benefit from labor law and rights. Promote its legal recognition, fair remuneration, and protection, and advocate for the regularisation of undocumented care workers. c. Revise legal frameworks to close gaps on intersectional discrimination Strengthen the Employment Equality Directive to explicitly address intersectional and structural discrimination, including those based on socio-economic status, migration status, gender, and informal or precarious labour conditions. d. Transform employer practices beyond symbolic DEI practices Support and hold employers accountable to implement anti-racist employment practices across recruitment, promotion, pay equity, and psycho-social safety, using transparent monitoring and participation of racialised workers. e. Guarantee decent work and fair minimum income Push for binding EU legislation on adequate minimum income and decent working conditions, including the regularisation and protection of platform workers and informal/undocumented workers in the gig economy, and the elimination of discriminatory sub-minimum wage practices, aiming at tackling in-work poverty. f. Support civil society and workers organising for justice in labour Provide sustained funding and protection for racialised-led organisations, and facilitate alliances between civil society and trade unions to address systemic inequality and exploitation in the labour market, notably through collective bargaining. g. Embed racial equity in EU economic and social governance Shift away from competitiveness-driven economic models by incorporating racial justice indicators and social equity objectives into the EUs macroeconomic frameworks, funding instruments, and social policy tools.
Read full responseMeeting with Michael Shotter (Director Migration and Home Affairs)
12 Jun 2025 · The QCEA wanted to present to Director Shotter their recently- published handbook titled “Moving with dignity - a positive peace approach to migration”.
Response to European Water Resilience Strategy
4 Mar 2025
Introduction Water is a fundamental human right and a key component of climate resilience, peace, and social justice. As the EU develops its Water Resilience Strategy, it must uphold the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and ensure policies do not prioritize economic interests over essential needs such as drinking water access, ecosystem restoration, and conflict prevention. We welcome the strong emphasis on the international dimension. The strategy must integrate a justice-based approach, ensuring coherence between internal and external actions while leveraging water as an entry point for peacebuilding rather than a source of conflict. About QCEA The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) is a non-governmental organisation, bringing a vision of peace, justice, and equality to Europe and its institutions since 1979. QCEA advocates for a new approach to security, focusing on nonviolent approaches to conflict. We promote policies that recognise the intrinsic equality of all people everywhere and a sustainable way of life for everyone on Earth. We identified several key priorities 1. Ensuring Equitable Access and Sustainable Water Management 2. Addressing Water Pollution Through Prevention & Accountability 3. Water as an Entry Point for Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention Integrating Water Resilience into External Action Conclusion The EU Water Resilience Strategy presents an opportunity to strengthen peace, justice, and sustainability. By enforcing the Water Framework Directive, preventing pollution, and using water as an entry point for conflict resolution, the EU can foster a resilient and equitable water governance system. Effective implementation requires coherence between internal and external policies, ensuring that water security is a foundation for both peacebuilding and environmental justice.
Read full responseMeeting with Lynn Boylan (Member of the European Parliament)
5 Feb 2025 · Just Transition and Climate Justice Policies in the EU
Meeting with Michael Mcnamara (Member of the European Parliament)
17 Jan 2025 · Introductory meeting