One of the huge meeting halls at German Bundestag hosted EM Germany’s last board meeting before the General Assembly taking place at the Italian Embassy in Berlin on June 26.

One of the main tasks was to finalise the board’s main proposal for EM Germany’s Political Agenda 2017/18: securing European values and democracy, social pillar, youth employment, climate change, EU communications, and the EU budget – a broad range of topics had to be discussed. With 250 member organsiations being represented in Germany’s biggest network for European politics, it’s certainly not easy to agree on a common line, but many of the disagreements had been resolved beforehand in a comprehensive consultation process that started in January.

Still, the board members found quite some issues for discussion. One of them was the proposal to suggest a higher EU budget. “Let’s take the courage to be clear on this! The EU can’t tackle growing challenges with less money, especially with the UK leaving” was the main line of argumentation. Some others spoke against it, asking to have the tasks examined first: “Not everything in the budget plan is really useful!” In the end, the board agreed on a common suggestion to raise the budget.

The delegates at the General Assembly will have the final say on this and 13 other topics. | Read the full text in German: https://www.netzwerk-ebd.de/nachrichten/mehr-eu-budget-wagen-ebd-vorstand-beschliesst-leitantrag-zur-ebd-politik-201718/